One of the most common questions I get asked is, “What’s your favorite thing to eat?” And I can’t answer it, man! How could I? The truth is, for me I really enjoy the process of cooking more than I enjoy eating itself. Don’t get me wrong; I like eating. A lot. But there’s something about the virtue of cooking something beautiful yourself, filling the house with smells, crying as you chop onions (I don’t care how hard core of a chef you are, they still get you), and having a glass of wine or two while you do it. For me that’s what this dish is all about, and it’s one of my favorite things to prepare:

Recipe: (Serves 4-5)

- 3 lbs boneless beef short ribs, trimmed of excess fat
- 1 large onion, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- 2 stalks celery, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, diced
- 6 small dried figs (use fresh if available)
- 2 cups Cabernet Sauv. (or another full bodied red)
- 2 cups beef stock
- 4 large celery roots, peeled and cubed
- 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
- 1/4 cup cream or milk
- 2 tbsp butter
- 3 large portobello mushrooms, sliced
- fresh parlsey for garnish
- salt and pepper
- flour

Method:

Season the pieces of short ribs liberally with salt and pepper, and dust the pieces with flour to help them brown. In a large, heavy bottomed pot, heat a thin layer of oil and add in a tsp of butter. Add in the pieces of short ribs and brown over med-high heat for 5-7 minutes until caramelized. Flip and do the same on the other side. Once they are evenly browned, remove short ribs from the pots and add in the garlic, onion, celery, and carrots and saute for 2-3 minutes until soft. Add in the dried figs, wine and beef stock and bring to a boil. Add the short ribs back into the pot and cover with a parchment paper lid, which will allow for some evaporation and reduction of the sauce while still protecting the top of the short ribs from becoming burnt. Cook at 325 for approx 3 hours or until the short ribs are very tender.

While short ribs are in the oven, heat a large pot with boiling salted water. Add in the cubed celery root and the sprigs of rosemary. Boil for approx. 20-25 mins until fork tender. Remove rosemary sprigs from pot and mash or whip with cream butter, and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

In a medium sauté pan, cook the mushrooms over med-high heat in 1 tbsp of veg oil and butter. Add in 1/2 cup of red wine and let it reduce. When mushrooms are dark and most of the liquid has evaporated, turn heat to low and set aside.

When short ribs are out of the oven, remove them from the pot, and using a hand blender or a standard blender purée the vegetables and figs into the sauce. Place back on the heat for 2-3 more minutes to reduce.

TO PLATE!

Plate a couple spoonfuls of the rosemary celery root purée in the center of the plate and top with a couple pieces of the braised beef short ribs. Add a tbsp or so of the sliced red wine mushrooms on top, and finish with the cabernet fig sauce on top. Garnish with fresh parsley and DIG IN!

Well we sure hope you’ve had enough time to bust out at least one of the cooking fundamentals we covered in Part 1 of our “No Fluff” guide to improving your cooking skills.

We hope you pleasantly surprised your butcher by asking him for short ribs, brisket, cheeks, shanks or chuck to braise instead of steaks or chicken breasts. We hope your vegetables found their way onto dinner plates perfectly cooked and brightly coloured by way of blanching. We hope you sauteed standing as proudly as 6ft tall Julia Child did in the video we posted, to the roar of thunderous praise and second helpings. But most of all, we hope you had some fun doing it.

For part 2, we’re covering another very important fundamental skill with specific recipes and techniques. Brass tacks, baby!

#1 – Learn Versatile Base Sauces

This is one of my favorite skills. Learn a few simple preparations and you can literally turn it into dozens of different sauces to suit any dish by adding 1 or 2 more ingredients to the base sauce. Classic French cooking teaches 5 “mother” sauces. Between you and me, you really only need to know 3.

