Rooftop Gourmet

Salsa Verde or “Green Sauce” is something that is used in many different countries and cuisines. The green-ness refers to the color of the ingredients in the sauce, rather than the sustainability of the ingredients. Italian salsa verde is like a chunky pesto with the addition of capers and anchovies, while Mexican salsa verde is made from roasted tomatillos and jalapenos. Every country has their own version of “green sauce” and it’s a great way to freshen up any dish.

Consisting mainly of fresh herbs, and some type of acid, the sauce can transform a rich, hearty ingredient into a light, summery meal. With a heat wave upon us, I was craving a dinner that would satisfy my red meat craving, yet keep me from sweating and feeling gross. I decided to make my own, “not your average” salsa verde by combining different green ingredients from all different cultures. Basically this was an American Salsa Verde because it was new, fresh, and a giant melting pot of ingredients.

I started out a base of finely minced shallots and garlic. This sauce is served raw so make sure to get those knives working hard because no one wants to bite into a large piece of raw garlic. The next ingredient I tossed into my mixing bowl was edamame. Edamame is a Japanese, immature soybean that is boiled or steamed in the pod. You usually see them on the tables of sushi joints, served as an appetizer because they’re a simple snack that is packed with nutrients. They have the texture of a fresh lima bean and the color of Kermit the Frog. The next ingredient I added to the mix was some thinly sliced haricot vert; France’s elegant version of green beans.

 Haricot vert is the fancy term that the French gave to the slender, chop stick sized green beans. Unlike the American version, the haricot vert are half the size and uniformly straight. I thinly sliced the long beans and added them to the bowl to give a slightly firmer texture and flavor.

 I then rinsed off some capers (a component in the Italian salsa verde) and tossed them into the mix to bring a salty, briny pop to the sauce, along with bunches upon bunches of chopped fresh, Italian flat-leaf parsley. The parsley really brings all of the ingredients together and makes the sauce light and fresh.

 Lastly, I chopped up a handful of fresh mint to add another element of flavor and freshness. Mint is to the Greeks, what basil is to Italians… they put it in everything! I rounded out the sauce with some high quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper. I stirred it up until it reached the salsa-like consistency that I was looking for and I let it hang out on the counter for a while so that all of the flavors could meld together and meet one another.

 In the meantime, I boiled some baby Yukon Gold potatoes and tossed them with some butter and sea salt as well as prepared my skirt steak. As you have probably noticed, I eat a lot of skirt steak. It is clearly my new favorite, wallet happy, flavorful alternative to pricey rib eyes and dry aged sirloins. It looks like an accordion and is sometimes referred to as the beef diaphram.

 It comes from the “plate” section of the cow, right below the ribs of the animal. What is lacks in tenderness it makes up for big time in flavor, you just need to learn a few simple tricks in order to make it seem tender. Skirts are usually marinated, pounded, or slow-cooked to tenderize them, but simply grilling and slicing on the bias works just fine. If you picture the long, stringy grains of muscle all flowing in the same direction, you want to hold your knife perpendicularto them. Breaking up the strands by thinly slicing makes it easier to chew as opposed to a mouthful of rubber bands. I seasoned my skirts with salt, freshly cracked black pepper, and some balsamic vinegar for some sweetness. They only take a few minutes on the grill, so you really have to let your grates get glowing hot before plopping them down.

 Once the steak had some time to rest off the grill, I sliced it and poured my beautiful, bright green salsa verde all over the top. Each random component glistened in the golden olive oil and slid down the side of the skirt. I topped it with a small salad of picked whole parsley leaves, mint leaves, lemon zest and sliced Fresno chilies. The Fresnos gave the dish a touch of heat that balanced out all of the other bold flavors in the sauce. I chose to pair this steak dish with a unique wine from an up and coming growing region in the United States.

The 2007 NxNW Walla Walla Cabernet Sauvignon sounds like it would come from a place the Muppets would live, but Walla Walla is actually a grape growing appellation of the Colombia River Basin in Washington State and Oregon. The NxNW stands for North by Northwest, and is a collaborative project created by four distinct wine makers who are blending grapes from different plots of land in the area.

