Category: 3. Secondi (main courses)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)28 Comments

Perfect Duck Breast Using Transglutaminase

StefanGourmet

I always thought it was impossible to prepare a perfect duck breast. Duck breast consists of two parts: the skin and the meat. To be perfect, the skin should be crispy with most of the fat rendered out of it, and the meat should be medium rare. Both at the same time seemed to be impossible, as the meat overcooks while you are rendering the fat from the skin. Even experimenting didn’t help to solve this conundrum.

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But then I thought of Transglutaminase, an enzyme that is sold mixed with maltodextrin and sodium caseinate under the name of Activa RM and is also known as ‘meat glue’. Why not take the skin off the meat, cook skin and meat separately, and then glue them back together again? Teun had some Activa and so I went over to his place to try this. And guess what? It worked! Crispy skin and meat that was uniformly medium rare all the way up to the skin. (Unfortunately I only took photos with my iPhone in bad lighting conditions. I will prepare duck breast this way again and then take good photos and post a proper recipe.) Continue reading “Perfect Duck Breast Using Transglutaminase”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)22 Comments

Rabbit Legs Sous-Vide with Fresh Fig Sauce

StefanGourmet

A few weeks ago I was envious of the fresh figs Richard McGary used for his wonderful Chicken Quarters with Fig Chutney, as good quality fresh figs are very hard to get in this country. I remember eating fresh figs in southern Italy and being impressed how great they were compared to the watery imported stuff I’m used to. But lo and behold, quite soon afterwards I picked up some very decent fresh figs from the market and they were even a bargain. As I picked up a rabbit from the same market, I pretty soon came up with the idea to prepare the rabbit with a fresh fig sauce. Continue reading “Rabbit Legs Sous-Vide with Fresh Fig Sauce”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)19 Comments

Rabbit Loin Saltimbocca (Saltimbocca di Coniglio)

StefanGourmet

Cuts of meat that come from different muscle groups in an animal require different cooking to make them shine. For instance, a ribeye steak is best served medium rare after a quick sear and some resting, whereas a brisket needs to be cooked low and slow to become tender and delicious to eat. Smaller animals like chickens and rabbits are often cooked whole, disregarding the wisdom gained from preparing beef in separate parts. Part of the reason for this may be that a chicken fits easier into most pans and ovens than a whole cow does 😉 A more economical reason is that if you judge by effort per pound of meat, a relatively big effort is needed to separate the different muscle groups of a small animal. Even so, it is worth doing so to get the best results. This is also true for rabbit. Rabbit loins are the ‘rib eye’ of the rabbit, they are very tender and require very little cooking. The legs and other parts however need to be braised or stewed. Even so, rabbit is often cooked whole with the loin dried out.

I thought this to be a waste of a very nice piece of meat, and so when I bought a whole rabbit I decided to do my own butchering and divide the rabbit into loins, legs, flap meat, and carcass. (Of course you can also ask your butcher to do this for you.) The latter three parts will be used for tomorrow’s recipe. The tenderloins are so small in a 1.1 kg (2.5 lbs) rabbit that they are hardly worth getting out. The loins themselves were about 160 grams together or about 14% of the weight of the rabbit.

On the same day I had bought the rabbit, I had also bought some very nice prosciutto. As I still have fresh sage growing in my garden, I decided to turn those rabbit loins into rabbit saltimbocca. Saltimbocca is a famous dish from Rome consisting of veal scaloppine with prosciutto and sage. It is so delicious that it is called “jump into mouth” (salt = jump, bocca = mouth). I prefer to have a rabbit jumping in the direction of my mouth rather than a calf 😉 But seriously, this rabbit saltimbocca was absolutely delicious. The meat is super tender and succulent, and pairs very well with the prosciutto and sage. Compared to the veal version, it is a bit lighter and softer in style.

