Cooking Grass-Fed Beef: Episode 3 – Rib Eye Steak "Steakhouse" Style

This video recipe for Rib Eye Steak "Steakhouse" Style is the third in the series of videos I'm doing that focus on cooking various cuts of grass-fed beef. As usual, this beef came from my friends at Normanton Farms.

The rib eye is most steak lovers' favorite cut. A fatty and flavorful steak that can be pan-seared, broiled, or grilled with equally delicious results. I called the video Steakhouse Steak because I'm showing two classic steakhouse techniques; a traditional dry-rub seasoning blend, and a flavored butter called a "beurre maitre d' hotel."

I'm doing a very simple garlic and parsley butter, but a "hotel butter," (aka compound butter) can be made with just about anything. They often contain shallots, vinegar, other herbs, and are often fortified with salt and pepper. I just left mine plain since I was serving it on a very well seasoned piece of rib eye.

Speaking of seasoning; I joked about this seasoning blend being a "secret," but this is a well-known steakhouse standard. The funny thing is, very few home cooks bother to use a rub like this and then wonder why the steaks at Ponderosa Pete's House of Beef taste so much better.

As usual I remind the viewers that grass fed beef is lower in fat, cooks faster, and can dry out if over-cooked. I only cooked mine for 3 minutes per side and was rewarded with a juicy, flavorful steak. Adjust as you see fit. Enjoy!



Seasoning Ingredients:
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp paprika

Hotel Butter Ingredients:
4 tbsp butter
1 tbsp fresh chopped Italian parsley
1/2 to 1 clove garlic, crushed fine
salt and pepper optional

Fresh Peach Tartlet - It's Like a Peach Tart Only Smaller

Here is the peach tartlet video recipe I promised the other day. It's a Julia Child recipe from one of the cookbooks she did with Jacques Pepin. I was going to do this delicious dessert for the Julie & Julia post, but decided to go with the more substantial roast chicken recipe.

This is about the easiest "looks hard" pastry technique I know. You can make the pie crust dough if you want (I've also posted my mother's key lime pie video below so you can see how easy pie crust is), or you can grab a package of the Pillsbury pie crust that is in just about every store these days.

I usually don't give brand names, but in this case I will since I've tried a couple brands and the Pillsbury is by far the best. It actually has lard in the ingredients, and as any pie maker will tell you, when it comes to delicious, flaky crust, lard kicks ass.

This recipe features the unusual and exotic Chinese 5-spice powder. Peaches are a natural with the aromatic blend of anise, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns, which usually make up this thousand-year-old spice.

By the way, by watching and mastering this technique, you just learned like 12 different tartlet recipes. This works equally well with apples, pears, plums, etc. Just adjust the caramelizing time based on the density of the fruit so it will be perfectly cooked in the 15 minutes it sits on the tartlet. Enjoy!



Ingredients for 8 tartlets:
2 tbsp butter
3 large peaches, halved, pitted, each half cut into 4 pieces (24 slices total)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp Chinese 5-spice
1 box (15-oz) ready-to-use piecrust (2 sheets)
1 egg, beaten plus 1 tsp water

How To Make Pie and Tart Crust:

A Tuesday Tease: Steakhouse Steak Secrets

Coming soon: Our next installment in cooking grass-fed beef series, featuring grilled rib eye steaks complete with "secret" steakhouse seasoning blend, and how to make a simple beurre maitre d' hotel. Stay tuned!

A Chicken for Julia

This video recipe for roasted chicken with watercress is dedicated to the late, great Julia Child. Today, Food Wishes is the Julie & Julia (a new film starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child) Blog of the Day, and I decided to feature my favorite Julia Child recipe to celebrate this great honor.

We're all familiar with the question, "If you could invite three famous people (dead or alive) to dinner, who would they be? For me, that's an easy one, it's Leonardo da Vinci, Joseph Campbell, and Julia Child.

Since this is a food blog, I won't expand on the first two choices, although if you're familiar with their work, they're pretty easy to understand. As far as choosing Julia Child goes, that's an absolute no-brainer.

My decision to become a chef was a direct result of my childhood fixation with watching her cook on The French Chef. I'm sure I saw every show she did, and would watch, and re-watch the reruns with undiminished delight.

