Rooftop Gourmet

Construction… check! Electricity… check! Warm weather… check! The roofdeck is finally complete and mother nature was cooperating (minus the brief thunderstorms). This past weekend we planned to have our first dinner on our brand new moon-lit dining room. The humidity was unbearable so I decided to make something light and healthy.

The traditional salad Nicoise was originated in the city of Nice, France but became extremely popular in America when Julia Child introduced it to us in her cookbook “The French Chef”. The original components to this salad are debatable but for the most part it contains canned tuna, potatoes, haricot vert, olives, tomatoes, red onion, and hard boiled eggs.

I left the supermarket with the impression that I still had a few eggs left in the fridge but they magically disappeared, so I left the eggs out of my salad. I also wanted to put my own twist on this classic salad, so instead of using the canned tuna or sardines, I bought some sushi grade, Ahi tuna. 

Ahi tuna is a species of tuna that is typically seared, or eaten raw, sashimi style. I’m sure you’ve seen it before because every restaurant in America has some sort of seared tuna, or tuna tartar appetizer on their menu these days.

I loved this cold salad idea because I was a little skeptical about bringing hot food up the spiral staircase for the first time. Plus, we wanted to sit on the deck and relax without having to worry if our food was getting too cold. I started out by boiling some baby Yukon Golds until they were fork tender.

Then I quickly blanched my haricot vert and after less than a minute transferred them to an ice bath to stop the cooking. I like when my veggies still have a solid snap to them. After that one pot of boiling water was dumped, all of my indoor cooking was finished.

I continued slicing my olives, tomatoes and onions, and seasoned my Ahi tuna steaks with tons of cracked peppercorns. In order to get a nice crust on the tuna, along with keeping the center nice and rare, you need to have an extremely hot grill. I let mine preheat for about 20 minutes until it was close to 700 degrees before I flopped my fish on.

Only a few minutes on each side and I was done. I sliced the tuna and tossed it into a bowl with all of my other components. The center was just slightly warm and bright pink.

Tuna is a great piece of fish for grilling because its flesh is firm and dense. Unlike other delicate fish that would flake off and fall through the grates, tuna can be treated like a steak. To make my vinaigrette, I combined Dijon mustard, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and olive oil in a small Tupperware container and shook the living hell out of it. This technique works for this whisk-free vinaigrette because the Dijon makes it thick and creamy.

I tossed my motley crew of flavorful and bold ingredients together and headed up to the roof with a bottle of wine made from more components than were in my salad. Sokol Blosser’s Evolution is a unique white wine made from the most random blend of grapes, I have ever seen.

 It boasts nine different varietals ranging from Chardonnay and Pinot Gris to Muller-Thurgau and Slyvaner all grown in Oregon. This is a really fun wine that’s perfect for a warm, muggy summer night and great with all types of cuisine. It’s off dry and has fresh aromas of freshly cut flowers, and key lime pie. Every sip seems to be different and “evolve” on your palate.

Sometimes you taste semi sweet flavors of sugary nectarines and others are bone dry with hints of pineapple and allspice. For such a weird blend, these random grapes produce a seriously complex wine that leaves you thinking after every sip. It’s bright acidity and off-dry flavors make it a great match for light salads, seafood, and especially spicy Spanish or Asian food.

As the sun set, we sat on our new deck and casually picked our way through a fresh and vibrant salad and sipped our white wine while our glasses and bottle started sweating profusely with condensation. The lanterns lit up the night as if it was twelve noon and the view of the Thomas Park monument towered over us. It was a truly perfect night and a great way to break in the new deck. We all know that wine evolves, but condos evolve, and classic French dishes evolve as well. I am happy to say that the gourmet is now officially back on the Rooftop.

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.