Continue reading “Rabbit Loin Saltimbocca (Saltimbocca di Coniglio)”

1. Antipasti (appetizers), Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)16 Comments

Stuffed Cabbage (Involtini di Verza)

StefanGourmet

Stuffed savoy cabbage or involtini di verza are quite a ‘homey’ dish, but they are so tasty and nice looking to boot that I dare to serve them at a dinner party. There is no single recipe for them — as with many Italian dishes there are as many variations as there are families. The general idea is that a large leaf of green curly savoy cabbage is parboiled, stuffed and then baked. I stuffed my version with the tender inner cabbage, minced beef and pork, mortadella, fennel seeds, and parmigiano and they were absolutely wonderful. The mortadella is important as it adds a lot of flavor, but if you use too much it will overpower the rest. I’m not usually big on cabbage, so I was surprised how delicious these turned out to be. Continue reading “Stuffed Cabbage (Involtini di Verza)”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)14 Comments

Rabbit Sous-Vide with Mustard Sauce (Lapin à la Dijonnaise)

StefanGourmet

Stéphane from My French Heaven always has wonderful photos on his blog and recipes that are as simple as they are tasty. His recent post about his version of the French classic rabbit in mustard sauce was all the inspiration I needed to make my own sous-vide version.

Continue reading “Rabbit Sous-Vide with Mustard Sauce (Lapin à la Dijonnaise)”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)17 Comments

Iberico Secreto Sous-Vide with Celeriac Fondant Sous-Vide

StefanGourmet

The dinner we cooked when Teun came over consisted of tuna with runner beans as antipasto, gnocchi alla sorrentina as primo, iberico pork sous-vide as secondo, and finally chocolate stuffed ancho chile with amarena cherries as dolce. The pigs that are grown for the famous jamón ibérico from Spain do not just yield the hams, but also other fine cuts of meat. The finest is called the secreto (literally secret) and is a very nicely marbled piece of pork with lots of flavor. Teun and Albert introduced me to this cut, and I absolutely love it. Cooking it sous-vide is of course a great way to enjoy it to its fullest. I thought it would be nice to combine it with celeriac fondant, and the dish did turn out great. Continue reading “Iberico Secreto Sous-Vide with Celeriac Fondant Sous-Vide”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto), Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)8 Comments

Pork Chop in Tomato Sauce (Primo + Secondo)

StefanGourmet

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We are back home from our travels through Australia. Since this is a food blog rather than a travel blog, let me suffice by showing you a map of the route we have traveled (6000 km or almost 4000 miles altogether) in a camper van from coast to coast.

In the other posts I wrote about cooking in the Outback, I told you about how we would on most days kept the cooking to a bare minimum and simply put meat like beef, lamb or kangaroo on our small BBQ. But on one day during a long drive from the West MacDonnells to Kings Canyon I had plenty of time to think and decided to make something that would require more actual ‘cooking’ with the ingredients I had in the camper and of course taking into account the very limited equipment at my disposal. We did not have time to do any shopping, so I used only the ingredients I had bought without a clear idea of how I would use them.

I thought it would be nice not to use the BBQ for a change, and so I decided to simmer pork chops in tomato sauce and then serve the tomato sauce over pasta with additional mushrooms as a primo piatto, followed by the pork chops with the remaining tomato sauce as a secondo (click here if you’d like to know more about the Italian menu structure). I would have liked to use a better marbled shoulder chop for this, but I only had a loin chop so that is what I used. The result was quite nice and I will probably repeat this at home with a shoulder chop or perhaps even sous-vide. Here’s what I did. Continue reading “Pork Chop in Tomato Sauce (Primo + Secondo)”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)15 Comments

Roo Fillet from the Barbie

StefanGourmet

So far during our travels through Australia we had seen plenty of live kangaroos and especially wallabies, but were confronted with an unexpected lack of kangaroo meat at the butcher shops and supermarkets that we visited. Luckily I found some kangaroo fillet steaks at a butcher shop in Alice Springs, so we could finally eat something very Australian: barbecued (grilled) kangaroo. Continue reading “Roo Fillet from the Barbie”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)13 Comments

Flank Steak Sous-Vide with Tian Provençal

StefanGourmet

When Clayton told me he’d be coming over to Amsterdam for a vacation, I thought it would be nice to cook dinner for him and his friend Paul.

