Literally – it exploded from all the barbecued beef I ate, and had to be replaced. Michele and I just got back from an incredible weekend in the Santa Maria Valley. The weather was hot, but beautiful. The food was amazing, and the people we met could not have been nicer.
I'm only back in San Francisco for one day before heading down to LA for my big shoot with the creative geniuses at Brand New Entertainment. I don't have time to post them yet, but I filmed three great recipes, and took tons of pictures I can't wait to share!
We stayed at the Historic Santa Maria Inn where I filmed Chef Alex Araizaga making a very unique salmon recipe featuring a sauce using the area's famous strawberries.
We also had the great pleasure of watching Paul and Susan Righetti make a traditional Santa Maria Barbecued tri tip meal, complete with pinquito beans, grilled garlic bread, and a wonderful salsa.
Susan's family runs the venerable Far Western Tavern, one of the best known Santa Maria-style barbecue restaurants in the area, and she also sells a complete line of local artisan products on her website, Susie Q’s Brand.
Not only did we get treated to an amazing lunch, but she let me film her making the beans and salsa, and Paul will be starring in a video recipe showing the "real" way to do a Santa Maria tri tip.
It was an amazing afternoon! As if that wasn't enough, later in the evening we were able to dine at the Far Western Tavern. We had such a wonderful meal, including an unforgettable plate of barbecued sweetbreads served with cocktail sauce.
We also got to have dinner at the world famous Hitching Post, where Michele and I enjoyed one of the best steak dinners of our lives. I had a 15-oz top sirloin that was so juicy, so flavorful, and so uniquely flavored by the intoxicating scent of the red oak fire that it defies description.
I'd like to offer a very special thank you to Christopher Weir who set the trip up, and was a perfect host. Christopher works with the Santa Maria Visitors Bureau and they could not have had a better representative. When we arrived at the Santa Maria Inn there was a gift basket with local wine, fresh strawberries, and a welcome letter from the Mayor!
Like I said, when I get back from LA, I will post the videos and more photos/info from this very special trip to California's beautiful central coast. Stay tuned!
We're just about to leave for Santa Maria, California for a weekend expedition to research and report on this area's famous (borderline mythical) barbecued tri tip.
Sunset Magazine once called this red oak roasted beef, "the best barbecue in the world." Sure, I could just take their word for it, but I decided to arrange a little excursion to investigate for myself.
I'll be interviewing the local tri tip aristocracy to learn the real history, recipes and techniques.
I've already posted my versions of the barbecued tri tip and the Santa Maria-style pinquito beans (pictured here with links to the videos), which I love, but I may have to make a few alterations once I see how they're truly supposed to be done. Stay tuned!
There's nothing like arriving somewhere after a long trip and being greeted with something beautiful and delicious.
The beautiful would be my wife Michele, the delicious was a plate of stuffed pattypan squash.
These sweet, tender summer squash were stuffed with rice and Merguez, a spicy lamb sausage from North Africa. She roasted them with tomato and chicken stock, and they were truly amazing! It might not be until next week, but I will film this recipe for sure! Enjoy.
I just got back into San Francisco last night after a fun, hot, and too-short visit with my family in upstate New York. It's hard to keep posting new video recipes when you've been traveling as much as I have, but luckily I had some footage saved from a delicious Bordelaise sauce I made when we tested the dry-aged beef.
Bordelaise sauce is one of those classic old school sauces that many chefs learn in culinary school, and then unless they end up working in a traditional French restaurant, or maybe some large hotel, they don't really make on a regular basis. It's a shame since this is such a fantastic sauce, and really very easy to make. When you factor in the availability of really good, really affordable red wine at the local market, this sauce makes even more sense.
The one key ingredient you'll need to track down is a nice rich (and real) veal stock. Many of your higher-end grocery chains now sell it, but you may have to ask a local butcher to find you some. There are NO thickeners in this sauce. It is simply reduced until concentrated. Substituting beef broth just will not cut it, since we are relying on the gelatin in the stock to give us the beautiful sticky viscosity the sauce is known for.
I mention in the video that real, classic Bordelaise usually calls for the addition of beef marrow to add richness to the sauce. I've had it that way, and it is wonderful, but this version is very nice also, even without that unctuous addition.