She was as enigmatic as she was iconic. She was America's most famous French chef, and yet she was neither French, nor a chef. Her cookbooks contained some of the most complicated recipes ever published, yet she adored simple food.

At a time when the country was just becoming health conscience, Julia Child was publicly outraged McDonald's had decided to stop cooking their French fries in beef tallow.

She stubbornly refused to jump on the organics bandwagon, and was heard to ask on numerous occasions, "what's so great about a free-range chicken walking around in its own droppings?"

She certainly wouldn't have been considered what today we call Locavores. She was once asked what vegetable she'd want on the plate for her last meal. She said, "Asparagus…no matter what season it is."

So, while the guest list to my dream dinner party would be relatively easy, the much harder question is what would I serve? Da Vinci was history's greatest mooch, so he'd eat anything. Joseph "follow your bliss" Campbell never struck me as a picky eater, so I guess it would have come down to what to serve Julia.

I believe that if I'd ever had the opportunity to cook for her, I would have served this roasted chicken recipe. The fact it's from one of her cookbooks helps, but more than that, this was the kind of cooking she most loved. Rustic, simple, big flavors, rough around the edges -- a plate of food you don't have to think about to enjoy.

This recipe is from her cookbook, Cooking with Master Chefs, from the chapter with Jeremiah Tower. My wife Michele introduced this recipe to me, and we've been enjoying it, almost exactly as you'll see, for many, many years. I really hope you give it a try. Bon appetit!

Click here for more information about Julie & Julia.



Ingredients:
5 lb whole chicken
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
3 lemons, halved
4 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs rosemary
6 cloves garlic, crushed, unpeeled
1 onion, sliced
olive oil as needed
1/2 cup chicken stock or broth
2 tbsp walnut or hazelnut oil
2 bunch watercress

Top Photo (c) PBS.org

Things I've Made That I Wished I'd Filmed, Part 74: Five-Spice Peach Tartlet

UPDATE: I forgot this recipe is from an old Julia Child's cookbook! I'm going to film for my Julie & Julia post for Monday. Stay tuned!

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I did film the peach tartlet, but I decided not to use it for the Julie & Julia post for Monday. Instead I decided to film my favorite Julia Child recipe, a delicious roasted chicken with watercress. Stay tuned!

Food Wishes Picked as a Julie & Julia "Blog of the Day"

On Monday, Food Wishes will be honored as the "Blog of the Day," on the official Julie & Julia website! For those of you not familiar, Julie & Julia is a soon-to-be-released movie based on an autobiographical book by Julie Powell.

Entitled "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen," the book recounts Powell's quixotic mission to cook, and blog about, every recipe from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," in a period of 365 days -- all 524 recipes (and you think I cook a lot).

The movie stars Meryl Streep as Julia Child, with Amy Adams playing the intrepid Julie Powell. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the movie trailer below -- Meryl Streep's Julia Child is so scarily accurate, I think that some sort of supernatural possession may have occurred. I've also included a clip of Streep talking about her role.

I will be doing a special Julie & Julia blog post on Monday in celebration of this great honor, hopefully including a Julia Child-inspired video recipe. Stay tuned!

The Great Dry-Aging Steaks at Home Experiment: One Week Later

It's been one week since I put this strip loin into the special "drybag" and sucked the air out (I used a machine, in case you were wondering).

It looks great! The loin has shrunk ever so slightly, the meat is firm, there is no unpleasant odor, and the color looks just right. The membrane has adhered perfectly to the surface of the meat, and most importantly there is no wetness under plastic.

There's also no moisture on the surface, or under the rack, yet the loin is clearly undergoing a very slow dehydration. At this point, I can only conclude that the bag is performing as advertised. One week to go, so stay tuned!

Wolfgang Puck's Famous California Pizza Dough

One product of my recent online interview with Wolfgang Puck was being given his pizza dough recipe to publish on my American Food site on About.com. I don't think this recipe is any kind of secret, and I'm sure it's been published many times, but I had never personally tried it, so I decided to do this recipe video and check out this iconic dough for myself.

As I read the recipe, I noticed the times were very short for the rising and proofing. I was a little suspicious, but hey, he's Wolfgang Puck and I'm not. I believe the honey in the dough, which feeds the yeast (sugar is to yeast, as anonymity is to bravery online), as well as the very warm water both contributed to the yeasts very rapid growth.

