Salmon in grilled paprika sauce

Ingredients:
-Salmon fillet
-Orange bell pepper, red+yellow will do
-Fresh cream/ evoo
-Cucumber






It's a very simple dish with a delicious and omnibus sauce, first, you have to burn the skin of the bell peppers, you can do it in the oven, on the barbeque grill or just on the fire. Once you get the whole bell pepper skin burned, leave them in a big bowl and cover it, the steam will moisturize the burned skin and when it cools, you will have an easier life to peel it, seeded it without burning your fingers.

Before going to the next step to make the sauce, you can cute those sweet smoked bell peppers in strip or any shape you desire, marinade with evoo and crushed garlic(optional), it's unique taste can be used in any dish, salad, sandwich or to garnish your dish.

To make the sauce, you can use fresh cream or just the evoo to have lighter refreshing sauce, in your blender, mix them until you get a smooth texture, season with guerande salt. I often make extra grilled paprika sauce and make the pasta with it, some italian friends will disagree with me, but the mix with this sauce and pasata is just a bless.

Cut the cucumber in half perpendicularly, seeded, cut in any shape you like to garnish the dish.

Dry the salmon fillet with towel paper, saute on both side and slightly season it with guerande salt and white pepper. I personally prefer to serve the sauce under the fillet instead of pouring it on top so you can enjoy also the crispy side of your dish.


Note:

1. Always seeded the cucumber, it doesn't have much taste and will lighten your sauce, dish or salad.

2.If you want to preserve the grilled pepper, pour the evoo until it covers the peppers, it works with any kind of preserved food because the food doesn't have direct contact with the air.

Steak in Artichoke purée

Ingredients:
-A nice tender beef steak, Entrecôte recommend
-10 Holland bean or any vegetable with natural sweetness
-One artichoke
-Fresh cream and 30g butter/evoo
-Guerande salt
-Fresh grounded black pepper
-A shot of cognac

Artichoke is actually a fairly time consuming vegetable to prepare but you will be compensated with a wonderful gourmet taste, all you need is a spoon and a very sharp knife. First, cut the stalk, and cut the half top off, set the artichoke on the cutting board, start to trim the green part of the artichoke just like how you cut the orange, grapefruit skin. Then cut it in half and use the spoon to take out the hair (that's the choke) and voila! you have the artichoke heart ready to go! This preparation should not take longer than 1 minute. (Exclude the doubt time in your first try)

In a small pot, bring water to boil, cook the holland beans no more than 30 seconds, then immerse in cold water to keep it fresh and green. Same pot, cook the artichoke heart till the fork can easily penetrate it. When the artichoke heart is ready, together with the fresh cream (just good enough to make your mixer spin, you don't want the cream to overwhelm the taste of the lovely artichoke), guerande salt, and butter or evoo (extra virgin olive oil) optional. And this is the artichoke purée good to go with any red meat.

Trim your steak in smaller size before you cook it, the meat need to have the maillard reaction (when you cook the meat in hot environment, the surface of the meat turns brown and hard, sometime crispy) to seal the juice, remember to dry the steak before you put it into the pan to get the best result. When the steak is ready, season it with guerande salt and pepper, take it out and pour a shot of cognac into the pan, burn the alcohol (or not :-D), there you have the pepper cognac sauce (remember when we seasoned the steak with pepper before you took the steak out!)


Note:


1. Many people wonder which part of the artichoke is edible, my answer to that will be, try it once, because no one can tell you what you should like or dislike, follow your own instinct and discover your own taste, be open and try everything at least twice.

2. If you are interested in how and what is maillard reaction, read the book of Herve This, Kitchen Mysteries

3. Pepper will give a strange taste if your over heat it, if you are to marinade something, use the whole grain or just smash it so you can still take it out when cooking

Wine note:

We had it yesterday with a bottle of italian wine from Barbaresco 2004 and it works perfectly well with the peppery, natural sweetness from the meat, the artichoke and the holland bean.

Here we go!

A friend sent me a message asking: What's cooking? It took me a week to answer that question, so I answered: Cooking to me is a way to interpret a complex emotion, life experience and communication. It turns out my friend was just asking how am I doing...

I would like to share the joy of my life with you through this blog by exchanging ideas, comments are always welcome and of course, to share the world wide restaurant experience is essential!