Béchamel Sauce

Don’t be weirded out by the name. It’s a basic white (cream) sauce that once made properly, can be made into a great number of other tasty sauces for different styles of cuisine. There are basically two important steps in making the béchamel – properly making a roux (combination of equal parts flour and butter) and heating up the milk prior to incorporating it into the roux. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

- 2 cups milk (use at least 2%, or higher)
- 1/4 cup butter unsalted
- 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- pinch salt
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- half a small onion, diced

In a sauce pan, heat up the milk until “scalded”, which means just under the boiling point. In a separate sauce pan, heat up the butter until melted, and whisk in the flour, cooking for 2-3 minutes until incorporate and smooth. Whisk in the scaled milk and add in the onion, bay leaf, pinch of salt and nutmeg. Heat until the sauce thickens and simmer for 10/15 minutes. Strain the sauce to remove the onion and you’re left with 2 cups of smooth, creamy béchamel base.

Now, feel free to use this tasty sauce just as is. Use it in lasagna or other pasta dishes or bake it with sliced zucchini and tomato for a delicious rich casserole.

OR! You could go crazy with it. Think of every cream sauce you’ve ever had. They’ve almost all started with a béchamel base just like this.

For starters:

– Add some diced garlic and parmesan and you’ve got an alfredo sauce.
- Add grated cheese, some dijon and fresh cracked pepper and you’ve got a great mac ‘n cheese in the works.
- Add some tomato sauce and you’ve got a rosé.
- Add white wine and lemon and you’ve got a delicious sauce for fish or shellfish.
- Add lemon and dill and you’ve got…well, you get the idea.

The important part is to perfect the rich béchamel base, and then the rest is up to you. Stick with the classics or go nuts with it. This is what I love about cooking.

Tomato Sauce

Making tomato sauce is kind of like going to a bar that’s having a karaoke night, everyone seems to think they’re the best at it but the really good ones are few and far between. The trick is, as with the béchamel sauce, to make a larger batch of tasty, classic base sauce and then having the option of creating variations of the sauce depending on what you’re making. Some people may think a spicy tomato sauce is best, but being stuck with a big batch of something that would completely overpower more delicate flavours is just plain silly. Here’s my recipe for tomato sauce (again, don’t feel you need to follow this exactly, but use it as a guide) and some examples of variations:

Ingredients:

- 4 strips bacon, diced
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 cup red wine
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, diced
- 3 cans (28 oz) whole peeled plum tomatoes, high quality such as San Marzano
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 carrot, diced
- 1 tbsp dried oregano
- 1 tbsp dried thyme
- 1 tbsp dried basil
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tbsp sugar
- salt and pepper to taste

In a very large sauce pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat and add in the chopped bacon, sautée for 8-10 minutes until bacon has rendered and is crispy. Remove bacon from pot and drain half the fat. Add in the garlic, onion, carrot and bay leaf and saute 5-6 minutes until softened but not browned. Add in the red wine and use a wooden spoon to scrape the bottom of the pan and deglaze.

Next, open the cans of whole tomatoes and crush them by hand as you add them to the pot. This step is very important! Once the tomatoes are in, add in the thyme, oregano, basil, and sugar and tomato paste and simmer for 45-60 minutes over low heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. This sauce will keep for up to a week in the fridge or until to 6 months frozen.

Now my recipe I posted above is technically more of a marinara sauce due to the herbs, but it’s still very classic and very tasty. It’s great on everything but can also be riffed on to no end to bring a multitude of dishes to the next level:

- Add equal parts tomato sauce and béchamel to make a rosé.
- Add olives, capers, lemon zest and fresh parsley to two cups tomato sauce to make a Mediterranean style Putanesca sauce for pasta or vegetables.
- Add white wine, lemon zest and red chile flakes along with a cup of the tomato sauce to make a spicy white wine tomato broth for mussels or clams
- Add diced bell peppers and cilantro along with a a cup of tomato sauce and reduce it over low heat to make a tomato sofrito, an uber flavourful condiment for burgers, chicken or halibut.

I could go for days, man! Store-bought tomato sauce right out of the jar is a go-to for many, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but next time add a little extra jazz, I don’t think the execs at Ragu will mind at all!

