Saturday Night at My Sister's Place

Another saturday night has made my sister summoned me to create some nice dishes at their house. Normally, I would bring all my stuff because I don't trust their pantry and their kitchen tools except cooking oil, stove and oven. I even brought my own pepper. Anyhow, I have this small cooler that has become my 'pantry on the go' carrier.



Anyhow, so let's start the fun! I told her that I was to make five dishes. Here are the list: French Fries, Steak, Salad, French Onion Soup, and Baked Chicken.

I could actually make individual post for those mentioned dishes but then again, it ruined the idea of reality for me *but hey, you are in the internet, there is its own reality right?* Anyhow, let's start with the fries.

The preparation for the fries is easy and you can do this a day in advance. Julienne them into uniform sizes and place them in a container and cover them with water. You need them to be uniform so that it cooks evenly when you deep fry them and you cover them in water so that it removes the excess starces that the potatoes have. If possible soak them overnight, which I did, or at least an hour.



I then cooked the french onion soup first since it can be heated easily later when service time comes. Slice some onions and butter a casserole. Place the onions there.



Caramelized the onions there. When it started caramelizing, add some leeks, and some balsamic vinegar. Don't forget to season them too.



Then, add some chicken stock and and bring it to a boil. Then simmer it. Covered. Then let it just stay there and turn it on again later when service time comes.

As the soup cooks, cut the vegetables for your salad, my vegetables consisted some iceberg lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes. Tomatoes were diced. I also candied some walnuts during that time. You just roast them with some sugar. When you are done with these, I made my dressing. I reduced some balsamic with a little bit of brown sugar. Lastly, I used a vegetable peeler to slice some parmesan. When those are done, put the sauce aside and place the vegetables inside the fridge. Use them later when service time arrives.

While reducing the dressing, I made the steak sauce. It is technically a red wine reduction with demi-glace *cheat, I used some Knorr professional demi-glace, when you have a time constraint, you need to cheat*. At this point, I was using 3 stoves right now, one is for the soup, and two were for the sauce an dressing. During this time, I only have 2hours to go before service time so I started making the main courses.

I started blanching the fries in oil. The key to making good fries is to cook them first at around 320F. Then, when you are about to serve them, deep fry at 375F. Restaurants do this all the time. They blanch in advance then refrigerate or set it aside then give it a final cooking.



Drain them then set aside. *didn't have paper towels at that time boo!*



First, I seared the chicken drumsticks with butter and olive oil. Then, halfway during the searing of the meat, I placed some rosemary and whole cloves of garlic. I let them baked for 45 mins in the oven with some chicken stock.

While the chicken was cooking in the oven, I started pan roasting some steaks because it was 45 mins before service time. Sear, baste. *nice sear >:)*



It took me around 15-20 mins to do that. So I have 30 minutes to go, prepared the french onion soup and started heating up a pan for the fries at 375F.



I used L'artizan's baguette and some gruyere. Finished those in the oven.

This was a pretty intense cooking for me. While four stoves were running and the oven heating, I was still cutting more vegetables because I was told that there will be two additional guests arriving *relatives/neighbors*. Lolz, pretty pressured that time but I was also able to pull it off.

Then service time came. Everything was good and the execution of food were expected. I was actually 30mins late in terms of serving them, not yet trained in terms of time execution of cooking, oh well, I learned.

Bad presentation for the salad and dressing was overly reduced. Loved the walnuts though.



Loved the cooking of the steak. The only problem was, poor quality steaks, there were USDA choice grade rib eyes, the catch? they were already frozen for a year! lolz, but still, it was pretty well cooked I think. Sauce was great *thanks cheat demi*.



People liked the fries. Texture was good and seasoning was just right. Although I think it absorbed too much oil for my taste. Anyhow, as long as they are happy, that is good.

Chicken was pretty moist and it had a lot of flavor. Simple clean elegant dish.



Lastly, the soup was so-so. I think my stock that time was weak. It could have been better. Luckily, one of the extra people liked it *actually, he likes onions* so he finished all of the soup lolz!

The presentation was not really pleasant since I was really press for time :(



Whew! that was like a level-up for cooking execution for me. I felt like having a professional cooking simulation, pressure and heat. It was fun actually and I like the feeling to be able to pull off something like that.



We were happy eating :D

Fried Chicken with Bacon and Mushroom Gravy

My mom bought a box of chicken *33 lbs* from a supplier the other day and we were defrosting it so that we can easily fit it in the freezer. As the whole box was thawing, I took two leg quarters for this dish. Moreover, I still have lots of bacon that I need to discard and I don't just wanna fry them up, that'll be boring, so it gave me this idea of making a bacon gravy.

