Archive for the 'Food and Wine' Category

Making of a ‘Special’

Published December 20, 2011 Food and Wine , Stuff happens 1 Comment
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Talk about making a special for the holidays and most cooks in the kitchen suddenly perk up! Inspiration is sought from books. Ideas are exchanged. Arguments are made. But nothing is as exciting as going for a trial run. When an idea for a special reaches that critical exalted point of a ‘trial run’ where Chef Bruce says, ‘’let’s try it out’’, frantic activity ensues. Orders are placed with vendors taking care it’s not confused with our regular orders.  The reservation list is scanned to find out when it will be relatively less busy in the kitchen for the cooks to pay proper attention to the special. And everyone braces for Chef Bruce’s ‘Go’.

‘’For this year’s Christmas Eve menu, we decided to try and make a special that’s in tune with the holiday feel,’’ says Chef Bruce while straining the jus out of the slow-roasted lamb shoulders. Lamb 3 Ways, comprising of slow-roasted lamb shoulders, braised lamb neck meat ravioli and grilled lamb chops is not just a tribute to the festivity in the air, it’s also a filling gourmet meal that leaves you astonished with the use of bold favors and surprising ingredients.

Gigante beans for one. It’s slowly cooked in a flavorful broth which draws the medley of flavors out of the bouquet garni and into the beans. Or cipollini onions which are roasted with honey. Or the braised lamb neck that gets cooked until the meat is falling out of the bones.  And surely the piquillo emulsion, that might be just a garnish on the plate but gives the rest a run for their money!

“While my family follows the Seven Fishes Christmas Eve Tradition here at the restaurant we break all the rules.  This item is just too good to save for everyday!  Happy Christmas,” shares Betsy, who is spending Christmas this year feasting on her Mom’s prime rib roast.

A Good Peach is a Leaner! (Peaches on the menu and a recipe too!)

Published August 5, 2010 Food and Wine , Recollections 2 Comments
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A couple of years ago I met then New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Charles Kuperus.  He was a throw back to some of my professors (and classmates) when I was at Cook College (Rutgers College of Agriculture and Environmental Science); educated, articulate, smart and sill a farmer at heart; very down to earth.  He was eating a luscious juicy peach, standing up, learning over a little so that it didn’t drip onto his shirt, thoroughly enjoying it like someone who completely grasps what it to takes to grow those yummy morsels of summer sweet goodness. When he was finished he stood up straight and proclaimed “a good peach is a leaner!”  Yup, a good peach is nice and juicy (not dry and hard!) and those juices will dribble all over you if you don’t lean out and away.  It’s gravity. 
 
The occasion was a New Jersey Peach Council  kick off of peach season.  Yes, New Jersey has a Peach Council, and, of course, The Frog and The Peach features peaches on the menu every summer.  It’s a no brainer!  It’s in our blood, our name and Jersey peaches are up there with Jersey tomatoes; too good to not have a place on the menu.  Peaches are all over our menus!  We’ve got sweet preparations.  We’ve got savory ones. The Annual “frog a la pêche” 5-Course Tasting Menu features peaches 5 times in 5 different items.  Every year Chef Bruce Lefebvre manages to develop new preparations, (and our guests who come back year after year tell us, “This is the best one yet!”) with the exception of our signature “Peach Carpaccio with Duck Confit.”  This one is a keeper!  Sometimes you find an item that is too good to tweak.  This one is a perfect balance of sweet and salty, crisp and smooth, hot and cold, refreshing and rich, upscale and down to earth.  It’s a palate pleaser…actually, it makes mine dance.
 
We love our Peach Carpaccio with Duck Confit so much we are sharing it with you. You can make it at home!  The duck confit part is a production to make at home, it’s available in upscale grocery stores and I believe I even saw some at Costco recently.  Here’s Chef Bruce Lefebvre’s recipe:

Peach Carpaccio with Duck Confit, Baby Arugula and Spiced Almonds  

Serves 4                      

For the Salad

  • 1 ½ cups shredded duck confit
  • ¼ cup Prosecco vinaigrette, recipe below, or to taste
  • 2 just-ripe peaches, peeled
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • ½ cup spiced almonds, recipe below, coarsely chopped
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

For the Duck Confit

Buy confit duck legs at Wegman’s or other upscale grocery store.  (Contact me if you want a recipe.)

You will be taking the meat off the bone and shredding it somewhat.  The rest of the direction is below in the    section on assembling the salad.

For the Prosecco Vinaigrette

Extra vinaigrette with keep in the refrigerator for 2 weeks.