The idea is to focus on a single grape varietal and showcase the different ways it is affected when grown in different terriors. It’s a perfect wine for this “not your average” salsa verde because just like the sauce, it has Cabernet grapes that were grown in all different vineyards blended together to create something magical. Of all the wines, I have ever seen, NxNW hands down has the most informative label. It has everything from the select vineyard sites and percentage of grapes from each, to the type of soil and dates of harvest. The wine was a dark purple color and surprisingly chewy for a low alcohol Cab. It was apparent that the fruit was the main focus in this wine.

Cherry, plums, and black raspberries flood your palate with hints of oak and roasted red peppers. After the third or fourth sip, the wine opens up and takes on a sharp cola flavor. The intense fruit played nicely with the char from the grill and the tannins were smooth enough not to overpower the light salsa verde. Thankfully we weren’t eating outside on deck in the 100 degree heat because this wine was big… too big to drink when sweating through your clothes, but perfect with this dish in the air conditioning.

Last week, we left the city and spent a few days house sitting in the burbs for my family. We got to spend some time with Gino, our new Golden Retriever puppy and cook an extravagant meal in my parent’s kitchen. My family doesn’t have as an adventurous palate as we do, so since they were gone, I wanted to make something that would typically never be seen in their kitchen. We walked Gino, or more like Gino walked us, down to John Dewars on Linden street, which is where I get my meat when I’m not in the city.

 They have the best quality meat around and they also stock some unusual ingredients. I went inside in search of foie gras. Foie gras is the controversial ingredient that is most commonly made in France. It is the fattened liver of a duck or a goose, and it is extremely delicate and expensive. The reason it has been so controversial is because of the process in which it’s made.

 Gavage is the technical name for the technique used to fatten the birds up when they are young. It involves jamming a tube down the bird’s throat and force-feeding it corn, five to ten extra times a day, in order to fatten the birds’ liver. Even though the technique dates back as far as 2500 B.C, and the animals don’t have a gag reflex, you can see why some people consider it inhumane.

 Whether you find it disturbing or not, the flavor of the foie gras is incomparable. Its rich, buttery yet delicate texture is a real treat, and I can see why it’s so expensive. Because it’s so rich, I only bought a small amount in order to make an appetizer portion for the two of us. Some people prefer their foie gras molded into a pate’ or a terrine, but I think it tastes the best when it is pan seared. Traditionally, seared foie is served with toast and some type of sweet sauce, usually made with berries to balance out the richness of the liver.

 Siobhan started baking early in the morning when I left for work the day before, because I had an idea in mind. She went out into the backyard and snipped a bunch of fresh sage from my mother’s garden and bought some fresh blueberries. I am not much of a baker, so I let her do her thing and I came home to a giant loaf of blueberry-sage bread. The loaf was dense and moist, studded with plump berries and swirled with a chiffonade of woodsy sage. The combination or herbs and berries was new and exciting.

I decided to dredge a few slices of the homemade bread in a beaten egg and make an insane French toast. After all, foie gras is a delicacy in French cuisine, why not let it rest on a bed of French toast? I slowly toasted the bread in a non-stick pan and got my foie gras out of the fridge. Because of its high fat content, you really don’t want to handle the liver too long because it will melt in your hands.

 Letting it melt would be an expensive mistake so try to keep it melting in your mouth and not in your hands. I let my pan get smoking hot before I even brought my foie near it. This was judgement time and I was getting a little nervous because if you sear it the wrong way or leave it in the pan it could literally disappear before your eyes. It was like trying to sear a pat of butter. The one inch thick slice of liver hit the pan and the whole kitchen started to sizzle, I quickly flipped it over after a few seconds and started basting it with all of the fat that had already rendered out of it.

