Top Chef #4: Sunday Brunch

Liz and I, along with our friend Roxana, got to Top Chef Mecca (Liz's place) at 8:15ish am to start with the cooking.

Since brunch wasn't going to be served until 11 am, we focused on the prepping. Roxana made the whipped cream for the crepes. Liz made the egg mixture for the spanish tortilla and also made the chipotle aioli. I  and made the french toast batter and the crepe mixture. I also prepped the bread for the egg in a hole. We didn't have a biscuit cutter like the recipe called for, so we used a drinking glass that had a diameter of about 3 inches. It worked pretty well. Also, we felt bad throwing the holes out, so we put 4 of them together to make a "slice" of bread.



As far as I could tell, all of the prepping was fairly easy. We were finished with the prep about 30 - 45 minutes. After which we hung out for a little whiles. At about 10 am, we started making the crepes. A few notes on making crepes, especially if you don't have a crepe pan. Choose a shallow pan that has a large flat surface. If your pan isn't that big, just adjust how much batter you put into the pan. I had a larger pan, and Roxana was making crepes on a smaller pan. The recipe said to use 1/4 cup of the batter for each crepe, which worked for me. But with Roxana's pan, it looked more like a pancake. We cut that in half, and had a perfect crepe. The other key components are to butter the pan after each crepe with a brush and to really spread out that batter to the edges of the pan.

I turned over my crepe making duties to Liz and focused on the french toasts. There was a LOT of bread to soak up. The egg in a hole called for a french toast with egg on top of another piece of french toast. So since we were making brunch for 8, we had 16 pieces of french toast. Anyways, they soaked every ounce of the egg mixture. The tough part was to then make the egg in a hole. The recipe called for toasting one side with the egg, then flipping it to toast the other side. Well, I wasn't sure how the egg would remain sunny side up if that was the case. We first tried that route and the egg became over easy/medium. I also tried toasting one side and after flipping it, added the egg, which looked nice, but took forever. We also realized that the extra large eggs we were using were teeming over the holes. So for future reference, use medium - large size eggs. The other alternative is to toast one side, flip to the other side, add the egg and finish it off in the oven. I found that using a wide but flat skillet was much easier than a curved bottom pan.The assembling of the dish was quite easy. We had a piece of french toast at the bottom. In the middle was a piece of prosciutto and on top was the egg in a hole.

Moving on to the tortilla. Liz had previously made the mix for the tortilla and prior to cooking it we added the crackers and chips so that they retained some of the crunch.  The recipe made for quite a lot and the two skillets we used made pretty big tortillas. Since one of the skillets was deep dish, it was pretty tough to flip the tortilla. It required two of us, both using spatulas to turn over one half and sort of shove the other half over. Since the tortilla was somewhat pliable, we were able to flip them that way without breaking the tortilla.



And for the tasting of the meal.

Starting off with the egg in a hole. It was quite tasty, but most of our esteemed diners said that the prosciutto didn't do much for them. In this case, it might have been better to splurge for better quality prosciutto or perhaps put two slices so that the saltiness can be more prevalent.

The tortilla was quite delicious, but what really made that dish was the chipotle aoili which had an awesome spicy kick to it! The chips and crackers added a nice and different texture to the tortilla.

The crepe was delicious. It was wrapped in the almond whipped cream and strawberries, and was deceptively light -- there's a lot of butter that goes in to it!

Another successful meal!

Shopping for Top Chef #4

This time, Liz and I opted for a brunch theme and came up with this menu:

• Sara's Egg in a Hole
• Spanish Tortilla and Chipotle Aioli
• CJ's Crepes with Strawberries and Almond Whipped Cream

What we quickly realized was that we would need a LOT of eggs (about 30 in total). So we opted to shop in bulk at Costco. There we picked up the eggs, the bread (the multigrain with a lot of grain held up really well when making french toast), and strawberries (the egg in a hole called for a grapefruit garnish, but we subbed that for strawberries since we were also using that for the crepes).