Makes 4 cups

  • 1 bottle Prosecco (reserve ½ cup for finishing)
  • 2 small shallots, peeled and diced
  • 1 pasteurized, organic egg yolk
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
  • ¼ cup fresh lemon juice
  • 8 ice cubes
  • 3 ½ cups grape seed, corn or canola oil
  • Salt and white pepper to taste

 Add the bottle (minus the ½ cup) Prosecco to a pot.  Cook over a medium high heat, allowing the wine to gently boil until it is reduce by half to ¾ cup.

In a blender add the reduced Prosecco, shallots, yolk, vinegar, mustard, lemon juice and ice cubes.  Blend on high speed, slowly pouring the oil into the blender until the dressing is emulsified.

When cool, taste and season with the salt, white pepper.  Stir in the remaining ½ cup Prosecco.

For the Spiced Almonds

These spiced nuts will stay fresh for several weeks when stored in an airtight container.  In addition to a garnish on the Carpaccio, they make a delicious and easy-to-serve cocktail snack.

Yield 1 pound

  • 1 pounds peeled whole almonds
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • ¼  cup honey
  • 1 cups water
  • 2 teaspoons canola oil
  • ½  teaspoon cayenne pepper, more if you want spicier

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place the nuts in a large bowl and wash with cold running water.  Cover the nuts with water and allow them to soak 10 minutes.  Drain the nuts.

Bring a large pot of water to a simmer and add the nuts, gently blanching them in the simmering water for 10-15 minutes.  Drain and rinse the nuts in cold water again.

In a medium pot over medium high heat, bring the sugar, honey and water to a boil, stirring occasionally until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the cayenne.

Stir the nuts into the syrup and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until no liquid is left. Add the corn oil and toss just to coat.  Taste, and add more cayenne if desired.

Spread the nuts out evenly on a nonstick sheet pan and place in the oven for 20-25 minutes, rotating the pan 180 degrees after 12 minutes.

Remove from the oven and with a fork separate the nuts while they are still warm.

The nuts will seem a little soft after cooking, but will harden as they cool.

To Assemble the Salad

Slice the peeled peaches lengthwise as thinly as possible into rounds.  

Arrange the rounds in a circular pattern on 4 plates.

Add the oil to a sauté pan and heat until smoking.  Add the duck Confit and cook until crisp, stirring occasionally, about 4 minutes.  Remove from the heat and reserve.

Place the arugula in a bowl and season with salt and pepper.  Add the Prosecco vinaigrette and toss the greens until each leaf is lightly coated with the dressing. 

Place a quarter of the arugula on top of the peaches on each plate.  Equally divide the warm Confit over the greens.

Garnish with the spiced almonds and a drizzle of the vinaigrette.

And for when you don’t’ feel like cooking, The Peach Carpaccio is on all menus right now; Lunch, Dinner, Bar .  When you are feeling really peachy, the frog al la pêche annual 5-Course Peach Tasting Menu is here until the end of peach season (very last September), $59 or with wine paired to each course $105. What could be sweet and juicier than the Peach Menu?  How about the Peach Menu for 2, you and your sweetie pie, at a discount?!  We do that every Friday, because it’s Date Night in New Brunswick (New Brunswick Rocks!), $60 off!  The Peach Tasting with Wine for 2 for $150.  That’s super peachy!

The Cocktail Craze: Bee’s Knees and other Classics.

Published November 17, 2009 Food and Wine , The Frog Bar Leave a Comment
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As previously mentioned, several months ago we kicked up our cocktail program a notch and introduced a Classic Cocktail of the Week.  I know it’s not an original idea.  Places have been doing this for years. (A colleague accused me of stealing the idea from him. LOL!)  Not original but still a good idea for a whole bunch of reasons.

We decided to do it because we thought our Bartenders could use some training in everyone making the same drinks the same way.  There is a lot of ego in drink making!  Not wanting to bruise any, and still knowing that just like with the food menu, cocktail consistency matters.  Also, as with cuisine, being grounded in the basics is necessary before a cook/chef can go off and improvise (I say).  A bartender (aka “Bar Chef”) needs grounding in classic technique and combinations before they can go off and be a credible improvisational mixologist (I say). Finally, I don’t want my bartenders using our expensive ingredients to experiment on the public. Knowledge is power. Power to the bartender!  Okay…. I am getting a little out there with this…back on track.

So we are working our way through Classic Cocktails, one week at a time.  It goes pretty much like this: One week something fairly common (Daiquiri, Tom Collins, Whiskey Sour), one week something obscure (Aviation, Silver Fizz), or in between (Negroni, Rob Roy, Zombie), throw in an occasional forgotten cocktail (Pompadour) and before know it we have perfected at least a dozen cocktails, all classics. We have a long way to go. It’s fun!  Our bartenders are better for it. Our guests more cocktail savvy too. It’s a win-win

This week we are mixing up a somewhat obscure classic cocktail Winnie-the-Pooh would love; Bee’s Knees. Not many cocktails feature honey as a sweetener; generally it would muck-up the purity of drinks with distinct flavors (Think margaritas and daiquiris. Honey? Yuck!) However, Bee’s Knees is all about the warm, floral flavors of honey.  Honey always works well with lemon, and combined with the herbal tones of Gin, it’s a match! 