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Clayton is one of the founding fathers of the International Shanghai Chicken Project. I know he’s very interested in sous-vide, so I picked some nice sous-vide dishes. I prepared sous-vide sea bass with crispy skin, sous-vide chicken ravioli, sous-vide wagyu flank steak with tian provençal as a side. To include something Dutch, I ended with an apricot vlaai (tart from Limburg). Continue reading “Flank Steak Sous-Vide with Tian Provençal”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)35 Comments

Parsley-Crusted Steak with Mushroom Ketchup and Garlic Puree

StefanGourmet

One of the best ways to become a better cook is to learn from others. I asked my modernist cooking friends Teun and Albert to join forces with me to create dishes together. This dish is the first result of that collaboration. It was loosely based upon a dish that Albert had cooked before out of the Big Fat Duck cookbook. We wanted to do something with wagyu sous-vide. The idea for the mushroom ketchup came from the Big Fat Duck dish. As parsley and garlic are friends of mushrooms in Italian cuisine, we decided to coat the steak with parsleyed bread crumbs and serve it with a garlic puree.

For me the main success of this dish was the crust. The wagyu flank steak was very tender and flavorful because it had been cooked sous-vide, and had additional flavor because it was finished on a charcoal grill. The tender beef was complemented very nicely by the crunchy parsley crust. The combination with the mushroom ketchup, mushrooms, and the garlic puree also worked very well. Continue reading “Parsley-Crusted Steak with Mushroom Ketchup and Garlic Puree”

1. Antipasti (appetizers), Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)10 Comments

Sarde a Beccafico (Stuffed Sardines)

StefanGourmet

Apart from the fennel balls, I prepared another antipasto for my Sicilian dinner: Sarde a Beccafico. We really liked this dish when we had it at Tischi Toschi, and I copied the presentation from there. Sarde a Beccafico can be served either as antipasto or as secondo (main course). Sardines are stuffed with bread crumbs, raisins, anchovies, parsley, pine nuts, sugar, and baked in the oven with some orange juice. This dish is very tasty and easy to prepare if you ask the fishmonger to turn the sardines into fillets for you.

Continue reading “Sarde a Beccafico (Stuffed Sardines)”

1. Antipasti (appetizers), Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)11 Comments

Smoked Halibut ‘Pizza’

StefanGourmet

The following I dish I prepared for the Sicilian dinner was very loosely based upon one of the appetizers at La Madia, the best restaurant in Sicily with two Michelin stars.

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The ‘pizza’ at La Madia

This is what I wrote about this dish in my review of our dinner at La Madia: “We were thoroughly fooled by this pizza, because we were wondering how we were going to survive 8 courses if they were all going to be this big. It turned out to be very light actually. What looks like melted mozzarella is actually potato mousse. The crust was only a very crispy very thin round of dough, and underneath the ‘cheese’ there was lovely cod smoked on pine wood and some semi-dried tomato. Great flavors and wonderful presentation. 10/10”

The dish I prepared is by no means an attempt at recreating chef Pino Cuttaia’s dish, but it has been heavily inspired by it. My ‘pizza’ was made with hot-smoked halibut, potato mousse, and semi-dried tomatoes. It was more substantial than at La Madia and I served it as a main course. Continue reading “Smoked Halibut ‘Pizza’”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)11 Comments

Lamb and Eggplant Meatballs

StefanGourmet

Just a week after returning from my cooking on the boat adventure I have another challenge lined up, as we are participating in the gay pride canal parade in Amsterdam this Saturday and that requires a lot of preparation. As a result, I’m not cooking very elaborately this week and nothing that I haven’t blogged about before. I had some leftover lamb and eggplant ravioli stuffing in my freezer, and since I prefer to make the stuffing fresh when making ravioli for guests, I decided to turn the stuffing into meatballs by breading and frying them. This turned out great: the outside of the meatballs is nicely crispy, whereas the inside is very soft and juicy and tasty. These meatballs are so good, it would be worth making the stuffing just to prepare them.