That concluded part 1 (of 3) of the food shopping. Liz did the bulk of the food shopping the following day, so check out her blog for that experience. I received a text from her later on in the day saying that she couldn't find two ingredients. Luckily, I was in Wegmans when I got the text and just so happened to be standing under the display of terra chips. The other ingredient, a sundried tomato cheese spread, was really hard to find, so I substituted that with a tomato cream cheese. Since we were only using about 2 tablespoons of it, the substitution didn't make too much of a difference.

All told, I spent about $30.

Top Chef #3: Spring Seafood Medley

For our third challenge, we opted for seafood. The weather was warming up and we wanted a lighter fare. This time, Liz did the food shopping. Check out her blog for the highlights, particularly how hard it was to find a chocolate cookie!

Our menu consisted of:

• Lia's Olive Oil Poached Shrimp, page 86.
• Ilan's Fideos with Clams and Saffron, page 164
• Cliff's Marshmallow and cookie ice cream, page 234

Liz and I were joined in the kitchen by Le. Liz and Le took lead on the appetizer, which was very complicated. Liz didn't have a vegetable peeler; the recipe called for us to peel the zest of the lime. Luckily, Le was able to get the job done with a paring knife. The rest of the recipe had multiple steps to make a sauce, which would only be a dollop on the final dish! Another highlight of this recipe called for a chargrilled jalapeno, which can be done over a gas stove. TIP: the recipe called for us to just leave it on the stove, but we found that using tongs and being able to turn the jalapeno worked much better!

What made this appetizer recipe complex was the sauce mentioned above, as well as the lime syrup. I can't even begin to go into the intricacies that Liz and Le had to go through. My contribution to this appetizer was the poaching of the shrimp. I washed the shrimp and made sure that they were dry. The recipe called for a whole bottle of olive oil, but here's a TIP, you only need to use enough to cover the shrimp, which for us came out to be able less than half a bottle. Poaching it in olive oil was quite a treat. It made the shrimp taste even sweeter, but oddly enough, I didn't get too much of that greasy, oily feeling. The appetizer was quite a hit and we probably could have used more shrimp than the recipe called for. 

Moving on to the main course. Since we had to double the recipe to make enough for 8, it was a LOT of pasta. We weren't able to get the appropriate color of brown on the pasta since we didn't have enough baking pans, or space in the oven to place the uncooked fideos in one layer on each pan. In hindsight, we could have done it in batches, but at this point, we just wanted to finish the cooking to start eating! ;)

The sauce was easy to make; the tough part was mixing the pasta in with the the clams and the sauce. TIP: separating it into multiple pots made it easier to mix. Just make sure that you also add enough sauce and clams!

Last but not least, dessert! Since ice cream takes a while to set, it was the first thing that we made. I took the lead on the ice cream. What I found difficult was making sure that everything was precise -- this tends to be the case in making desserts! What took forever was getting the cream mixture up to temperature. It took longer than the recipe said it would, but I was uncomfortable with taking it off the stove before it hit 170 degrees.  After that, everything was a breeze -- probably because the ice cream maker machine did the rest of the work. TIP: make sure that the ice cream maker bowl is COLD. We left it in the freezer for over 24 hours. When the consistency of the mixture looked like ice cream, that's when you add in the other stuff, like marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate cookie crumble. The ice cream was fairly easy to make, particularly compared with the appetizer! 

Overall, another successful top chef meal!

(Note: this blog entry is backdated to reflect the actual date of the meal)

Top Chef Dinner #2: All Things Beef

I was lucky enough to get out of work early on Friday and so I got to Liz's just after 4 pm to start with the making of our feast.

I started off making the raspberry coulis and the vanilla creme fraiche for the dessert. With the use of devices such as a food processor and a stand mixer, the dessert components were easy enough to make.

I then measured out the ingredients for the ribeye crust. Liz came home about that time and started grinding the spices for the rub. We then took the ribeyes out of the fridge to let it stand at room temp before cooking.

The carpaccio called for homemade mayo, which once we used the right kitchen tool, was easy to make. Note to others: if it says blender, use a blender, not a stand mixer.

