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!