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Alex Caceres -120

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#561

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Meat pie... why? Why put meat in a pie?

I'm baffled by it,

"Meat pie", what?

But to digress, to be specific, I'm mentioning the "wellington" family of dishes. For example, lets take an entire salmon side and encase it in puff pastry and bake it, or a whole beef shank, and put it in puff pastry, and bake it.

Why? I AM TOTALLY UNSURE.
#566

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Heres Sacko's favorite salsa recipe:

I'm sorry amigo, salsa here may have a different meaning here then it is there. There is two meaning I've seen, the first is some peculiar odd boiled tomato dish thats canned and sold to people as "chip dip", the second is some type of salsa fresca, fresh tossed ingredients.

So technically, this would be caramelized corn salsa fresca, I think, but correct me if I am wrong, I know nothing of the language. I live in Canada, my neighbours are donks.


Anyway, heat up your grill, take some fresh corn and grill on all sides. The key it to caramelize it and slightly darken it without burning it. Don't be afraid of it blackening, its supposed to happen, but if you pay attention and flip it vertically and horizantally it will not burn. If you guys want, I can take a picture for you the next time I do it, just caramelize and lightly blacken about half the kernels, its not too complex.

What you want to do is cut all the kernels off the cob, cut off the tip, grip the root, and just cut downward with a knife, set aside to cool.

In another bowl prepare a mixture of extremely finely diced red onion, red pepper, jalapeno pepper, and some diced coriander (cilantro).

The key with the peppers is crucial to the preparation process. Cut a pepper in half, you notice how once deseeded and deveined there is this soft white layer stuck to the skin of the pepper? This contains all the moisture of the entire pepper, if you leave this in the dish the liquid will release and turn your dish into mush. Use a petty or paring knife to trim the peppers as close as possible to the skin, if its a jalapeno, all you want to see is green, and if its the red pepper, all you want to see is red. Take this process as thin as possible and then dice them as thin as possible. Some sort of salsa fresca varient like this needs every ingredient cut as finely as possible.

Season with S&a bit of P, lemon AND lime juice, oil very lightly, toss it, fridge it over the night. If when you take it out after the night and there is liquid collecting in the bottom of the container, you did not slice into the peppers fine enough, and trust me, it will ruin the dish.

This is the ultimate "salad" accompaniment for crab cakes.
#570

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Well my attempt at creating a legit UFC forum cooking/gambling discussion thread with intelligence has been usurped. So I'll just repost my initial post in the ALEX CACARES thread.

As requested by MD - "Croque Monsier" recipe, my favorite sandwich.

First step is to prepare a Bechamel sauce, its actually very easy.

Bechamel sauce is one of the 5 french mother sauces, and arguably the easiest to make, here is what you need:

Butter
Flour
Whole Milk
Onion
Clove
Bay
Nutmeg
Salt and Pepper (If you are making this for personal use, use black pepper, personally I think white pepper tastes like a barnyard, its necessary in a restaurant setting for "presentation purposes", but really, it tastes like garbage)

So theres two steps here, what you want to do is use a pot to bring your milk up to heat. The ratio of milk:roux in this sauce is about 4 ox roux:1L milk. Lets assume we are making a 0.5 litre portion, throw in half an onion into the pot chopped roughly, a bay leaf, 2 cloves, and a small amount of ground nutmeg, maybe a couple peppercorns. Gently bring it up to heat, dont bring it up to a simmer, as milk scalds easily. One tip I learned in school was to rinse the pot out in water, dump the water, but do not wipe out the bottom of the pot prior to adding the milk. It sounds illogical, but it actually provides a sort of barrier for scalding.

Next, make a white roux. White roux is a combination of equal parts butter and flour. You are going to melt the butter in a sauce pan, and add the flour to it, and gently cook the flour into the butter while stirring. You do not want to cook it very long though, if it starts to turn yellow it becomes what is known as a "blonde roux", this is not what we want for this sauce. Just cook it until it incorporates the flour into the butter and kind of thickens up a bit, then you want to remove the pan from the heat. The reason for this is that you want your roux to cool for a moment before adding your milk base, the difference in temperature prevents the roux from clumping in your sauce. In any case, return the pan to heat and slowly add your milk base along with the flavoring ingredients while stiring constantly to combine the roux with the milk base. Add one ladle and stir until smooth, add another, etc. You want to bring this to a low to moderate simmer.

Roux does not actually activate its thickening power until it simmers for a few moments, so while combining the two it may just look like liquid, but it will actually thicken. You want the consistency of a reduced cream sauce, if its too thick, you can add more milk (or cream, but I'll get to that later), if its too thin, what you can do is whip up a buerre manier (literally, kneeded together raw butter and flower until its incorporated, kneed the shit out of this stuff) and add it in small pieces to the sauce, again, letting it simmer and waiting until it thickens. Once you have the correct consistency, set it to a very, very low simmer and let the flavors all mix while stirring occasionally to prevent burning on the bottom of the pan. Season with S&P.

Personally, I like to add a bit more roux to my sauce, and then once it simmers add some cream for extra body. The clove and nutmeg are essential, use fresh nutmeg if possible and just shred it over a microplaner or fine grater and add it. You do not want the sauce to taste like either nutmeg or clove, you just want a tiny bit in the background to add a bit of depth to the sauce, or else it just tastes like reduced cream. When the sauce is finished, remove it from the heat, and swirl in a small pad of butter until it incorporates into the sace.

As for the actual sandwich, the preparation is not difficult at all:

Take some slices of a nice french loaf, lightly butter, and toast in the oven. Pull them out, spread some excellent dijon or spicy mustard on them, and fill with black forest (or any other kind, to be honest) thinly sliced ham, and gruyere cheese. Close the sandwich, spoon the bechamel sauce on top of the sandwich, and top with grated gruyere and, if you have it, either pedano or regganio parmesan, return to the oven, toast until the cheese is melted and then turn on the broiler for about a minute to lightly brown the sauce and cheese on top of the sandwich.

You are now in posession of literally the best sandwich on the planet.

If you want to step it up a notch, fry a sunny side up or over easy egg and throw it on top, you now have a croque madame, also an elite sandwich.

Enjoy the shit out of that, its penetrating gold.


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