Liz made the parsley sauce, shitake broth, and she became in charge of the main course, while the dessert was mine for the making.


We didn't have a double boiler, so we used a smaller sauce pan over a larger sauce pan. In that I melted butter and bittersweet chocolate. The smell was quite wonderful. I then buttered the ramekins. Tip -- it's easier to do by hand than with a utensil. Mixing the eggs was an art. I was concerned about what "small and medium peaks" look like. The eggs had to be beaten until small peaks formed. After that, I added sugar, the melted chocolate and beat that til medium peaks formed, then folded in some flour.


What was probably the hardest part of the dessert was the baking of it. I didn't want to overcook it since that'll lose the molten aspect of it. But if it was undercooked then it would break when I plated. The recipe called for 11 - 14 minutes of baking. We actually baked it for about 21 minutes.



Once dessert was done, I finished our app.The tough part of this dish was the meat. We had frozen it in hopes of further slicing it, but was unable to do so. At this point, I started defrosting the beef. The key here was to use cold water instead of hot which could cook the meat. After the beef was defrosted, I started putting the carpaccio together and plating them. I had gone to Crate & Barrel and bought some tasting spoons so that we could have a better carpaccio presentation. The meat was thicker than we needed, so i had to slice them into smaller pieces.

 The guys were a little wary of eating raw meat, but once we told them that Liz and I had already tested it, they were quick to partake of the app and it was gone pretty quickly! The half pound of beef we bought easily made about 36 bites.

The mayo had a nice tart taste to it, the shitake broth was awesome, so full of flavor. We had forgot about frying the capers, so we put them on au natural. Overall, quite a delicious bite!


After that, I plated the dessert. Using a small knife, I carved out the cakes and turned them upside down on a plate. I filled the plate with raspberry coulis (the recipe made a LOT of coulis) and added a hefty dollop of creme fraiche (the recipe also made a LOT of creme fraiche). Also, we bought way too much raspberries for the recipe and were left with over a pint! Before I go into how the dessert tasted, we'll move on to the main course.

The potatoes took some time. While Liz was making the steaks, her friend Lauren was put in charge of the potatoes. We ended up using approximately 8 oz. portions of ribeye instead of 5 oz (which I'm pretty sure the guys appreciated). The chive puree was another interesting component--that was the one that called for the xantham gum. It truly was a lot of effort for a tiny dollop on the plate. Nonetheless, the pop of rich green was great on the plate!

Carmelizing the celery was quite interesting, but the taste was really good! We finished the potatoes, and then began plating. We also had a lot of shitakes from the broth, so we added those to the plate as well.

The crust on the ribeye was a great combination. Liz perfectly cooked the ribeye, which was so juicy and not too marbelized.Adding the shitake to the mashed potatoes was delicious. The potatoes were so deliciously buttery and the shitakes which had been soaking in the broth, added the right amount of salt to the dish.

And for dessert. I normally would not put so much sauce on the plate, but we had a lot of it. The coulis was a perfect tart complement to the sweetness and richness of the molten cake, which turned out wonderfully!!! Phew! I was soo worried I had overcooked it!

We cooked for about 5 hours, but what we ended up having was a wonderful feast that tasted very high end!

Shopping for "All Things Beef"

This time around, our theme was beef. Don't worry, dessert was not beef, but instead we complemented our beef selections with a molten chocolate cake. The menu was:

• Beef Carpaccio with watercress, fried capers, and shitake broth by Casey Thompson (page 71)
• Crusted Ribeye with Carmelized Celery by Bryan Voltaggio (http://www.bravotv.com/foodies/recipes/crusted-rib-eye-with-caramelized-celery)
• Molten Chocolate Cake by Hung Huynh (page 230)

These recipes called for quite a list of ingredients; the shopping list was about a page and a half.
We started at the local Giant and found almost everything, except for creme fraiche, maldon sea salt, xantham gum, and a butcher that can thinly slice our beef for the carpaccio. Yes, we could have gotten a hunk of sirloin to cut ourselves, but I wasn't too sure of my slicing skills for that.

