The Duncan

 

This is a different take on the Boardwalk Martini, an evolution if you will. A major shout out to the lovely and talented Liz for taking it to the next level in a feat of cataclysmic creativity.

Ingredients for two Martini’s:

  • Boyd and Blair Potato Vodka. A small batch “craft” vodka.
  • Dry Vermouth in a mister (no mister, no deal)
  • Lemon
  • Crushed Ice
  • Regular Ice
  • Frosted Martini Glasses….(another deal breaker if they aren’t frosted)
  • Toothpicks
  • Citrus Stripper
  1. Fill bottom half of martini shaker with regular ice cubes.
  2. Add 5 ounces Boyd and Blair to your shaker.
  3. Remove frosted Martini glasses from ice box.
  4. Spray the frozen glasses inside and out with light vermouth spray (it sticks to the frozen glass)
  5. Use the stripper to get lemon peel into glass. Ideally you will do the stripping near the glass so you get the lemon zest on the inside of the glass
  6. Drop lemon peel in glass
  7. Shake the shaker 5-7 times, don’t over shake, you will water down the spirit.
  8. Add crushed ice to the shaker….don’t shake…huge upside, it gives you shards…
  9. Pour into the two glasses over the lemon peel
  10. LET IT SIT. for 5-10 minutes, yes LET IT SIT
  11. Congratulate yourself on what a pompous ass you are for making such a perfect duncan
  12. Enjoy.

 

Snapper

Grilled Red Snapper and Mango with Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette

6 tablespoons olive oil (1/2 lime oil and 1/2 reg)

5 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 1/2 teaspoons grated lime peel

4 5- to 6-ounce red snapper fillets

1 large mango, peeled, cut into thick wedges

3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

8 large buttercup lettuce leaves

Prepare barbecue (medium heat). Whisk oil, 4 tablespoons cilantro, lime juice, and lime peel in small bowl. Season vinaigrette with salt and pepper. Brush all sides of fish and mango with some of vinaigrette. Reserve remaining vinaigrette. Sprinkle fish and mango with salt, pepper, and cumin seeds. Grill fish without turning until fish is just opaque in center and mango is soft and beginning to brown, about 6 minutes.

Top lettuce cups with fish and mango. Drizzle with remaining vinaigrette. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro.

Tamales (WIP/Phase I)

This breaks out in 6 very distinct phases.

  1. Meat preparation
  2. Chile preparation
  3. Husk preparation
  4. Masa preparation
  5. Production
  6. Cooking

Brisket:

Ingredients:

  1. 4 heads of garlic
  2. Large crab pot
  3. 22 lbs of Brisket w fat remaining
  4. Ladle of salt

Brisket Prep:

  1. Cut the brisket into baseball size chunks
  2. Add brisket and garlic to crab pot in garage or outside
  3. Add cold water to the crab pot to 3/4 full
  4. Bring to a boil and add salt
  5. Once boiling, skim the yukkiness repeatedly as it comes to the surface, this will go on for 10-15 minutes until the foam becomes less murky
  6. Boil on high for 15 minutes
  7. Reduce heat and boil for another hour and 45
  8. Take out of water and shred by hand while still hot (forks)
  9. Set aside

Chile prep:

Ingredients

  1. 1 lb new mexico dried chile peppers
  2. 20% of broth from the brisket (u will use the other 80% for the masa)
  3. Lard
  4. Flour

Process (epic)

  1. While someone is hand shredding the beef, clean the chile peppers by rinsing and taking the tops off. Keep the seeds etc inside.
  2. Remove about 80% of the broth from the large crab pot.
  3. Bring broth in crab pot to a boil again (it was off)
  4. Once broth is boiling, stir all of the whole cleaned chile’s into the crab pot broth.
  5. Cover
  6. Boil on high covered for 5+ minutes
  7. Turn off and let sit in covered hot crab pot for 15 minutes
  8. Ladle the cooked chili out into a separate large pot.
  9. Using a blender, blend the chile and some of the broth to the consistency of canned tomato sauce. Blend it all and set aside.
  10. Now to fry the chile sauce. Put a large ladle of lard in a very large pan, (we used electric roaster oven) add a half ladle of flour… yeah are you fukin kidding me. It keeps getting better.
  11. Separately heat the spicy broth (see pic for amt)
  12. Once the lard and flour are combined and hot, add chile sauce and fry. (we are frying the chile sauce so that it binds better with the brisket)
  13. Add the spicy broth into the chile sauce you are frying to make it into a consistency between whole milk and half n half.
  14. At ideal consistency, bring to a slight simmer and start to add the brisket. Add broth and chile as necessary based on volume so that its all coated perfectly.
  15. Simmer for a while to bring the flavors into the meat, 10-15 while stirring
  16. Side note: fresh chile doesnt make your tamales (or anything) too red
  17. Set aside overnight for tomorrow we make the tamales.

Prepping the husks:

Choose high quality husks that are not too dry.

  1. Separate the larger usable husks from the chaffe.
  2. Clean the husks and separate into piles. Bad, good small and good large. Good large is what you want to use. The good small pile is for doubling up for a single tamale.
  3. Soak the husks for 20-30 minutes in warm or hot water. This softens them
  4. Drip dry them, they will not be totally dry.. on purpose.

Simple Grilled Sea Bass

A simple way to season and serve grilled sea bass. We used the leaner local stuff, not the super oily chilean stuff.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon paprika
  • lemon pepper to taste
  • sea salt to taste
  • 1.5 – 2 pounds sea bass
  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • 2 large cloves garlic, chopped
  • 2 tablespoon finely chopped Italian flat leaf parsley

Process:

  1. Mix the spices in a bowl and spread evenly over towel dried sea bass
  2. Grill the sea bass on a very hot, well oiled grill for approx 6 mins each side.
  3. While grilling, melt the butter in w the chopped parsley and garlic over very low heat
    1. When butter is finished, hit it w a little kosher salt.
  4. Spoon butter over seabass on served plates.