So here is the line up *forgot to include some worcestershire in the picture*



First, make a seasoned flour. Get some flour and mix in the paprika, salt, pepper and garlic powder.



Dry your chicken with some paper towels then coat it with the seasoned flour.



Now, heat some oil. Make sure you have a thermometer in hand to heat it so that you fry the chicken at the right temperature, too hot will burn the skin and not cook the chicken, too cold and the chicken will absorb some water.



Deep-fry the chicken at 350F.



Remove them when they golden browned or when the sizzling of chicken is lower



Now, let's make the gravy, saute some bacon. We will use its fat for the roux.



Lots of fat there.



Then, add in some mushroom and give it a quick saute.



Then, add some flour and some chicken stock into it.



Add some worcestershire at the end of cooking and some salt.



Serve



Opinion

Some of the skin of the chicken was a little burnt. I can feel that burnt taste that is both bitter and annoying of some chicken. The gravy though was great. It had a strong robust flavor. The bacon and mushroom gave a strong savory flavor for the gravy.

The only problem of this dish for me was that the mushroom have been cut smaller. It should have been minced so that it can easily be eaten with the chicken. Since the mushroom were sliced, it was hard for me to eat the chicken with the mushroom. Moreover, butter could have helped a lot!

Chicken ala Orange

So often than not, you see duck ala orange in the menu and not chicken ala orange. The reason I used chicken is that it is cheaper and I have never cooked duck before. Anyhow, this dish is a little troublesome because of the sauce but hey, the sauce tasted great! It was full of flavor without any use of MSG or any flavoring cubes *knorr* so I was quite happy with it.

First, get some of the frozen chicken stock.



And defrost it.



Now, its time to really make the troublesome sauce. Get a small saucepan and add some white wine vinegar.



With the white wine vinegar inside the saucepan, add some peppercorns, a bay leaf and some minced shallots.



Reduce that until it is dry, while it is reducing. Get some oranges and squeeze the juice out. Taste it. Add some sugar if necessary, mine needed a lot it.



When the white wine vinegar mixture is au sec *almost dry* add in the orange juice into the sauce pan and reduce 1/4 of its total mixture.



Strain the mixture.



You get this strong sweet, tangy, savory sauce.



Now, the sauce needs more body, return the orange sauce to the saucepan, add the chicken stock and reduce! French cooking is always about reduction to enhance the flavor.



As you can see, the left part of the saucepan has some stains. Scrape those off and mix it with the sauce. The fond *stain* is full of flavor so we do not want to waste that.



Set this aside, we will be doing something about this later again.

Now, lets prepare the chicken and all its ingredients. We just need to pan roast it and it is easy.



It's a simple roast, just need some chicken, salt and pepper, rosemary, garlic, thyme, butter and olive oil. Pat the chicken with a paper towel, we would want them to be really dry so it browns nicely thus giving it a better flavor.



Season and brown the chicken on both sides.



When it is 70% done, add the garlic, rosemary, thyme and butter into the pan.



Then baste the chicken. Basting is technically pouring the oil in the cooking over the meat. Use a spoon, scoop out some oil, then pour over the chicken.



When the chicken is done, remove it from the pan and let it rest. Then we make a roux *a thickening agent for the sauce*. Making a roux is easy, it's equal parts fat and starch. In our case, the fat that we are going to use is the one we have just used for the chicken.



Add some starch, mine is an all-purpose flour. Then cook it for just a little while to remove the starchy taste.



Then add the orange sauce that we have set aside awhile ago. Pour over a little at a time so that you can control the consistency. Try scraping the pan with a spoon too since there will be good flavored fonds there.



Lastly, mount in some butter to give that extra rich and creamy flavor. In french cooking they call this monte au beurre. Normally, you can make the sauce in advance, then when you want to serve your dish, reheat the sauce, then mount some butter.



Lastly, plate the chicken, cut some chicken then place the sauce around it. Simple plating. :D



Opinion

Presentation is a little dull. It lacks color. I was first thinking of making a pure orange sauce out from to give it a nice orange color, however; the extra rich flavor that is in the cooking pan will be put to waste if I don't use it, so I did what I did.

Flavor was great. The sauce was spectacular. The only problem was that there were bites that overpowered the chicken. Duck meat could have paired better with this sauce since duck has that robust flavor that will complement really well with my sauce. Still, flavors were great.

Lastly, the chicken breast were cooked nicely. It wasn't dry and it was pretty moist. Moreover, the thin layer of skin on the breast was great with the moist breast meat. Yum :D