In just 35 minutes the dough had doubled beautifully -- it was soft, supple, and very subtly scented with honey. As you'll see in the video, this is a very quick and easy pizza dough recipe, and I was very happy with the results. I think this Wolfgang Puck guy may have a future.

Even though I already have a couple pizza dough recipes that I love and use (both posted online), you never want to get to a point in your cooking where you think you've found the "best" recipe for something, and not try other variations. This is the fatal flaw of many cooks and chefs.

Thanks to Wolfgang Puck for his recipe, and I hope you all give this a try. Enjoy!



Ingredients:
1 package dry active yeast
1 teaspoon honey
1 cup warm water (105 degrees F)
3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
toppings of your choice

Brand New Food Show Ideas and a Casting Call

If you have an idea for a food-related reality show (aka "unscripted" television), BNE and I would love to hear it! I'm sure most of you watch a fair amount of Food Network, as well as other food-friendly networks, and have thought to yourself, "I wish they had a show about ______."

At the very least, this post should provide a few chuckles, but who knows -- maybe someone here will come up with the next big thing! By the way, any ideas you submit will be considered a gift, and will become my intellectual property -- to be used for good and/or evil as circumstances dictate.

Also, BNE is looking for a novice cook in the LA area to appear in a "sizzle reel." They need to be comfortable on camera, articulate and outgoing, and if they have a good reason for why they DON’T cook, well, even better. They will get a free cooking lesson from Chef John and best of all, their hard work in the kitchen will be rewarded with a super delicious and unforgettable meal. It will be a very fun afternoon!

If you are interested, please contact BNE at: info@brandnewentertainment.com. Serious candidates only. Thanks!

Photo (c) Flickr user bormang2

Cooking Grass-Fed Beef: Episode 2 – New York Strip Steak with Warm Caramelized Mushroom Salad

This video recipe for New York Strip Steak with Warm Caramelized Mushroom Salad is the second in a series of videos I'm doing that focus on cooking various cuts of grass-fed beef.

The New York Strip is a very popular, easy-to-prepare cut, and the most popular steak in America (with the higher-fat Rib Eye coming in a close second and gaining fast).

While I prefer to grill Rib Eye steaks, with the New York Strip, I think a simple pan searing is best. These grass-fed steaks come from Normanton Farms, and were about 8-oz each. This is sort of a standard size for this cut, unless you're talking about a steakhouse portion, which are usually 12 to 16-oz. Since it's a fairly thin piece of meat, it will cook pretty quickly when seared in a hot pan, but especially so if it's from grass-fed cattle.

To recap some grass-fed facts from Episode 1 – Top Round "London Broil," grass-fed beef is much lower in fat, so it cooks faster, and can dry out faster if over-cooked. As you'll hear me say in the video recipe, I only cooked mine for a couple minutes per side to a fairly rare temperature. This ensured a juicy, tender, and flavorful steak.

Speaking of flavorful, I LOVE this warm caramelized mushroom salad as a topping for steaks, especially these steaks. The earthy mushrooms really amplify the beefy flavors of the steak -- and the sherry vinaigrette and fresh tarragon are perfect conduits. I hope you grab yourself some grass-fed beef and give this recipe a try. Enjoy!



Ingredients:
For the mushroom salad:
8 large mushrooms, sliced
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
salt to taste
1 whole garlic clove, peeled and bruised
1 tbsp fresh chopped tarragon

For the rest
1 tbsp olive oil
2 (8-oz) New York strip steaks
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
1 tbsp butter to finish sauce

Chef John and Some "Brand New Entertainment"

I'd like to apologize to everyone who's ever sent me an email saying I should have my own show -- to which I responded, "are you high?" or "have another drink." Turns out you may have been on to something.

I'm happy to announce I've just signed a deal with Brand New Entertainment to develop a series of unscripted food-related television shows. We are still in the very earliest stages of production, and only a small percentage of these projects make it big, but hey, it's still exciting to finally have been discovered (especially for someone that started out using a photoshop'd picture of George Clooney as his avatar!).

Brand New Entertainment has a great track record in unscripted television (that's what they call reality shows down there). I've included their reel below so you can take a peek at some of the stuff they've done.

I can't give any detailed information about the shows we are working on, but believe me, you will be the first to hear when we have something to announce. I want to thank you all for your support, which no doubt helped make this possible. Stay tuned!

BNE Reel from Brand New Entertainment on Vimeo.

Dry-Aging Steaks at Home – This is Only a Test

One reason the steaks at premier steakhouses are so amazingly good is dry-aging. Of course, most high-end steakhouses also use Prime beef, which is more marbled with fat, hence juicier than the Choice grade you get at the supermarket, but beyond the quality of the meat, it's the aging that really makes a memorable steak.

This is also why they are so crazy expensive. The strip loins are carefully aged for weeks in a perfectly controlled environment, and as they sit they slowly dehydrate, which intensifies the meaty flavor, and also give the steaks an even more luxurious texture. Natural enzymes have time to break down the fibrous, connective tissue in the muscle, which tenderizes the steak like no other method.

A thick dry-aged steak is the ultimate red-meat eater experience. Unfortunately, there was really no great way to do this at home…until now (I think). I heard about a website, drybagsteak.com who was selling a kit to effectively dry-age steaks at home. They sell a vacuum heat sealer along with specially designed bags which they claim allows moisture to permeate out of the bag, but at the same time blocks oxygen from entering the bag.

I asked them if I supplied the strip loin would they send me the bags and equipment to test this new product on the blog? They agreed, and so the video demo you see here is Part 1 of the process. This video shows how to prepare the beef in the bags using the vacuum sealer, and in 14 days we will unwrap the meat, cut some steaks, and test the results in Part 2. Stay tuned. Enjoy!




Aging Steaks Photo (c) JOE M500

French Fries – So Nice Because You Cook Them Twice

This how to make crisp restaurant-style French fries video recipe is probably more of any FYI – "oh, that's how they do it" demo, than an inspiration to actually try them.

I don't think most people realize that any decent French fry needs to be twice fried. The first frying in done at a lower temperature, which softens the potato and prepares the starchy surface for the second frying's crispification.

When done correctly, you get an amazing textual combination of light fluffy interior and thin crisp exterior. When you fry raw potatoes, even if the oil and temperature are perfect, there is really no way it will get and stay crisp just cooking it through in one shot.

I've been to so many restaurants that either don't know or don't care about this important fact. Why would they serve a limp fry when they could be making beautifully crisp fries? It remains one of the great foodservice mysteries.

Some people actually refer to these as "Belgium fries," since many food historians claim the technique was first developed there. If you research the history of French fries you will read many passionate arguments on the France vs. Belgium debate regarding this sinfully delicious side dishes' true origins.

I find these arguments amusing, not because there aren't legitimate cases for both sides, but because give or take a few bad movies and a couple museums, France and Belgium are like the same country. Enjoy!



Ingredients:
Russet or Kennebec Potatoes
vegetable oil or shortening for frying
salt

Wednesdays with Wolfgang

Many of you responded to my request a few months ago for questions to ask chef Wolfgang Puck, who I was assigned to do an interview with for About.com. I got so much great feedback, and used many of the questions in this interview. Thanks!

If you are interested, here is the link to the entire interview on my American Food site. In addition to agreeing to an interview, he will also be sharing some of his signature recipes. The first being his world famous pizza dough!

Yes, I feel a video recipe coming on. Enjoy!

Photo (c) 2009 Wolfgang Puck

Easy Chicken Roulade – So Faux Fancy

This chicken roulade video recipe is a great example of something that looks very complicated on the plate, but is actually quite simple to make. The other great thing about this recipe is we can all use a new technique for working with the ubiquitous and often sleep-inducing boneless chicken breast.

I hope this video serves its intended purposes as an idea generator and technique tutorial; not a specific recipe to be recreated exactly. These types of dishes, once the basic method is mastered, are tons of fun to experiment with. Which one of the millions of possible chicken roulade stuffing/sauce combinations will you come up with?

I decided to do an Italian inspired version, but no matter how you "roll," when this beauty comes to the table your guests will undoubtedly be impressed. The only thing people like more than food, is creatively manipulated food.

This chicken roulade video was produced for About.com, and can’t be embedded in the blog, but when you click on the video you'll be taken to the recipe page where you can watch the clip, and get the ingredients. Please return to comment, question, and discuss. Enjoy!




















Happy Bastille Day!
Celebrate in true French style
by following me on Twitter!