Hollandaise

Yup, we all know hollandaise and often consume it during hangover-induced brunching (yes, I did in fact use brunch as a verb). It’s delicious, rich, and actually has many “spin-off” sauces, as has been the case with everything in this post. While most of them are considered “old school” in the world of cooking today, the process of making an egg-yolk emulsion sauce such as holladaise is a valuable skill to learn. Think of it this way; now you can brunch in your underwear without getting hassled by that pesky manager at IHOP – “Poach this!”

Ingredients:

- 4 large egg yolks
- 3/4 cup butter
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- pinch cayenne pepper
- pinch salt
- pinch white pepper
- 2 tbsp hot water

Set up a baine marie by heating up a sauce pan with boiling water, and placing a metal mixing bowl over it. Melt the butter in a microwave and skim off the top layer of milk solids (this is a quick and dirty way to make clarified butter). Add in the eggs yolks and lemon juice and whisk constantly until the yolks have warmed and thickened slightly, about 3-4 minutes, do not overheat the yolks or they will begin to cook your sauce will have chunks of yolk in it. Gradually pour in the melted butter, whisking constantly until fully incorporated. Add in the cayenne, salt, and white pepper and continue whisking until the sauce has thickened and forms ribbons when the whisk is pulled through it. Whisk in the 2 tbsp of hot water and remove from heat. Serve immediately.

Here’s a great video for you visual learners from epicurious on the techniques.

Making hollandaise isn’t hard as long as you understand the key points of why we make it this way:

- You need to heat the yolks before adding the hot butter to prevent them from shocking, resulting in a chunky, broken sauce that won’t hold the emulsion.
- You need to constantly whisk to evenly incorporate the ingredients, not whisking enough will break the sauce.

Hollandaise has plenty of derivatives as well, many restaurants these days have deemed them as passé, but don’t listen to them, how can you go wrong with anything starting with a hollandaise base?

- Remember that classic Bernaise sauce for steak? Yup, hollandaise with shallots, tarragon and crushed peppercorns.
- Impress your guests by making a Sauce au Vin Blanc, combining hollandaise with reduced white wine and chicken or fish stock. Delicious on any white meats or seafood.
- Kick up the standard eggs benny by adding minced roasted peppers, or even pesto, sundried tomatoes.
- Make an incredible steak or roast beef sandwich by adding hollandaise kicked up with horseradish and rosemary. Good Lord I think I am making this for lunch tomorrow!

To sum it all up, even though we’ve posted specific recipes on this blog, I hope the point came across that you don’t really NEED to follow a recipe other than very basic ratios and preparations. Master something simple, then make it your own!

I’d love to hear some of your creations from these mother sauces, leave a comment and let me know! Happy cooking.

I was searching the interwebs today looking for a good article to tweet about the best ways to genuinely improve your cooking skills so that you could, for example, cook a delicious Mother’s Day meal today (though undoubtedly still not as delicious as her cooking would be).

Perhaps google was not my friend today, because to be honest what I found was a lot of fluff; tips like “Be Positive!”, or “Learn to religiously follow recipes!”, or “Learn what things mean!” Really?

So I decided to create a basic guide myself that most importantly has specific skills, terms and techniques, with examples, that you can learn to immediately take your cooking skills at home to the next level. For Part 1, here’s what we’re doing.

#1 – 3 Fundamental Cooking Techniques You Must Learn

Here’s the truth, you really don’t need to dig through cookbooks memorizing obscure preparations or techniques. I’ve identified the 3 most important fundamental cooking skills you should master to take your food to the next level. Here they are:

Sautéeing

This is one we are all definitely familiar with. Hot pan, put in food. Cook. Right?

Well, sure, but what’s important is to understand the purpose of what sautéeing is all about. When we sauté we cook over relatively high heat with very little liquid to caramelize meats, crisp fish skin, brown vegetables and develop flavours.

