Steak Oscar

Want to take "Steak Night" up to a "Whole 'Nutha Level!?"  Steak Oscar is easier than you think!  Traditional Steak Oscar involves a grilled steak, topped with a lump of crab meat and some asparagus, then smothered in hollandaise sauce.  I threw in a couple of curve balls... Let's do this!

You Will Need:

• One 8-10oz Beef Tenderloin Medallion (Filet Mignon)
• Some large raw shrimp
• A heap of raw fresh spinach (washed)
• Two Tbsp bacon fat
  
• Two Egg Yolks
• 1 Stick butter, cut into small cubes or pieces
  
• 2 Tbsp Water
• 1 Tbsp Lime
• 1/2 Tsp Salt
• 1/2 Tsp Chili powder

For the steak:

I like to use a Filet Mignon for this dish, and I like to reverse sear it.  You can grill it any way you want, as long as it's Medium Rare (I'm kidding, you can grill it to Well Done if you want, just promise not to tell me about it).  For me, Medium Rare is an internal temperature of 120 degrees.  AS SOON AS IT TOUCHES 120, take it off the heat and wrap it foil to rest.

For the shrimp:

Marinate your shrimp in some olive oil, lime juice, and some creole seasoning, for about an hour in the fridge.  When the steak is nearly done, drop the shrimp right on the grill grates and flip/stir them until they're done.  This happens quick... 3 or 4 minutes should do the trick.

For the Spinach:

Heat up the bacon fat in a large skillet, over medium-high heat.  Drop the spinach in and use tongs to flip and stir it around.  As soon as it wilts, take it off the heat!!  If you cook it too long, it will just get soggy and mushy, so err on the under-done side if you have to.

For the Hollandaise:

I do this sauce last because it's finicky and it doesn't like to sit, all alone, in a pot on the stove.  Take the smallest sauce pot you have and whisk two egg yolks with two tablespoons of water until you have a uniform frothy mixture.  Put it on the stove and set the heat to medium-low. Add the butter, and keep whisking while the butter melts.  Do not go anywhere, do not allow anyone to distract you, do not focus on anything except for the sauce!  Whisk and whisk and when the butter is melted, add the tablespoon of lime juice and the salt and chili powder.  Continue to whisk until the sauce has the consistency of gravy.  Serve immediately...

Assembling the dish:

Place your steak in the middle of a nice plate.  Arrange three nice shrimp on top of the steak.  Use your tongs place a lump of spinach on top of the shrimp, then ladle a portion of the hollandaise sauce over all of it!  Make sure it drips over everything!  Serve....

Pizza Dough (Napoli Style)

If it's good pizza you want, you need high heat and quality ingredients.  If it's GREAT pizza you want, you need to start with an excellent pizza dough!  It needs good "chew," some crunch, and a tiny bit of char.  It should be heavy and dense, but packed with plenty of little yeasty bubbles.  This recipe will provide you with 5 (or 6) 12" dough balls that you can use to make the pizza of your dreams!  Let's do this!

You Will Need:

The first thing you will need is time.  If you want to make pizza on Friday night, you'll need to start making this dough on Thursday afternoon and I'm not kidding...  You will also need EXACTLY:

• 1Kg, 00-grade Flour  (It's important.  It's VERY important!  Use your googler and find the 00 flour, it's higher in gluten and it's everything to this recipe).
  
• 1/4 Teaspoon Yeast (Yes, I know it's a small amount)
  
• 640g Cold Water
• 30g Salt

A quick note about 00 flour... Here in the U.S., we sort and label our flour by the amount of protein they have.  The higher the protein, the higher the gluten formation.  This means greater elasticity and "chew!"  In Italy, they grade their flour a bit differently.  Flour is graded based on how finely the flour has been ground. Coarsely ground type “2” flour is at one end of the ruler, and powder-fine “00” flour is at the other.  

I find 00 flour here at the Restaurant Supply store and they only sell it in 50lb sacks.  That's OK with me, it just means more pizza.... you might have to source yours from the interwebs.  Luckily, it's cheap.  You can make about 30 12" pizza crusts for less than $30.

