Bo Kho Vietnamese Beef Stew

Bo kho, a traditional Vietnamese beef stew made with tomato, star anise, and lemongrass, from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen:

Braised Tuna with Radicchio, Chickpeas, and Rosemary

The other day, I made Braised Tuna with Radicchio, Chickpeas, and Rosemary from Molly Stevens' wonderful All About Braising. Braising may sound like a terrible way to cook a nice piece of tuna, but the recipe works beautifully. The key is to keep the braising liquid at the gentlest of simmers, cooking the tuna just enough so that it remains pink on the inside. I cooked two 1.25 inch thick steaks for 8 minutes. The braising liquid is infused with the strong flavors of rosemary and radicchio, and the chickpeas lend the dish additional heartiness. This is an easy one pot meal, with the only necessary accompaniment being a baguette to soak up the delicious sauce.

Sunday Morning in the Studio: Pancakes

No matter how busy I may be, I always try to find time to cook a big breakfast on Sunday morning. A big pot of french press coffee at my side, the Sunday Times in my hands, and a spread of breakfast food on my plate; to me, there is no better way to mark the beginning of the end of the weekend. I usually prefer savory breakfast dishes, but every now and then I enjoy a stack of pancakes doused in warm maple syrup. For those days, I always turn to Mark Bittman's recipe for basic pancakes from How to Cook Everything. There are recipes that will produce a lighter, fluffier pancake (the book even includes one), but for my infrequent pancake cravings, the simplicity of this recipe hits the spot.

Basic Pancakes
Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsbp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 2 eggs
  
• 2 cups milk
• 2 tsbp. butter

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
   
2. In a small bowl, beat the eggs. Stir in the milk.
3. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Do not over mix, as this will result in a tough pancake; leaving a few clumps of flour in the mixture is fine.
4. Heat a large skillet or griddle over medium heat.
   
5. Add the butter to the skillet. Once the butter is melted and has stopped foaming, use a ladle to pour in the pancake mixture. The size of the pancakes is up to you, but smaller pancakes are easier to flip.
6. Cook the pancakes until golden, about 2 to 4 minutes. If necessary, increase or decrease the heat to produce a nice golden color.
7. Using a spatula, flip the pancakes, and cook until the other side is golden, approximately 2 more minutes. Serve stacked on a plate with warm maple syrup.

Veal Ricotta Polpottone

Veal ricotta meatballs from Molly Stevens' All About Braising, served with roasted fingerling potatoes:

Tom Colicchio's Braised Pork Belly

I thought that the best way to show my appreciation for Tom Colicchio after he kindly answered my questions was to cook one of his signature recipes. His recipe for braised fresh "bacon" in Think Like a Chef helped bring the pork belly craze into home kitchens. As simple as the dish is to prepare, it is certainly restaurant-quality. I served it with Chef Colicchio's lentils, celebrating the beginning of autumn in New York.


Braised Pork Belly
Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 2 lbs. pork belly, preferably with skin on
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 1 leek, white part only, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
• 3 cups chicken stock

Directions:

1. Heat of to 350F.
2. Pat dry the pork belly with a paper towel and season with salt and pepper.
3. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add pork, skin side down, and cook until well browned, about 15 minutes. Set pork aside.
4. Pour off all but 2 tbsp fat and add onion, carrots, celery, leek, and garlic. Stir to coat the vegetables with oil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are soft, about 20 minutes.
5. Add pork belly to the pan along with 2 cups of chicken stock. Bring to a simmer, then transfer the skillet to the oven. Cook, uncovered, for 1 hour.
6. Add the rest of the stock and cook until pork is tender, approximately 1 hour.
7. Remove the skillet from the oven and let the pork cool. Once cooled, remove the skin with your fingers and discard or eat it. Score the fat, then cut the pork into 4 pieces.
8. Increase the oven heat to 400F.
9. Strain the braising liquid, discarding the solids, and return the liquid to the skillet. Bring the liquid to a simmer and skim off any fat.
10. Return the pork, fat-side up, to the skillet. Transfer the skillet to the oven and cook until the fat is browned, about 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

Three Questions for Tom Colicchio

I recently had the opportunity to ask Tom Colicchio a few questions. Although his fame is attributed to being co-host of Bravo's Top Chef and co-owner of the Craft restaurant empire, his cookbook, Think Like a Chef, is something that every amateur cook should own. It is a personal favorite of mine, teaching how to break away from the confines of recipes and make the most of your ingredients. He provided some valuable tips for getting through the fall cooking season with your sanity in check and some delicious meals on your plate.

When you’re living in NYC, you have a very limited kitchen and very limited space. What cooking advice can you give us New Yorkers?

