6 Romantic Dishes to Make for Your Valentine

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with prosciutto wrapped cherry stuffed chicken breast that's right it's almost valentine's day and you're going to need something that looks great tastes great and ideally contains some aphrodisiacs and this one covers all of that so here we go all right first up here we're gonna do our stuffing which is simply some bread crumbs some fresh oregano some fresh thyme dried cherries chopped up some fresh garlic definitely some cayenne a little black pepper some salt an egg yolk some freshly grated parmesan cheese and a little bit of olive oil and of course you're going to get all those ingredients and amounts on food wishes.com i'm going to take a fork and i'm going to give that a good mix all right so this stuffing isn't really wet it isn't really dry it's just kind of in between all right after it's all mixed together you should definitely be able to sort of squeeze it with your fingers and basically have it hold together like that so that's looking good we're gonna set that aside and start on our chicken prep so we're gonna need two large boneless skinless chicken breasts now we're gonna pound these but before we do i want you to cut a little bit of a flap and i hear you chef john i've never cut a flap before how do i do it so what we're gonna do is we're gonna have the large side of the breast to our left so i'm going to slice towards the thick side of the breast you're going to put your knife about halfway and make like a 45 degree angle cut but not all the way through just like an inch or so all right i don't want to go all the way through i just want to open it up a little bit just like that all right so don't be too nervous try not to go all the way through and you're going to be fine and that's really going to help for the next step which is pounding this all right so that's looking good i'm going to go ahead and put that between two pieces of plastic i'm going to take my meat pounder and or a flat frying pan and just pound that breast not too thin maybe half inch all right so go kind of gently you don't want to smash it when that's pounded i'm going to go ahead and season with salt and pepper be a little careful with this all because we're going to wrap this in prosciutto which is a little salty but a little sprinkling is fine i'm going to put half my stuffing mixture down and pat it in firmly and then i'm going to use the plastic to help me roll this up you want it pretty tight so just kind of keep rolling it and when you get to the end there a cool little trick is just kind of twist the two ends of the plastic in opposite directions and give it a little spin and it kind of will keep everything nice and together pretty cool alrighty next step on a piece of plastic wrap i'm going to lay down two thin slices of prosciutto i want you to lay it out so it's the exact same length as the chicken so we're going to place down our piece of chicken on the end and we're going to do the same trick with the plastic all right we're going to roll this up so the prosciutto covers the chicken breast entirely all right you want to roll it firmly but you don't want to smash all the stuffing out and when we get to the end like we did on the last step you're just going to twist that and it's going to be looking amazing all right next up we're going to lay four pieces of string on the cutting board about an inch apart you're going to lay your stuffed chicken on top and we're simply going to make four ties now you don't want to just do a simple knot you want to twist that string through two or three times because that friction will hold it in place all right so let's watch this so you're gonna cross it over and then you're gonna cross it over two or three more times and then when you cinch it down it will stay in place and it will let you tie the final knot by the way guys don't make any jokes to your valentine about how much you enjoyed tying up the chicken breast it's not funny it's actually kind of creepy for the ladies opposite advice all right so once our two chicken breasts are stuffed rolled wrapped tied they can be wrapped with plastic and refrigerated until you're ready to cook all right so you can make those earlier in the day that will give you time to clean your apartment and burn some candles when we are ready to finish the dish i'm going to lay these in a lightly oiled pan i'm going to put those in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until they reach an internal temperature of 155. all right at that point you're going to remove them from the oven remove them from the pan put those on a plate loosely wrapped with foil just to rest now if you want optional step you can do a little quick pan sauce i'm gonna blot out some of the oil i'm gonna add just a little chicken stock a little bit of balsamic vinegar and i'm just going to bring that to a boil to deglaze the pan we've done dozens of these sauces all right so i'm just going to gloss over this but we put this on high heat when it reduces by half we turn off the heat and stir in a piece of butter by the way this is a really flavorful chicken dish so the sauce really is optional but it's nice to have a little bit of moisture to spoon over the top and you don't need a lot just a spoon or two of course you're gonna taste it and adjust the seasoning maybe a little salt and pepper maybe not depends but that's it all right i'm gonna set that aside and i'm gonna go ahead and slice our chicken of course we're gonna remove the strings and then we're gonna look at how gorgeous this is look at that come on you make that for valentine's day you are so good oh i already did that joke anyway you make that for valentine's day and you're gonna make someone very very happy and of course if they're happy they're gonna want you to be happy it's a classic win-win all right we're gonna throw that on a warm plate a spoon or two of our deglazed pan sauce and that's it prosciutto wrap cherry stuffed chicken breast by the way look how perfect my rice pilaf is it almost looks like one of those box mixes anyway like we said the introduction looks great tastes great and cherries are an aphrodisiac cherries have that really subtle earthy sweetness to just a perfect perfect foil for that slightly salty porky prosciutto wrapping so a really nice dish your valentine's gonna be very impressed it looks like it took a ton of work and it really did not so i hope you give that a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more information as usual and as always enjoy lobster mac and cheese that's right i've never been a big fan of the expression if it's not broken don't fix it because changing things that don't need changing is how chefs spend a lot of their time so with that in mind what we were attempting to do here is take our classic totally not broken mac and cheese recipe and fix it up