I just got back from LA and it's way too late to recap the last three days, although I can tell you I had a fantastic time. Jude and her husband Greg were marvelous hosts, and working with her team at BNE was a great experience!
After a long day of shooting Wednesday, Jude treated us to a very special meal at a restaurant called Honey Pig in LA's Koreatown. Her friend, and fellow BNE producer Juliana recommended it, and it turned out to be a wonderful choice!
Anyway, I'm going to bed, but I wanted to post this very short film I captured with my iPhone. What you are seeing is pork belly, pumpkin, kim chi, bean shoots, garlic, and jalapeño all grilled and eaten wrapped in stick rice sheets. It was incredible!
I just wrapped up day one of my shoot with BNE in Los Angeles. It was a long, but fun day, and left me with a new appreciation for people that cook on TV.
This doesn't mean I'll stop making fun of them, but I do have a whole new level of respect.
My host Jude, the Co-Founder and Executive Producer at BNE, is a force of nature and a total joy to work with. She really took this rookie under her very pregnant wing and made me feel so comfortable and relaxed.
I'm not sure how I did, but she seemed to think it went well, so that's good enough for me. After the shoot she and her husband Greg took me (and her adorable son Hudson) to dinner at this great Mexican seafood joint called Mariscos Chente.
We had this huge whole grilled fish (snook) dish called pescado zarandeado. So good! I also had my first ever michelada (pictured here), which was a very refreshing (and huge) drink made with beer, lime, and a mildly spicy tomato juice.
I'll be back in San Francisco Thursday evening, and will give you an update then. By the way, I've been in San Francisco since 1983 and this is the first night I've ever spent in LA! See you soon.
The Eggs Benedict Florentine you see here was posted on my Twitter page during our trip down to the Santa Maria Inn. It was delicious, but it reminded me of my days, long, long ago, as a brunch cook dealing with the nightmare of the end-of-the-service broken hollandaise.
It's the ultimate Murphy's Law in the kitchen, the hollandaise is fine until you get down to those last few orders and then it "breaks." The egg and butter separate, and you are basically screwed.
As a young cook I remember feverishly whisking up a small, new batch of sauce as the rest of the table's food was going out. I don't remember when, but eventually someone showed me how to save a broken hollandaise, and my life has been significantly better since.
I was doing a little practice for my shoot tomorrow in LA with Brand New Entertainment, and was playing around with making and breaking a hollandaise sauce, so I decided to turn on the camera for a quick little demo. Enjoy!
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
I just got back from LA and it's way too late to recap the last three days, although I can tell you I had a fantastic time. Jude and her husband Greg were marvelous hosts, and working with her team at BNE was a great experience!