Continue reading “Lamb and Eggplant Meatballs”

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)9 Comments

Hot Smoked Trout

StefanGourmet

Stovetop smokers are wonderful. You can use them either on the stovetop or outside using burners. They are very easy to use: simply add a few tablespoons of smoking dust and the food item you wish to smoke, close the smoker, heat it for 15-20 minutes, and out comes a beautifully smoked fish or whatever you put in. Especially fatty fish are great this way.

I prepared smoked trout as a quick dinner before we left on the boat trip, and I’m sharing the recipe with you now before writing some more about the food I’m cooking on the boat trip. Continue reading “Hot Smoked Trout”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)15 Comments

Lamb Chops ‘Scottadito’

StefanGourmet

I already blogged about lamb chops ‘scottadito’ (“burn your fingers”) in March. Back then I prepared them in the oven, but thought they would be better on a griddle or on a charcoal grill. I now tried the griddle and it turns out I was right: because of the higher heat they get a nicer crust on the outside while staying succulent on the inside. Lamb chops scottadito are so simple and so good and this time around my photos turned out better so I’m giving you the recipe again 🙂 Continue reading “Lamb Chops ‘Scottadito’”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)23 Comments

Carne alla Pizzaiola

StefanGourmet

Alla Pizzaiola indicates something like “pizza style” and is not a clearly defined term in Italian cooking. The basic recipe for Carne alla Pizzaiola (meat pizza-style) is thin slices of meat (usually beef, but it can be prepared with other types of meat as well) cooked in a simple tomato sauce. To the tomato sauce you can add ‘pizza style’ ingredients like oregano, olives, capers, etc. It is a simple dish with a lot of flavor that in Italy is often served as piatto unico with mashed or roasted potatoes. It is easy to prepare, as you should only take care that you do not overcook the meat. An interesting point about carne alla pizzaiola is that in all the recipes that I have seen, the meat is not browned first. Continue reading “Carne alla Pizzaiola”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)27 Comments

Lamb and Goat Cheese Roulade

StefanGourmet

Summer has finally arrived and that means it time for grilling, or BBQ as we call it. For me grilling is strictly a charcoal thing, as a charcoal fire is hotter and imparts more flavor than a gas grill. Most grilling done in the Netherlands is very ‘low brow’, with cheap meat from the supermarket, with the lack of flavor masked by a reddish marinade. That is clearly not my kind of grilling. I like to use proper meat and pre-cook it sous-vide so it’s always cooked through, juicy and tender on the inside, and nicely browned on the outside. Since the meat is already cooked, visual inspection (i.e. using your eyes) is all that’s needed to decide when to remove the meat from the grill. Since I discovered last year that lamb and goat cheese go well together, I decided to make a roulade of lamb shoulder with goat cheese, pancetta, thyme, and balsamic vinegar. It turned out great! Continue reading “Lamb and Goat Cheese Roulade”

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)17 Comments

Scallops with Radishes and Sorrel Sauce

StefanGourmet

Life is full of coincidences. One day my friend Jeroen mentioned sorrel during our wonderful dinner at Bord’Eau, and then the next day I noticed sorrel available at a local supermarket. After deciding to buy it, I had to pick something to prepare. Sorrel can be used for salads, soups, or sauces. As a sauce it is usually used for seafood, and that is what I decided upon. I thought it would pair nicely with radishes, and so Scallops with Radishes and Sorrel Sauce it would be. Since I had some pancetta as well, I decided to use a bit of that for some additional flavor. I was happy with the result and really liked the flavor combination. I will definitely make something like this again. If you can’t find sorrel you can also use the greens of the radishes instead, but it won’t have the special tart flavor of the sorrel. Continue reading “Scallops with Radishes and Sorrel Sauce”