with lobster and turn it into something a little more fitting for a special occasion like for example valentine's day so let's go ahead and get started and first up of course you're gonna need some lobster and i'm gonna use two tails those are about five ounces each and by the way for the record to make real lobster mac and cheese you really need to use a whole live lobster and while i am a fan of keeping things real i'm also a bigger fan of keeping things easy so these tails are going to be a lot more user-friendly yet still very delicious and effective and what we'll do is we'll split those in half with a sharp knife and then just like if we're working with shrimp there may be a vein well actually it's not really a vein it's a digestive tract but if you see anything like that you want to pull that out so our tails have been split we pulled out any veins or other icky looking stuff and at this point we can head over to the stove where we're going to partially cook these in a very hot pan so i have a skillet set on high heat with a little bit of vegetable oil and we're going to sear those for about two minutes per side and we're not trying to cook these through we just want to get a little bit of color on that lobster meat that's going to sweeten it up intensify the flavor a little bit so we'll give them a couple minutes we'll flip them over and we'll give that shell side a few minutes and like i just said we don't want these to cook all the way okay we actually want that lobster to finish cooking in the mac and cheese for extra flavor and moisture all right if i have to give you a percentage we want these cooked about 40 or 50 percent of the way through so it's just gonna be a couple minutes per side at which point we're gonna turn off the heat please turn off your heat and we will remove those partially cooked lobster tails to a plate to rest and then into the pan we're gonna toss a couple tablespoons of butter which of course is gonna melt in that hot pan and as soon as it does we'll turn our heat back to medium and we'll stir in some flour to make a roux so stir in that flour and we'll just cook that on medium for a minute or two to take the raw edge off you know the drill this is like our 300 through on the channel and of course as we're doing that that roo's kind of deglazing the bottom of the pan it's releasing all those lovely caramelized lobster bits and then once our roux's cooked we're going to pour in about a cup and a half of cold milk stop me if you've heard this one before but cold milk hot roux no lumps so we'll stir that in until it's incorporated and we'll continue cooking on medium heat until we see it start to simmer and like all rube sauces that's not really going to thicken up until that happens and as soon as that starts to thicken and you see it starting to simmer we will turn our heat down to low and add some more stuff first of which would be a nice shake of cayenne and then we're also going to add a little bit of paprika something nice preferably from spain sorry hungary and we'll stir that in and in addition to a little bit of flavor it's going to give this dish a little more of a lobstery color okay and then i think we do want a little touch of nutmeg which as you know i like to freshly grate it's just better and what we'll do is we'll stir that in and we'll just let that sit there on the lowest heat setting stirring occasionally for about three or four minutes all right so the base of our cheese sauce is pretty much done and while we're waiting our lobster tail should be cool by now and ready to pull apart and all we need to do here is stick your thumb in between the meat and the shell and just separate that meat but we're not going to discard the shells oh no we got plans for those what we'll do is we'll add those to the water in which we're going to cook our pasta which believe it or not is going to add a little bit of flavor so we'll add those to our pot of water along with of course a generous amount of salt and of course we're going to bring that water to a boil because it's almost time to cook the macaroni so our lobster meat set our pasta water sets and at this point we can go ahead and finish our cheese sauce which as you remember has just been sitting here on low heat and what we'll do is we'll add a nice pinch of salt of course that's going to be to taste and a whole bunch of shredded cheese personally i'm going to use four parts cheddar to one parcrear and we'll go ahead and we'll mix that in and as soon as that cheese looks like it's just about melted which for me was right about here you can still see a few shreds here and there but that's close enough at this point we want to turn off the heat okay you never want a cheese sauce to simmer so we're going to turn off the heat and then one last touch here that i forgot to put in earlier a few drops of worcestershire sauce three to be exact because two is not enough and four is too much so exactly three drops of worcestershire and we'll stir that in and basically this is done all we need of course is some cooked macaroni so we'll toss that into our salted boiling lobster shell water and cook it according to directions and i know some people like to undercook it but i don't i like to cook it to just about the same point of doneness as how i'd eat it so a hair under done's okay but you don't want it too underdone otherwise it's gonna suck up all your liquids and then once we think our macaroni is almost done we should pull out those lobster shells because i'm going to use a strainer to transfer that pasta into the pan i don't want those shells in the way so we'll go ahead and pull those out but don't throw those away we're going to use those to garnish later and then as soon as our macaroni is cooked we will go ahead and transfer that into our cheese sauce and it's totally fine if a little bit of that water comes with it that's a good thing so we will transfer that in and we will mix it around and at this point you could be thinking that's a lot of sauce do we really need that much yes you do if it's not really saucy at this point your final product is going to be way way too dry and then for one last touch i decided to toss in a few fresh thyme leaves just a little bit you do not want to overpower this with a lot of herb so just a little hint and of course it goes without saying you're going to need to taste this for salt so make sure you're tasting and adjusting and once that's all stirred together we are ready for final assembly so at this point we're going to divide our mixture between two buttered gratin dishes as you can now see this makes two large portions so we will divide that between our butter dishes at which point we will top it with our chopped lobster so take that reserved lobster meat and just cut it into some chunks not too small you definitely want to know you're biting into lobster and what we'll do is we'll scatter