Category: 3. Secondi (main courses)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)22 Comments

Neck of Lamb Sous-Vide

StefanGourmet

The ‘secondo’ (main dish) for my lamb extravaganza was this: neck of lamb sous-vide, rack of lamb, parsley root puree and roasted chervil root, served with a lamb jus. The recipes for the parsley root and chervil root will follow in my next post, this post will deal with the neck of lamb. The neck is one of the tastiest cuts of lamb, but also one of the toughest because the neck musles are used a lot. It is ideally suited for cooking sous-vide, which will make it melt-in-your-mouth tender while keeping it succulent. For a good crispy crust I both … Continue reading Neck of Lamb Sous-Vide

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)16 Comments

Simple Succulent Salmon

StefanGourmet

It is amazing how good the most simple dishes can be. The only thing you need for this is fresh salmon, farmed is fine, and a digital instant-read thermometer with a probe. The salmon is cooked to medium rare in the oven and will be so tender and succulent that you can eat it with a spoon. You can serve the salmon with your preferred sides, fresh herbs, or sauce, but it’s good enough by itself. This is so easy that anyone can do it. Please give this a try, you will be amazed! Ingredients Fresh (not frozen) salmon fillet, … Continue reading Simple Succulent Salmon

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)22 Comments

Lepre alla Cacciatora (Hare Legs Stewed in Red Wine)

StefanGourmet

As I pointed out before, although both are furry and have long ears, a hare (“lepre” in Italian) is red meat and different from the white meat of a rabbit (“coniglio”). The recipe for Lepre alla Cacciatora (Hare Hunter’s Style, or in fact the wife of the hunter) is however quite similar to the recipe for Coniglio alla Cacciatora. Both are stewed in wine and tomatoes. The main differences are that hare is marinated and cooked in red wine with just a bit of tomato, whereas the rabbit isn’t marinated and cooked in white wine and tomatoes. I made this … Continue reading Lepre alla Cacciatora (Hare Legs Stewed in Red Wine)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)21 Comments

Hare Loin with Sauerkraut and Chestnuts

StefanGourmet

Hare loin (“hazenrugfilet” in Dutch) is the most prized part of a hare: it is very tender but lean red meat with a lot of flavor. Hare has a ‘gamey’ taste, which is not appreciated by everyone. Hare loin is often served with sweet garnishes or sauces such as port and figs, but it also works great with sauerkraut. You can hunt, skin, and butcher your own hare, or you can just get it from the butcher. This preparation is quite easy if you already have the hare loins and hare stock. I used steamed chestnuts as they are sold … Continue reading Hare Loin with Sauerkraut and Chestnuts

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)14 Comments

Home-skinned Hare, Part 1: Hare Stock

StefanGourmet

If you are a vegetarian, this is probably a good point to turn back. I like to eat meat and I believe it is natural for humans to eat meat. I believe that if you eat meat, you should be prepared to face the fact that it came from a live animal. But I do get a bit squeamish when I have to deal with a dead furry animal that still has its skin. And I’m glad that this hare was already killed when we got it, as I’m not sure how prepared I would be to kill it myself — … Continue reading Home-skinned Hare, Part 1: Hare Stock

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)11 Comments

Homemade Fish Fingers

StefanGourmet

Like so many things, homemade fish fingers are so much better than store-bought! They are quite easy to make and you get to control what goes in them. So only the freshest fish, homemade breadcrumbs and an organic egg. For these fish fingers I used fresh Atlantic wolffish (“zeewolf” in Dutch, also known as “seawolf”). Since you will use fresh fish rather than frozen, the fish will be that much more flavorful and succulent. I suppose fish fingers were invented for people who don’t like to recognize that they are in fact eating fish, but I like them anyway since … Continue reading Homemade Fish Fingers

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)7 Comments

REMCook’s Breaded Chicken Breast Fried in Claried Butter

StefanGourmet

My favorite recipes are simple and elegant. The less ingredients, the better. When I recently blogged about my first homemade batch of clarified butter, Richard McGary commented “Now that you have your clarified butter, if you want to try something, get a boneless, skinless chicken breast; season it with a little salt and pepper; bread it in bread crumbs from fresh bread, not stale or dried bread; and sauté it in the clarified butter. This is a remarkably simple technique with minimal seasoning but the flavor you will get with the butter and bread coupled with the moist chicken is mind … Continue reading REMCook’s Breaded Chicken Breast Fried in Claried Butter

