Monday, March 9, 2009

Carnivores Rejoice

School has been keeping me pretty busy so I've let the ball drop on keeping this blog updated. All last week and this, I've been working with different types of meats. I've butchered more chickens than I care to count and am pretty comfortable working with a slab of beef and veal. Working with raw meat use to gross me out a bit, but I find it quite fun now. I realized that before school, I hardly cooked with meat. Sure, I bought the occasional pre-cut chicken breast or ground beef but I never grilled steak or roasted a pork loin. I was always scared I would cook it incorrectly and thus steered clear of recipes that were protein intensive. I was definitely missing out! Some pictures of dishes I remembered to take pictures of...

My first grilled steak ever! This is a grilled strip loin steak with sauce Choron (tarragon-tomato emulsion), french fries and dressed watercress. I was trying to cook it to medium rare on the grill, but unfortunately I'm still getting used to reading proper meat temperatures and it came out medium. The criss cross grill marks that are probably familiar to most are called quadrillage. I hand cut the fries, but they can easily be done on a mandolin also. It came out pretty delicious and made for a great lunch on Friday.

This is a breaded chicken breast garnished with egg whites, egg yolks, capers, parsley and a lemon slice, olive and anchovy in the center. It's served with a pan fried potato pancake (pommes darphin.) I brought this home for my roommate to try and she really liked it! I was skeptical of the garnishes myself, but they worked with the richness of the heavily buttered chicken breast to create a nicely balanced dish.
I've never really eat veal let alone cook it so this recipe was highly educational. This is veal stew in cream sauce. The veal shank was braised to draw out the tenderness of the meat. It's served with rice pilaf ( a la Uncle Ben) and cocotte vegetables (see previous football entry) and a rich cream sauce. I thought it turned out pretty well and had it for lunch. :)

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