 Before I knew it, the foie had shrunk in half and it was seared, and warmed throughout. I plated it atop my blueberry-sage French toast and garnished it with some blueberry compote that I had leftover in my freezer. Since the foie is super rich, I sprinkled some minced lemon zest on top just to cut through some of the fat and keep your palate fresh and clean. Our forks slid right through the warm foie and each buttery bite dissolved on our tongues. Classically Foie Gras is served with Sauternes, which is a French sweet, dessert wine. 

We opened a half bottle of Muscat de Saint Jean de Minervois or otherwise known as the poor man’s Sauternes. Just as syrupy and delicious but for a fraction of the cost. This dessert wine is served chilled, and it perfect to pair with belt-poppinly rich foods such as foie gras and Roquefort blue cheese. It is made from the Muscat blanc grape and is full bodied and sweet.

There are tons of beautiful flavors or ripe apricots, mangos, quince, and honey. It looks like a bottle of melted 24 carat gold and the finish is long and luxurious. I don’t know what filled me up more, the Muscat or the foie, but we definitely needed some time before I started our main course. Just when you thought I couldn’t make anything more intense than a foie gras appetizer, John Dewars runs a special on two pound Wagyu beef “long bone” chops! Obviously, I couldn’t pass that up so I grabbed one for myself and a more human-like steak for Siobhan.

Wagyu is one of the most flavorful grades of beef because it’s fattened and lazy, making the meat intensely marbled with flavorful fat. The cow’s diet consists of chestnuts and beer which I guess is a little bit better than corn through a tube. I obviously didn’t want to mess around with the magnificent flavors of the beef, so I simply seasoned it with salt and cracked black pepper and I rolled the bone in tin foil so that it wouldn’t burn on the grill. While I seared this giant sledge hammer, I went inside and made a quick goat cheese mashed potatoes with a sprinkle of chives. I cooked the long bone to medium and plopped it down with a mountain of mashed. I opened a bottle of 2008 Orin Swift’s The Prisoner because it it has enough raw power to stand up to this massive chop.

The red blend consists of primarily Zinfandel but also has traces of Cabernet, Syrah, and Petit Syrah. This is an explosion of fruit in your mouth! The ripe berries and the new French oak swarm your palate, followed by a soft tannic finish. If I didn’t have such an over the top steak on my plate, this wine would kick its ass and take its lunch money. If I was alone, I would have picked it up like a lollipop and eaten it like a Flintstone. Even Dino (I mean Gino) got to gnaw on the bone (that was the size of my forearm) after I was done with it. Yabba Dabba Do!

Want to know why your steak tastes better at a steakhouse than when you pull it off your backyard grill? Butter. That’s all there is too it. Well… not all there is to it but for the most part, it’s all about the butter. The quality cuts of meat, liberal salting, and a dim-lit dining room also add to the steakhouse ambiance.

If plain, boring, sensiouly silky, rich butter just doesn’t cut it for you… add something to the butter to make a compound or flavored butter as I did last night. The possibilities are endless. You could add herbs, truffles, chopped porcini mushrooms, crystallized ginger, pesto, honey or even fruit. In the words of Dr. Evil… throw me a friggin’ bone here… literally. Bones have been used in cooking for centuries to flavor soups and stocks, but what’s inside a beef bone is like the Holy Grail.

Marrow is like a beef compound butter in itself. Its slimy, fatty texture and concentrated beef flavor is typically spread on toast with a sprinkle of sea salt, but also famous in the classic northern Italian dish, Osso Bucco. Humans have been eating marrow for years. Back before humans learned to hunt, they were scavengers. Cracking open bones and sucking out the marrow was a great source of protein. Diners in the 18th century even designed a long and skinny marrow spoon that is now typically seen in antique shows.

Unless you’re a vegetarian, what could be better than a gorgeous piece of beef, enhanced with a beef flavored butter? When I stopped at my butcher the other day, not only did I ask for a prime, dry aged NY Strip, but a big ol’ bag of beef bones as well.

 Most supermarkets or butchers sell bones, but sometimes they can be frozen or hidden in the back because as you can imagine, they’re not the most popular item in the meat department. The poor old lady at the check-out counter thought that I had 17 Golden Retrievers at home.