Here are the fundamental pointers:

1. Use a quality, heavy saute pan which will retain enough heat to properly caramelize whatever you’re cooking.
2. Wait until the pan is hot enough! Adding food to a pan not properly heated will result in the food steaming or even sticking, and not properly browning.
3. Remove as much excess moisture from foods before cooking them. Pat your seafood, chicken or beef with paper towels before cooking, ensure your vegetables are thoroughly dried.
4. Don’t be a pan shaker! Leave the food alone once it’s in the pan, don’t shake it around constantly or stir it. Let it develop colour and flavour, nobody likes a pan shaker.

My personal favorite video demonstrating how to properly sauté is from Julia Child herself, showing how to properly sauté various parts of chicken. Notice her tips on using part butter, part oil to prevent the butter from burning, as well as not crowding the pan, and most importantly, leaving things alone and letting them cook! Watch how she uses the leftover caramelized bits of chicken to make her sauce and deglaze the pan. This is what it’s all about.

Braising

Braising is easily my favorite cooking technique. You’ve probably noticed this since a ton of recipes we post involved braised foods. We braise an awful lot of things in our catering business, even though it can be time consuming, because it allows foods to develop a character and complexity through the virtue of a longer cooking process that you wouldn’t get from any other method.

When I was learning how to braise foods, a chef once told me that “Braising is like stewing with a college education.” I’ve never heard it described better than that, so it’s still how I describe it to anyone wanting to learn.

More specifically, braising uses a combination of sautéeing (low liquid, high heat cooking). and stewing (slow cooking in liquid), to tenderize tougher cuts of meat, add flavour to certain vegetables and more. When we braise, we first brown over high heat with a small amount of oil or butter (sound familiar?), then the meat is removed from the pot, and we add in aromatic vegetables such as carrots, onions, garlic, celery, fennel, or anything you can think of. The meat goes back in the pot, we add in braising liquid such as wine or stock, and the pot is covered and transfer to a preheated oven to slowly cook for a long period of time.

Here are the most important tips you need to start braising today (you’ll notice the tips mirror closely to sautéeing, many of the same principles apply):

1. Use a heavy-bottomed pot, suitable to be transferred directly to the oven. No plastic handles or the not so favourable smell of melting plastic will be delicately imparted into whatever you’re cooking.

2. Take the time to get a proper sear before adding liquid. This is by far the most important step. Let whatever you’re braising properly brown, then remove it from the pot, adding in your vegetables, braising liquid (stock/wine, etc), then adding the meat back in before covering and placing in a preheated oven.

3. Give it time. Depending on what you’re cooking, it may need to braise in the oven for 3 hours, or even more. The virtue of this process is worth the final result in the end. Let your house fill with the delicious aromas all day, drive your neighbours crazy.

Here are some picture tutorials we’ve posted here involving braising. If you only learn one technique from this blog, learn this one.

http://drewcooks.com/blog/2010/picture-tutorial-sausage-and-beer/

http://drewcooks.com/blog/2010/braised-veal-cheeks-with-sweetbreads-rosemary-celery-root-and-fig-cabernet-sauce/

http://drewcooks.com/blog/2008/quick-meal-idea-braised-short-ribs/

Blanching

Blanching is very much an underrated technique, in my opinion. Primarily used on vegetables, which are easy to overcook, it allows you to perfectly cook them while maintaining the beautiful bright colour you get from a perfectly cooked piece of asparagus, or a bean, or broccoli, or anything similar.

When we blanch, we cook in a large amount of well-salted, boiling water. It’s important to use a pot large enough to not lose the boil for too long when adding in the vegetables. When the vegetables are just cooked through, we remove them and immediately plunge them into ice water, stopping the cooking process and locking in the colour.

Key Tips:

1. Use enough salt, approximately 1/2 cup per 4 litres of water. The salt will ensure the vegetables are seasoned through, and also helps to bring out their colour faster.
2. If blanching a large quantity of vegetables, do them in groups to avoid the water losing the boil.
3. Tie vegetables such as asparagus or carrots together with butcher string to make them easier to fish out when properly cooked.

