Chicken Fried Gourmet

Beef Tenderloin with El Bulli's Potato foam

This post covers a weekend we spent at my parent's house in West Monroe La. Here in Louisiana you can use the heater and your AC in the same day. Luckily this weekend was one of the first tastes of fall that we have experienced without having to eventually turn off the heat and crank up the AC (although my kids are still wearing jackets and shorts). We had my oldest son's birthday at a wildlife park about an hour outside of the city during the day and came back to my parent's house for dinner. Ironically today is his actual birthday and I was able to leave work and go on a field trip with him. Lucky kid, I don't remember my school inviting all my classmates to go on an expedition for MY birthday but whatever.

As you can see from the pictures (and the title) we had steak for dinner. Thanks to my early days as working as a manager at Lonestar Steakhouse & Saloon I am able to trim and cut meat pretty well. Its about the only thing I learned cooking wise that I still use today (oh the horror stories I could tell).

Anyway one of the recipes I have been wanting to "test out" for Thanksgiving is a Potato foam dish. I first read about this dish on EGullett's forum on Jose Andres' Minibar (go to page 7 also,If anything is guiding me in my food creativity right now I would have to say that it is the techniques they are using at this restaurant ).

His version is topped with vanilla oil, caviar and chives. The first time I saw this I knew I had to make it. Just the fact that it paired vanilla with potatoes piqued my interest. I was going thru some of my El Bulli recipes I have on CD the other day and came across his version of the "potato foam".

I don't want to print the recipe because I in no way followed it correctly. For one it was in grams and my lazy butt just did not want to look up the conversion table. I just "guesstimated". I boiled potatoes in chicken stock, drained and saved the water. I then pureed the potatoes with heavy cream and a little bit of olive oil. Once pureed I added some of the stock till it resembled a milk like consistency. I strained this and added it to an ISI whip cream maker. I placed this in a pot of water and kept it warm over a slow simmer.

To make the vanilla oil I just steeped 2-3 pods of vanilla beans(split open) in olive oil for about 3 hours.

To finish the dish you take the canister and add the n2o cartridge and "charge" it. I know it sounds complicated but it is really not. You can find out more about the basic process of this HERE.

Instead of caviar and chives I just chopped up some fresh rosemary. This turned out to be a really light alternative to the usual mashed potatoes and the vanilla oil really cut into the richness of the potatoes and was a good substitute for butter.

This also was paired with a filet mignon steak that was marinated in oil, garlic and rosemary and then grilled. The sauce is nothing more than red wine that is reduced with garlic and cane syrup.

(UPDATE) In case you are wondering about all the non-food photos, it is simple. The reason I cook, the reason I work, the reason I am is because of family. This is who I am this is what I show, hope you can enjoy also.

Grilled Pineapple, Basil, Espresso, Vanilla Ice Cream & Brandy

Two weeks ago we were at my parent's house in West Monroe for the weekend. As loyal readers of this site you may remember that when it comes to dinner I like to be totally in control of the menu. There are two certainties when it comes to my mother and cooking at her house :

1. She always has pork tenderloin in the freezer

and

2. No matter what I tell her beforehand she will always buy something for dinner that is not in my plan.

This weekend she wanted to make homemade pizzas. I was not against this at all since I had no pre- conceived notion of what to do for a Saturday night dinner. When going to the store for beer and wine I thought that I would make dessert for a change, my mother usually handles this while I do the entree. I wanted something with a pineapple since it is still relatively warm and humid here in Louisiana.

The meal quickly came together in my head - Grilled Pineapple with a pineapple basil foam, vanilla bean ice cream and a brandied espresso glaze. It turned out to be a pretty easy dessert to make.

I combined squares of pineapple with brandy, brown sugar and salt and pepper ( yes you just read that right) and let them marinate for about an hour or so. Throw the squares on a grill and cook till the outside caramelizes.

For the pineapple basil sauce, I just simply tossed the leftover pineapple chunks into a blender with a few sprigs of basil and about two tablespoons of sugar. Puree then strain the sauce and just before serving froth it up in a blender.

For the coffee glaze, I took some brandy and cooked it with a vanilla bean till reduced by half and added a cup of espresso and some cane syrup and cooked this down to a syrupy goodness.

Its hard to tell that there is ice cream in this dish since it quickly melted on top of the grilled pineapple.

Plate everything and enjoy.

If I left anything out or you have questions let me know. I am horrible at converting a recipe from my head to paper.

Oh and I just found out via my stats page that I was mentioned in an online article of the Providence Rhode Island Newspaper.

Redesign Help

I am in desperate need of a redesign of this site. I have looked around and have a pretty good idea of what I want this site to look like and what I want it to do ( index of recipes anyone ?).

Does anybody have any recommendations for a site designer I could use ? I am also thinking of switching to Wordpress if that helps.

Contact me at michael(dot)oboyle(at)gmail(dot)com