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)23 Comments

Scallops and Shrimp with a Vanilla Sauce, Pea Puree and Parsnip Puree

StefanGourmet

Wine is often paired with food, but it can be inspiring to take a bottle of wine as the starting point and try to cook something that will go well with it. Oak barrels can give a hint of vanilla to wines, and so I thought it would be fun to make a vanilla cream sauce to go with a creamy oaked chardonnay. It worked out really well, and the pairing was outstanding. The wine went well with the vanilla creaminess of the sauce as well as with the seafood. The combination of scallops with parsnip and peas is something … Continue reading Scallops and Shrimp with a Vanilla Sauce, Pea Puree and Parsnip Puree

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)8 Comments

Sole Meunière

StefanGourmet

The best way to prepare really fresh sole is to simply fry it in butter. In French this is called Sole Meunière. Of course it is much easier to fry the sole perfectly in clarified butter than in regular butter, so I decided to celebrate my first batch of clarified butter by making sole meunière. This recipe is remarkably simple, but if you have fresh sole it will also be remarkably delicious! Ask your fish monger to make the sole ready for pan-frying. This means removing the head and and cleaning it, as well as removing the skin. Season the … Continue reading Sole Meunière

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)9 Comments

Sweet and Sour Pork Tenderloin (Filetto di Maiale in Agrodolce)

StefanGourmet

I’ve mentioned before that my Italian cooking adventures all began with the great books by Biba Caggiano. One of my favorite recipes from one of her earliest books, Modern Italian Cooking, is the one for sweet and sour pork. She uses pork loin, but I’ve always used pork tenderloin instead since it is more tender. This dish is original, delicious, and easy to make. It cooks quite fast as the tenderloin is cut into slices and it is best when cooked to medium rare or medium. Give it a try! Ingredients For 2 servings 1 pork tenderloin (about 300 grams / … Continue reading Sweet and Sour Pork Tenderloin (Filetto di Maiale in Agrodolce)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)11 Comments

Sous-vide Rib Steak finished on the BBQ

StefanGourmet

  Once a year Kees throws an overnight party on our boat with about 25 friends, which involves a BBQ, a lot of beer, and a lot of fun. This year I decided to tag along (drinking wine rather than beer) and had a great time as well. I brought along 5 kilograms (11 lbs) sous-vide pre-cooked beef that was finished on the BBQ that was a big hit. All of it was devoured in five minutes. It was good quality marbled Irish beef, but since it was a cut that can usually only be prepared as a braise or … Continue reading Sous-vide Rib Steak finished on the BBQ

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)10 Comments

Fish soup (Zuppa di Pesce)

StefanGourmet

My parents came over for dinner and my dad’s favorite dish is fish soup filled with different kinds of seafood. There are many varieties of this type of soup, including bouillabaisse from France and zarzuela from Spain. It can’t be a surprise that my version is Italian style and therefore called zuppa di pesce. The quality of this soup depends solely on the freshness of the seafood used, and there are hardly any ingredients besides the seafood itself. It is a very elegant dish that looks great to boot. From sous-vide cooking we’ve learned that the ideal temperature to cook … Continue reading Fish soup (Zuppa di Pesce)

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)11 Comments

Sea Bass poached in fresh Tomatoes (Branzino al Pomodoro Fresco)

StefanGourmet

I have tomato envy. I read all those posts of fellow food bloggers who are buying heirloom tomatoes at farmers markets, or even harvesting perfectly ripe tasty tomatoes from their own backyard. And given the local climate here, I have to make do with tomatoes that come from a greenhouse and are just not the same. If you do have access to good tomatoes (as well as fresh sea bass), do yourself a favor and make this recipe. I promise it will be an outstanding way of tasting what summer is supposed to taste like! This is one of the … Continue reading Sea Bass poached in fresh Tomatoes (Branzino al Pomodoro Fresco)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)5 Comments

Pork Ribs Sous-vide

StefanGourmet

When Conor wrote about pork ribs, I knew I had to try pre-cooking them sous-vide rather than boiling. Sous-vide cooking allows us to get ribs that are both tender and succulent. Since I had never made pork ribs before, I wanted to experiment a little before serving them to my friends at a BBQ. For this trial run I seared the ribs in a hot frying pan rather than firing up a BBQ, since it was only the two of us on a week night. I tried two flavors: Conor’s paprika – honey – soy marinade and Italian style sage … Continue reading Pork Ribs Sous-vide

