Freebie Wednesday. Well, not quite. But I still heart Chef @home, Michael Smith
Mar 25th, 2009 by nancyzimmerman
What I suffer in produce prices up here I will make up for by eating at home more. A lot more.
Much as I cheer for Yellowknife, it is decidedly lacking many good options for dining out (with a couple exceptions). Mind you, Vancouver is a hard act to follow, as Raul will attest. But I digress. The point is:
I will be eating at home, a lot more.
Thank goodness for Chef at Home, Canada’s own Michael Smith. Like Rachel Ray but with a more authentic kitchen, he manages to make gourmet cooking look easy.
Take his blue-cheese encrusted filet mignon :
Does this not look gorgeous? (forgive my indiscretion, vegetarians. And one of these days I’ll join the cause).
If i have it straight it’s as easy as this:
1. Sear the steaks, after salting and peppering them. Remove from pan.
2. In food processor, blend equal sizes of blue cheese, hunk of bread (torn up) and butter.
3. Put blue cheese mixture on top of steaks and put in hot oven (8 minutes or so?)
Tres easy, oui? Even I could handle that.
Readers: I’m looking for sites/videos/tv shows that give ideas on simple-yet-gourmet recipes. Fast though please, and not too many exotic ingredients (I live in Yellowknife). Suggestions?
ps: photo credit: adactio. And adactio, keep posting pictures like that and I’m coming over, wherever you are.
The best source I know of for simple-yet-brilliant recipes is Mark Bittman of the New York Times, aka “The Minimalist.” I have most of his books and have been cooking almost exclusively from them for the past three years. Most of his recipes take 30 minutes or less and I’ve only found a few that aren’t utterly delicious. His “Bitten” blog (http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/) has a recipe-finder tool on the right side of the screen (you’ll have to scroll down a bit to find it) that’s pretty useful; he’s got dozens of recipes there free for the taking. Bittman is himself a very good chef, but his genius is to work with some of the best chefs in the world and distill their recipes down to the bare essentials. He’s like a food editor, cutting out needless ingredients or unnecessary techniques to arrive at a result that is just as delicious but requires about a third of the effort.
Another good source for simple-yet-sophisticated meals is The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. While some people flinch when they see “Moosewood,” thinking of the original vegetarian bible of the 1970s, this book is full of healthy, delicious, modern recipes that can be made in 30 minutes or less. There’s no meat here, but there are some very good fish dishes. I’ve cooked almost every recipe in this book over the past 15 years and they’re all great.
@brad – been poking around the bitten site – definitely will bookmark and start drawing on this! Great stuff there. Thanks a lot.