After the vegetables are chilled in the ice water, you can keep them refrigerated until you’re ready to use them. Then simply reheat them any way you like, grill some asparagus to warm it and toss it with parmiggiano reggiano. Toss some carrots with balsamic reduction, broil some broccoli with smoked cheddar. What’s important to keep in mind is that you are simply reheating them at this point, NOT cooking them twice.

Here’s a 30 second video showing you the nitty gritty:

Stay tuned for part 2!

The old tailgating classic is getting a facelift today, and I know some of you may be thinking, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Believe me, we don’t think there’s anything wrong with grilling up some brats or Italian sausages along with a cold pint, or cooking them in beer and piling them high with caramelized onions. In fact, it’s so right we wanted to be able to serve it not just for our summer BBQ events, but also as part of something like a multi-course dinner party.

While this version isn’t technically a sausage, I wanted to make use of some of the ingredients commonly used in sausage making such as fennel (seeds) and other ingredients classically paired with pork, such as apples, and present them in an interesting way.

Here’s what I came up with:
Berkshire Pork Jowls with Fennel Purée, Braised Endive and Apple Ale Sauce

Here’s the money shot, now let’s see how we made it there:

Start with the Berkshire Pork Jowls. Berkshire pork is a heritage breed of pig, kind of like pork’s answer to Kobe beef. It is prized for it’s flavour and marbling. While the premium cuts of Berkshire can be pricy, there is great value to be found in cuts such as the jowls, which with a little love can be elevated into a terrific dish:

Beautiful marbling on this pork. Supplied by Cioffi’s Meat Market and Deli in North Burnaby.

Trim any excess fat, and use butchers twine to tie them into rolls.

Next, peel and slice a couple apples, diced a couple cloves of garlic and cut a large fennel bulb in half (bottom removed). Don’t chop up the fennel as we’ll need to remove it from the braising pot later.

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Heat up a large, heavy bottomed pot, add in a layer of vegetable oil. Season with pork and sear 3 mins per side until golden brown. Remove from pot and set aside:

Next, add in the fennel, apples and garlic and saute until softened. Add the pork back in.

Now it’s time to add the beer, which is a nice segway to show you a new Vancouver-area brewery, Stanley Park Brewing. The brewing operations are powered entirely by wind, and it’s a great, smooth tasting Amber Ale. Try it!

Alright, pour in a couple bottles of suds, and bring the mixture to a boil, season with salt and pepper.

Add in a bouquet garni, and cover with a parchment paper lid. Transfer to the oven for 2 hours.

While the jowls are in the oven, let’s prep the braised endive. Belgian endive is a bitter green that mellows out quite a bit when braised, but still provides an interesting note to the dish. I love to serve it with pork and chicken, especially.

Cut off the bottoms, and saute 2-3 minutes per side in a hot pan with some oil.

Add in some chicken stock and a bit of dark soy sauce.

Transfer to the oven to braise for 35 minutes.

After 2 hours, this is what your pot looks like:

Remove the pork, herbs, and fennel from the pot, and purée the apples into the ale sauce. Season with salt and pepper and reduce the sauce over medium heat for 15 minutes.

Next, blend the fennel with some of the sauce until smooth:

Alright! Time to head to the plate. Batting leadoff is our fennel purée, use the back of the spoon to spread it across the plate:

Slice the pork into medallions and arrange in the center of the purée:

Next, fan some of the braised endive around the pork, and spoon some of the reduced apple ale sauce on top:

Lastly, while the pork was braising I julienned some apples, carrots and fennel and tossed them in a touch of lemon juice, salt, pepper and some of the fennel fronds to make a quick “slaw” to provide some acidity to the dish:

And that’s it! Money shot time:

While it may not become the staple at tailgate BBQs this summer, for anyone feeling a little ambitious on a rainy night, I encourage you to try this dish or any of the elements in it. As always, let us know what you think!

