First, saute onion and red pepper flakes in vegetable oil. Add sliced napa cabbage, salt, and pepper. Next, add shiitake mushrooms and green peppers.
Meanwhile, boil the egg noodles.
Back to the sauce: season with balsamic vinegar, more cabbage, scallion, and sesame oil. Add the cooked noodles. Add soy sauce, to taste.
Yesterday I bought a loaf of challah to make Frenched Toast, which due to domestic miscommunication, I did not have the opportunity to make this sunny Sunday morning.
Nonetheless, the recipe I would have followed (and likely will, soon, post haste).
This recipe is for 2.
French toast begins by making a slurry of eggs and milk. The same goes here, with the addition of vanilla extract and cinnamon. You can also add any flavored spirit in lieu of the vanilla, such as a dark rum, a flavored rum, Grand Mariner, or even Chambord, if you like to cover your finished toasts with berries. But I digress, as a Sunday-morning breakfast needn’t begin with liquor.
The soaking period in egg is up to the chef: it will depend upon the thickness and fortitude of your bread. Too long, you have mush. Too little, you’ll have a tough mess. Use your judgement. Gauge between 15 seconds and 3 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat up a non-stick surface and right before “frying”, add butter. Copious amounts, if you want this to go-over well. Then, add your wet challah slices, two at a time, to the pan. Fry until golden, 3 turns total. Set aside, and start again with the last 2 slices.
With fresh butter in the pan, add maple syrup, and warm through to bubbling. Set up the plates, 2 slices each, and pour-over the warm butter/syrup mixture.
Garnish with fruit. Powdered sugar, if you want to go over the top. Serve with a side of bacon for the Messy Chef’s favorite combination.
Last night I had my second dinner at Sensei, located on East Cary Street in Richmond, VA.
Sensei has changed a bit from my initial visit. The music is softer, and thus made me feel it was less of a “New York style”, hip restaurant. This change in music was the first thing I noted. Service was better, but still had some rough edges (appetizer dishes sitting dirty on the table for far too long). On a Friday night, I expected to see more customers. The menu was new too, some of the same items, but also some new.
We ordered two appetizers: the calamari fritti and the portabello mushroom crostini. The calamari was done right, a nice coating and not rubbery. One diner complained it needed more salt. It was served with both a creamy and a tomato sauce. The portabello appetizer was less successful in execution. The “bread” portion was more like some avant-garde sculpture which dominated the vertical space above the plate. It was not palatable. The mushrooms and the prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella portion were good, the mushrooms, grilled, with balsamic vinegar on the plate, the highlight. It was great flavor, but I would have preferred a “better” bread crouton.
Entrées ordered included swordfish (excellent, lots of flavor), seafood risotto (not bad, but bettered by their seafood pasta), and the porcini/truffle gnocci (sublime). I ordered the gnocci, and indeed, it was an excellent dish I admired. Throughout the dinner, that smell of truffle perfumed by dining space, the porcini mushrooms fresh (not dried) and oh so good. Each one was like a royal treat. The gnocci were unusual, and large: they wrapped a mushroom stuffing. The dish was the right size (not too much), and the addition of vegetables (from asparagus to broccolini) was excellent. I asked for salt, which was missing on the vegetables.
The order of profiteroles (cream puffs) made an appropriate dessert when shared… just a few bites of delicious mocha flavor. I was annoyed that the waiter drowned each one in chocolate sauce, which made sharing messy and inconvenient. I could have well doused each one on my own plate with the sauce, thank you very much.
Sensei offers (still) a dynamic, different dining environment in Richmond, and offers some tasty twists on Italian fare. I continue to be impressed and would recommend it!
This past weekend we filmed a new Messy Chef video, centered on a 3-course menu. You can find the video, alongside all future videos, on the video page.
I made and adapted these recipes on the spot, so I do not have precise measurements.
The **zucchini* included green zucchini, bread crumbs, olive oil, parmesan cheese, mortadella, sopresata, pinch of water. This mixture gets processed and then fills hollowed-out zucchini. We baked them for about 18 minutes at 400 degrees.
The beef entrée was presented on a bed of puréed white beans, with truffle oil, parmesan cheese, and garlic, with waxy potatoes. This mixture was processed and became a warm-bed for the beef. The beef was prepared simply, using seasoning of salt and pepper, and was first seared on the stovetop. The beef was more gently warmed in the oven in two 5-minute intervals, the first, with an additional splash of red wine.
After warming a second time, the beef was sliced thin, and presented on top of the potato-purée base. The beef was topped with chopped tarragon, mint, and spring onion, and playful splashes of a balsamic vinegar glaze.
The dessert was adopted from a recipe that appears in the Williams-Sonoma Entertaining cookbook. The upside-down cakes included orange segments, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, heavy cream, and flavorings. You can serve the dessert with a crème anglais sauce. We made the sauce off-site ahead of time, and re-heated it. Our sauce was made with low-fat milk. I recommend using half-half, or heavy cream, if you can afford the calories, for a thicker sauce.
I should like to thank my hosts, GP and HJ for the use of their kitchen!
In this month’s edition of Bon Appetit magazine, they featured a “master class” with Alice Lo, of New York City, on creating Chinese soup buns. They are a delicious take on the idea of a meat-filled dumpling. We found they were reasonably easy to make, once you have created a flavorful soup base that turns to jelly with the addition of gelatin.
Once steamed for 12-13 minutes over cabbage leaves, the buns are ready to eat, and get treated with a sauce of Chinese black vinegar, ginger, and soy sauce.