Archive for July, 2008

Tonight I made some fish. I’m always looking for simple preparations; full flavors are good too. Here, I used a soy-based gingery, garlicky sauce with some heat. I covered an orange roughy filet with the sauce and baked it in a 400 degree oven for 12 minutes until fully cooked, with firm flesh.

The side dishes included broccolini, first par-boiled, then flash sautéed in EVOO and garlic, and finished with good-quality balsamic vinegar. The mashed potatoes were made from one large baking potato, boiled, and riced. I used a wisk to combine copious amounts of EVOO that had been heated up with garlic and hot chili flakes. Salt and pepper all around.

Top Chef Hung is up for the prestigious Bocuse d’Or later this year.

Our wonderful dinner started with a special salad, hinting with garlic, but highlighting delicious summer tomatoes in red and yellow.

Toasted pine nuts added crunch, and Maytag Dairy blue cheese was tucked away in all the appropriate places for a salty, unique bite. Salt and pepper topped it all, amid a mixture of crunchy greens.

“The messy chef always makes great salads!” Thank you.

For our main course, we positioned champagne sauced chicken alongside a simple whole-wheat pasta with using an exquisite super Tuscan EVOO, garlic, and my now famous oven-roasted Roma tomatoes.

The love of mushroom variety plus lemon zest and juice, enveloped our chicken breasts, pounded thin, and wrapped in a tasty parmesan crust. As a hint, add the lemon juice just at the end for a maximization of taste.

For the pasta, be sure to use seasoned water, don’t hold back on using good-quality EVOO, and top each serving with the best grate-yourself parmesan you can find. Your tastebuds will love you.

It was Saturday. That means Belmont Butchery on Belmont in Richmond is open! Time for some good, quality meat.

Oven roasted asparagus with garlic was one item up for the plate; another was some butter-basted garlic potatoes. More attention was devoted to the mushroom sauce.

• crimini mushrooms
• butter
• salt, pepper
• 1/4 sweet onion
• garlic
• dried thyme
• 1 strip bacon
• red wine (in this case, Shiraz)
• honey mustard

Start cooking the bacon, cut into smaller pieces. Next, you brown the mushrooms, after already wilting the onion in the pan with the bacon. Add the garlic. Add some wine; reduce; add the herb and mustard, and keep warm while you cook the steaks.

I used prime filet; it was heavily dowsed in salt and pepper, and cooked with a crusty finish in a lightly oiled sauté pan. I added the mushrooms on top of one, and a seriously thick slice of Maytag blue cheese plus mushrooms on another. It warmed in the oven for 5 minutes while I plated the garlicky vegetables. A little truffle oil might have found its way on the plate, too.

If you’re a Richmonder, please try Belmont Butchery. They sell some good stuff.

I like noodles. A variety, really, usually going between what could be termed “Asian” and those in the pasta family from Italy. I recently made two recipes I thought I’d share.

The first is based on a recipe I watched on TV with my very favorite female cook, The Barefoot Contessa. It takes a real woman not to bat an eye when she pours on more butter.

This recipe was served cold. She used pasta, I used Japanese buckwheat noodles. You boil the noodles first, then rinse them under cold water.

The “sauce” is a combination of:

• rice wine vinegar
• oil
• peanut butter
• garlic/chili paste
• soy sauce
• scallion
• ginger, garlic

You add “crunchy vegetables” in addition to the sauce. In this case, it was chopped red peppers and blanched sugar snap peas. It was refreshing and delicious.

Despite an under-saturated picture, the Italian recipe was even better. I used fresh pasta (courtesy of my favorite pasta-maker, Gianni Cavanna), and made up another batch of oven-dried tomatoes. 3 hours, 200 degrees.

Add garlic, good EVOO, salt and pepper, and a healthy dose of grated parmesan cheese. Don’t forget a little chiffonade of basil, and you have some basic, good eating with classic-good flavors.

Eat Noodles!