CHICKEN, FISH & STEAK

Brussel Sprouts Paysanne (serves 5)

finished brussel sprouts

1 # brussel sprouts
2 oz carrots, paysanne
2 oz leeks, paysanne
2 oz celery, paysanne
2 oz onion, paysanne
1 ½ oz prosciutto, juiliened
1 oz butter
salt TT
1 ½ minced parsley

1. Clean, blanch, and shock the sprouts
2. Cut other vegetables into paysanne strips 1/8 by ½
3. Sweat the paysanne in butter. Add prosciutto and sprouts
4. Cook gently, with out browning for a few min
5. Toss with parsley, adjust seasonings

TIPS: When blanching the Brussels sprouts do it in heavily salted boiling water. The salt keeps the vibrant green color. Blanch for a few minutes. When I was making this I didn’t blanch them long enough so in order to make up for it when I was sautéing them with the other vegetables I cooked it a bit longer (covered) til the sprouts were fully cooked.

paysanne cut carrot, leek, & celery

When sprouts aren’t fully cooked, this is when they smell and taste like feet!

If your Brussels sprouts are bigger, cut them in half or even quarters. They are easier to eat this way and I think event taste better when they are smaller.

brussel sprouts cut in half

Brussels sprouts are a fall and winter vegetable – that is when they are at their best!

Sauteed Chicken Chardonnay (serves 4)

finished chicken chardonnay

2 ea chicken supremes, prepared (boneless, skinless)
1 ½ oz clarified butter
1 oz shallots, fine dice
6 oz mushrooms, sliced
2 oz white wine (chardonnay)
3 oz chicken stock
3 oz heavy cream
parsley chopped, as needed
salt and pepper TT
flour as needed

1. Prepare chicken breast supreme’s and refrigerate
2. Heat the clarified butter in sauté pan
3. Dry, the chicken with a paper towel, season with salt and pepper. Dredge in flour, shake off
4. Sauté chicken in butter, presentation side down, until golden brown, turn and sauté other side
5. Remove to baking pan and finish in oven @ 350
6. Adjust the fat, add mushrooms and sauté them for 3-5 min. Remove and set aside
7. If needed, degrease pan
8. Deglaze pan with white wine and reduce au sec. Add chicken stock and reduce by 2/3
9. Add heavy cream and reduce to sauce consistency season with salt and pepper
10. Put sauce under chicken on plate, garnish with chopped parsley.

breasts after being sauteed; the little pieces with the breast are the oysters – one of the tastiest part of the chicken

A supreme cut is a boneless skinless chicken breast – this recipe is also seen with a airline cut which still has the wing joint in it. Chicken should cook to the internal temp of 165 F.

chardonnay sauce

When saucing this plate the chicken should be placed on top of the sauce and not smothered… this is a very elegant dish and the beautifully golden chicken should not be covered up by that sauce (which by the finished plated picture you can see we did…oops)

Chateau Potatoes (serves 10)

potatoes in saute pan

2 # potatoes, waxy
salt TT
6 oz clarified butter
white pepper TT
2 oz whole butter

1. Peel potatoes. Cut into 2 inch lengths – make a fat tourne
2. Place in cold salted butter
3. Bring to simmer and parcook potatoes approx 5 min. – should be raw in middle
4. Remove from water and spread on pan, to release steam and dry potatoes
5. Heat sauté pan over med heat. Add clarifies butter to cover bottom – ¼ inch deep
6. Sauté potatoes in batches, adding more butter as necessary turning them often
7. If browned but not cooked, place in oven at 350 for a few min
8. Season with salt and pepper and toss with whole butter

Once again we had to try a turn a potato into an impossible shape known as a tourne, a shape that is a seven-sided football shape.

These are really tasty though – when browning they should be just slightly browned – but not as brown as a “French fry brown”.