We’ve gotten a ton good feedback about the HD videos we had shot in the past. But then again, doesn’t HD make pretty much anything better? The chicken looks juicier, the salmon skin looks crispier, the steam looks….steamier, okay, I’m getting a little carried away, but you get the idea.

Since we had such a good time filming our previous ones, this weekend we went to town on a whole schwack of new ones. 6 to be exact! Over the coming weeks and months we’re very excited to be posting the videos along with detailed recipes on our site. They look amazing so far! (Trust me, I was there.)

Now, my question to you is, which one would you like to see posted first?

Vote on our poll below, and we’ll listen!

And here’s a couple of our videos we’ve shot in the past, the new ones will be even better!

It was my birthday yesterday. And like most days, I woke up thinking, “What am I going to cook today?”. Except today I had something in mind right away. Now, on any other day, my favorite foods to cook and eat are braised foods, slow cooked foods, offal, things that people may think of as unappealing or even unappetizing in their humble raw forms, yet are transformed by virtue of good cooking techniques and flavours.

Today I wanted a sure thing. I wanted indulgence. I wanted a steak. Not just any steak, mind you, a Kobe beef NY Striploin.

I immediately sourced one from Cioffi’s Meat Market in Burnaby and picked it up. When I got home, this is what was staring back at me:

Yes, it’s a thing of absolute beauty. I couldn’t wait to cook it. But how do we cook such a steak? Well, the answer for this, and any other quality grilling steak, is not a BBQ, believe it or not (though I certainly wouldn’t kick a BBQ’d steak off my plate). The answer is your trusty cast-iron pan:

The reasons are pretty simple. For starters, a hot cast iron pan has more surface area coming in contact with the meat than a grill grate, giving you a beautiful crust on the meat that you just don’t get on the grill. Secondly, it’s a truer beef flavour, as there’s no charcoal/propane/leftover grease on your cooking grates to mess with the flavour. And when you’re dealing with a quality steak, you want to taste it for what it is.

Let’s get started. I like to flip mine over on the gas and leave it there for seriously, 15 minutes or so. Disconnect your smoke alarm cause it’s going to be a barn burner in that kitchen of yours tonight. Preheat oven to 400F.

When your pan is screaming, unapologetically hot, season your steak with good kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper.

Add a tbsp of canola oil to the pan and add the steak immediately. The sizzle should be legendary.

Don’t touch it for 2 minutes, then flip it over, you should see a beautiful caramelized crust on the steak:

Now cook for an additional 1 minute and then fire it in the oven until the steak hits 125F. Pull it out, and let it rest for 5 minutes, aka the longest 5 minutes in the history of time.

You can see the fat melting throughout the meat like butter, it is indescribable.

On any other steak, I would add a touch of butter to the pan immediately after the flip, but for this steak I just didn’t need it. It was a perfect birthday meal for me this year, because at times you need to realize that despite all the fancy plating, trendy food items and modern cooking that you’re surrounded with every day, sometimes there just isn’t anything that can beat a good old fashioned steak.

Cheers!

We sometimes get people asking us about sweetbreads, so much so we wrote a blog about them about a year ago, in which we basically described them, threw in a pretty gross picture of them uncooked and didn’t show what the finished product could become. I doubt too many readers were inspired to try them out, and we wanted to change that.

Sweetbreads are a star performer of the foodie community. People that know them, love them. It’s like knowing an indie band before they make it big. You can say you were around in the beginning, then accuse the sweetbreads of going mainstream and selling out when they show up on menus all over the place like they are starting to. Or just eat them more often.

This dish combines 2 unusual (for lack of a better word) cuts of meat, and makes them into one enormously satisfying dish. Let’s get started.

Here’s the money shot, now let’s see how we got there:

Start with the sweetbreads in their humble raw form. I purchased them along with the veal cheeks at Cioffi’s Meat Market and Deli in North Burnaby.

Now, you’ve got to soak them in some cold water with a bit of salt for at least a few hours to draw out some blood and other impurities, it really does improve the final product. Do this overnight if convenient but for at least 3 hours.