Buttermilk Fried Chicken – Southern, Fried, but Not Southern Fried

Not being from the south, I had no idea that this recipe I've been calling southern fried chicken for a long time, was not really southern fried chicken.

It was southern, and it was fried, but the addition of the buttermilk marinade apparently disqualified it from being a true southern fried chicken recipe.

According to my sources deep within the southern fried chicken subculture, real southern fried chicken consists of chicken parts, dredged in seasoned flour, and fried in hot oil until crisp and cooked.

That's it. If any additional steps or ingredients are added, and you still call it southern fried chicken, someone may drop a, "Well, bless your heart" on you. Sounds nice, right? It's not, ask a southerner.

I'll have to try that pure version one day, but I love the tangy tenderization that the buttermilk and associated bacteria provide, so I don't see any reason to change my approach.

Yes, this is a messy project, but there are perks to having a Dutch oven full of oil around for a few days. You already saw the Paczki we made, and you will see a French fry demo soon, so stay tuned.

I decided to show a couple minutes of me cutting up the whole chicken into the classic eight-piece meal. I did speed it up to make it somewhat bearable, so if you need to, go back and watch it a few times to see the nuances of the dissection. Enjoy!

UPDATE! It seems I wasn't clear in the video regarding the temperature. The oil is 350 degrees F. to start, but when the chicken goes in it will drop to about 300. It should rise back to 305-310 and be held at that until done, about 20 minutes. I've added a notation in the video, so hopefully that will help!




Ingredients:
3 1/2 pound chicken, cut in 8 pieces
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 tsp ground dried herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary, sage)
2 cups buttermilk

for the seasoned flour:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder

2 1/2 quarts peanut oil for frying

Happy Friday! Does This Blog Make Me Look Old?

I just finished editing some great video I shot while making a killer batch of southern fried chicken. I hope to have it up on the blog sometime Monday, so stay tuned.

It's my birthday tomorrow, so I may take the next few days off to rest and celebrate, but mostly rest. I just can't believe I'm going to be 46 – I'm still so immature!

Please don't worry about trying to figure out how to send me a gift. I really don’t want anything except your continued support for what I'm trying to do on this blog. The fact that so many of you get enjoyment from these videos is the greatest gift of all.

Of course, if you insist, a donation to the site would be nice. Enjoy!

How to Make Paczki! Mmmm... Not Doughnuts

So, that didn't take long! Here's the Paczki (pronounced POHNCH-KEE) video recipe I just produced for About.com's Eastern European Foods site. It's quite an easy recipe, and it's traditionally made on what we call "Fat Tuesday," the day before Ash Wednesday.

This surprisingly light, fried Polish pastry is most similar to our American jelly doughnuts – but, please, do not use the term "doughnut" around any Polish people. They go totally "świrują" (Polish for crazy)! They're right, doughnuts have holes, and these are indeed hole-less.

I had never made this exact recipe before, and was surprised how much less sweet it was than one would imagine. The dough is very similar to a soft roll, with just a hint of sweetness.

While the actual Paczki dough itself wasn't very sweet, the final package – warm soft dough, sweet fruit filling, and powdered sugar dusting – was just right. If you don’t drink coffee, you should really think about starting, just so you can drink it with these. It's a perfect pairing.

By the way, you know the drill; since I can’t embed the actual video player in the blog, when you click on the video you'll be taken to a recipe page on About where you can watch the clip. Just don't forget to comeback here for comments, questions, and general fried pastry discussion.

Special thanks to Barbara Rolek for the recipe! If any of you want to explore some more Polish recipes, or any other Eastern European cuisine, check out her great site. Enjoy!

Braised Grass-fed Beef Meat Sauce – Because I'm Down on the Ground

If you saw the video recipe for the London Broil I did using the Normanton Farm's grass-fed beef, you saw me save some of the top round, which had a little more connective tissue in it, to make a meat sauce recipe. This is that.

Most meat sauce recipes call for ground beef, and as most butchers will tell you (off the record), it isn't exactly the premium cuts that go into making ground beef. In fact, usually included somewhere in their answer is the statement, "you really don’t want to know."

This super-easy video recipe for a braised beef pasta sauce is similar to regular ground meat sauces, but instead uses freshly cubed beef as the base. The advantages are obvious and quite delicious.