that over the top to make sure we have the same amount in each and by same amount i mean your valentine gets a little more than you that is just good crustacean related karma and once we've scattered over our lobster meat i want you to take a fork and kind of poke it down in so we kind of want to poke it down in and insulate it a little bit and once that's set we're going to go ahead and top this with buttered parmesan bread crumbs and for that all we need is a little bit of melted butter some panko bread crumbs or any bread crumbs for that matter and we'll give that a mix and then all we need to do is mix in a little bit of grated parmesan so a very simple mixture but incredibly effective and once that's mixed we will generously apply that over the top not a super thick layer but we do want total coverage and then just like the lobster i like to take a fork and give that a little poking down all right we want that crispy topping to become one with the mac and cheese so i do like to give it a little forking like this before it goes in the oven and at this point we can transfer that into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 15 or 20 minutes or until it looks like this it should be beautifully browned and at that point you're pretty much ready to serve although it's really not a bad idea to let this sit for about five minutes it really is way too hot to eat right now and the last thing we needed a romantic valentine's dinner is somebody burning their tongue so i would let it rest for a few minutes before plating up and while we're waiting remember those lobster shells i told you to save let's go ahead and use those to garnish our dish check it out that looks pretty good at this point i'm ready to serve so i placed my gerton dish on another plate i also did a little bit of fresh chive because i got to take a few pictures and while i have no way of knowing your valentine i'm pretty sure they're going to think this looks amazing smells amazing and most importantly tastes amazing which we will check right now so i'm going to dig into this thing and it really was fantastic i mean lobster aside this is just a really really good mac and cheese recipe but when you add in those chunks of sweet lobster meats this goes up to a whole other level in fact this is so good you better make sure you have a few things around for breakfast too okay so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] classic cheese fondue that's right i'm going to show you how to make fondue like a swiss guru oh yeah it's true so without further ado let's fondue and if by some miracle you're still watching the first thing we need to discuss is the cheese and for this we're gonna have to grate up one pound of the finest swiss cheese you can find and this time i went with a mix of half gruyere and as you know we've used that in many food wishes recipes over the years including but not limited to cartons and then the other half of my cheese was emmentaler and while i'm going with these two classic choices pretty much any melting cheese will work and really the only one you shouldn't use ironically would be something sold by the name swiss cheese since that is not actually a kind of cheese all right cheeses have names like emmentaler and gruyere and then besides the cheese we're also going to want something to serve our fondue out of which ideally would be some kind of superfly mid-century fondue set complete with matching forks and by the way never buy these new all right roughly 20 percent of the inventory of any random second hand store or thrift store is made up of fondue sets so go find something cool and while you can use electric versions i much prefer the ones that use the little sterno cans underneath so that way we can put it anywhere we want and we don't have guests tripping over cords and then just as importantly we're going to need to have an arrangement of our favorite cheese friendly foods which must of course include some crusty bread but everything else would be up to you and here i went with apples grapes fennel potatoes broccoli cauliflower red peppers and some kabasa and yes towards the end of the video i'll give you some ideas of what to do if you don't have a fondue set or you can still enjoy this and then as far as the recipe itself goes it could not be any simpler and we'll begin by adding some dry white wine to a saucepan okay just over a cup and in case you're keeping score at home i'm using a lovely sauvignon blanc and by lovely i mean cheap and then to that we will add one optional but very very traditional ingredient a tablespoon of cherry brandy which is not to be confused with sweet cherry liqueur right we need to use something like kirschwaaser which is basically cherry moonshine and while the final product will not taste like cherries it will definitely be more flavorful if you use it and then traditionally this pot would be rubbed with a garlic clove before we add the wine but personally i just prefer throwing in a crushed clove and it's been my experience you get the same exact effect but anyway suit yourself speaking of which i'm going to go ahead and add a shake of cayenne plus a small but very important touch of freshly grated num egg all right except no substitutes and then we'll finish up with the ingredient that makes this method i'm using full proof and that would be a little bit of cornstarch which we will add in and then whisk thoroughly to combine and that's it once that's mixed we can head to the stove and place this over medium heat and then what we'll do while whisking is wait for this to come up to the appropriate temperature before we add in our cheese and while you should probably pretty much whisk constantly you can take a few short breaks and i don't think anything tragic will happen and what we're looking for here is that our mixture is going to start to thicken up slightly and it's going to get very hot but not quite to the point where it's simmering although you will see steam rising up from the surface and then what we'll do once our wine mixture is nice and hot like this is go ahead and stir in our cheese pretty much all at once okay so many recipes out there say to add this a little bit at a time but those recipes would be wrong i want you to add this one handful at a time just stirring for a few seconds between additions until it's all been transferred in which i was going to film myself doing all of but due to a little something we call in the business human error i did not get a shot of that last handful going in but the good news is it looked exactly like those first handfuls but anyway the point is add all the cheese at once one handful at a time and then all we're going to do here is continue to stir and cook this over medium heat until it's perfect and it's right about here you'll probably be thinking maybe i shouldn't have listened to chef john and added that cheese so fast since