I preheated my oven to 425 degrees and threw in a tray of vertically stacked bones to roast the marrow. It only takes about twenty minutes and your kitchen will start to smell like Julia Child has been making her Beef Bourguignon all day on your stovetop. Unfortunately, I do not own marrow spoons, but it’s just as simple to turn a regular spoon backwards and fish out the marrow with the handle.

 This part isn’t for those with a weak stomach, because the insides look exactly what you’d expect the inside of a beef bone to look like. Shiny, brain-like, gelatinous blobs of hot marrow spilled out into a bowl, one by one until I had about a half cup.

I promise you that if you close your eyes and take a spoonful, the most elegant, silky, buttery bite will slowly just dissolve on your tongue. There’s something incredibly sexy about eating bone marrow, as hard as that is for some of you to grasp. The sensation is quite similar to taking a bite of rich mushroom risotto, dowsed in truffle oil. I added a stick of softened, unsalted butter, and a handful of freshly chopped rosemary to the bowl and creamed my homemade compound butter until it was all incorporated.

I set the butter aside in the refrigerator to set because it became a little bit too soft during the mixing period and ultimately I needed it to be thick enough to pipe into a hollowed out bone. In the meantime, I prepared some classic, steakhouse side dishes. The asparagus I bought had some serious girth, so I decided to peel them before I tossed them into a pot of boiling water. Most of the time, I never peel them because when they’re grilled, the outer, fibrous skin usually chars and breaks down nicely. I was going for a more delicate, elegant cooking approach last night and simply blanched them and softly sauteed them before serving.

 I also sauteed some giant trumpet mushrooms that looked like they came from level 4 of Super Mario Bros. These massive shrooms, were meaty, and earthy… a great combo withthe marrow butter. I brought my dry aged steak to room temperature and seasoned it with coarse salt and freshly cracked black pepper while I preheated my grill. Dry aged beef has two significant benefits. Natural enzymes in the meat break down the connective tissue in the muscle to make for a more tender steak, and moisture in the muscle evaporates, leaving a more concentrated beef flavor.

As you can tell, I was doing everything in my power to showcase and enhance the beef. Once my grill was too hot to hold my hand over it, I slapped the two NY Strips down on the back of the grate. Inside, I piped the roasted marrow-rosemary butter back into the bone for presentation. I garnished it with a firm, sprig of rosemary which also acted as a tool to scoop the butter out.

After the steaks were ready to come off to rest, I slathered a dollop of the compound butter on top and watched the thick butter slowly melt into the flesh. As I plated, I opened a bottle of Chateau Clairefont Margaux from the highly acclaimed 2005 vintage. Bordeaux and rich beef dishes are a cute couple. They interact so nicely with each other and enhance the flavor of one another bite after sip and sip after bite. This particular wine from the Margaux region of Bordeaux is composed of primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, with a little Merlot and Petit Verdot blended in. The nose is perfumed with dried flowers and smoke and impeccably balanced with the bright, ripe fruit of cassis.

Even though the wine is quite young for a Bordeaux, it is refined, structured and succulent. As my steak knife slid through the pink flesh like butter, the aroma of pure and simple beef was met with flavors of earthy marrow and woodsy rosemary. As the wine sat and swirled around in my glass throughout the meal, it opened up quickly and released a second serving of fruit and oak. This was one of those moments where a perfect marriage of food and wine transform a normal meal into a heavenly experience. Let’s just say, when all was said and done, we had no bones to pick with the chef.

Memorial Day is all about honoring American soldiers who died in combat, and is traditionally spent watching parades and enjoying backyard cookouts. Grilling on your deck or in your backyard is about as American as it gets, so that’s exactly what I did Sunday evening… with a classic French twist. I can’t think of anything that I haven’t thrown on my grill before, so I’m always searching for ways to add some flair to my char.