Now, get out a couple big ugly celery roots:

Preheat the oven to 350F, and slice off the outer layers of the celery root, like this:

Chop them up a put them in a pot of salted water to boil:

Now throw in a couple sprigs of rosemary to the pot, the smell will be fantastic!

Now on to the veal cheeks, let’s have a look:

As you can see, they’ve got quite a bit of fat/silverskin that we need to trim off using a sharp knife. Go for it.

Now, preheat a heavy bottomed pot with some vegetable oil, season the cheeks with salt and pepper and dust lightly with flour.

Brown the cheeks on all sides over high heat:

Next, remove the cheeks from the pot and add in some aromatics and some figs. I’m using dried figs but if you can get fresh in your area, absolutely go for it.

Now, add half a bottle of cabernet, some veal stock and bring it to a boil.

Throw it in the oven and let it braise for about 1.5 hours at 350F.

Drain the celery root when tender and mash with a little butter and cream. Season and add in some fresh parsley to finish and set aside:

Next, scoop out the underrib of a small portobello mushroom cap, coat it lightly with oil, and fill it with the celery root. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

After 1.5 hours the cheeks should look like this, pull it out and remove the cheeks, they should be very tender but not completely falling apart:

Next, puree the figs and aromatics into the sauce. Put back on low heat and let it reduce for 10 minutes.

Next we’re on to the sweetbreads. Drain and pat them dry, cut them into chunks:

Heat a heavy bottom pan and fill it up about half way with canola oil. If you’ve got a home deep fryer, fire that bad boy up! Always use caution when working with hot oil! Set up a breading station with eggs and milk, as well as seasoned flour. Lightly and evenly bread the sweetbreads:

Test a sweetbread by placing it in the oil, it should bubble immediately which will indicate the oil is hot enough. If you’ve got a good thermometer the oil temp should be around 350F.

Fry them up until they are a golden brown. Words cannot describe how delicious these are. I like to dust them with a touch of smoked paprika right out of the fryer. Use this opportunity to sneak a chef’s snack. Or two.

Once the sweetbreads are fried, it’s time to plate! Start with your beautifully reduced cabernet fig sauce:

Now place the celery root stuffed mushroom cap in the center:

Thinly slice the veal cheeks, and arrange on top:

Followed by those beautiful crispy sweetbreads:

Experiment a bit with garnishes, a simple sprig of rosemary or parsley works, maybe some caramelized shallots.

And there we have it! Sure, it’s not for everybody, but if you’re feeling adventurous and are up for adding something to your culinary repertoire, why not head to your butcher and try at least one of the elements of this dish out for yourself? I promise, you’ll soon be a fan too.

In a world of beverages full of sugar, artificial colours, sweeteners and more, it’s pretty darn refreshing (literally) to find a company like R.W. Knudsen Family that is sticking to the same philosophy they’ve had since they started in 1961: 100% natural ingredients, with no added sugar, artificial colours, flavours or preservatives.

And man are they good! For our corporate catering lunches around Vancouver, Richmond and the Lower Mainland, we’ve begun using these products almost exclusively as they are such a great alternative to sugar-filled colas and other beverages. My personal favorites are the “Spritzer” beverages that come in a range of great flavours such as:

Black Cherry
Boysenberry
Jamaican Lemonade
Orange Passionfruit
Organic Apple
Mandarin Lime
Tangerine
Vanilla Creme
Red Raspberry and several others.

It is truly a great tasting natural product, and it’s something we’re proud to offer our clients.

I don’t know about you, but all this talk has made me thirsty! Enjoy the games everybody…Go Canada!

We get some emails and questions from our clients and visitors on what to do with rabbit. It’s a little pricier than say, chicken, and people will often shy away from cooking it either thinking they don’t know how, or that they won’t like it. There’s also the “cute” factor. Some of us have hang-ups with cute, fuzzy, hopping little bunnies making their way onto the dinner plate. I’ll let you know right now that I’m not one of those people, and for those looking for an absolutely delicious meal, read on with me through this picture tutorial for a great preparation of rabbit. Here’s the final dish:

Now let’s see how we got there.

