Linguini with Saffron Prawn Aligue (Crab Fat) Cream Sauce

Saffron and Seafood go very well together. Aligue and Prawns is a marriage made in heaven. Hence, saffron, prawns and aligue should be an awesome threesome (think Neve Campbell and Denise Richards with Matt Dillon in Wild Things).

Here is a slightly decadent but very simple recipe that serves two:

6 tiger prawns, shelled and deveined
Saffron, few threads
½ cup prawn stock
1 Tbsp. butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. minced onion
1 small tomato (skinned and seeded and chopped)
½ cup good white wine
1 200 ml pack whipping cream or cooking cream
1 to 2 teaspoons aligue (crab fat)
Salt
Cayenne Pepper
Linguini (De Cecco or any other good Italian brand)

Ahead of time, make a prawn stock with the fresh prawn heads and shells. Roast the heads until they are cooked through. Pound each head to crack open before putting them into a pot of water for the stock. Boil to simmer for 45 minutes.

Soak the saffron in the half-cup stock.


Season the Prawns in some salt and cayenne pepper. Sauteé the prawns in butter in medium to low heat, set aside prawns and keep warm.


Sauteé the garlic and then onions for a minute or so and then add the tomato, cook for a minute or two.


Add the white wine and reduce until almost syrupy.


Add the prawn stock and reduce further.


Add the cream and reduce to desired consistency and then add the aligue. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.



Mix in the pasta and then add the cooked prawns. Garnish with some chopped flat leaf parsley or fine chives.

Pair this dish with a nice Chardonnay, preferably the same one you used to cook the sauce with. Unlike many Filipino pasta recipes that consist of 80 to 90 percent aligue which I find a bit too much, I use the aligue sparingly just enough to bring a strong hint and to enhance the savory flavor of the sauce. The aligue here is used as a natural food enhancer and its combination with the other flavors in the sauce is heavenly. Parmesan cheese can also be added here but I refrain from doing so as not to intrude too much of the flavors of the prawns, aligue and the expensive saffron.

Truffled Marrowed Burger with White Wine Mushroom Cream Sauce (Ultimate Burger Part 2)

So far, I've received very positive feedback from people who tried my 'Ultimate Burger'. Now, how do I improve on it? Simply add some truffle sauce and serve it with a nice mushroom sauce.

I discovered this very heavenly combination of truffle and bone marrow at Gaita Fores' Pepato in Greenbelt 2. At Pepato, the whole bone is roasted and then sliced in half lengthwise to make it easy for diners to scoop out the flavorful marrow with a spoon. Served with the bone is a ramekin each of truffle sauce and sea salt. When eaten all together, my taste buds just go wild with an almost orgasmic sensation with my eyes almost half-closed. Meg Ryan must have been eating this on her sandwich at the famous deli scene in 'When Harry Met Sally'.

What is truffle sauce? Go back to my last post.

After eating the marrow at Pepato and watching Anthony Bourdain and Fergus Henderson devouring roasted bone marrow at one episode of No Reservations, I was getting much inspiration with regards to the beloved and very underrated piece of offal. One time at the restaurant, I served beef consommé with truffled bone marrow toast’, simply making a paste of bone marrow, truffle sauce, sea salt, freshly ground green pepper and coarsely chopped flat parsley. It didn't look too appetizing though but now I'm trying to perfect truffled bone marrow dumplings.

Having known about this heavenly marrow and truffle combination, how can I not add this truffle sauce to a bone marrow filled burger? I was disappointed in myself that it took me so long to even think about it! The process of doing this version is the same as the ultimate burger with the addition of truffle sauce on top of the chopped marrow and adding chopped flat leafed parsley instead of thyme.

After cooking this 200-gram burger almost 2 minutes per side on high heat on a grill pan, I put it on a plate and then add some white wine mushroom cream sauce. I then garnish with some fresh chives. I serve the burger with mashed potatoes (or some pommes frittes), and voila… you have a very elegant Salisbury Steak. The truffle paste and mushroom sauce gives the burger a new dimension. The 'ultimate' burger is great but this one is excellent. Think Beatles 'Revolver' album being followed by 'Sgt. Peppers'.





If you don’t have a white wine mushroom cream sauce on hand, and you want to try doing this at home, simply deglaze the cooking pan with some white wine and reduce until syrupy. Add some beef stock reduce and then add some cream, reduce, add some cooked sliced white mushrooms and monté with some cold butter nuggets. I would think a nice medium bodied red will go with this such as a Shiraz or a Merlot.

Again, to those who know, you know where and to those who still don’t know, send me an email.

Truffled Slow Cooked Egg on Emmenthal Toast

How do you make eggs and cheese go to another level? By simply adding some truffle sauce. Eggs and cheese and cream and butter are supposedly the best friends of the exquisite and very expensive mushroom. Since we don't have access to this decadent and delicate shroom, the next best thing is truffle flavored oil or in this case, truffle sauce.

This jar of Salsa Tartufata Al Funghi (Mushroom and Truffle Sauce) is made from muhsroms, oil, breadcrumbs and one percent Black Summer Truffle (Tuber Aestivum). It is available at Bacchus Epicerie located at Power Plant, Rockwell. This 580 ml jar costs P1,000 and its very well worth it. Since there is actual pieces of truffles, though only one percent, the truffle flavor is much more prominent than a truffle flavored olive oil. I will be dedicating many posts that will feature this truffle sauce in the near future.

Here is a very simple recipe: Slow-cooked egg on Emmenthal toast.

Toast a slice of nice bread, here I used country loaf from Le Coeur De France, add some slices of Emmenthal or Gruyere (or any good cheese for that matter), toast in a toaster oven until cheese melts.