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)14 Comments

Eel in Tomato Sauce (Anguilla in Umido)

StefanGourmet

Eel is caught locally in the area where we live and we love smoked eel. Eel is also available fresh to be used for stewing, but I don’t care much for the Dutch/Flemish preparations. My curiosity was piqued though when I saw a post by ChgoJohn on eel stewed in tomato sauce Italian style (or to be more precise, in the style of Le Marche). I did some research and it turned out that this dish is known as Anguilla in Umido in most of Italy, and that it originated in Campania, the region of Naples. Anguilla in Umido is traditionally eaten between Christmas and New Year’s as a symbol to drive out the evil for the New Year. Eel looks like a serpent, and by eating it you conquer it. How simple was life back then.

So why am I preparing this dish in summer? Because fresh eel is available around here between May and October only, that’s why. And this year because of the cold, I only noticed eel at my fishmonger for the first time last week. It was very expensive (because eel is starting to become scarce), but I’m glad I bought it anyway because prepared this way it was absolutely delicious! The eel gives off a very nice flavor to the tomato sauce, the eel is tender and juicy without tasting too greasy, and the flavor of the eel is not at all overpowered by the tomato sauce. Continue reading “Eel in Tomato Sauce (Anguilla in Umido)”

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)8 Comments

Ancho Chile Salmon with Chinese Cabbage

StefanGourmet

After trying Richard’s Ancho Chile Rub on tuna, I also wanted to try it on salmon. Combined with some Chinese cabbage prepared with fish sauce, soy sauce, and shichimi togarisahi, this makes for a dish with a small number of ingredients that is simple to prepare, but has a lot of flavor and is healthy. We both loved this. The only thing I will change next time is to add a few wedges of lime, which I didn’t have but I think will add a nice bit of freshness to the earthy flavors. Continue reading “Ancho Chile Salmon with Chinese Cabbage”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)24 Comments

Richard’s Awesome Chipotle Pork Burgers

StefanGourmet

After receiving Richard’s wonderful chile package, I browsed through his chile recipes (i.e. most of his recipes 😉 ) to get ideas of what to do with those chiles. His recipe for Chihuahua Cheese Stuffed Porcine Chipotle Burgers struck my fancy, so I decided to give it a try. I’ve never seen Chihuahua cheese around here, and I didn’t look forward to inquiring because everyone would think I was talking about a yappy little dog rather than cheese. So I decided to use sardinian pecorino because that is what I had.

I had never heard of chipotle chiles before, so I did not know that they are in fact smoked jalapeños. The flavor of the pork burger with the pickled chipotles mixed into the patties was simply amazing! We both loved it. The smoky flavor of the chipotles worked really well. I will definitely prepare these burgers again and then I will try grilling them on a charcoal fire because I expect that will take them over the top. Thanks Richard, not only for the great gift but also for this delicious recipe! Continue reading “Richard’s Awesome Chipotle Pork Burgers”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)15 Comments

Braciole alla Barese Sous-Vide

StefanGourmet

A simple but great dish from the city of Bari in Southern Italy (in the region of Puglia) is Braciole alla Barese, which can be prepared using either beef or horse meat. Thin slices of beef are stuffed with garlic, parsley, and cheese, rolled up, and braised in tomato sauce. I absolutely love this dish, but I thought it could be even better when prepared sous-vide. In the traditional preparation the meat is braised and thus cooked well done; with sous-vide it is possible to ‘braise’ the meat in the tomato sauce to medium rare. There’s only one way to find out, and that is to simply try it. It turned out delicious, and without putting down the regular version, which is great, the sous-vide version to me is absolutely superior. The meat is more juicy and the whole dish has a ‘fresher’ taste. Roll up the beef bundles as in the regular recipe and brown them in hot olive oil.
Continue reading “Braciole alla Barese Sous-Vide”

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)19 Comments

Ancho Chile Crusted Tuna, Tomato Salsa with Pickled Chipotles, and Zucchini with Pickled Jalapeños

