Category: Recipes

Western Ranch Salad

Our Western Ranch Salad is the latest I have created and added to our lunch menu at both Taverns. Like all potential new menu items, I run them as a special first to see how they sell and solicit guest comments on it. The popularity of this salad took off right away so it was quickly added to our menus. It’s kind of a Western version of the classic Cobb Salad. It’s made with chopped romaine, grilled chicken, pecan wood smoked bacon, roasted corn and heirloom tomatoes, all tossed with our garlic-honey ranch dressing and them striped with Chipotle-Bourbon BBQ sauce and then sprinkled with crushed corn chips. Again, it has been on our menus for only a short while but it is quickly moving up the ladder for best-selling entrée salads. Give it a try next time you’re in!

Famous Chicken Dish…a Gift from Florence

On my first trip to Italy, I had flown to Rome for several days of site seeing there, then taken the train up to Florence so soak up all that we could in their cultural capital, and then rented an Alfa Romeo and cruised down to our rented villa in the heart of Tuscany. Using the villa as our base of operations, I visited a different magical hill city every day during our stay. Rounding out our trip, we then drove to Assisi where we stayed at the beautiful, rustic hotel ‘Nun Assisi’ which is a converted Nunnery. Beneath the hotel they have the most amazing spa I have ever been to. It is carved out from what once was an ancient Roman limestone amphitheater discovered during the renovation. The entire place is filled with steam and soft, dim and dramatic lighting. One of the real reasons we came to Assisi was for their amazing annual spring ‘Calendimaggio’ which is the biggest medieval festival in Assisi. The inhabitants of Assisi spend a year preparing for this festival. Residents from the upper ‘sopra’ and lower ‘sotto’ side of the city are dressed in authentic medieval costumes and of all ages and put on elaborate plays and skits. The two sides are judged, and one is awarded the winner each year and the competition is fun but fierce. The costuming and props are incredibly elaborate and bleacher seating is erected in the town square where all the events play out. People from all over Italy come to view this amazing spectacle. In any case, when planning the trip I was told by a friend who had many summers in Italy that, when staying in Florence, I had to go to a restaurant called ‘Trattoria Sostanza’ and order what he said was the best chicken dish he had ever had, said it was talked about among world travelers, and said if I didn’t agree he would pay for our dinner. Well, I did go to Sostanza, which just also happens to be one of the oldest restaurants in the city, and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t right. We had the chicken and the other signature dish which was a loosely bound omelet filled with fresh artichoke bottoms, both of which were absolutely amazing. I mean, I’ve been cooking professionally for 45 years, and these two dishes were absolutely off the charts delicious. Trattoria Sostanza is a totally unassuming little restaurant with community style seating and a small kitchen with a tiny woodburning grill known internationally for 3 dishes…Steak Florentine, Artichoke Pie, and Pollo al Burro or ‘Butter Chicken’ as it’s become known as by Americans who have enjoyed it. The amazing thing is that it is made using only four ingredients… butter, flour, lemon and chicken breasts. But it is the quality of the small chicken breasts and the high fat butter content of European butter that make this simple dish so damned good. They prepare and serve the dish in a small cast iron skillet and that’s the way I serve it at home. The hot skillet keeps the chicken warm and bathed in its simple, rustic, yet divine sauce! During our dinner I kept seeing one of their other signature dishes float through the dining room…their Tortino di Carciofi, referred to locally as ‘artichoke pie, which is really an omelet but was like no omelet I had ever seen. It was round in shape with the scalloped edges folded up around the center of artichokes and slightly under cooked eggs like a collar. I was so curious about this dish and the reaction that diners around us had to it that we ordered it as our dessert and, damned if it wasn’t almost as good as the Pollo al Burro! After a few attempts, I was able to duplicate the butter chicken and so I am happy to share this with you all now. If you don’t have small iron skillets I would suggest using a large cast iron skillet and then serve the chicken in a small, low casserole style dish for each person with the butter-lemon sauce poured on top of each.

Streuselkuchen

I’m not a big dessert guy but I do love pumpkin and during December we are offering a dessert that’s a play on a German classic streusel topped pastry with pumpkin and pecan. I love it as a sweet Brunch starter, served hot or cold, but it also makes a great dessert warmed and served with ice cream and caramel sauce. It’s like a pumpkin pie on the bottom covered with a crunch cinnamon-pecan streusel on top. This is a no-brainer pumpkin dessert that simply rocks. Available at lunch, dinner and Brunch!