While bread is in the toaster-oven, fry and cook an egg as slow as you can. Add some sea salt and ground black pepper.

Place the egg on the toast.

Add a teaspoon or more of the truffle sauce.

There you go. A simple egg and cheese toast that has gone to heaven.

Smoked and Braised Texas Chili Con Carne

Fact: Chili Con Carne, despite it's Spanish name, is not from Mexico. It is from Texas and is considered the national dish of the lone star state. Cooking Chili Con Carne has been a very macho pastime and is a favorite at tailgate parties. Men would flex their muscles by exclaiming they make the best chili con carne. I've only been to Texas once in my life for an overnight trip accompanying my father on a business trip. I asked the bellboy where i could find authentic chili con carne and he suggested a diner chain which i didn't trust. I ended up eating an unforgettable authentic fajita in a restaurant in the hotel. The fajita was a skirt steak, rubbery but chewy and very flavorful, smoked in mesquite.

What we know and what we grew up with as chili con carne is a bit far from its authenticity. Research shows that real chili con carne has no tomatoes or tomato sauce. Chopped beef is used instead of ground beef and as I just found out: has NO Beans. Just as some Italians proclaim that a carbonara has no cream, some Texans proclaim chili con carne has no tomato sauce or even beans.

I have a fascination with Mexican and border cuisine. I've developed this recipe over the years and its base is from two recipes from two cookbooks, namely the The Beef & Veal edition of the Good Cook series published by Time/Life and a wonderful cookbook called The Border Cookbook by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison.

The most important ingredient here is the dried Ancho chili. I had this sent from my sister who lives in the US. It looks and smells like sun-dried tomatoes, the taste though is something similar to cocoa. It's spice is mild but the flavor is somewhat bitter and has a tinge of sweetness. No wonder the Mexicans mix chocolate and chili in their Mole Poblano sauce. It has a wonderful taste and I don't think there is a substitute for it.

The first step is to rub and season the beef. Here I use a whole slab of local chuck (kalitiran). The marinade for the 1.5 kilo slab of beef is a paste made of garlic, salt, ancho chili and olive oil. I use a mortar and pestle to crush the six cloves of garlic and I use a blender to grind the two chilis. I stir two teaspoons of salt and olive oil to make a paste. I then rub the marinade all over the beef.

The second step is to smoke/grill the beef. In a charcoal broiler, I heat enough charcoal until the gray ashes form on top. I then add some soaked mesquite wood chips (available at any True Value branch) on top of the charcoal and i then place the beef directly on top of the wood chips and charcoal. I cover the charcoal broiler so all the smoke flavor can be captured by the meat. I do have to manually fan the holes of the sides of the barbecue grill to make sure there is enough oxygen in the charcoal and wood chips to prevent the smoke from dying. The beef should be smoked on all sides. This process should take around 20 to 30 minutes.

After resting the slab of beef and it has cooled down, I then chop it into 1/2 to 1/4 inch cubes. I sauteé some onions in bacon fat (leftover from my bacon dinner the week before) in a big pot. I then add the beef, brown it a bit and then I add the juices of the beef (which was saved during the chopping process) and around two to three cups of beef stock and add a couple of bay leaves. I simmer the beef for an hour or until soft and tender.

While the beef is simmering, I will make a chili paste which will be the base of the sauce. In a non greased skillet or pan, I toast one tablespoon of whole cumin seeds in very low flame for around ten minutes. Cumin is an important spice in the overall flavor of this dish. Do not use packaged ground cumin. Any Mexican, Texan, Indian or Middle Eastern cook will tell you, it is imperative to toast the cumin before grinding it. I purchased the cumin seeds at Assad in Jupiter, Makati. After toasting the cumin seeds, I grind the seeds in an electric blender for around 20 seconds. I then add around six cloves of garlic, six stemmed dried ancho chili, a teaspoon of dried oregano. While grinding in the blender, I slowly add some water until it becomes a paste. I then mix in one tablespoon of sugar, one tablespoon of salt, three tablespoons of good Spanish paprika and some cayenne pepper for spice. Add just enough cayenne pepper accordingly to your desire. Since the ancho is mild in spice, I use cayenne pepper.

Now, there is a controversy regarding beans in this dish. Some purists say that real authentic chili con carne has no beans. There was one time I cooked this dish for my family without beans. Everyone on the table kept on asking for beans. They exclaimed that chili con carne has to have beans, despite all my arguments from research. Personally, i do enjoy it with beans as long as the beans do not overpower the meat. My ideal chili con carne would consist of 20 to 30% beans. From experience, the ideal beans for chili is pinto beans. To address this issue of beans or if I'm going to have a purist at the dinner table, i can always serve the beans separately.

After an hour or so of simmering the beef, add the paste and simmer for another thirty minutes. The paste and the reduction time will slightly thicken the sauce. To thicken some more, the traditional way is to add cornmeal. With the absence of cornmeal, i prepare a roux using flour and bacon fat and mix it into the stew.

After an hour and half, the smoky mesquite flavor has rendered itself all over the dish. You don't need to be told that the cumin and the chili is a perfect combination with the smoky flavor.

This dish can be served many ways: In a bowl as toppings for rice or in a bowl separately with rice on the side. The simple garnish for this dish is chopped white onions and grated medium cheddar. To make it more exciting, other garnishes can be offered on the table such as tortillas or nachos, chopped tomatoes and chopped lettuce making it into a somewhat taco chili salad. Cold beer is the perfect beverage to go with this dish, Corona or San Mig Light.

This dish requires a lot of time and work but it is all worth it. The flavor of the mesquite, the texture of the beef cubes as opposed to ground meat is all worth the effort. I'm actually thinking of selling this and anyone interested can send me an email, just give me a week's notice.