Using this method, you get to choose the cut you like; I used top round, but rump roast, or chuck steak would be just as good. You can also control the fat content, trimming as you and your summer Speedo see fit. Enjoy!



Ingredients:
1 pound top round steak (may substitute rump roast, or chuck steak)
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
red pepper flakes to taste
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch green onions, white and light green parts only, chopped
1/2 cup beef broth or water
1/2 cup milk
1 (28-oz) jar prepared pasta sauce
1 (14.5-oz) package penne pasta, cooked
grated Parmesan cheese as needed

A Tuesday Tease: Paczki (Please do not call them Polish doughnuts!)

I just completed a rather fun assignment for About.com's Eastern European Guide, Barbara Rolek, on the Polish fried pastry "paczki." It should be airing very soon, so stay tuned. By the way, the chicken roulade video recipe I teased like 6 months ago will also be debuting soon – so a certain person can save their email!

Deviled Shrimp Ragu Over Creamy Corn Custard – Hell Yeah!

As promised, here is part 2 to the heavenly corn custard video recipe I just posted. This sexy seafood concoction is a slightly more refined take on the southern classic, shrimp and grits.

Grits has yet to find its way into my repertoire. I've made it maybe twice in 30 years of cooking.

I don’t even remember if I like it, but I like polenta, and every time I see someone on TV making, or eating shrimp and grits, I think to myself, "that looks great, I really should make that."

Whatever the inspiration, this subtly sweet, fairly fiery shrimp ragu poured over the light, creamy custard was a magnificent combination.

The firm spicy shrimp and the soft, sweet corn not only complimented each other, they pushed each other to places neither could have reached alone.

This would make a fantastic first course for any summer dinner, and it's certainly rich enough to be enjoyed as a entrée. You can also pour this over rice or noodles with complete confidence. Enjoy!




Ingredients:
1/2 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined, shells reserved
1 cups water
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 tsp chipotle pepper
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 clove garlic, minced very fine
salt to taste
cayenne to taste, optional
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp minced chives
1 tbsp cold unsalted butter

Sneak Preview: Heaven and Hell

Airing Monday, this unbelievably perfect combination of fiery deviled shrimp ragu on creamy corn custard.

Celebrate the 4th of July by Having Your Flag and Eating it Too!

As the wise man once said, a video food blogger has to know his limitations. I had planned on doing a flag cake demo for the 4th of July, but since I've never made one before, I decided to do some pre-shoot research.

I figured I would watch a few clips to see how others have approached the subject. Once convinced I could do a better, funnier job, I would head into the kitchen and roll camera.

Well, after seeing this concise, clear, and easy to follow flag cake video from my friends at Howcast, I decided to just post this instead. Being a true patriot means putting your country ahead of your own selfish interests… and I'm kind of busy.

Anyway, have a happy and healthy 4th of July weekend, and (since I can’t say it at the end of the video) as always, enjoy!




Photo (c) Flickr user BL1961

Creamy Corn Custard – This is How They Serve Corn in Heaven

If you checked out my top ten list of Aspen Food & Wine highlights, you read about Christopher Kostow's impressive roasted corn custard with truffles and popcorn. Ever since that Patron-soaked evening I've been craving the sweet, silky goodness of this extremely easy recipe.

Corn custard is a wonderful side dish for all kinds of meats. Since it is so soft and light, texturally, it makes a great foil for things like barbecue pork, grilled steaks, and fried fish.

One major difference between my corn custard and Christopher Kostow's (pictured here), or any other "real" chef for that matter, I don't spend 20 minutes straining it. If you really want the ultimate creamy corn custard experience, you need put the mixture through a fine mesh sieve several times to remove all the fibrous corn kernel skins (is there a word for that?).

Since Thomas Keller wasn't coming over for dinner, I used the puree as is, and it was fantastic. If you do strain out the corn solids, you get something closer to a flan, but since you will lose a good deal of volume, you won't need as much egg to bind.

I guess I'll just have to make that version sometime, so I can give you’re the exact measurements. In the meantime, give this method a try. By the way, this is just part one. I love to use this corn custard, along with some spicy shrimp, to make a beautiful, and very summery first course. So stay tuned, and enjoy!



Ingredients for six (6-oz ramekins):
2 cups corn
1 1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup milk
1 1/4 tsp salt
pinch of cayenne
3 egg yolks
2 eggs
butter