it does look a little bit separated and clumpy but fear not just keep whisking and before you know it you'll be looking at the smoothest most gorgeous fondue west of zurich and also east of zurich so that is looking pretty much perfect which means we can pull it off the heat and transfer it into our fondue pot and if you don't have one of these you can always keep your sauce on the lowest heat setting on your stove or you could take one or two of those little tea light candles and place them between a couple bricks and then just set your pan on top of that or i've even seen people use heating pad set on high but anyway the point is you're going to need to keep this warm while you eat it otherwise it's going to solidify fairly quickly and that's it we're now ready to stab dip stir twirl in bite in that order and the reason we want to stir this as we dip is of course the cheese at the bottom of the pot is going to be hotter than the top so by stirring as we eat we'll keep that heat nicely evened out and that my friends if you're a cheese lover is one of the ultimate bites right the combination of that acidic wine with those rich buttery cheeses is just a wonder to behold and if you're wondering are vegetarian guests going to be upset that people are stirring this with a piece of sausage well i hope not although we could go with a plant-based sausage or a carnivore-based guest list and yes i do like to mix a little bit of fruit in not just because it's amazing with cheese but it also kind of cleanses and refreshes the palette between the other bites and of course you can just copy me but half the fun of this is customizing your platter to your taste and personally i like a nice thick fondue but if for whatever reason you want yours a little thinner that just means using a little less cheese so feel free to adjust that if you want all right that is just you fonduing but as i dip and twirl this piece of broccoli i have to ask the question why would you want anything thinner than this i mean come on look at that that is perfect coverage but anyway that's up to you i mean you are after all the mr magu of your cheese fondue and speaking of bad eyesight i had to stop and put my reading glasses on because i thought i saw some cornstarch lumps but good news turns out it was just pieces of garlic and above and beyond the amazing taste and textures there is just something extra special and super fun about eating things off the end of a freakishly long fork in fact if i ever open up a restaurant i think i'm going to set the tables with forks like this for everything and maybe i'll call it johnny long forks but anyway that's it how i do fondue i think that this is by far the easiest simplest most foolproof method there is whether you've never tried this before but always wanted to or you have tried it but weren't happy with the results either way i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy oyster rockefeller that's right this is my original version of the original version from antoine's in new orleans and how did i get such a secret recipe i know a guy but anyway we're going to try to stay as true to the original as possible there's no bacon there's no cheese it's just fresh oysters and the world's best compound butter and this is how you put it together so the first major misconception with oyster rockefeller is that there's spinach involved there's not this is the main green and the butter watercress it's generally sold like this at the store these days with the roots still on so we're going to cut that right where the leaves start don't worry about picking out those little stems they taste exactly the same as the leaves and watercress has this great herbaceous peppery characteristic which is just so perfect in this so i'm going to chop up about a cup and all this is going to get blended with butter but i do like to give everything a chop first it will just mix a lot better all right in addition to the watercress we're going to need some other greenness first of which would be freshly chopped tarragon all right some minced green onions some italian parsley and some celery all right and then maybe the most important ingredient perno which is kind of an anise flavored liqueur you can see here product of france looks like the vintage of this one would be 1805 which i believe was an excellent year for pereno okay so once all our ingredients are prepped we're gonna go ahead and throw some butter into a food processor i'm using this little cheap one i got for opening a free checking account i'm gonna dump in my watercress i'm gonna add just a little bit of crumb that's gonna give it some body we're gonna dump in our chopped herbs celery and onions and then two nice big spoons of the perino just a gorgeous flavor so unique and interesting and if you can't get paranoid just use a little absinthe all right very similar flavor i'm going to hit it with a little bit of black pepper a little bit of cayenne and a nice big pinch of salt and then we're going to blend that completely smooth so this took me a few minutes i scraped it down a few times pulsed it on and off but bottom line you want to keep blending it till it looks like that and that rockefeller butter is done and of course this dish gets its name because of this rich sauce which happens to be of course the color of money and by the way that stuff is good on so many more things in oysters so i always make extra all right so that's done we're going to set that aside and now we need some oysters on the half shell so i'm just going to show you how to open up one of these all right you're going to need an oyster knife of course and oysters have two sides kind of a rough rounded side and a flatter side you want to put the flat side up round side down all right definitely grab a towel to help you hold it oyster shells can be very sharp you're going to take the tip of your oyster knife you're going to put it right into that little indentation right at the back of the oyster right where it comes to a point you're gonna apply firm but steady pressure while you're giving it a little wiggle and eventually we'll pop through and release that top shell i'm gonna flip the knife over and i'm gonna run it along the top of the shell so it releases the oyster which is just gonna be hanging on there by a little bit of meat so scrape the oyster off the top and once the top shell is removed it's also going to be attached to the bottom with this little muscle right there on the side you can feel it just kind of scrape that down and once you cut through that what we like to do is flip the oyster over because the other side's a little more presentable of course if you see any little pieces of shell you're going to want to remove them that wasn't that was just a little piece of oyster so i left that alone and that's ready all right next up because these are going to be cooked in a very hot oven we