Just Another Sunday Omelette

After-church brunch today was omelettes with super-hammy grits. Everyone ordered something different in their omelettes, but they got to choose from ham, cheese (cheddar and some thing called "cougar cheese" that is awesome), green onions and bell peppers. If you don't have my can't-fail omelette recipe, just shoot me an email (tom@tomramsey.com) and I'll send it to you. For the super-hammy grits, just cook as usual, but substitute ham stock for the water.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Dinner with Deborah

Our friend Deborah joined us at home for dinner last night. We had a great visit and from the pictures below, I think you can tell that Deborah enjoyed the meal. I made Flatiron Steak with a Wine Reduction Pan Sauce, Lobster Whipped Potatoes and for Kitty, Gluten-free Broccoli Au Gratin. Before dinner we cracked a bottle of Castle Rock Pinot from California's Central Coast and with the meal, we uncorked a Parados Malbec from Argentina. 
I had never attempted to make any dishes "au gratin" with gluten-free baking mix before last night. I figured that with a small gathering, if I bombed with it, I could always throw some Fordhooks in the microwave and no one would be the wiser. As it turns out, you can use the stuff pretty much like flour when making a bechamel sauce.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Marinated Flat Iron Steak with Pan Sauce

1 Flatiron steak (2-3 lbs.)

2 cans pilsner beer

½ cup Dales Steak Seasoning

1 Tbsp. Ivy & Devine Coffee Rub

6 Tbsp. unsalted butter

1/3  cup good red wine

½ cup rich beef stock

Fresh ground black pepper

6 green onions

1 bunch parsley   

Prep

Marinate steak in beer and Dales Seasoning for at least three hours before cooking. Remove from marinade and pat dry. Allow meat to come to room temperature and rub thoroughly with Ivy & Devine Coffee Rub. Finely chop parsley and green onions. Turn on broiler and allow it to become very hot.

Cook

Heat a large iron skillet over high heat until it is very hot. Add 2 Tbsp. butter to the hot skillet and as soon as it melts and foams, add steak and cook for one minute on each side. Transfer skillet to broiler and add 1 more Tbsp. butter. Broil for seven minutes and transfer from broiler back to stovetop over medium heat. Remove the steak and allow it to rest in a bowl covered loosely in foil while the sauce is prepared. Turn off the broiler and place a large platter in the oven to warm. With the pan on the stovetop over medium heat, deglaze the pan with wine and allow it to reduce to 1/3 of its original volume. Add beef stock and continue reducing until it is ½ of its original volume. Turn heat to low and add any liquid that has pooled in the bowl beneath the steak and remaining butter. Stir in butter until it is completely emulsified and add ½ of the green onions. Add black pepper to taste.

Plate

Slice steak at an angle, place on warm platter, fan the meat and top with pan sauce. Garnish with chopped parsley and remaining green onions.

(Serves 4)

Lobster Whipped Potatoes

4 large russet potatoes

1 Tbsp. lobster base*

4 Tbsp. unsalted butter

1 cup whole milk

4 green onions

Salt

Pepper

Prep

Peel and cube potatoes. Set milk out and allow it to come to room temperature. Finely chop green onions.

Cook

In a large saucepan or medium stock pot, cover potatoes with cold water, add 1 tsp. salt and bring to a boil. Continue boiling until potatoes are tender enough for a knife to pass through them with little resistance. This should take about 12-15 minutes. Reduce the heat to low. Drain all but ¼ cup of water from the potatoes and return the pot to the stove. If you can’t determine this amount by “eyeballing” the liquid, remove ¼ cup of the hot water, set aside and then drain the potatoes completely and return the reserved water to the pot. With a potato masher or ricer, mash the potatoes until all the lumps are gone. Add lobster base and butter and stir thoroughly. Slowly add the milk, a little bit at a time and whip with a wand mixer while the milk is added. You may not use all of the milk before the desired consistency is reached. When the potatoes are velvety and completely lump-free, add salt and pepper to taste.

Plate

Serve hot and top with chopped green onions.

(Serves 6)

*I recommend a brand called Better than Bouillon.

Gluten-free Broccoli Au Gratin

6 heads fresh broccoli

4 Tbsp. gluten-free baking mix

4 Tbsp. unsalted butter

1 cup shredded jack cheese

¼ cup shredded parmesan cheese

1 cup whole milk

¼ tsp. nutmeg

1 whole pod garlic

1 tsp. olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Ingredient

Prep

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Cut broccoli florets from the stalks and place in a microwave and oven safe dish, season lightly with salt and pepper. Make a ¼ inch slice through the top of the garlic pod. Drizzle garlic with salt and pepper and wrap in foil. Allow the milk to come to room temperature.

