Tuna tasting plank

Hey everyone. How are you guys today?? hungry?? I know I am, and also really craving some serious penne alla carbonara right now.

What I do want to do is apologize for the less than stellar photos today, the light just wasn't working with me when I took them is all. I hope you guys can forgive me.

What we're looking at right now is 3 styles of tuna, all ahi ( blue fin ) that I got for a great price at the public market.

Recipe I'm going to share with you today is the cedar plank baked tuna, but first i'll go through a description on each one.
The first one on the menu is the crusted tuna. This is crusted with a rosemary sesame paste that I made with a mortar and pestle and then seared on a very high heat for roughly 45 seconds on each side, serve sliced or whole.

The second one is a tuna tartar. This is mixed in with rice vinegar, grainy dijon, and fresh squeezed blood orange juice, simply season to taste and serve cold for the best results.

Now it's going to get fun, time for some cedar plank baked tuna. The trick to this is baking in the right flavours, so what we're going to do before we bake this is marinate it. The marinade I used is super simple, all it is is dark soy sauce and sesame oil.

What you want to do is cut 6-7 slices of tuna, as thick or thin as you want and then set them aside. Now preheat your oven too 350, after that prepare you marinade.

For the marinade it's 50/50 sesame oil and dark soy sauce.
Just whisk this together until it forms a solution and then place your tuna in and let sit. The Tuna slices should be ready when the oven is warmed up.

Now that the oven is fully heated lay your fish out on the cedar plank and, using a spoon, pour some of the marinade over it as well, if it's separated at all the give it another quick whisk before you pour some on.
Now that your ready to go place it in the oven. Depending on how thick you slice the tuna it should take 10-15 minutes to cook properly.

While the tuna is cooking you should have just enough time to prepare you 3 garnishes.
3 chives
1 lychee nut
julienned rhubarb

With your chives you just want to chop them as small as possible, this is also known as a bruiniose, and set aside. With the lychee nut peel it and then cut in half to remove the seed, afterwards cut each half into 4 pieces and then put them with the chives. Now with the rhubarb all your going to need is 1 inch of the stalk, fairly simple, just slice it up so it looks like long thin sticks.

At this point your tuna should be ready to come out of the oven, so check and then pull it out. When you pull it out it's still going to be pretty hot so give the tuna 2-3 minutes to cool down before you garnish it. When it's cooled off enough, garnish and serve.

This is a great dish to serve at a dinner party or family gathering I've always found, it goes over well and makes a great appetizer. Both light and summery but you can change the garnishes to suit any season easily or even try a different wood to cook with. I love this dish because it's as flexible as it is, and that's what makes it great for me because I'm always trying to mix things up, as a chef that's my job, right??

I really hope you guys all give this one a try and end up loving it as much as me, check back in if you do try it and let me know how it goes for you !!!! I'll be posting again soon so I'll be seeing you around, but until then this is Chef wishing you all great food and good days.

Beef Tartar

Grainy Dijoin and brandy Beef Tartar seasoned with fleur de sel and cracked black pepper on top of a avocado salsa, garnished with a fried quails egg and accompanied by a caprese salad.

Muscle a la Vino Bianco

How's everyone doing today? I really hoping you're all doing great and enjoying all your meals.

What I want to share with you today is a fairly simple dish that anyone can make at home.

Mussels in a spicy white wine cream sauce with bacon

1 1/2 Lbs muscle
( With the muscles try to get them fresh out of the tank at your local super market )

For the sauce :
1/2 a sliced Serrano pepper
1/4 cup diced bacon
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tbsp brunoise shallots
1/2 cup white wine
3/4 cup heavy cream

The first thing you want to do is fry up your bacon until it's fairly Al dente then throw in the garlic, shallots, serrano and muscles. Saute this until the muscles start to just slightly open and the garlic lightly colors then hit it with your wine and a small glob of butter. After you deglaze with the wine quickly dump in the cream and place a lid on your pan and leave to reduce and cook. The sauce and muscles will be done in about 3-5 minutes or when all the muscles are open.

Some advice for safety is that if a muscle doesn't open or only opens a very very small amount it that it's most likely dead so don't eat it, just toss it out.

This is a simple a delicious dish !! and one of my personal favorites when it comes to Muscles. It's savory with just the right amount of spice to cut through it so it wont be too heavy on your stomach, great to make if you want to impress your friends or if you just want something simple and light. That's another thing that's highlighted with this dish, the simplicity that any and all food should be created with. I wish i could say that this is a completely original dish but muscles have been done in a 1000 and 1 different ways and I'm sure that some  restaurant in my city or yours is making something similar in their kitchen, but that doesn't make it any less amazing. So try this one at home and enjoy !!! I need to go cook my dinner now so this is your Chef signing off and wishing you luck with this one !!!

Sable fish

Let me know if you want the recipe for this everyone and I'll be happy to put it up !

This is a pan seared sable fish fillet with a warm cheesy potato salad, also including eggs, bacon, sautéed onions, and diced tomato served with a dill crème fraiche and garnished with bull's blood micro greens.

Uni preparation

Heyy guys !! It's here as promised, Step by step instructions on how to prepare Uni and a recipe afterwards so you can make something of your own.

Now the first this you want to do is rinse your Uni off.

After that let in sit to dry for a few minutes.

After you've let in sit to dry for a while take a pair of scissors and cut around the mouth of the Uni, roughly 1 cm away from the circular mouth, use the mouth as a guideline. The gross stuff you will see inside is only plant matter and some guts, it's the yellow roe attached to the sides that we're after.