need a heat proof dish i'm going to fill it up with some coarse salt or rock salt that's going to hold the oysters in place all right it's also going to keep everything nice and warm so i'm going to nestle my oysters down into the salt i think if you're doing an appetizer 6 would be a perfect portion all right and once those are in place we're going to go ahead and top with our herb and butter mixture and be generous think rich and decadent this is called oyster rockefeller not oyster gandhi all right so you want a good teaspoon teaspoon and a half on each and once those are topped you're gonna put those in a 500 degree oven for about six or seven minutes until they look like this now i don't like mine cooked too far i just want that oyster barely set all right if you want it chewy and rubbery cook it longer but it should just barely spring back when touched and if you want you could put these under a hot broiler for a minute just to glaze the top a little more i actually cheat and do with a blowtorch which is again why i'm careful not to overcook these all right and once those are glazed i'm going to serve that with a little bit of lemon a seafood fork by the way that is not a freakishly small seafood fork they're supposed to be that size and that is one of the great bites in american culinary history i mean look at that that unique combination of the aromatic herbs and the anisette flavor and aroma from the tarragon and the pereno it's just incredible and as good as the oyster is you take a piece of french bread and you swab up all that incredible butter sauce it really is magical and as i mentioned earlier i always make extra this butter because it's so good spread on top of any kind of seafood so go find yourself some pereno the rest of the ingredients are easy to find and make what i and many other foodies consider one of america's greatest indigenous recipes alright so i hope you give that a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] the manhattan filet that's right i'm going to show you a little home butchering technique to turn a strip steak into what looks and eats like a filet mignon except unlike a filet mignon it's not going to be as lean and it's actually going to have more flavor but wait that's not all the trimmings from this procedure are going to be used to make one of the greatest pan sauces you've ever had which will be a separate video recipe following this one so here we go i have one very large gorgeously trimmed new york sirloin strip steak and of course it's perfectly fine to eat like this and once it's cooked and you're cutting pieces you can always trim off any fat or sinew or silver skin or whatever but to create a manhattan fillet we're going to go ahead and trim away everything except that center eye of meat so we're going to take a very sharp knife and we're simply going to go around trimming off everything that's not that center piece of meat all right so we'll cut off that little tail piece and you can see we got little nuggets of meat in there but that's fine like i said in the next sauce video you're going to see what we do with those so do not be afraid to trim off a little bit of meat as you're getting this fat off in fact that's more desirable so we'll simply continue around cutting off everything that's not pure meat and it should be fairly obvious where you should be cutting and you may be tempted to not trim off this one end here because it looks like there's a lot of meat there and there is but there's also a lot of connective tissue so we are going to go ahead and cut that off right where it attaches to that main eye of meat and then once all the visible fat is trimmed off we can go ahead and do a little fine-tuning and shaping i'm going to cut off that little pointy bit there to make it look more like a fillet but really that's up to you you are the robert oppenheimer of this steak trimming primer oh by the way as a side note i learned this trick on a food blogger trip to las vegas and while it wasn't the only trick i learned on the trip it's the only one i can actually show but anyway after we've carved our new york strip into a manhattan filet we have one more job to do we're gonna go through all those trimmings and we're gonna cut off every single scrap of meat we can use so really the only thing you should be discarding is pure pieces of white fat that have no meat attached all right if you can see any red meat at all just go ahead and include that in the pile so that's what i went ahead and did and i actually went ahead and did that with two steaks so as you can see here i have two beautifully trimmed manhattan filets i have a dinner date and a fairly decent pile of meat scraps now of course you can save that and make a killer meat sauce that would be a fantastic idea but like i keep saying we're gonna use that for the sauce so all i need you to do is wrap that up and put it away and we will continue on with this manhattan filet project so what we're going to do at this point is season those up with some freshly ground black pepper and then i didn't want to say anything because i wanted it to be a surprise but we're actually going to dry age these overnight so after the black pepperine i'm going to go ahead and throw those on a little rack on a tray which of course will encourage airflow if you don't have one of those just crinkle up a piece of foil and what we'll do is we'll pop those in the fridge uncovered overnight which is going to theoretically intensify that flavor a little bit because we are losing a little bit of water content and as you can see here when i take it out the next day that surface is going to get nice and leathery it's going to make for a beautiful crust and what we'll do is we'll pull those out we'll let those warm up a little bit maybe 15-20 minutes at that point we will season them generously with salts and we will cook them as it says on every bad restaurant menu in the country to perfection by the way restaurants stop putting that on your menu we'll be the judge of that not necessary but anyway we're going to go over to the stove where i have a skillet on high heat with a little bit of vegetable oil in it and once that's super hot we'll start searing our manhattan fillets and generally with this kind of thing we want to preheat on high get that thing super hot and then once those are in there and searing viciously i will generally back the heat down to like medium high and i'm going to sear that first side for about four or five minutes as you know i can't really give times for proteins there's just too many variables so you just go ahead and cook that steak to your liking although one quick tip here whether you're cooking a manhattan filet or a traditional filet mignon you want to sear the sides a little bit you don't want to be looking at that gorgeous crusty surface and then a half inch below you have this like pink gray exposed surface