Cook

Place the foil-wrapped garlic in the hot oven and roast for 15 minutes. Add 3 Tbsp. water and cover the dish containing the broccoli with plastic wrap, cut several holes in the wrap and microwave for three minutes. Carefully remove the plastic wrap and allow the broccoli to cool while you make the sauce.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the baking mix. Whisk together until velvety. Slowly add milk and whisk constantly (this sauce is now called a béchamel). Remove the garlic from the oven and squeeze the roasted cloves into the béchamel and continue to whisk until the garlic is fully emulsified. Pour the sauce over the broccoli and add ¾ of the cheese. Mix thoroughly but gently so as not to break up the florets. Top with remaining cheese and bake for 20 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and the sauce is set. Finish under the broiler for 2 or 3 minutes to brown the cheese.

Plate

Serve hot.

(Serves 6)

 Before...

After...

Quick Lunch

This was the result of wanting something hot, hearty and quick. It was like heaven, only cheesier.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Practice...Practice...Practice

To help get ready for my January 23rd audition for the new Gordon Ramsay show "Masterchef," I cooked one of my favorite dishes for one of my favorite priests. I figure, this guys has great beer, is bound by heaven to give me an honest opinion and besides, he and his wife are a blast to hang out with. Kitty and I went to the home of Bryan and Julie Owen and had dinner with them, the kids, the dog and the cats (who were terrified of me for some reason). Julie made a great salad with mixed greens, feta cheese and tart fruit. I did my go-to dish of Pork Tenderloin Stuffed with Andouille Sausage, served with a Fig Gastrique.
Next Saturday, I will be making this dish for Gordon Ramsay. I picked this recipe because I don't know how long I will have to wait, with my food in a hotbox. The gastrique and the roasted pork will hold up well to the long wait. I think I will also serve Ramsay a Chived Rice Timbale and some Steamed Green Beans with my secret weapon seasoning. Here is a photo from last night. I'll post the recipe later.
Thanks to Bryan, Julie and the kids for a great night and an honest critique.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Practicing What I Preach (sort-of)

Last night I grabbed a $1 cheeseburger at McDonald's on my way home from a speaking engagement in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I won't bore you with the pictures. Suffice it to say that the burger was mediocre at best. I was not however disappointed since it tasted exactly how I expected and provided me with enough energy to get home and go to sleep.
Wednesday night I took my own advice from the day's blog entry and whipped up a chicken breast without any notion of a recipe. I had some chicken in the freezer, some cream in the fridge and some chicken stock in the pantry (didn't feel like thawing out the homemade stuff). I put that together with a pouch of frozen butter beans and some basmati rice. It wasn't haute cuisine, but everyone was happy, the sauce was rich and it went nicely with the leftover bottle of Parados Malbec that was sitting on the dining room table in the cool  chef-thingy I got for Christmas from my in-laws. Despite the fact that I didn't use a recipe to cook the dish, I did remember what went into it and even took the time to write it down. here is my recipe for no-recipe chicken. If you want to get all fussy and go lower-cal, you could substitute milk for cream. It just won't taste as good. Instead, I would recommend just pouring a little less sauce on the chicken and none on the rice. That stuff tastes great without any sauce. Or you could hide your TV remote and chase the kids around the yard for a while to burn off the extra calories from the cream. Or you could just not worry about it and cook something extra light the next night. Or you could eat cream with every meal and just COMPLETELY stop snacking on junk between meals. Wow - I'm preachy tonight. Sorry about that.
Bon Appetit!

~Tom
Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts with Cream Pan Sauce

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 Tbsp. olive oil

3 Tbsp. unsalted butter

1 tsp. Ivy & Devine Poultry Seasoning Blend

¼ cup chicken stock

¼ cup heavy cream 

2 green onions

Prep

Liberally season chicken breasts with Ivy & Devine Poultry Seasoning Blend. Chop green onions. Set stock out and allow it to come to room temperature while cooking the chicken.