Steak au Poivre

finished steak, with sauce, carrots, & chateau potatoes

Two 4 oz steaks, ½ pound each, from fillet, romp or sirloin.
Crushed pepper – black, gray or green
Salt
1 tbs canola oil
1 oz cold butter
2 oz dry white wine
2 oz brown veal stock
2 tsp crème fraiche
1 tsp Dijon smooth mustard

1. Remove the steaks from the refrigerator 20 min in advance. Prepare a cooling rack
2. Cover the steaks on both sides with crushed pepper. Pat it firmly so that it sticks into the flesh. Then salt the steaks
3. Heat the oil in a sauté pan over high heat. Add 1 tsp butter, once it foams lower heat to med. Lay steaks in the pan and cook 4 min. Rotating and spooning the cooking juices over them - cook 2 min on each edge. Remove to cooling rack and tent with aluminum foil
4. Put a serving dish and sauce boat into warm oven @ 150 F
5. Pour the wine into a sauté pan and bring to a boil, stirring, scrapping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spatula until wine is syrupy
6. Dice the rest of the butter (should be chilled) add veal stock to pan, boil 2 min. stir in crème fraiche, then diced butter bit by bit – put through fine strainer into warm sauceboat
7. Taste for salt and pepper.

sub primal cut of meat that we fabricated into the steaks

FRENCH TRANSLATION: Au = with and Poivre = pepper = Steak with pepper.

It is really important to put the pepper onto the steak before the salt, because if you put the salt on first the meat will just soak it up and the pepper wont stick to the meat.

When cutting up your steak, make sure to take off the sliver skin. It is Important to tear it off instead of cutting it off because when you cut if off you may end up tearing off to much meat. The reason you do this is because of the texture of the sliver skin – it is really tough.

fabricated steak cuts

sauce on fire after adding the brandy

The tenderloin gets denser as you get close to the middle of the loin. The center cuts will weigh more and are better for rare to medium rare cooking.

We made one CHANGE to this recipe – we used brandy instead of white wine.

The brandy made the sauce a little more intense. If you want the brandy to burn of you would need to cook the brandy for 20ish minutes and we did not cook it that much. When we first tried to make this sauce the cream broke, due to the constant heat so if when you put the cream into the sauce and it starts to break remove from heat, also remove from heat when you get the flame from the brandy.

In addition to the chateau potatoes and steak we made batonnet carrots. This was simply done by cutting the carrots into a batonnet cut which is ½ inch by ½ inch by 2 ½ inch – thin sautéing in butter and adding salt and pepper. (see picture with finished steak picture)

Pan Fried Chicken with Gravy (serves 4)

finished fried chicken with pan gravy, asparagus, & mashed potatoes

Frying chicken, 2 lb -3lb cut into 8 pieces each
Salt and pepper TT
3 tsp garlic powder
3 tsp onion powder
1 ½ tsp dried oregano
1 ½ tsp dried basil
12 oz flour, seasoned
2 c buttermilk
oil as needed
4 oz onion, small dice
1 ½ pts chicken stock

1. Season chicken with salt and pepper
2. Add herbs and spices to flour
3. Dip chicken in buttermilk, flout – repeat
4. Set on parchment until ready to fry
5. Pan fry chicken in 360 Foil until done. Approx 40 min, turning so it cooks evenly.
Reduce heat as necessary
6. Keep 3 tbl of oil form pan,
7. Add diced onions and sauté until translucent
8. Add 1 ½ oz of flour to cook blond roux
9. Temper stock and simmer approx 35 min
10. Strain through cheese cloth adjust seasonings

Serves 2 pieces per person with 4 oz of gravy.

chicken frying in a canola oil

The oil should be at a temperature of 330 F to make a golden brown skin. Each chicken should cook 8-10 min on each side. The oil should not be smoking

Buttermilk has latic acid in it so it makes a great natural marinade. If you don’t have buttermilk you can use milk and squeeze a little lemon – this tenderizes the meat.

You can do crusts in a million different ways. We did a traditional crust basically following the recipe. However instead of dried herbs we used fresh basil and oregano. – This made the fried chicken feel more fresh and light (as light as fried chicken could feel!)

Our exact method: We pre seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper, then a light marinade in milk and lemon. Next we dredged the chicken in flour seasoned with garlic powder, onion powder, fresh basil, and oregano. Then fried in vegetable oil for about 10 min on each side.