We then made our way to Whole Foods. Creme fraiche and maldon sea salt were easy to find. We also found xantham gum, but since we only needed 1/4 tablespoon for the ingredient, we didn't feel like spending over $10 for an ingredient we wouldn't really use again. We substituted that with gelatin.

The butcher at Whole Foods didn't have a slicer either, but luckily we found some "sandwich cut" sirloin that while not paper thin, was thin enough that it would do the trick.

Total spent: about $110 for dinner for 7

Next entry: the prepping, cooking, and eating of All Things Beef.

Our first challenge: Outdoors/BBQ foods

Let the fun begin!
Last night, Liz, Karen, and I met up to do our first challenge. We opted for a 3 course menu, focusing on foods to be eaten outdoors. (For more details on the recipe selection, check out Liz's blog entry).

The menu:
Appetizers: Evangelos "Spike" Mendelsohn Spicy Fire Wings with Pineapple Jicama Slaw and Apple Cider (the most complex recipe of the three). This recipe is not in the Top Chef Cookbook, but is found at http://www.bravotv.com/foodies/recipes/spicy-fire-wings

Main Course: Black Truffle Burger by Howie Kleinberg (page 102)

Dessert: Strawberry Apple Crisp with Hazelnut Whipped Creme by Brian Hill (page 236)

Liz and Karen started off prepping the wings and burgers.

Once the wings were done, the guys (Tri, Steve, and Drew) grilled and basted the wings: 

 
I arrived a bit late to really help out with the first two courses (aside from cutting tomatoes, toasting the burger buns), so I started the dessert.


So, past knowledge of baking tells me that precision in measuring is key. I figured following the recipe is the other key component. Well, sorry Top Chef/Tom Colicchio, the recipe was wrong. It called for the flour and sugar (dry ingredients) to be added first (sifted in the mixer bowl), then add the rest of the ingredients for the crisp: vanilla, egg whites, butter.

Our resident pastry chef, Karen, noticed that the mix was not blending well and it was not becoming pasty. Luckily, she was able to save it. We separated the butter from the rest of the batter and creamed it, then added the batter back in, a bit at a time and added some more flour to make it more pasty. Luckily, that worked. We then spread the batter out on a rimless cookie sheet, cracked the hazelnuts, finely chopped them, and spread them out on the crisp. Into the oven it went for about 25 minutes -- took a little longer since the crisp wasn't as thin as it should have been (oops!)

In the meantime, we started eating (will get to the results in a bit). In finishing the dessert, I hand-whipped cream for the first time!! 






And for the fruits of our labor:

The App. The wings were quite flavorful and had a slight kick to it; thank goodness we didn't put in 3 quarts of chillies like the recipe called for. We found the jicama and pineapple slaw to be really refreshing with an awesome dressing! Who knew that fish sauce (nuoc mam could be used like this!) I think this was my favorite course of the evening. I was probably in the minority of wanting to add more chillies. lol.
















The Main Course:  Wow did that burger have complex flavors that all worked! This was the guys' favorite dish of the evening. The truffle butter was delicious, the pancetta and cheese really complemented the meat.























Dessert: A light dessert and with the exception of the crisp was easy to make. The apples had great carmelization on them, the strawberries were fresh, and the whipped cream was light and not too sweet. The crisp almost tasted like a fortune cookie, with hazelnuts.

Overall, a great first effort. Everything was delicious. The wines we had went well with the food. The three of us worked well together. I definitely learned a lot and had fun doing it! Next time, I'll remember my apron and my cookbook!!

*** Thanks to Tri for taking the photos. ***

Cookbook revealed

I can't take credit for this. Liz came up with this one, and it's much better than anything I could have conjured up. (Her explanation for why this book can be found on her blog -- http://lizcancook.blogspot.com/)


I love Top Chef so I was more than happy to go with this choice. Also, it'd be fun to go eat at the Top Chef contestants' restaurants and meet them!

My cookbook should be arriving this week, so our first attempt should be next weekend! Stay tuned :)