of meat that's not a good look so sear those sides in the hot pan a little bit all right and at this point i determine mine we're close enough to medium rare to remove them so we will remove to a plate to rest and we'll go ahead and let those rest for about five to ten minutes all right you're gonna get your sides ready you're gonna get your sauce together like i said we're gonna show you that at that point you will be looking at one of the most gorgeous gorgeous steaks you've ever seen in your life like i said the exact shape of a filet mignon the no trimming of a filet mignon and yet we have the marbling and the beefier flavor of the new york strip steak i mean come on and by the way if you're thinking man that sauce looks amazing i really hope he shows us that i'm going to in the next demo i've said that like four times already so anyway let's finish up by cutting into this thing you need to give zero thought to trimming every bite is going to be perfect gristle free no fat no silver skin no nothing except pure steak enjoyment it's just a really easy and great technique and like i said you're going to be amazed at what we do with those trimmings all right so stay tuned for that but in the meantime i hope you go pick up a couple new york strips and give this fun and revolutionary technique a try so head over to foodwishes.com for well there's no ingredients but there's more information as usual and as always enjoy [Music] pan sauce bordelaise that's right actually that's not right it's really more of a red wine meat scrap sauce but you have to admit that really does not have the same ring to it so we will go with pan sauce bortilage for the purpose of this demo and of course this is the companion sauce video for our soon to be famous manhattan filet and as we mentioned in that demo the base of this delicious sauce is going to be those meat scraps we saved when we trim the steaks so i'm going to unwrap my reclaimed new york strip scraps and what we're going to want to do before we start the sauce is chop this up as fine as possible now if you want a dirtier food processor go ahead or your meat grinder go ahead but for me i'm just going to take the old chinese cleaver and chop this up real fine so basically something that resembles a coarse ground hamburger so that's looking good right about there at that point we're going to stop and transfer that into a cold skillet which we will then turn on to medium high heat and what we're going to do is brown this meat very very thoroughly oh we're talking full caramelization and the reason i started in a cold pan is because i want some of that fat to render out slowly so by the time this pan gets up to temperature we got a little bit of fat built up in the bottom and that of course is going to help the browning process so basically all we're going to do is saute this stirring breaking the pieces up as much as we can until it's nicely nicely browned and do i mean like that no it's getting close but not quite so let's keep going and that's getting closer but we could go a little more until it looks like that and i know some of those pieces could go a little darker but we're not done cooking because at this point we're going to add some sliced shallot along with a little pinch of salt and we're going to continue sauteing this until those shallots are golden brown and i want you to keep an eye on your heat if everything seems to be going fine leave it on medium high but if it seems like the pan is getting a little too hot go ahead and lower it to medium that's you adjusting on the fly also known as cooking so we'll keep cooking that stirring until those shallots soften and caramelize and turn a beautiful golden brown so once we have our meat and our shallots caramelized beautifully we're going to go ahead and dump in some red wine and then all we want to do is basically cook this until the wine pretty much evaporates and don't walk away that's going to happen pretty quickly the ups guy will come back don't worry stay by the stove because in just a few minutes that wine is going to reduce and you're going to be able to see the bottom of the pan when you stir although i still can see a good amount of liquid under there so we're going to give this one more minute until we have this you see that we're stirring and we really don't see any wine at the bottom of the pan so that's perfect and at that point you're going to quickly add a couple cups of chicken broth unsalted please or at the very least low sodium because we're going to reduce this we got to be careful of our salt content so ideally you're using homemade chicken broth here but anyway we're going to pour that in give it a stir and then what we're going to do here is we're going to bring this up to a simmer and then turn the heat to low and then just let this cook for about an hour to an hour and a half now of course if you want you could transfer this into a saucepan which is a little easier to control but i didn't want to dirty another pan and i was going to be in the kitchen the whole time so it didn't matter and what we want to have happen is that all that flavor from those little caramelized bits of steak goes into this liquid and that's what's going to make this finished sauce so so delicious so for me after about an hour hour 15 minutes of simmering on the back of the stove this is what mine look like all right the goal when we strain this is to have about a cup of product okay give or take and then once that step has been completed we're going to carefully strain this and of course make sure you press out every precious drop from those meat scraps and once i was done straining i had about 200 ml here let me turn this around to a way more logical system of measurements oh yeah there we go it's almost one cup almost eight ounces and by the way i should mention this step can be done way ahead of time and in fact if you're not going to use this sauce right now let it cool and leave that fat on the top and that will turn solid as it cools and you'll have an airtight seal but if you're ready to use it to sauce your steaks then let's go ahead and remove the fat from the top and as soon as that's done we are ready to go all we need now is somebody to cook a couple steaks and as you may have already seen i was that person so there's my two beautiful manhattan filets we've cooked them to perfection and of course we're gonna remove those to a plate to rest which of course leaves us with this the saucier's best friend a dirty pan all right so we're gonna take our pan that has the fondant on the bottom that form when we cooked our steaks we're going to go ahead and pour in our reduction we're going to turn the heat up to medium high and of course as this comes up to temperature all those beautiful caramelized bits are going to dissolve off the bottom into our already flavorful liquid and we'll do final seasoning later but i'm going