Coq au Vin

When I opened my first restaurant PAVE in Corona Del Mar in the early 80’s it was in the midst of my early fascination with French cuisine. After that I moved on to dabble in Southwestern (El Torito Grille & Kachina) American (Bistro 201) and Italian (Sorrento Grille) Years later my love affair with French food surfaced again with the opening of French 75 in Laguna Beach but, while the menu did include some haute cuisine delicacies such as Foie Gras and Chocolate Souffle, most of what I served were classic French Bistro dishes, albeit with a little flair. These dishes were what were considered comfort food in France, so I guess I always have been partial to simple, robust and rustic comfort foods no matter what their ethnic origin. As the weather starts to turn chilly I’ll be making some of these one pot stews, and while this dish might not seem likely to show up at Tavern at the Mission, it should as it’s one of my winter favorites….the iconic ‘Coq au Vin’. The literal translation is ‘chicken cooked in wine’ but there is much more than wine that goes into the making of this rich dish that delivers multiple layers of flavor. The original French version is typically made with whole frying chickens cut into pieces but given the aversion to having to deal with bones by many, along with the unequal cook times for different parts of the bird, I use boneless, skinless chicken thighs. When I cook any chicken dish, this cut is always my favorite since it includes some extra fat (fat=flavor) that breasts do not have. The fat cooks out in the process, so you are left with very lean and moist chicken meat but the small amount of rendered fat adds so much to the flavor of the finished dish. Also, the thighs continue to become more tender the longer they are cooked in contrast to breasts which can become tough and dry.

Lobster in Spicy Black Bean, Ginger & Garlic Sauce

One of my favorite meals to enjoy is Dim Sum. In years past I made regular treks up to Westminster with chefs and friends for Dim Sum at Seafood Paradise on Sunday morning. No sooner would we sit down, order some ice-cold Tsingtao beers when the carts would come rolling up the table…..immediate gratification! We would each create our own dipping sauces with chile paste, soy and hot mustard and dig. My favorite dim sum are the Shumai which are steamed dumplings made with a thin wrapper of some kind and filled with pork and shrimp…..great flavor and texture. In addition to the small dim sum items would order a large plate of style shrimp, lobster or crab prepared with ‘Salt & Pepper style or in a spicy black bean, ginger and garlic sauce. So I was at my local Gelson’s the other day and there’s a really nice lady who always works the seafood counter who saw me and said ‘’Today’s the last day of our Maine Lobster sale”! I know right away how I was going to prepare it.

Tis the Season… for Slow Roasted Goodness

With the onset of June Gloom, it’s time to embrace those slow cooked dishes that I love to make, eat and share with friends and family. One of my favorites is the old Italian classic ‘Osso Buco’ which literally means ‘pierced bone.’ I don’t understand why other culinary cultures, including American, haven’t embraced this dish. Maybe it’s because it’s become so expensive. I can remember when this dish was on almost every decent Italian restaurant’s menu selling for less than $20, but like many other secondary and tertiary cuts, its increasing popularity allowed meat packers to slowly and steadily increase the price. Part of this is because it normally is only cut from veal vs mature cattle, but seriously, it’s just a cross-cut portion of the shank or leg bone! I watched the same thing happen to skirt steak, once an inexpensive, flavorful cut of meat used for old school ‘London Broil’ or ‘Mexican Carne Asada’ that now can cost close to $20 a pound for choice grade! When entertaining, braised dishes are not only satisfying to your guests but also great for the host since they can be made a little bit ahead of time and either kept warm or briefly rewarmed so the cook is not scrambling around the last minute. This dish is traditionally served with a saffron scented risotto but I like it with either a creamy Parmesan polenta or garlic mashed potatoes, both of which can also be made ahead of time and held warm.

Summer Figs

Fresh fig season is short and we’re right in the middle of it now and I don’t know of any fruit that evokes a more sensual arousal in foodies than the fig. In fact, even in ‘pre-foodie’ times, D.H. Lawrence wrote an entire poem praising its sensuality… surely no fruit more deservedly owes claim to the adjective ‘luscious’ than the fig. A Simple Definition of luscious Having a very appealing taste or smell Richly appealing Very physically attractive

Seared Foie Gras… a Controversial New American Classic

Someone asked me the other day what some of my favorite foods were and the first thing that came to mine was a dish that always promises to draw out comments… foie gras. French chef Jean-Joseph Clause is credited for creating and popularizing pâté de foie gras in 1779 in Strasbourg, however, its origins date back far before French cooking made it a delicacy. The ancient Egyptians hunted and then domesticated geese, and discovered that waterfowl developed large, fatty livers after eating large amounts in preparation for migration. To replicate this naturally occurring large liver, the Egyptians, over 4000 years ago, developed the technique now known as gavage to produce a fattier bird. Paintings found on the tombs of aristocratic Egyptians depict the hand-feeding of geese, which served as an important source of nutrition around the Nile region.