Ok, let's get started!  If you don't have a kitchen scale, this is the time to buy one.  You could ask "Google" to tell you how many cups is equal to 640g of water, but it will only tell you that one cup has 240g in it, and then you'll have a bunch of math to do.  Honestly, every home cook who's even a little bit serious needs a kitchen scale.  Get one on Amazon and put it to use!  Put a bowl on the scale, zero it out, then add 30g of salt.  Zero it out again, and carefully pour in the cold water until you have 640g.  Now, stir until the salt is completely dissolved and pour it all into the bowl of your mixer (this is so much easier if you have a mixer)!  Dry out your bowl and fill it with 1Kg (1,000g) of 00-flour.

Now, turn the mixer on it's slowest setting and watch as it stirs you water.  Dump 5 or 6 large spoonfuls of your flour into the water and wait until it's mixed together.  It should resemble some loose pancake batter.  Sprinkle in the yeast.  Let the mixer ride for a minute to thoroughly mix the yeast in then slowly add all of the rest of the flour except for a spoonful or two.

You'll need to KNEAD the dough for a solid 15 minutes.  You can either turn this dough out onto your countertop, dust your hands with that last spoonful of flour and get to it... or you can use the dough-hook on your mixer.  Either way, this is a chore!  The dough is heavy, and the gluten will build and it will put your hands (or your mixer) through a pretty thorough workout!  It needs to be done though, so smash, pull, fold, press, and repeat for 15 minutes!  I let my stand mixer and the dough hook do this for me, but the mixer does get HOT... 

When you're done, put the dough back onto your cutting board and cover it with a damp tea-towel for TWO HOURS.  I know what you're thinking... you're thinking, "I can't wait to come back in two hours to see how much this grows!"  Well, you're going to be disappointed.  This dough won't grow much at all.  Why?  Well, we've made it very hard for the yeast to work.  We fed it salt, no sugar, and we dumped it in COLD water.  We don't want a fluffy loaf of bread here, we want a heavy dense gluten ball for pizza!  Trust me, it will be OK!  

When your two hours is up, take a final weight of your dough ball.  Divide the total by the number of pizzas you want.  This ball of dough will make five or six 12" pies, depending on how thin you like your crust.  I like mine a bit on the chewier thicker side so I divided 1,665g by five and got 333g.  So... I pulled off 333g of dough and rolled it into a tight ball before dropping it into a small tupperware box.  I did this 5 times.  Then I parked all five containers in my basement utility room where it's 65 degrees.  

Leave your dough balls in a 60ish place overnight, for up to 24 hours.  The dough will rest, the yeast will wake up and you'll end up with a pizza dough that you can stretch, toss, and use to make EXCELLENT pizza!!  If you're not making pizza right away, park the dough in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Shrimp Cocktail, Mexican Style!

This dish is fresh, crunchy, healthy, and a super cool treat on a hot summer day.  So, why did I make it in the middle of Winter?  What can I say, I have a thing for shrimp...

Let's do this!

You Will Need:

• 2lbs Jumbo Shrimp (Cleaned, boiled, tails removed, chilled in the fridge)
  
• 3 Celery Stalks, (halved lengthwise and chopped fine)
• 2 Jalapenos, (finely chopped)
• 1 large Cucumber, (finely chopped)
• 2 Avocados, (peeled, pitted, chopped)
• 2 Bundles of Fresh Cilantro, (finely chopped)
• 1 Small Purple Onion, (finely chopped)
• 2 Limes, (juice)
• 1 Orange, (juice)
• 2 Cups Spicy Tomato Juice (or Spicy V8)
  
• 1 Cup Tomato Sauce
• 1 Tbsp Horseradish
  
• 2 Garlic Cloves, (finely chopped)
• Cayenne Pepper Hot Sauce, (to taste)
• Salt/Pepper, (to taste)

This dish is super easy:

Mix all of the fruit and veggies together in a bowl.  Sprinkle in some salt and pepper to taste and stir it again.  

