Steak on the barbie

I ordinarily don't eat steak--it's expensive and all that meat can't possibly be good for you if you have it regularly. But once in a while really is a treat! I found these steaks on sale at our local Whole Food on their Friday sale.

This is an Italian twist on a traditional steak. I got the recipe from Chef Fabio Viviani---You can watch his video on steak here.

A tip I learned from Chef Viviani:
1) Don't salt your steak before cooking it. Instead, you freshly cracked pepper. A lot of pepper. The cracked pepper will help create a thin layer on the steak which will seal in the juices. The salt with draw out the moisture in the meat and dry out your steak. If you want salt, add it at the very end!

2) Use a fresh branch of rosemary as your basting brush. Heat activates the oil in rosemary and really brings out its flavor. If you have some rosemary oil, use that!

3) Look for marbling in the steak. The marbling helps lock in the juices--so they will stay inside the steak and not leak out during the cooking process.

A few tips I learned along the way:
1) Bring you steak to room temperature before grilling. For this recipe, I made a mix of chopped garlic and olive oil. I then let the steak marinade in that for about 1 hour at room temperature.

2) Make sure your grill is clean and oiled. Noone wants the reminants of whatever what cooked on the grill two weeks ago in their food. Its best to clean the grill after your last grilling job, when the grills are hot, food doesn't stick as well.

3) Oil your grill before you add your meat. The best way to do this is to bunch up a paper towel and douse it in oil. Wrap it in one thin layer of aluminum foil and puncture the aluminum foil several times with a fork. Use a pair of tongs to brush the grill when it is hot with the oil.

2) Make sure your grill is nice and hot! When heating your coals, use a chimney starter--they are really inexpensive and work great. They take a little bit longer to heat up your charcoal, but it is much better--no one wants to taste lighter fluid on their food!

3) On that note, be sure to use natural charcoal. Some manufacturers will douse their charcoal in lighter fluid for an easy light...Don't but these brands.

4) If you have any natural wood to burn it, use it! Natural wood works really well, and imparts a delicious flavor to meat! The best part is that if you use natural wood logs, they turn into charcoal as they burn, saving you a trip to the store. I will place two logs of wood on each end of the barbeque, and then add the hot coal in between. The heat of the coals will make the logs burn, so you get a good combination of flame and slow heat from the charcoal.





5) Use steak with the bone in. It will help lock in moisture.

Ingredients
1 steak
Freshly cracked pepper
Garlic
Olive Oil
1 rosemary stem
Fresh Thyme
Salt



Bring the steak to room temperature.

Drizzle the steak with olive oil on both sides. Massage the olive oil in.

Cover your steak with freshly cracked pepper. This pepper will help create a seal which will lock in the juiciness and flavors of the steak so be liberal with it.

Fire up your barbeque.
Cook on high heat for 7-8 mintues. Don't be constantly prodding the steak. Just close the cover and let it cook undisturbed.

After 7 minutes, add some fresh thyme to the top of the steak (the raw side) and flip the steak. Brush the top of the steak (the cooked portion) with the rosemary brush. Sprinkle some salt on the cooked side.

Place a meat thermometer inside the steak. The temperature needs to get to 145 F (62.7 C) for 15 seconds.


Cover and cook for another 7-8 minutes.

Once the steak is done, remove from heat and let it sit for 5 minutes or so. The internal heat will continue to cook the steak. 

Serve with mashed potatoes, salad or sauted mushrooms. I found the flavor so intense from the wood fire and the rosemary, that the steak didn't need any seasoning at all. 

Once you are done grilling, clean off the grill while the coals are still hot with a grill brush. Let the coals burn out naturally. The wood you used will have turned to charcoal, so you can use that charcoal the next time you barbeque. 

Roasted Chicken in a Dutch Oven

We recently got an Oval Dutch Oven from Le Creuset . I have roasted a chicken many times before, in a roasting pan, like the one's that comes with a standard oven. Although that works just fine, you really get something special when you roast a chicken in a Dutch Oven!

The main difference I saw was that the meat cooked faster, and the bird was much more juicier.  All of the moisture gets locked into the bird, and makes it really soft and tender. The next major benefit was that this really was a one pot meal. I roasted the chicken in the dutch oven with carrots, celery and fennel. I could store the chicken in the same Dutch oven in the refrigerator. When I was done with the chicken, I could make chicken stock directly in the Dutch oven, with the bones, carcass and the vegetables I used to roast the chicken.

Lastly, all the fat from the chicken dripped out into the pan, so I could easily collect it and use it in another recipe! Look at all that deliciousness! LeCreuset is definitely  the way to roast a chicken!










This is a standard recipe for roasting a chicken. My recipe for roasting a chicken on Shokubi can be found here.

Bring the chicken to room temperature. Take a lemon and boil it in water for a few minutes, until it becomes soft. Prick it several times with a knife and stuff it into the chicken. Stuff with carrots, celery, fennel and onions. Pop a few garlic cloves under the skin and place on a be of carrots, celery and potatoes. Generously rub with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Roast the chicken at 400 F for 1 hour or so. After the chicken comes to the proper internal temperature, 160 F on a meat thermometer, remove the cover and let it roast for about 10 minutes more, or until the skin gets very crispy.

Turkey Stuffed Tofu

This is a twist on traditional pork stuffed tofu. Tofu is cut in half, stuffed with raw pork and scallions, deep fried and served with a sauce. This variation replaces the pork with turkey, which is leaner and has less fat, but just as delicious!








Ingredients
Extra Firm Tofu, 2 10 oz blocks

Filling
Ground Turkey, about 1/2 lbs (you can also use ground pork)
1 scallion, minced (use whole scallion, white and green parts)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon dry sherry
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 teaspoon cornstarch

Sauce
1/3 cup rich dark chicken stock
1 teaspoon soy sauce
2 teaspoon oyster sauce
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1.5 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 tablespoon of water
1/2 teaspoon black bean sauce (optional)

Directions
For the filling, mix all the ingredients and marinade for 20-30 minutes or up to 2 hours.

Combine the sauce ingredients in a small saucepan and stir regularly on medium heat, or until all the ingredients dissolve into the sauce. Set aside.











Wash and pat dry the tofu squares.

Cut the tofu squares into triangles. To do this, take one tofu block and cut it in half lengthwise.

Take one of those halves and cut it into four triangles, by cutting a big X through the tofu block. Repeat with the other half of the tofu. If you are using 2 packs of tofu, you should end up with 16 tofu triangles.









Take one of the triangles of tofu. With a sharp pairing knife, cut out a thin pocket on the long side of the tofu. Take the carved out tofu and use for another recipe. Repeat for the remaining tofu triangles. Reserve the scrapped out tofu for Mabo Tofu.

After the tofu ingredients have marinated, take on the tofu triangles, and stuff the tofu pocket with the turkey mixture. Be sure not to overstuff the tofu, it will break the tofu and ruin your stuffed tofu! It takes about 2 teaspoons of meat mixture. Repeat for the remaining tofu triangles.

You can fry these immediately, or keep them in the refrigerator for a few hours.

When you are ready to eat, heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok or cast iron skillet. When it gets hot, almost smoking, add the triangles, meat side down. Cook for 5-6 minutes total, turning the tofu to brown on each side. When all the sides are nicely browned remove from the wok and place on paper towels. Let any remaining oil drain off.

Serve with the dipping sauce!

Honey'd Preserved Figs

I still had some figs left over from my last meal, Fig Balsamic Vinegar, and I didn't want them to go bad. At the same time, I didn't have any dishes I readily wanted to make with figs, so I decided to make a fig jam. I went online and found a recipe for Honey'd Preserved Figs, from a blog called Will Cook for Friends.

This turned out really good! I used some Hawaiian honey from the Big Island and it was so delicious!

This works great as a spread for toasted rustic bread! I am thinking about making some sort of ice cream with it.

Ingredients
1 lbs black mission figs or any other type
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup granulated sugar




Gently wash and stem the figs. Cut them into half or quarters and add them to a saucepan.

Add the remaining ingredients. Give them a good stir, its okay if you break down the figs a bit.

Let the figs marinate in the lemon juice, honey and sugar for 15 minutes.

Put the saucepan with the figs on medium heat, and cook for 7-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
I found stirring the figs with a large wooden pestle really does the trick! Continue stirring until the fruit begins to break down.












Reduce the heat to low. Continue to cook for 7-10 minutes more, or until the jam has thickened to your liking.











Spoon the preserves into a glass jar. They will stay in the refrigerator for a few weeks. Alternatively, you could can the fruits. Properly sealed jars can stay in a cool dark place for several months. Just be very careful with the canning process!

Fig Balsamic Vinegar

We recently got a bunch of figs from friends! Thank you very much! We were debating what to do with them.

I scoured the internet and found this recipe from a food blog called White on Rice. Its delicious! I have been using this as a dipping sauce for roasted chicken. I am thinking of other uses for it. It works great with toasted bread and goat cheese as well!



Ingredients
1 cup of fig pulp (I used Mission figs, but I think Brown Turkey would work too)
1 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Scoop out the fig pulp from the figs. I found a paring knife works best for this.

In a saucepan, add the balsamic vinegar and fig pulp. Simmer on low heat for 30-45 minutes, or until the mixture reduces to about half. Give it a good stir every 5 minutes or so, to make sure the figs don't stick to the pan.










Allow the fig reduction to cool. Place the mixture in a food processor and blend thoroughly.













The recipe from White on Rice called for straining the fig seeds out of the mixture, but I found the figs seeds were too small and just fell through my colander  I would stay strain it if you have a really fine mesh colander--those seeds are small! Otherwise, just leave the seeds in.

Add a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract.

Store in a glass container in the fridge.