Whipped Herbed Butter Potatoes

potatoes after being "whipped"

1 ½ # Russet potatoes
3 oz heavy cream
2 oz butter, softened parsley as needed
salt and pepper TT

1. Prepare the potatoes, cover with cold water, and season with salt and season with salt, bring to boil and simmer until very tender, approx 25 min
2. When potatoes are done, drain and let steam escape – run the potatoes through the ricer
3. Add butter and cream. Whip them quickly, fold in fresh chopped parsley, season TT
4. Keep warm in bain marie until needed.

When boiling these potatoes cut them half and keep the skin on. By keeping the skin on, this keeps the starch inside the potato. When you take the skin off all the starch goes into the water.

Make sure when you take these potatoes out of the water they are tender enough to mash – if you like your mashed potatoes creamy then make sure they are really tender!

Our potatoes were not quite tender enough, we first tried putting them through a food mill – that didn’t work, then we tried mashing it with the bottom of the pan (we didn’t have a masher), our third attempt to whip these taters were to put them in the blender, this also didn’t work extremely well… but after all three methods we ended up with only just slightly lumpy potatoes.

Mixed in the potatoes were roasted garlic, cream, butter and salt and pepper.

ROASTED ASPARAGUS.

We lightly tossed it in oil, salt and pepper and then put it in the oven to roast at 350 F for 15- 20 min.

Truites a la Meunire

finished whole pan fried fish with lemon herbed risotto & spinach

4 each trout fillets – prepared
salt and pepper TT
lemon juice TT
clarified butter – as needed
Flour as needed
2 oz butter
½ lemon – fresh squeezed
parsley- chopped

1. Heat the sauté pan with a thing layer of clarified butter
2. Season the fillets, dry with paper towels and dredge them in flour
3. Sauté the fillets in clarified butter skin side down until just done
4. Remove the fish to a plate and keep warm
5. Discard the clarified butter and add the whole butter and heat to light noisette
6. Add lemon juice and chopped parsley – coat the fish with this lemon butter sauce
7. Adjust salt and black pepper serve immediately.

We ended up using a loupe de mer instead of a trout.

whole loupe de mer before being fabricated

The word TREET BLU – means to cook the trout while it is still alive. If you see this on the menu it usually means that they have stream of have the live fish in the back… they catch and cook it to order. When cooked the fish turns blue - it is usually lightly seasoned with flour and parsley butter sauce.

fish missing one of its "fillets"

We cooked our fish in three different ways.

The first way: Sauté

fish ready to be stuffed

With this method we butter flied the fish and stuffed it with lemon, butter, salt and pepper and thyme. We first trussed the fish to hold the aromatics inside and then sautéed the fish in clarified butter.

NEXT TIME: We should have added more aromatics because you couldn’t really taste them. We also did not need put string on the fish or at least as many, because after the fish was cooked, and we tried to take the string off the skin came with it.

The second way: En Papillote

fillets after being cooked en papillote

This is when the fish steams in its own juices. You place the fish in parchment that has been folded it in half and cut it like a heart. In addition to the fish put in some butter and lemon and thyme. The paper is then folded around the fish like a calzone. We baked ours for 425 F. for 15 min.

fish fillet inside of its pouch before it was cooked

The third way: Grill

For this method we seasoned the fillets with lemon, butter, and thyme and then oiled the grill.
We grilled each side of the fillet for 3-4 minutes.

With the fish and risotto we also made sautéed spinach. The steps for this are as follows:

1. Put the patted dry spinach in the pan with nothing else in it, put a lid on top and press the spinach till all the moisture is out, then remove from heat.

2. Later sauté the spinach in butter or oil or flavored oil.

We chose to toast cumin seeds, mix those with butter and then sauté the spinach with the cumin butter. Don’t forget to add salt at the end! (see picture with finished fish picture)

RISOTTO

3 cups stock
1 cup rice
We added celery and fresh tarragon as well.

1. Sauté (without browning) the celery
2. Add rice – completely cover with oil before adding any stock
3. Slowly add stock little batches at a time

4. Stir constantly until all liquid is added, taste rice to make sure cooked, if not may have to add more liquid.

This rice dish is delicious and creamy; it can be a little labor intensive because you have to constantly stir it.

In the middle of the cooking process.

There you go three entire meals! All yummy and relatively easy to make.

Stay tuned for week 9 when we showed off our skills to our family!