I have a small kitchen myself. Keep yourself organized. When you’re actually cooking a meal, you shouldn’t have to use a knife anymore. All the prep work should be done. You can buy small containers and put your prep in it, so when you start cooking, everything is right there for you. You can just add things to the pan when you need it. You shouldn’t be chopping and cooking at the same time—you make a mess. Especially if you have limited space, you need to keep really organized. I cook on Christmas Eve for 16 people and I make 8 or 9 dishes and I have a little stove. You can do it.

What are some great ingredients for fall dishes?

For fall, we take duck, root vegetables and apples and we combine those three things in different ways. You can make duck ham, duck confit, cold duck terrine with roasted vegetables, roasted duck, duck with apples, applesauce… And, you can do a soup with pureed vegetables with apple and duck confit. There are always different ways to combine food. If you tell someone to be creative with unlimited options, it’s sometimes hard to come up with something. If you say be creative with these three ingredients, you can do it in many different ways. Just learn how to cook—there are five basic cooking methods. And after that, it’s about just learning technique. If you can cook one green vegetable, you can cook them all. Don’t overcomplicate things.

What one piece of Thanksgiving advice would you give to someone cooking the meal?

Don’t overcook that turkey! People think it takes a lot longer than it takes. If you’re going to cook your turkey breast to the point where it’s nice and juicy, the legs will be undercooked. So what I do is take it out at that point and let it rest for a good half an hour before you carve it. Then, get the roasting pan, clean it out, keep it hot, take the legs off, put the legs back on the roasting pan and back in the oven. Cook the legs separately.

When carving the breast—I don’t know why people think carving the breast on the bird is a good thing—take the breast right off. Cut right down the breast bone and take the whole breast off and put it in on the cutting board and slice it. Every time I tell people that, they can’t believe it.

A Preview of Fatty 'Cue at Epicurious Entertains

On October 4, I attended Fatty Sunday, an event from "Epicurious Entertains" catered by Zak Pelaccio and the rest of his crew to taste dishes from the long-delayed and much-anticipated Fatty 'Cue. Set in a Union Square loft and offering attendees the opportunity to sample Chef Pelaccio's food while watching the day's football games, the 7-hour event brought out an interesting mix of foodies and jocks. With several flat screen TVs on each wall, an open bar, and a never-ending supply of smoked meats, no one could leave disappointed.

The event began with a gracious welcome from Epicurious Editor-in-Chief Tanya Wenman, who proclaimed that of all the week's "Epicurious Entertains" events, which included a multi-course event cooked by Daniel Boulud, Fatty Sunday's food was going to be the best. She then encouraged everyone to get in line to the kitchen, where Chef Pelaccio and his staff were serving the food buffet style.

Here is the menu of what we ate:

Smoked Brisket Bao with Sweet Cilantro Sauce
House Smoked Bacon and Clams with Dragon Pullman Bread
BBQ Lamb Shoulder with Goat Yogurt
Pork Spare Ribs with Palm Sugar Fish Sauce
Charred Turnips and Bitter Greens with Red Curry
Cucumber Salad
Nasi Ulam
Banh Mi

The lamb shoulder was the standout. Smoked for 14 hours by the Fatty 'Cue crew with a smoker on loan from Wildwood Barbeque (the Fatty 'Cue smokers are not yet ready), the meat was brimming with woodsy (applewood?) flavor. The goat yogurt, spicy and cool at the same time, was the perfect match for the intense smoke of the meat.

The spare ribs, smoked for a paltry four hours, were not far behind. Beautifully caramelized and cut into bite-size riblets, I could not resist helping myself to two platefuls. The fish sauce and palm sugar mixture that had been rubbed onto the succulent ribs was all the succulent meat needed.

The other foods were delicious in their own rite. What I love about Zak Pelaccio's cooking is that his riffs on Southeast Asian cuisine bring out the authentic flavors of the region without dumbing them down with sweet, gloppy sauces that seem to go hand in hand with the Asian-fusion moniker. The curry sauce on the turnips was properly spicy and the clams and bacon dish contained enough fish sauce to make P.F. Chang run back to the suburbs. The only disappointment of the night was the brisket bao, or steamed bun; the brisket was fatty and not very flavorful and the bun was much too dense.

For $50 a person, all of which went to the Taste of the NFL Charity for hunger, the full day event was a wonderful value. While I ate more smoked meat than I have eaten in the last year, I left excited for Fatty 'Cue to finally open. When would that be, I asked Chef Pelaccio. "By the end of the year?" He replied somewhat hopelessly. Oh well, I guess "Epicurious Entertains" has only added to the anticipation.
Pictures of the event

Chef Pelaccio with Epicurious Editor-in-Chief Tanya Wenman:
The beautiful smoked lamb shoulder:
Red curry turnips and bitter greens:
Clams with house-smoked bacon:


My first plate of food (don't judge):

Spare ribs with palm sugar fish sauce:


Chef Zak Pelaccio: