Although I would never describe myself as a gourmet cook, if you gave me a choice between spending all day in the kitchen and spending all day doing housework, the kitchen wins. I am picky about my pots,pans,knives and other cooking type attire.
One of my favorite ways to cook meat/poultry/pork and some kinds of fish, is the sear/roast method. I don’t know how well it translates to the vegans among us. Here is a good overview.
I use a cast iron or one of my French style steel fry pans. I heat until it sizzles enough to bounce water just a touch then take an evenly shaped cut of beef/pork/poultry/fish and cook it a few minutes each side. The kind of pan is critical because you won’t get a good browning with any kind of non stick pan. The it goes in the oven on a high temp between 400-500 depending on your oven. I generally make some kind of sauce and incorporate the brown bits from the searing. I like a wine/mushroom sauce for beef, a tomato olive concoction for chicken, a booze/fruit combo for pork ( don’t mix sweet fruit with sweet booze too overpowering) and so on… My rule with a sauce is use what you like. It is done quickly. I usually so a quick boil on green beans, give them a cold water shock, and then sauté them. People tend to think that cooking is too time consuming and all it takes is having some stock items that you use all the time.
A few other hints…
Experiment on hungry people, they are more appreciative…
Always have a few bottles of wine on hand in case things don’t go according to plan…
No kitchen is complete without a cast iron pan….
Gentlemen: Women LOVE a man who cooks for them… you are instantly transformed into Brad Pitt even if you don’t really resemble him.
Well, thanks for looking. Hang out and chit chat but don’t rec pony party. Please have a look at the great offerings on our recent and rec’d list. Participation equals democracy.
6 comments
Skip to comment form
Confession: I just had a bowl of soup for dinner.
…my friend the chef (Culinary Institute and years as an exec chef) and I were dining out, as was our weekly wont in my NYC years. I do not cook, he knows it, and I asked what I could do for a friend’s birthday. He prescribed pretty much exactly this: take a filet mignon roast, butter the hell out of it, salt and pepper in equally absurd measure, and sear/seal quickly all the way around in a very hot pan. Flames in the air. Then, 45 minutes, not much more, in the oven. I generally don’t even like rare meat, and it was delicious. I get compliments years later.
Then again, I suppose there are limited ways to screw up a big filet mignon roast from Balducci’s.