to put a little pinch of freshly ground black pepper and some salt in here now and then all we need to do while our steaks rest is reduce this down until it thickens which in a pan the size is not going to take very long so in just a few minutes this is what might look like so at this point my sauce is just about where i want it you can see it's thickened up beautifully and it also has a beautiful shine to it and we haven't even added the butter yet which is the next step so at this point i want you to turn off the heat and we're going to finish this in the classic pan sauce style with a chunk of butter and once you toss that in you want to keep it moving until it disappears so we're going to whisk continually until that happens and because of the acidity in that sauce and the fact the sauce is hot and the butter is cold that fat is going to emulsify into that mixture it's going to give it even more body of course flavor and richness but it also gives it an incredibly gorgeous shine i mean if i had a comb or hair i could totally comb my hair in that sauce and then of course because we're not terrible cooks we're actually going to taste this and see if we need another pinch of salt or two and once it tastes as good as it looks we'll go ahead and spoon that around and possibly over a couple beautiful steaks and that perfect pairing of seared beef and reclaimed meat scrap borderlay sauce is done just a really beautiful combination we could just sear a couple steaks deglaze the pan with plain red wine reduce it and finish it with butter and we would still have a great pan sauce so you can imagine how much richer and more flavorful this is using those meat scraps and i know i know you already saw me cut up the steak and dip it in sauce in the last video but i never get tired of watching pieces of meat get dragged through sauce in fact there should be a television network that that's all they show i mean come on there's a weather channel and this is way more interesting than that alright so if you do end up giving our manhattan fillets a try i really hope you save those craps and give this a try too so head over to foodrishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and way more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] lobster thermador that's right i'm very excited to show you my take on this iconic special occasion dish and not only is this going to look right and taste amazing it's also going to be easy to eat which is not always something we can say about your typical lobster recipe it's almost as if they've developed some kind of evolutionary defense mechanism to help protect them from being consumed but here because we're using tails and separating the meat from the shell ahead of time we're going to end up with something extremely user-friendly that by the way only looks hard to make as you're about to see and first up we're going to need to prep our tails before we cook them and what i have here are four approximately four ounce each lobster tails although this technique will work the same with any size and to prep these what we need to do is take some scissors and cut through that lighter softer bottom shell right where it attaches on the side to that thicker upper shell so we will cut from the big end all the way to the tail end right where those two shells meet on both sides and by doing that once this is cooked we're going to be able to pull out all the meats and that shell we cut and then once our lobster meat mixture is prepped we'll go ahead and stuff that right back into the shell to create what most people think is a pretty impressive presentation so we'll go ahead and make our two cuts on the bottom of each tail at which point we'll head to the stove to almost cook these all the way but not quite and we'll do that in some melted butter over medium-high heat so we'll go ahead and place those in cut side down and yes i'm also tossing in any of those little flippers that came off and what we'll do is cook this covered for about five minutes or so until like i said they're just about all the way cooked through okay don't forget this is going to get cooked again once our shells are stuffed so we don't want to overcook them at this stage so what we'll do is start those cut side down and then after about three minutes we'll go ahead and uncover those and turn them over to the shell side or at least one side of the shell side because they're kind of curvy and then once those are turned we'll recover it cook that for one minute uncover it turn those to the other side of the shell and then go ahead and give those one last minute at which point if everything goes according to plan they should be just about almost cooked through all right let's say 85 to 90 percent okay so to recap about three minutes on the cut side and then a couple minutes on the shell side and once that's set what we want to do is turn off the heat and remove those lobster tails to a bowl along with any other shell remnants we've added because we're just about to use this pan to cook our shallots so once everything's been removed we'll put the heat back onto medium and add a nice chunk of butter along with some minced up shallots and a pinch of salt and what we'll do is cook those stirring for about three or four minutes until they sort of soften up and turn translucent and as these cook the moisture from those shells it should start to deglaze the bottom of the pan of any of those lobster juices to start to caramelize on and then what we'll do after a few minutes once our shallots are looking a little something like this is go ahead and toss in our diced mushrooms if we're using these are optional although i consider them personally mandatory and we'll go ahead and cook those stirring for about maybe five or six minutes until they sort of turn a golden brown and not only are these mushrooms going to help increase the volume of our stuffing which of course in the business we call filler but they're also like flavor sponges and they're going to absorb all that caramelized lobster flavor from the pan and since once cooked they have a similar texture it's going to seem like you actually have more lobster than you do so like i said we'll go ahead and cook those until they're sort of golden and looking something like this at which point we're gonna toss in about a tablespoon of flour and we'll go ahead and stir that in until the mushrooms are coated and then we'll cook this for an additional two minutes to take the raw tasting edge off that starch and don't be surprised if some of that flour starts to stick to the bottom of the pan totally normal and not a bad thing because what we're going to do after cooking the flour for a couple minutes is deglazed with a splash of cognac or if times are tough just some brandy and what we'll do is pour that in and then ignite it with the slider to burn off all the alcohol which it would have done