StefanGourmet

This is how I dipped my toes in the world of chiles after receiving Richard’s package. The three jars seemed a little less daunting than those different kinds of dried chile peppers that I had never heard of before.  I had browsed a lot of chile recipes on Richard’s blog REMCooks.com for inspiration. It wasn’t needed to search or filter on the blog, because there are chiles everywhere 😉 And so I made up this dish, to get to know the heat and flavor of the first three items in the package. It turned out great, I absolutely loved it. The ancho chile rub is not very hot but does impart a lot of flavor and it pairs really well with tuna. The jalapeños en escabeche paired well with the zucchini, and the salsa with pickled chipotles was quite hot but very nice. Not bad for a first experiment. It gave me the courage to proceed with the rest. I can highly recommend Richard’s recipes for all three of the condiments (links below). Here’s what I did… Continue reading “Ancho Chile Crusted Tuna, Tomato Salsa with Pickled Chipotles, and Zucchini with Pickled Jalapeños”

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)17 Comments

Swordfish Sicilian Style (Pesce Spada alla Siciliana)

StefanGourmet

Even though I didn’t actually have this dish while I was in Sicily recently, I did see it on menus everywhere and I thought it would be appropriate to include it in the series of Sicilian recipes I’m doing. The swordfish is cooked in a tomato sauce bursting with flavor of onions, garlic, anchovies, capers, olives, and cayenne pepper. This is an easy dish to make, as long as you lower the heat (or even turn it off) when you finish cooking the fish to avoid overcooking it. Continue reading “Swordfish Sicilian Style (Pesce Spada alla Siciliana)”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)46 Comments

Hanger Steak Sous-Vide

StefanGourmet

Hanger Steak is a lesser known but very flavorful cut of beef. It has so much flavor because it comes from the diaphragm that is needed for breathing, and has therefore had a lot of use in the life of the steer or cow. Hanger steak is called onglet in French, and longhaas or karweivlees in Dutch. It is best when served medium rare, but it can be slightly tough when prepared like a regular steak. With sous-vide we can fix this, because we can cook it for a longer time without taking it over medium rare or we can apply the technique that I have called warm aging.

It is possible to tenderize beef by boosting the activity of calpain and cathepsin enzymes in the meat through bringing the meat to temperatures of 39.5C/103F for calpains and 49.5C/121F for cathepsins. These are the same enzymes that are at work when meat is aged at refrigerator temperatures (both for dry aging and for aging in vacuum), but much faster and (compared to dry aging) without drying the meat. If you can find dry aged hanger steak there is no need to apply warm aging, but I don’t expect this to be a cut that is available dry aged. I finished cooking the steak at 55C/131F for medium rare. You could also cook it longer at 55C/131F instead of applying warm aging, but the meat would turn out less juicy and a bit more like medium. Continue reading “Hanger Steak Sous-Vide”

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)20 Comments

Swordfish Salmoriglio

StefanGourmet

Swordfish is more meaty than most other fishes. So meaty in fact, that if the swordfish is really fresh and you cut away the ‘blood meat’, you could probably fool someone into thinking he’s eating meat rather than fish. There is one issue with swordfish and that is that it is often overcooked and dry. With swordfish this happens even more often that with other types of fish. By cooking the swordfish sous-vide, it will be very tender and juicy without risk of overcooking. The nice thing about cooking fish sous-vide is that it only takes a short time, so it is possible to cook the fish sous-vide without having a sous-vide water bath. You only need a digital thermometer for this to work. Continue reading “Swordfish Salmoriglio”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)25 Comments

Veal Scaloppine al Marsala

StefanGourmet

Some dishes are so simple you don’t really need a recipe to make them. But that doesn’t mean they’re not delicious. Italian cuisine is full of such recipes. This one takes less than five minutes to prepare and is a classic recipe that you can find in restaurants all over Italy (and in fact, in Italian restaurants all over the world). Continue reading “Veal Scaloppine al Marsala”