Now that we've opened it all up get a container of cold water and a spoon ready. What you need to do now is scoop out everything around the roe into the water without damaging it. After you have everything scooped out you want to take the roe out and into the same water. To do this you take your spoon and start at the bottom of the shell and slowly scoop up and underneath it to remove from the wall of the urchin.

Now prepare another bowl of cold water. Remove the roe from the dirty water and place in the clean water then proceed to clean all the bits and pieces of seaweed off. Don't worry if white or yellow liquid starts to ooze out, that's just coming from the centre on the roe and is something that adds to the natural flavour.

I didn't get many other pictures after this one. But what you need to do now is pull all the Uni roe out of the water once fully cleaned and set aside on a towel or paper towel to dry.

And here we go !!!! Like I said I'll be giving you guys a recipe for this so I'm going with something simple and easy to do, tempura Uni with spicy frites.

For the tempura batter:

1/2 cup flour

1 TBSP corn starch

1 TSP baking powder

1 ounce sake

1 egg

2/3 cup water

Mix all your dry ingredients together, then take your egg and sake and mix. Now fold it into dry mixture.

With the water your going to want to be careful, you wont need all of the water but it's good to have a little measured out just in case you want a thinner consistency of the batter, slowly fold in the water until the batter looks almost like reduced heavy cream and it's smooth with no chunks floating around in it now that that's all done place in the fridge and pray it wont split and tempura batters made at home are known to do. if you've folded the batter properly as opposed to mixed it it really should be fine, the key to a good batter is mixing or moving it as little as possible. 

At this point I'm hoping you all have a wok at home, if you don't it's easy enough to get one at your local Chinese super market. So if you do have a wok fill it just a little under 1/2 way with oil and turn onto a medium high heat so it's good for deep frying.

While your oil is heating up make your frites, for this you need 2 small-medium potatoes and a japanese mandelon ( about 45$ at your local kitchen store but will last you a life time) and take the medium teeth and screw them in then proceed to cut you potatoes into frites. place them in a bowl under running cold water to clean them of starches and dirt of any kinda, drain and set aside until needed.

Now it's time to cook your Uni. Take your batter out of the fridge and test the oil's temperature take a small dab of the tempura batter and drop it into the oil, it's should begin to fry within a matter of seconds, if not then wait a few more minutes until the oil is hot enough. Once the oil in hot enough give each piece of Uni a good coating of the tempura batter and fry. The Uni should be done once it's golden brown and floating at the top. once all your Uni is done set aside on a paper towel to drain of excess oil. Now all you need to do is your frites, this it fairly straight forward. All you need to do is drop the raw potato slices into the oil and let them cook till golden then quickly scoop them out with a slotted spoon and into a bowl, once in the bowl toss with paprika and salt to taste. Now plate your frites and Uni, serve with japanese mayo if you prefer.

This is the dish pictured above if you haven't taken a peek already, and I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did !! Time for me to say good night because it's getting a little late for me over here so I'll be wishing you all a great day and and amazing food, Chef is signing off.

Uni appetizers

This is home made fish n' chips style Uni made with a thick tempura batter and shoestring frites tossed in smoked paprika and served with Japanese mayo. I'll be giving you the full recipe when I post on how to clean a sea urchin. 

What your looking at is torched uni with julienned radishes and pineapple, cauliflower purée. On the top is Bulls Blood micro greens and some toasted black sesame seeds. All of this is covered with a small drizzle of sweet and sour yuzu sauce.

A good lunch

First of all let me start off by saying YEAH WOHOOO GO CANUCKS!!!! IN YOUR FACE SHARKS!!!!

And now that that's out of my system I want to apologize for the less than stellar picture, but seeing as it's a French onion soup and grilled cheese for lunch on this lesson it's hard to have a pristine plate with the cheese melting to the bowl.

This lesson was to teach basic knife skills as well as recipe and cook times.

For the soup:

5 sliced large yellow onions

handful of thyme

2 bay leaves

3 litres of beef stock

2 cups of red wine

for the top:

slices of bread

grated smoked Guyere cheese

The first thing you need to do is put your oven on too preheat at 400 and move one rack to the second last placement. While the oven is heating up put all your sliced onions into deep pot heated to medium with oil. Sweat your onions off until they are soft and pliable then turn it up to a higher temperature so you can caramelize them properly, the best is a golden-dark brown. Now is a good time to throw in your thyme and bay leaves. Stir in your aromatics for at least 5 minutes before you pour in your wine. Let the wine reduce by half then pour in all your beef stock and season to taste then let simmer for about 1/2 an hour stirring every 3-5 minutes.

With the bread you'll be making croutons so cut the bead to fit into the top of your bowl then place on a cooking sheet and sprinkle olive oil and salt on them. Place in the oven until dry and slightly golden brown. After you remove them from the oven turn it onto broil so you can melt your cheese.

Now that you have everything ready make your grilled cheese !! I personally use Applewood smoked cheddar. Make this about 5 minutes before the soup is read to come out of the pot and just lightly colour both sides of the grilled cheese then place on the bottom rack of the oven. 

What you should do now is ladle your soup out into bowls according to your preferred portion size, place a crouton on top each one and then cover with a generous amount of Guyere cheese then place in the oven on the top rack while it's on broil too melt the cheese, them take it out as soon as it's fully melted but use a dry towel as the bowl with be very hot.

Right as your placing the soup/s/ in the oven you should be taking out your grilled cheese.Cut your grilled cheese and place on the plate, then put the soup on the plate after it comes out as well and enjoy !!!!!!

I love french onion soup so much because it's such a traditional thing, so simple and beautiful also such classic that I cant help but enjoy !!! Actually I think I'm going to make some more right now, so this is your chef saying have a good one !! and wishing you all great food !