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)28 Comments

Wagyu Flank Steak, Pan-seared versus Sous-vide

StefanGourmet

On nice days I often walk from the train station to work, rather than taking a tram or subway. On my way to work I will then walk by the fanciest butcher shop that I know of in Amsterdam (and probably in the whole country): Slagerij De Leeuw. This is not a place to get your daily meat, but for special occasions they have great stuff like organic foie gras, Rubia beef from Spain, and wagyu beef (imported from the US). Wagyu is usually outrageously expensive, but the flank steak (referred to as “bavette”) looked great and almost reasonably priced. … Continue reading Wagyu Flank Steak, Pan-seared versus Sous-vide

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)28 Comments

My First Home-made ‘Slow Food’ Hamburger

StefanGourmet

I do not eat a lot of fast food. I don’t care so much about the calories or fat (that just means eating a bit less of it), but I do care about the taste. If something isn’t necessarily the healthiest food in the world, then it should taste real good! And most fast food just tastes generic and often even bland. Just like most people, I love pizza, and I love hamburgers. But for me it has to be good pizza, or in this case a good hamburger! I came across an article on Serious Eats about finding the … Continue reading My First Home-made ‘Slow Food’ Hamburger

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)4 Comments

Sea bream with vegetables (Orata al forno)

StefanGourmet

This is another dish we had at the Ligurian coast that I recreated at home: sea bream roasted in the oven with vegetables. It is quite easy to do: you only have to find the freshest sea bream you can find and learn how to take the fish off the bone once it’s cooked. Use an instant-read digital thermometer with a probe to always cook the fish just right: tender and very juicy. Especially if it was very fresh (and not frozen). Fish should never be overcooked as it will be dry, but nobody likes undercooked fish either. Taggiasca olives … Continue reading Sea bream with vegetables (Orata al forno)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)17 Comments

Lamb Shoulder sous-vide with Goat Cheese

StefanGourmet

Lamb shoulder is really good if it’s slow cooked, so sous-vide is the obvious way to cook this cut of lamb. The meat will be amazingly tender and juicy. When slow-cooking lamb, make sure it’s from an ewe (female lamb). Rams (male lambs) have a strong smell that will be accentuated by long cooking. At Librije I discovered how good lamb and goat cheese are together. If you don’t have sous-vide equipment, roast a leg of lamb in the oven and serve it with some pieces of good French raw-milk goat cheese at room temperature (don’t let it melt) and a … Continue reading Lamb Shoulder sous-vide with Goat Cheese

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)5 Comments

BBQ’ed Lamb skewers with Balsamic (served on a Pink Piano)

StefanGourmet

I like to BBQ under two conditions: (1) using charcoal instead of gas and (2) marinating the meat yourself (or by a reputable butcher). Using charcoal makes for a much hotter grill that enables you to cook food with a crispy outside and a juicy inside and a real smoky BBQ flavor. Pre-marinated meat is usually low-quality meat with a marinade that overpowers the taste of the meat. Pre-cooking the meat sous-vide is not a requirement but certainly a good idea, as it makes for more tender meat, easier BBQ’ing (it is always cooked perfectly as soon as the outside … Continue reading BBQ’ed Lamb skewers with Balsamic (served on a Pink Piano)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)10 Comments

Stuffed fillet of Venison (Involtini di Capriolo)

StefanGourmet

I picked up some more roe deer venison, which is still in season in the Netherlands, and created this ‘Italian style’ dish that is not an existing dish that I know of. You could also use regular venison or even veal or beef for this, but venison makes it just that bit more special. You can cook the involtini sous-vide or in the oven. Ingredients For 2 generous or 3 normal servings 400 grams (0.9 lbs) fillet of roe deer venison or regular venison 50 grams (2 oz) pancetta, chopped 25 grams (1 oz) dried porcini mushrooms 2 cloves garlic, … Continue reading Stuffed fillet of Venison (Involtini di Capriolo)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)14 Comments

Classic Ossobuco alla Milanese sous-vide

StefanGourmet

Ossobuco is a classic Italian dish from Milan that most people know as veal shanks braised in tomato sauce. Originally, the veal shanks were actually braised in veal stock with just a hint of tomato. I like this classic version, because it gives a meatier flavor. With sous-vide cooking, you could braise the veal shanks at a lower temperature to obtain a different texture. This time, I’ve used Modernist Cuisine’s recommendation for veal shanks, which is 72 hours at 62C/144F. The meat comes out with a classic flaky structure and is very flavorful but just a bit dryish, and that’s … Continue reading Classic Ossobuco alla Milanese sous-vide

Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)8 Comments

Sea bream in salt (Orata al sale)

StefanGourmet

Sea bream cooked in a salt crust is a great way to prepare this lovely fish that is used all around the Mediterranean, including Spain, France and Italy. I had tried to make this once many years ago, but it got too salty. A few weeks ago I was telling my Italian friend about this experience while the waiter at the restaurant in Luguria where we were having dinner was filleting the orata al sale. He had overheard our conversation and said that I should try it again because it is very easy if you leave the scales on, dry the fish carefully, … Continue reading Sea bream in salt (Orata al sale)

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)12 Comments

Pork Belly sous-vide

StefanGourmet

Next to beef short ribs, pork belly is a meat that is often mentioned on eGullet as a favorite for sous-vide. I usually don’t eat pork belly, but I thought I’d give it a try and was not disappointed! Modernist Cuisine gives 60C/140F and 65C/149F, both for 72 hours, as ‘best bets’ for pork belly sous-vide. I tried both, and liked 60C/140F much better because it is as tender as 65C/149F, but much more juicy (the 65C/149F was really dry). Please note that at this temperature the fat doesn’t render, so you end up with layers of tender meat and … Continue reading Pork Belly sous-vide

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)9 Comments

Boeuf Bourguignon à la Conor

StefanGourmet

I had not made Boeuf Bourguignon in a long time, but was inspired by Conor’s post to make it again. As Conor rightly points out, there is no such thing as an official recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon. The only mandatory ingredients are beef (boeuf is indeed French for beef…) and red Burgundy wine. Conor’s recipe looked OK and since he seems to know what he’s writing about I decided to follow his recipe, including using pancetta even though that’s not very French (but I like pancetta better than bacon). I was not disappointed because it turned out delicious and my husband … Continue reading Boeuf Bourguignon à la Conor

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)35 Comments

Roe Deer Venison sous-vide with Roe Deer Jus

StefanGourmet

One of the tastiest and most prized types of game is venison from roe deer. A roe deer (Dutch: ree, French:  chevreuil, German: Reh, Italian: capriolo) is a small species of deer that is very picky about its food. If you cannot find roe deer, you can substitute with regular venison. I recently bought a nice back of roe deer venison, part of which I turned into carpaccio and the rest I served like this. The nice thing about buying the whole back was that I also had bones to make a great jus. By cooking the venison sous-vide, you can serve … Continue reading Roe Deer Venison sous-vide with Roe Deer Jus

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)3 Comments

Quest for my Grandmother’s Chicken, Part 2

StefanGourmet

Some weeks ago I wrote about my attempts to recreate the memory of my grandmother’s braised chicken. I came pretty close by cooking a stewing hen sous-vide at 64C/147F for 3 days, but I was not completely satisfied with the result yet. In the meantime I have done two new experiments with chicken from the same source, once at 62C/144F and once at 60C/140F. Just a short post today to give you an update of the results. Even after cooking sous-vide for over 16 months now, the difference of only 2C/4F degrees still amazes me. I’ve decided that 62C/144F for … Continue reading Quest for my Grandmother’s Chicken, Part 2

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)6 Comments

Lamb-stuffed Eggplant

StefanGourmet

I invented this dish myself, so as far as I know it is not an authentic recipe unless I recreated it by accident. It’s definitely Mediterranean though. I love the combination of lamb, eggplant and rosemary and that’s why I created this dish. I’ve been making it for years and have made small improvements over time. It is not a lot of work but it does take a while to make, so when I want to eat this after work I will prepare the night before. Ingredients For 2 servings as a main course or 4 servings as a substantial appetizer … Continue reading Lamb-stuffed Eggplant

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)34 Comments

Best temperature for Beef Short Ribs sous-vide

StefanGourmet

Welcome to Stefan’s Gourmet Blog!  You can find an overview of my sous-vide recipes as well as times and temperatures by clicking on “Sous-Vide” above.  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive an email whenever I post a new recipe. I’ve only known about sous-vide cooking for less than two years and have owned a sous-vide water bath for about 15 months now, but the early adapters of sous-vide cooking in the home kitchen were already discussing recipes and techniques on eGullet in 2004. I am reading through all of the … Continue reading Best temperature for Beef Short Ribs sous-vide