Cook

Heat a large iron skillet over medium heat. Add 1 Tbsp. butter and olive oil to skillet. When the butter foams and begins to brown, add chicken smooth side down first and cook until done, turning only once. This should take about 5 minutes for each side. Remove the chicken from the heat and either wrap in foil or place in a bowl, covered with foil. Deglaze the pan with ¼ cup chicken stock, loosening any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. When stock is reduced by ½ of its original volume, add cream and reduce by ½. Reduce heat to low and add to the sauce any liquid that has accumulated in the bowl or foil pouch of cooked chicken breasts plus the remaining 2 Tbsp. of butter. Stir with a spoon or whisk until the butter is completely incorporated in the sauce.

Plate

Place the cooked breasts over a starch (rice, potatoes etc.) in the center of the plate and drizzle over the top with the sauce. Garnish with chopped green onions.

(Serves 6)

Cooking Without Recipes

At the last meeting of the Belhaven Garden Club, I put on a demonstration detailing how to cook without recipes. They bought a load of groceries and hid them under a towel in the kitchen. When the class started, they pulled back the towel and I had to come up with multiple recipes for what I found there on the counter. It was lots of fun and I had some very attentive students. Since then, I have received several requests for the recipes of the dishes I prepared. In the spirit of the class, I will now give you the instructions on how to cook several different dishes without a specific recipe. So...this is not a recipe.

Step One – Things you need to always have in your kitchen.

There are certain staples that you should keep on hand at all times if you want to be able to cook without recipes. Having these items around will allow you to shop opportunistically and take advantage of meats and other items when they are on sale or marked down as a “manager’s special” (which usually means they are right up against the “sell by” date.

1.      Olive Oil

2.      Butter (not fake butter)

3.      Decent red and white wine (NOT cooking wine)

4.      A variety of herbs

5.      Chicken and beef stock (I use Better than Bouillon)

6.      Milk

7.      All Purpose Flour

8.      Pasta

9.      Rice (even the expensive Basmati is cheap and it’s worth the difference)

With the items above, you will never find yourself in a panic over what to cook.

Step Two – Shop like you are broke

Some type of meat is ALWAYS on sale. When the price looks right, buy a bunch of it and stick it in the freezer. Most every grocery store has a partition in the meat department where they have dramatically marked down the meat that is nearing the “sell by” date. Buy it. Freeze it. When frozen vegetables are marked down to under $1 per package, buy a freezer full of them.

Step Three – Cook like a restaurant chef (that is about attitude, not skill)

When a restaurant sees that it has too much of something, they create a “special.” When the waiter comes out and goes through a list of specials, he/she could just as easily say, “We have way too much spinach and our flounder needs to be cooked before we have to throw it away. With this in mind, our chef came up with a flounder/spinach dish that is not usually on our menu. Next week, we won’t have this particular problem so the dish will not exist. The Founder Florentine is served with a mixture of vegetables that we usually don’t serve together, but alas they are at the end of their shelf-life also.” Don’t get me wrong on this. Restaurant chefs are not trying to pass off old food on patrons as a special. They just know when they have too much of something and try to use it all up BEFORE they have to get rid of it. Generally, the special is the best thing on the menu because the chef have given careful thought to making regular ingredients in the kitchen sound even more appetizing than the rest of the menu. You need to think like that.

Step four – Don’t Panic, think ahead

When you are cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, take a look in the freezer and see what meats you have. Take out a package and let it thaw in the fridge overnight. The next evening you will have a meat that is ready to cook. This will serve as the “base” of your meal. Since you already have pasta, rice and perhaps potatoes (your starch), not to mention a freezer full of frozen vegetables, you only have to think about what meat you want to cook and how. Then you just think, “Would I rather have pasta, rice or potatoes to go with that _______ (insert meat name here)?” You can even ask the kids, “Do y’all want butterbeans, peas or green beans with your ____________ (meat) and _____________ (starch).”

Now you have your menu. The starch can be cooked in about 15 minutes and the vegetables take 4 minutes in the microwave. That leaves only the meat and its sauce to think about.

Pick an herb or two (oregano, thyme, rosemary) and get them out of the cabinet. If you want, pick a base note (onion, garlic, leeks) and chop them. Or you can just use a seasoning blend.

Now you have a meat and its flavors (herbs and base note). Pick a stock that matches your meat (chicken stock for lighter meats, beef stock for red meats). Pick a second liquid that you are interested in having that night (milk, cream, wine, beer etc.), this is not mandatory, but will add more flavor. Get out some butter and cut a few pats.

Decide if you want gravy or a sauce. If you want gravy, get out some flour.