In a rather large bowl, mix the tomato juice and sauce together, stir it all around until it's uniform.  Taste it, and add as much hot sauce as you like.  Add the horseradish and give it a final stir.

Dump in the veggies and stir to combine.  

Add the shrimp last and be creative.  If you're taking this dish to a pot-luck, you might want to lay the shrimp out on top of the cocktail in a creative way with some lime wedges.  If you're like me, you'll just stir it all together and park it in the fridge!  It makes a lot!

To serve it, you can either scoop a portion into a glass (above) or just ladle some into a bowl and eat it like a nice refreshing cold Ceviche! You can't go wrong, it's a nice low-calorie lunch of deliciousness!

Great Soup! Fantastic Soup in Four Easy Steps!

Is there anything better than your favorite hot soup on a cold day?  NO!  There is not!

Since there are an infinite number of soups and recipes to make them, I thought I would simplify your grandmother's basic soup recipe, so you can adapt it to your favorite goodies (apologies to grandmothers everywhere).  Let's do this!

You Will Need:

• 4 Cups (give or take) of your favorite veggies
• 3 Cups (or so) of your favorite protein
• 12 Cups (more or less) of your favorite soup stock
• 2 portions of your favorite starch (noodles, rice, etc)

Step 1: Dice up a bunch of your favorite veggies.  If you like carrots?  Add more carrots.  If you hate celery?  Don't add any celery!  Typically, this will include some or all of the following:

• Onions (yellow or red)
• Celery
• Bell Pepper
• Carrots
• Jalapenos
• Potatoes
• Tomatoes
  

Into your big soup pot, "blurp" in some good olive oil and heat it up over medium high heat.  When it's shimmering, dump in your diced veggies and stir them around.  Season them with some salt/pepper. Stir and saute them.

Step 2: Dice or shred your protein.  For this round of soup, I had a bunch of turkey leftover from Christmas dinner so I used that.  But you can use whatever protein matches your veggies.  Beef and Barley, Ham and Bean, etc.  When your veggies are tender (onions are clear, carrots are soft), dump in your protein.  Stir, stir, stir, bump the heat up a little.  Stir and cook everything for about ten minutes. 

Stock.  Let's talk about soup stock for a sec... I am NOT a fan of the cardboard quart-sized cartons of stock (any flavor).  They either have WAY too much salt or no salt at all.  They have a "processed" taste to them, and they can be expensive.  The best soup stock in the world is FREE!  Just make it at home!  I mean, for simplicity sake you could just drop a whole chicken (skin, bones, and all) into a pot, cover it with water, and simmer it for 3 or 4 hours.  Pull the chicken out, let the stock cool.  Shred all of the meat off of the chicken bones, put it in a bowl and use it for Step 2 above!  Season your stock to taste and use it for Step 3!  There are some amazing recipes for stock out there.  The best ones use roasted bones, red wine, brandy, exotic spices, etc.  Go nuts!  The point is, you want a stock that is amazing and delicious on it's own, without the veggies and/or protein so... take the time and do the work!

Step 3: Add the stock!  Pour in enough to cover your tender bits by at least an inch or so.  Stir it all together, bring it to a boil, then reduce it to a low simmer.  Strap on the lid and walk away from it for about an hour.  Let it come together... After an hour or so, taste it and give it a final seasoning.  This is where I add any "secret ingredients" like Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper sauce, garlic powder, Italian seasoning... whatever floats your particular boat!

Step 4: Add any starches you like to the pot and simmer one final time.  How long you simmer depends on your starch.  Spaghetti noodles?  Ten minutes of simmering should do the trick.  Rice?  20 minutes.  Big thick soup noodles?  15 minutes.  Just simmer, stir, and check on it every ten minutes or so before killing the heat and calling it "Done!"

Ladle it into your best crock, add a hunk of your favorite bread, and then look out the window and mock the snow that's outside!  Get your fireplace going, put your feet up, and tell everyone to leave you alone for awhile... Good soup should be savored!!