Start with a whole rabbit, it’s likely your supermarket won’t carry these, so visit your local butchershop:

If you’re lucky, the rabbit will come with liver and kidney inside. Don’t throw these away. Rabbit livers as well as kidneys are in my opinion the finest in the animal kingdom, a true delicacy. We’ll be incorporating them into our final dish.

Now, we need to cut the rabbit into parts. Start by removing the hind legs. Make a cut at the base of the thigh, then twist to expose the bone:

Use a sharp knive to cut inbetween the exposed joint. Since this is a more refined dish, the entire leg is too large. We need to separate the leg from the thigh. We do this again by cutting down the middle and twisting to expose the joint we need to cut through:

Use the blade of your knife to clean up the bone a bit, and what you should have at this point should look something like this:

Next, onto the rabbit loins. Flip the rabbit over and count about 4 ribs up from the top section, then use a large knive to cut the body:

Next, flip the middle section over, and cut along either side of the spine to remove each loin section, which should look like this:

Trim the excess flap, fat, and silver skin until you have just the rabbit loins intact. Save the extra trimmings and bones for stock. Your cutting board should look like this at this point:

Put the rabbit bones and trimmings in a bag and set in fridge/freezer for stock later. Put the thighs, legs and loins on a plate and and set aside. Wash cutting board with hot soapy water and it’s on to the vegetables:

Chop 1 large leek, 1 fennel bulb, a couple large carrots , garlic and shallots into a dice.

Next, grab 2 slices of bacon and slice them into 1/4″ thin strips like so:

Heat up a large, heavy bottomed pot with a thin layer of vegetable oil, and 1 tsp of butter. Season the rabbit thighs and legs with salt and lightly dust with flour. Add them (not the loins or kidneys) to the pot and brown well:

Once browned on both sides, remove rabbit pieces from pot, and add in the bacon:

Once browned, remove bacon from pot and drain on paper towel. Drain half the fat from the pot. Now add in all the vegetables, and 1/2 cup of dry white wine.

Cook for 5-7 minutes, then add in 2 cups of chicken stock, season and add the rabbit pieces back in. Cover with lid and turn down to a simmer. It needs to simmer for 45 minutes or so.

While rabbit is cooking, make the parsley oil. Add in 2 cups fresh flatleaf parsley, a pinch of salt and 3/4 cup vegetable oil to a blender or food processor:

Blend for 5-6 minutes:

Strain through a fine sieve and set aside:

After 45 minutes, remove lid and your pot should look something like this:

Boil a small pot of salted water. Add in the gnochetti and cook for 4-5 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Heavy a large heavy bottomed saute pan with vegetable oil and butter. Saute the rabbit loins for 2-3 minutes per side, they should still be nice and pink in the middle. Then sauté the rabbit kidneys and liver for 2 minutes per side. (Keep the kidneys as a chefs snack)

Set loin aside to rest, and remove the thighs and legs from the pot. Add in 1/4 cup heavy cream to finish the sauce and reduce for 5 minutes.

To plate:

It works best if you allow the gnocchetti to cool slightly and become sticky first. Using a ring mold, spoon some of the gnochetti into the center of a plate. Compress.

Next, ladle some of the fricassee mixture over top evenly:

Slice the loins into medallions, and arrange the rabbit parts on top of the fricassee mixture. Then place a couple slices of the rabbit liver on top of it all.

And finally, drizzle with the parsley oil and rendered bacon to finish!

If this dish hasn’t made you want to try rabbit, I don’t know what will! To get the full recipe, sign up for our newsletter on our homepage, or join our facebook group here! Enjoy!

Well it seems as though we’re in a sharing mood lately over here at the ol’ Drew Cooks food blog! And at the end of the day, isn’t that what cooking’s all about anyways? Try this one out for some high end finger food to wow your guests. Thank us later