anyway but if people are watching that's kind of fun to do people seem to like explosions but anyway we're going to flambe with some cognac and as soon as that liquor disappears which is only going to take a few seconds we will quickly pour in some cold milk and give everything a stir and then what's gonna happen is this comes back up to temperatures a couple things okay any and all goodness left on the bottom of the pan should be fully dissolved and also once this mixture gets hot enough to start simmering you'll notice it should thicken up nicely and as with all sauces that are thickened with flour once it does start boiling that's as thick as it's going to get and if it's too thick you could always thin out with a little more milk but this one looked just about perfect and then what we'll do once that's thickened up and is bubbling is go ahead and turn off the heat and stir in a couple tablespoons of crumb fresh or if you prefer some heavy cream with maybe a little squeeze of lemon to mimic the acidity from the creme fraiche and what we'll do is just stir that in and then with the heat off we'll just let this cool a little bit while we move on to finish prepping our tails which should be cool enough to handle by now and what we'll do is attempt to pull that meat out of the shell by sticking our thumb underneath like this although it's probably easier if we take that center shell off first and be careful do not waste any scraps of meat okay if there's any meat attached to the shell pull it off and reserve it and hopefully by getting your finger under like this most of that meat's going to come off in one section and that is pretty much this entire step okay we're removing meat from shell and shell for meat and by the way if you have trouble peeling that meat away from the shell with your finger sometimes you just need to start it by scraping with a spoon and then it should come off but anyway do what you got to do and hopefully you'll end up with a nice pile of meat like this and of course four empty now ready to use shells which we'll go ahead and transfer onto a sheet pan on top of some crinkled up foil that i formed some channels to hold the shells in place and then we'll move back to the cutting board to cut up our tail meat into some bite-sized pieces and as we slice these in half you always want to check to see if these need to be deveined and these really didn't have too much although there were a few little pieces i'm going to remove okay so just like when you're cleaning shrimp if you see any pieces of what we call the vein go ahead and pull that out since that can be a little bit gritty but other than a few little pieces mine were relatively clean then once we've checked for that we'll go ahead and cut this up into like half inch pieces and once our lobster meat has been cut up we'll go ahead and add a to a bowl and we'll go ahead and transfer in our sauce which is now slightly cooled and appearing much thicker but don't worry it's going to thin out when it's hot and then we'll finish this up with a pinch of salt and also more than a couple shakes of cayenne and then last but not least a generous application of freshly chopped tarragon which i believe to be the ultimate lobster herb and we'll go ahead and take a spoon and mix this all together and by the way feel free to customize this filling to your liking i mean you are after all the dinosaur of your lobster thermador and back in dinah's day they would added things like mustard and egg yolks and greer cheese right back then this would have been a much richer dish but in my opinion if this mixture is too rich you're sort of hiding that beautiful lobster which is what i want to be the star of the show so suit yourself and we'll talk about that on the blog post but i like to stay with a relatively light approach and then once that's mixed up we'll go ahead and stuff that evenly into our four shells which i highly recommend doing over the bowl not over the foil since if you drop some it's really annoying to pick up off the foil and then once we have that mixture divvied up as evenly as we can we will finish these off by sprinkling over the following three things first a tiny bit of dry bread crumb all right just a little touch maybe half a teaspoon per tail followed by an equally light application of freshly grated parmesan okay just a little dusting and then last but not least because this is a french dish after all we will drizzle over a little bit of melted butter and that's it once that's been applied these are finally ready to roast which we'll do in the center of a 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes or so or until nicely browned and our meat is heated through and if you want and i usually do i'll finish them for about a minute under the broiler so as to get some nice color on the surface and when they're done they should hopefully look something like this which i think is just absolutely beautiful and at this point you'll be happy to know we do not have to let these rest in fact don't we'll go ahead and serve those up immediately possibly next to a nice salad or one of these prop salads that looks like a real salad and not only does this look visually impressive and like it was super hard to make but your guests have to do virtually no work getting this on a fork and up to their mouth but just being easy to eat wouldn't really matter if this wasn't also intensely delicious in fact this was so delicious i totally forgot you're not supposed to push food onto your fork with your finger so please excuse my atrocious table manners and i switched and tried to do with a spoon and fork but that didn't feel right so i went back to the finger and i know i said i used a relatively light approach here which i did but this is still relatively rich and decadent and we have just enough that creamy sauce coating the lobster without overpowering it and covering it up so i just absolutely loved how this came out but anyway that's it my take on lobster thermador when it comes to extravagant expensive special occasion recipe ideas this one is one of my favorites and just between you and me because we're using frozen lobster tails they're not even really that expensive to make so for all those reasons and more i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 190,130

Keywords: Valentine's Day, valentines day, valentine's day recipes, what to cook for valentines, valentine’s day food ideas, dinner ideas for valentines, valentines day recipes, valentines day ideas, couple dinner, date night, dinner recipes, recipes, valentines day food, valentines recipes, valentines food, valentines food ideas, valentines dinner, valentines dinner ideas, valentines dinner recipes, romantic recipes, romantic dinner ideas, filet mignon, lobster, lobster tail recipe

Id: xFzox-482JE

Length: 48min 9sec (2889 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 30 2022