I had a long relaxing day on the new roofdeck and plenty of time to prep, so I decided to make a classic French Bordelaise sauce to drizzle over my grilled hangar steak. Sauce Bordelaise is named after the famous French wine region of Bordeaux, which produces arguably the world’s finest red wines (don’t tell the Italians).

So obviously this is a red wine based sauce combined with a classic demi-glace, which is like a “super stock” because it’s reduced and skimmed a hundred times over. Lets face it… I don’t have the patience to roast my own bones on Memorial Day weekend and make a traditional demi-glace from scratch so cartons of beef stock were just fine.

 I got the sauce going first by sauteing carrots, celery, onions, shallots, and some portabello mushrooms. It’s important to get these in the pot and just walk away for a bit because the more color and caramelization on your aromatics, means more flavor in your final product.

When the veggies were ready, I dumped in an entire bottle of Bordeaux (any dry red wine will do). The one thing that drives me nuts is when people come into the store and ask for the cheapest bottle of wine to cook with. I’m not saying to cook with expensive wine by any means, but I feel that a $10 bottle is sufficient.

The whole reason that you’re cooking with wine in the first place is because of flavor. You wouldn’t season your food with dirt instead of salt would you? When the alcohol evaporates and the wine reduces, what you’re left with is the flavor of that wine. A good rule is to never cook with a wine that you wouldn’t want to drink or serve yourself. I slowly let the wine reduce over the aromatics until it was almost completely gone. All of the flavors of the wine get intensified into roughly 1/4 of a cup, before I added some beef broth.

When that was simmering away, in between skimming the scum and fat off the top of the pot and discarding it, I popped back up to the roofdeck to enjoy the amazing view and ponder where my urban garden is going to be located (pictures will come soon once the furniture arrives).

 I picked a smorgasbord of herbs from my herb garden and chopped them finely to sprinkle over my trusty hangar steak. I love the smell of grilled red meat when it’s coated with fresh herbs because the oils in the leaves and stems come alive and fill the air with all sorts of enticing aromas. I dowsed the hangar with chopped rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage, and parsley before throwing it onto the cast iron grates.

Hangar steak cooks quickly so I took it off and let it rest for five minutes before I sliced it on the bias. Meanwhile, the sauce had reduced quite a bit so I took it off the heat and jammed it through a chinois or very fine strainer. After discarding all the bits and pieces, I was left with a silky smooth, beefy, red wine reduction that still needed some more time to reduce.

In a small sauce pot, I started whisking a roux (equal parts butter and flour) until it magically before my eyes went from white, to light blonde, to dark brown in color. When it was dark and rich, I added my reduction sauce and whisked away until the sauce came together and thickened to my liking.

 I turned down the heat and threw in a few sprigs of thyme to steep into the sauce. I served a light salad with the steak because it was painfully warm outside and the sauce is incredibly rich. I tossed some baby arugula with shaved radish, shaved shallots, and thinly sliced aged Gouda. It was an interesting combination but it tasted delicious. The aged Gouda is a great substitute for Parmesan.

Once I tasted, seasoned, tasted, and re-seasoned the sauce a million times until it was perfect, I sliced the steak. The rich, mahogany hued Bordelaise glistened as it crept into every crevice of sliced beef. I opened a bottle of the 2006 Catena Alta Malbec from Argentina because who knows grilled meats better than Argentinians. Even though Malbec from Argentina is the hottest wine craze at the moment, lets not forget that the French have been growing Malbec long before it was cool to do so in South America. The French have been using Malbec as a blending grape in Bordeaux for years because it gives wine tons of added fruit and a deep, purple color.

This wine in particular had an amazing color to it. It was like black ink and eggplant but had a lighter weight on the palate than I expected. It was creamy and lush, with flavors of blackberry, sage, and dark chocolate. It was medium bodied and had great acidity. Every hour that I had the wine open it improved more and more. More complex, intriguing flavors came alive as the night went on, long after the entire steak was devoured and our plates licked clean. Even though an American invented the dishwasher in 1893, we didn’t need to use it because the sauce was too damn good.