One problem with this post is no real "money shot." I was so busy that day with filming the potatoes and dry-aged beef test that I never took any decent pictures of the sauce! That explains the flickr photo I found (credits below), and recycled photo from the dry-age post. Photo esthetics notwithstanding, this is a great sauce recipe, which I hope you try soon. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 tsp butter 4 large shallots salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste 1 cup good red wine 2 cups real veal stock
Top Photo (c) Flickr user adactio Steak on Fork Photo (c) ChezUs
On a recent gourmet getaway to Aspen, I had the pleasure of tasting a fantastic Tres Leches cake at the Hotel Jerome (pictured below). Chef Christopher Keating, crediting his wife for the recipe, explained it was one of the items that he just couldn’t take off the dessert menu. As I made my way through the moist, milky goodness, I knew why — this was a great cake.
I'm sure I'd had it before, but I couldn't recall where or when, so it was like tasting it for the first time. Normally a soggy cake would not be a good thing, but here it's genius. The cake is soaked with a sweet milk syrup made from condensed milk, evaporated milk, and half and half (hence the name, Tres Leches). It's like eating cake and drinking milk, but in the same bite!
I won't pretend this version is better than the Hotel Jerome's made-from-scratch recipe, but since this is my Mom's version, it's at least a tie. She would have normally made this from scratch also, but time was short, and the humidity was high (life-threateningly high), so she used a yellow box cake mix, which worked just fine.
Whenever I post an ethnic recipe like this, I like to research the name and history. Here I didn’t bother, since the cakes origins are so obvious once you see how it's made. So, with no facts to back up my story, here is how the Tres Leches cake was born.
Somewhere in either Mexico or Nicaragua, someone made a cake. They were going to serve it with milk, as people tend to do, but something happened which caused the milk to spill on to the cake. Not wanting to waste a good piece of cake, soggy though it may be, the Mexican or Nicaraguan cook served it anyway. People loved it, and eventually a sweet tres leches (three-milk) syrup was developed for soaking the spongy cake.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it! Whether you make a cake from scratch, or use Pauline's shortcut, give this delicious dessert a try! Enjoy.
Ingredients: For the Tres Leches- 1 can (12-oz) evaporated milk 1 can (14-oz) sweetened condensed milk 1 cup half and half For the Cake- 1 box yellow caked mix 3 eggs 1 cup water 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1 tsp vanilla shortening to grease pan
One video recipe I plan on tackling soon is puff pastry. This very special dough is readily available in our grocery store's frozen foods case, but it's a recipe that any foodie must try at least once.
This is from Vah-Chef, Sanjay Thumma, who does a great job explaining the process. I will do the recipe in US measurements, so don't worry about converting the metric measurements he gives.
If you've tried to make puff pastry yourself, I'd love to hear your experiences, and also pass along any recipes you found successful.
By the way, I'll be flying back to San Francisco on Tuesday, so things should be returning back to whatever normal is on this blog. If I've not responded to a comment or email, I've either not had time, or simply missed it -- so try again. Thanks and enjoy!
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce my latest creation… Porkporken™! This meaty monstrosity was inspired by the perfectly preposterous Turducken, which is a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken.
This is the porkification of that idea, and features a whole pork loin roast stuffed with a whole pork tenderloin.
This has to rank right up there with the dumbest ideas I've ever had, since there's really no good reason to stuff a pork loin with a whole pork tenderloin, other than just to see what would happen.
Having said that, it was pretty damn tasty, and proved visually entertaining for the guests. Between the two pieces of pork I used a savory rosemary, sage, and garlic bread dressing. It slow-roasted for 2 hours over a mirepoix, basted occasionally with the pan drippings.
I didn't film its creation, but something tells me you'll be seeing this on the blog at some point. By the way, alternative names to Porkporken™ include Porkenstein, and Death by Pork.
Literally – it exploded from all the barbecued beef I ate, and had to be replaced. Michele and I just got back from an incredible weekend in the Santa Maria Valley. The weather was hot, but beautiful. The food was amazing, and the people we met could not have been nicer.
We stayed at the Historic Santa Maria Inn where I filmed Chef Alex Araizaga making a very unique salmon recipe featuring a sauce using the area's famous strawberries.
Not only did we get treated to an amazing lunch, but she let me film her making the beans and salsa, and Paul will be starring in a video recipe showing the "real" way to do a Santa Maria tri tip.
I'd like to offer a very special thank you to Christopher Weir who set the trip up, and was a perfect host. Christopher works with the Santa Maria Visitors Bureau and they could not have had a better representative. When we arrived at the Santa Maria Inn there was a gift basket with local wine, fresh strawberries, and a welcome letter from the Mayor!