Do’s: WIP..not sure yet

Dont’s: WIP..not sure yet

Classic Top Shelf Margarita

The simplest of drinks that is the victim of too much cuteness at most bars. The key as always is to keep it to the simple ingredients and to use quality tequila.  Never add agave syrup, which is just simple syrup. Most bars, even good ones default to using it. It kills the drink. Order a skinny if you have to, a skinny is just a margarita. 

Ingredients:

  • Don Julio 70 or like good silver tequila
  • Naranja Orange Liqueur 
  • Limes
  • Large flake Margarita Salt or Tajin 
  • Ice
  • Rocks glass
  • Water
  1. Cut a lime half wise and then put a slit in it. Use the slit to run across the entire rim.
  2. Dip the wet rim in Margarita (large flake) salt or Tajin
  3. Fill rocks glass w ice above rim. The glass is important, this recipe size fits perfectly
  4. Squeeze 1 lime on ice. 
  5. Add 1.5 oz of Tequila (maybe a touch more)
  6. Add .5 oz of Naranja
  7. Add 1.5 oz of water
  8. Stir, this will drop the ice level, refill with ice to over the top
  9. On the beach, the ice starts melting by the time the drink gets to you. You are recreating this by adding water.
  10. CRITICAL: always customize for your guests. You do this once for each and you know their tastes. Naranja is quite hardy so every little bit counts.

Do:

  • Overfill w ice and stir the ice when done. This salts the drink and gives it a touch of water from the melting ice, creating a refreshing, not tart drink.
  • Use good cocktail ice, the cracked stuff if you can find it.

Do not:

  • Use bad tequila, treat it like a Martini. 
  • Use triple sec.

 

Simple Sole

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 1/2 pounds fresh petrale sole fillets
  • Salt, to taste
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 3 Tbsp minced shallots
  • 1/4 cup dry white wine
  • 2 Tbsp  butter
  • Fresh thyme leaves
  • Lemon

METHOD

1 Pat the sole fillets dry with paper towels. There is a lot of moisture in petrale sole, so you might have to pat them dry twice. Lightly salt the fillets on both sides.

2 Heat oil in a large, stick-free skillet on medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot, carefully add the fillets to the pan. Brown the fillets gently on both sides. Sole fillets will cook up very quickly, no more than a few minutes on each side. Once done, remove the fillets from pan and place on a warm plate.

3 Add shallots to the pan and sauté until soft. Deglaze the pan with white wine and scrape up the browned bits at the bottom of the pan. Add butter and gently swirl to make a sauce. Add herbs, and squeeze a little lemon juice into the sauce. Spoon over the sole.

Serve immediately.

Grilled Lobster Tail

We found this very simple recipe and it worked like a charm. 

  1. To prepare lobster tails for grilling: Using kitchen shears, cut the top membrane off the lobster tails and discard. 
  2. Partially loosen the meat from the shell, leaving the end of the tail attached. 
  3. Gently lift the loosened tail meat up and rest just on top of the shell. Brush tails with melted butter with an herb infusion, we use fresh thyme, lots of it.
  4. When the grill is ready, arrange the tails shell side down and cook 6-8 minutes. 
  5. Turn tails over so the meat side is on the grill and continue to cook 2-4 minutes until the meat is cooked through. Serve with a touch melted herb butter and fresh lemon. 

 

Dont: add butter before turning flesh down, causes burning

Do: use a lot of herbs in butter, the lobster is basically roasting in the butter

Pappardelle w Leeks and Sausage

A most epic recipe we got from eric and kenton..amazing…simple.

Ingredients:

Olive Oil

Truffle Oil

Butter

2 Leeks

3 Italian Sausages

Salt

Pepper

1 cup White Wine

Recipe:

  1. Cut up leeks into small pieces and rinse
  2. Sautee in oil/butter mix for 10 mins
  3. Slice open sausages and add sausage meat, discarding the sausage casing. Break up the sausage meat into smaller bites.
  4. Cook sausage and leeks until sausage has sufficiently browned
  5. Add 3/4 cup of dry white wine
  6. Cook until wine evaporates
  7. Cook your fresh pasta al dente w lots o salt (like seawater).. fresh pasta only otherwise you could die of sadness
  8. Transfer your pasta into a large bowl.. (dont drain, pull out w tongs to ensure some of the salt water stays on pappardelle)
  9. Toss fresh pasta w truffle oil
  10. Mix in the leeks/sausage love
  11. Salt and pepper to taste
  12. Serve w grated grana
  13. BAM!

Do: use more truffle oil than u might think, make sure u can smell 8-10 inches away

Don’t: use non-fresh pasta or drain the pasta

The El Dorado

El Dorado Kitchen is the originator of this great summer cocktail

Ingredients for two Martini’s:

  • Orange Grey Goose (or Absolut Orange): 4.5 oz
  • Lillet Blanc: 2.5 oz
  • Orange
  • Regular Ice
  • Martini Glasses.
  • Cherries w stems… ideally fresh cherries in season but maraschino will do
  1. Fill martini shaker with regular ice cubes.
  2. Add the booze
  3. Shake the shaker 7-10 times, don’t over shake, you will water down the spirit.
  4. Carve out a nice piece of orange peel/rind for each. Zest over the glass rims. Make sure to get the essence on to as much of the inside of the rim of the glass as you can
  5. Pour into the two glasses
  6. Pop in the cherry or two
  7. Enjoy.

Way to screw this up: use other orange vodka’s… they dont seem to work.(except Absolut)