5 Star Recipe

Garlic Mushrooms

Here is a simple recipe from Emeril that takes sautéed mushrooms to the next level. With the addition of shallots and garlic, this is a winner to top a good steak. In this case, I was using New York strip.

The steak was cooked on the BBQ (charcoal naturally), and when I flipped the steaks, I ran into the house and started the mushrooms. As the steaks were resting (4 minutes), the mushrooms finished up just in time.

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Rockfish with Hazelnuts

We love our hazel nuts here in the Willamette Valley (OR) and thus inspired putting a hazel nut sauce atop a fish. In this case, rockfish.

I would have rather used sliced hazel nuts (or sliced them myself) but the store I went to only chopped hazel nuts. What’s up with that? I can see hazel nut groves from the store and I have several groves near my house. Guess I will have to spend more time and acquire the hazel nuts from local stores rather than the commercial giants.

So back to the recipe, this meal was really quick to make and I cubed up some baby red potatoes, drizzled some olive oil over the top and dusted them with sea salt. Than baked until crisp at 475 degrees. 

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Tuna de Provence

This recipe comes from a village in Provence in the South of France and is amazingly easy to create. With only a few ingredients, it is easy to pick out the flavors and is very clean.

I used Yellow Fin Tuna that were fairly thick. Remember when cooking tuna, you want a little pink in the middle (like cooking a steak medium). Another trick is to lightly press down on the tuna, while in the pan, for a few seconds when you first drop them in.

The side dish was yet another simple task. I took baby red potatoes, sliced them thin with my KitchenAid Mixer Slicing attachment. While in the mixing bowl, I drizzled olive oil and sprinkled sea salt on the potatoes. Mixed them and laid them out on an old cookie sheet and baked at 475 degrees.

Ok, let’s get back to the fish. Tuna is straight forward, salt and pepper on each side and cook in olive oil. The flavors from the sauce is the icing on the cake.

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Grilled Garlic Bread

I know! I couldn’t believe it myself when I ran across this recipe from Emeril. Grilled garlic bread, what could possible be better. Now at first I was thinking how are you going to grill bread, then it dawned on me, in aluminum foil, and sure enough the recipe did not let me down.

This simple recipe starts by creaming some butter with parsely, garlic, lemon juice, and Emeril’s Creole seasoning. Be sure to let your unsalted (REAL) butter get to room temperature and use your mixer to cream the butter.

In the picture you will notice some salmon, Copper River Wild Sockeye to be exact. I am telling you, there is nothing like wild caught salmon – the juices from the fish make the BBQ go wild. At any rate, I kept the salmon very simple because I wanted to evaluate the garlic bread without an overpowering fish or sauce. So it was garlic salt, onion salt, and I squeezed a lemon over the top of the salmon – simply yet delicious.

So lets move on to the garlic bread.

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Italian Chicken Under A Brick

It was time to fire up the BBQ this weekend because we have been working hard on our backyard makeover and neglecting the grill. Ok it is more than a makeover it is a complete start from scratch, hence why my posts have been far and few between lately (which I will correct).

Today’s recipe comes from Emeril and his book Emeril at the Grill. In Emerils recipe he has you bone a chicken and grill it flat with bricks on top. What a cool idea, but I didn’t have a whole chicken when I tried this so chick breasts it was. My next attempt at this will certainly be a whole boned chicken.
 
Back to the bricks, find yourself some old bricks. Lucky for me, we are putting down about 5 million pavers (in the backyard) so finding candidates for the grill was not hard. I just had to look at the pallets in my driveway. Wrap your bricks with aluminum foil and heat them prior to grilling the chicken.

Another thing to think about is that you want to marinate the chicken for 2-6 hours. I recommend at least 4. This way the herbs and lemon juice penetrates the chicken.

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This recipe is from Chef Ramsay and may have you doing a few things you have not done before (or at least in a while). Like blanching the shallots skin on, or using the shallot as a whole along with the garlic cloves. I can assure you that even if you don’t keep the shallots and garlic whole (shame on you, its good) the flavor through the rest of the dish is amazing.

Our friends Rick and Cindy gave me the opportunity to cook in their kitchen (aka make a mess). I just love the space in their kitchen and I can really get down to work making a mess. With room for ingredients, snacks, and wine, you can’t go wrong.

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Potato Leek Sausage Soup – Country Style

This weekend I got to play with my new grinder attachment for the KitchenAid mixer. I just happened to have some pork roast that was dying to be turned into sausage. I ground up a bunch of pork adding all kinds of herbs, paprika, and salt.

With this sausage in hand and some fresh leeks, I was tempted to alter one of the recipes you may have seen on this site for potato leek soup. I added sausage to the recipe and made it country style. For me, country style means setting aside ½ the potatoes and ½ the sausage and adding them at the end. Note: in the prior recipe we pureed the soup with a immersion blender (boat motor).

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Salmon in Tomato Butter Sauce

This weekend I ran across some wild Sockeye salmon and had to try out Chef Ramsey’s tomato butter sauce. I was able to make this meal in 20 minutes and I was taking my time.

One of the key kitchen appliances is the food processor. You put most of the ingredients into the unit and spin away. Then you pass it through a sieve to take out all the seeds (from the tomatoes) and it makes your sauce smooth.

The salmon was cooked very simply – olive oil, salt and pepper. Wow that was really hard. Then I broiled it for bout 8 minutes. The flavor was in the sauce so we did not want the salmon to compete for your taste buds.

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Spaghetti and Meatballs

by Jeffrey William Cameron

This meal is a stand bye for me when I don’t know what I am going to make. You can prepare this meal in about 1 hour or if you have the time, you can let the sauce simmer for several hours. I can tell you the sauce is greatly enhanced when you let it simmer for a couple hours. But in a pinch, one hour will work.

Last night I did not know what I was going to make and I was in the mood for something with tomatoes. As you know the best tomatoes you can get, outside of your own garden are canned tomatoes; they put the best of the best in the can not on the product isle. Go figure. Besides, with canned tomatoes you don’t have to do the peeling part (boil for 10-15 seconds then peel).

So in this recipe I am using a can of tomato sauce and a can of whole tomatoes for the base. I add in sautéed garlic and shallots, then add in chopped basil, oregano, and Italian parsley.

Note: to make your life easy when you chop up the garlic, shallots, basil, oregano, and parsley, divide it into two, one part for the sauce and the other part for the meatballs.

I have done this recipe so many times, I don’t really have measurements and over time you will develop a flavor of your own with a little more this and a little less that. However, I will do my best to give you some measurements as a starter. And I will give you the order in which I prepare the meal so it all turns out at the same time.

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Chocolate Cream Puffs

This dessert is visually appealing and tastes great. Who doesn’t like chocolate and vanilla ice cream. The puffs can be made ahead of time and split just before serving.

I brought these over to our neighbors (Rick and Cindy) and we devoured them. The best part was looking at my 6 year old son (Max) afterwards. He had a chocolate ring round his mouth. What a fun time.

Make these for your family, and see their eyes when you present them.

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