Heat a large iron skillet over medium heat on the stovetop. Add a bit of fat (olive oil, canola oil, whatever oil, butter, bacon grease etc.). If you are using garlic or onion, put it in now. If you put in onions or garlic, let them cook for a bit before adding meat. When you add the meat, let it cook until well browned on one side and then turn it over only once and let it finish cooking on the other side. Remove the meat from the pan and set it aside, wrapped in foil or in a bowl, covered in foil.

Now make the sauce or gravy. If you want gravy, add a little more fat to the pan and a bit of flour. Stir them together until they look like a thin paste. Add liquids. If using multiple liquids, start thin and work to thick. In other words, stock or wine before milk or cream. If making a sauce, start with wine or beer and then add stock. You can also add jams, jellies or preserves to get a sweet sauce. You might want to play with different mixtures as you build confidence. As a rule of thumb, use the following guidelines

Fat+flour+stock+milk+butter=savory gravy

Fat+flour+stock+wine+butter=wine cream sauce

Stock+wine+butter=wine pan sacue

Stock+butter=au jus pan sauce

Stock+fruit+butter=sweet sauce

When you add the liquids, allow each one to reduce by ½ before adding the next one. When you add the butter at the end, turn down the heat and stir it around just before serving. When you are making the sauce, taste it and see if it needs more of the same seasoning you put on the meat.

Just before you serve the meal, take the bowl or foil pouch that holds the meat and add any juices back to the sauce and stir.

This may all sound complex, but the whole process is just a few steps with multiple choices. Essentially you: (1) pick a meat (2) pick your spices (3) pick a liquid that will become your sauce (4) cook your meat (5) deglaze your pan to make your sauce.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call me or schedule a class. In a small group, this concept is much easier to learn.

Bon Appetit!

~Tom

www.ivyanddevine.com

Ole!

I spotted a big hunk of Flank Steak in the freezer this morning and set it in the fridge to thaw. I had the whole day to think of what to do with it but my brain shut down after meetings with PR folk, calls with attorneys and trying to get some of my "real job" accomplished. With no fresh ideas in my head for this slab of beef, I turned to an old standard that is quick and easy. When I got to the house from entertaining some Senators and Representatives at Hal & Mal's (who were one of the few places open, due to the water shortage), I hit the kitchen at a full charge and had the fajitas ready when Kitty got home. I couldn't find any black beans, so I cooked black-eyed-peas with a bit of cumin and chopped onion alongside some basmati rice. Here's the recipe for the fajitas. The rest of it is easy to figure out without me having to type it up.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Fajitas
1 1½-2 lb. flank steak
1 medium yellow onion

1 medium red onion

2 bell peppers (any color)

1 jalapeño pepper

1 bunch green onions

1 cup diced tomatoes (canned)

4 cloves garlic

1 bottle Mexican beer

1 Tbsp. Ivy & Devine Coffee Rub

1 tsp. Mexican chili powder

1 tsp. cumin

1 Tbsp. olive oil

8 flour tortillas

6 oz. sour cream

1 jar high quality salsa

2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Prep

Slice yellow onions, red onions and bell peppers. Roughly chop jalapeño peppers, green onions and garlic. Slice the flank (across the grain) steak into ½ inch strips. Season the meat and vegetables with Ivy & Devine Coffee Rub. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

Cook

Put dining plates into the oven to warm while cooking the fajitas. Heat a large iron skillet over medium-high heat until very hot. Add olive oil to hot skillet and when it begins to smoke, add yellow onions, red onions, bell peppers, garlic, one half of the jalapeño peppers and one half of the green onions. Cook until onions are translucent and peppers begin to soften. Remove vegetables and place them in a mixing bowl. Cover with foil. If the skillet is too dry, add a bit more oil. Add meat to the hot skillet (but don’t crowd the pan) and cook for two minutes on each side. As the meat is done, add it to the mixing bowl of vegetables. When all of the meat is cooked, add all of the meat and vegetables from the mixing bowl into the hot skillet and increase heat to high. When the pan begins to really sizzle, add the tomatoes and about one quarter of the beer. Wrap the tortillas in a damp paper towel and microwave for about 30 seconds, depending on the strength of your microwave oven.

Plate

Serve family style by placing the hot skillet on the table on a trivet with the cheese, sour cream, salsa, and remaining jalapeño peppers and green onions in small bowls.

(Serves 4)