 I’ve said it a million times, there’s nothing I enjoy more on a warm summer night than grilled steak and corn on the cob. Something about the charred meat and the buttery, sweet corn kernels popping in my teeth as I typewriter through cob after cob. It reinforces that spring and summer are my favorite times of the year, spending time outdoors with friends and family around great food.

This past Sunday was a perfect night to fire up the grill, especially because I couldn’t run the dishwasher due to the water ban in Boston. Washing my knife, and cutting board with boiled water was frustrating enough, so I tried to cook the majority of the meal outdoors. I wanted to combine my favorite combination of steak and corn on the cob into something that I could hold in my hands. Forget the steak knife and fork, I wanted to create a sandwich that was packed with all of the flavors I was craving.

Skirt steak is perfect for sandwiches because it’s thin, and you have to slice it against the grain to maximize its tenderness; perfect for layering in between bread.

I seasoned the skirt with salt, chile powder, and enough freshly cracked black pepper to send you into a sneezing fit. Because it’s not very thick, I only flash grill it for a few minutes each side until its medium rare before slicing it. While I was out on the deck, I also grilled a couple ears of fresh corn.

This takes a little bit longer, because you want the kernels to brown and take on some of that amazing grill essence. You’ll know that the ears are starting to cook because they start popping loudly underneath the hood of your grill. When the corn was grilled, I took a knife to them and shaved off all of the grilled corn kernels and set them aside for the sauce. I made a classic aioli from scratch, which is basically a garlic-infused mayonnaise.

You start by whisking egg yolks and finely minced garlic while constantly drizzling in the oil. It’s quite the workout, especially if you don’t have a helper to hold the bowl for you. When my aioli was nice and thick, I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and fresh lemon juice before I spooned it into the blender. I tossed in all of the grilled corn kernels and pulsed it a few times to infuse the fresh corn flavor, but not too much to keep some of the whole kernels in tact.

I dipped my finger in to taste it and was blown away at how “corny” it was! One small, creamy bite was packed with so much sweet corn flavor, tangy garlic,  zesty lemon, and underlying char that made you realize it was grilled.

I could have taken out a spoon and devoured an entire bowl. Instead, I quickly grilled a chewy, French baguette and spread the grilled corn aioli all over it. Then I layered slabs of sliced skirt steak, some baby arugula, and shaved red onions, before topping it off with another drizzleof the corn sauce. I really had to clamp down on the sandwich in order to fit it into my mouth but it was worth the stretch. The juicy steak was so tender with that fiery black pepper crust that burned your lips just for a second before it was cooled down by the sweet and creamy aioli.

These would be great to serve at parties or barbecues because they’re small and handheld. You can hold a sandwich and a beer at the same time, whereas with corn on the cob and steak, it requires two hands, a forkand knife, and a lot of napkins. On the side, I made a grilled fingerling potato salad. Fingerlings are those small golden potatoes that look like fingers and are rich and buttery. I simply tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and dumped them onto the grill.

When they had a nice crust on them, I tossed them into a bowl with sliced haricot vert (thin French green beans), shaved red onions, and a few dollops of creamy Roquefort cheese.

The steam from the grilled potatoes slowly melted the creamy blue cheese and brought the whole potato salad together. I served these sandwiches on the deck with a bottle of 2006 Thomas Cusine Vilosell from Spain. I love this wine, not only because of its wicked cool label, but it’s a great wine for grilling. It’s a blend of primarily Tempranillo, with a touch of Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, and Garnacha.

The wine is perfect for grilled meats because of its rich, smoky flavor. The grapes are grown at high altitude in chalky, clay soil which gives the wine this peppery, earthiness to it. When those flavors combine with the ripe, fruit from the Syrah and Garnacha, the combination is your Weber’s match made in heaven.

On scorching hot days, like this one, you can even throw it in the fridge for 15 minutes before serving it to give it a slight chill which surprisingly enhances certain red wines. The Vilosell had tons of blackberry and cocoa flavors followed by a smoky, black pepper finish. The only problem was putting down my sandwich to take another sip.