Classic Cocktail

A Classic Cocktail Winnie-the-Pooh would love!

Bee’s Knees Recipe

  • 2 ounces Gin
  • 3/4 ounce Lemon Juice
  • 3/4 ounce Honey Syrup
  • Lemon peel

 Combine the Gin, Lemon juice, and Honey is a cocktail shaker with ice.  Shake.  Strain into a martini glass and garnish with a lemon peel.  Want to get fancy? Flame the lemon peel (not essential).

Wines for Budget-Conscious Times: What’s a wine guy to do?

Published April 6, 2009 Food and Wine Leave a Comment
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Posted by Jim Mullen, General Manager and Wine Director for The Frog and The Peach
4/2/2009

Our Walk-Around tasting series began in March of 2005, so we are now moving into our fifth year. The collected tasting notes on the wines that we’ve featured now runs to eighty pages. For those of us who love wine, the topic is endless; there’s always a new hot winery, a previously un-explored growing region; this years new vintage. And since the inception, we’ve really only had one theme: interesting new things that have been added to the wine list.

But these days, the times are different. People have one thing on their mind: what’s a good value? It’s a subject dear to my heart. At any time, finding a delicious wine for a less-than-expected price is one of life’s small pleasures. There have times in my life where I have had to really tighten my belt, but how can you end your day without good food and a decent bottle of wine? So both personally and professionally, I’ve developed strategies to face this dilemma.

So over the next few tastings, we’ll look into wines for challenging (aka “bad”) times. There are hundreds of wines readily available that are not only reasonable but well worth buying. And by that I mean, not just passable, but that have real character; a wine that over the course of a meal and into the evening, will continue to reveal itself. And here are some ideas upfront:

• Pay attention to the importer. If you find a wine you particularly like, take note of the people who brought it to you. Importers who bring in some of the great wines of the world, will almost always also import lesser, known, less expensive things. Importers like Kermit Lynch, Louis/Dressner, Pasternak just don’t carry bad wines-they’re obsessed (in a good way). You can trust their inexpensive bottles.

• In New Jersey, because on antiquated laws, the sale of wine is dominated by a few very large distributors. The good news is that these big guys have a blind spot for the value of older vintages. They make a practice of dumping things not of the most recent vintage to make way for the new, and, sometimes, this can be a gift to the consumer. Savvy restaurants and retail shops can often find great deals on slightly older vintages. Find one who will pass those deals on to you.

• Be adventurous. The art and science of winemaking has evolved leaps and bounds in the past couple of decades. Regions of the world that no one ever thought of now make wines that can sometimes rival many California Cabernets or even classified Bordeaux, where prices since 2005 have gone through the roof.

In our first tasting in this series, as sort of an over-view, we’ll be focusing on three of those regions: Spain, Argentina and the Rhone. There’s enough here to keep us happy well into the next bubble. Walk Around Tastings at The Frog and The Peach are scheduled for Friday May 15, September 11 and November 13. Additional information is available by calling the restaurant, 732-846-3216.

Green Garlic: Menu Inspiration Over and Over again, and a Recipe to Share

Published April 1, 2009 Food and Wine 1 Comment
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Posted by Chef Bruce Lefebvre, The Frog and The Peach

It is spring and our new menu is being phased it. People often ask me how I come up with new menus for every season. It is an interesting question because my answer is never exactly the same. One trick is that I keep a running list of ideas that come up in between “creative days” (when I have to put pen to paper), that I refer to when I need them later. Simply being in tune with one’s surroundings can also produce a fresh idea.

The one constant tool, however, is to generate a comprehensive list of a particular season’s ingredients and build from that. We are fortunate to live in a climate where every four months or so nature gives us a great variety of produce (and even fish) that are seasonal and at their peak. One ingredient that caught my attention this Spring is green garlic. It is one of spring’s first offerings and tastes like a cross between garlic and green onion.

For our 2009 Spring menu we are making a Green Garlic Vinaigrette and serving it with Rosemary and Seed Crusted Lamb Loin. Vinaigrettes are a refreshing accompaniment to meat as the weather gets warmer and we don’t need a “hot” sauce made from roasting and simmering bones for hours and hours.

Green Garlic Vinaigrette
Chef Bruce Lefebvre. The Frog and The Peach

2 oz chopped raw green garlic (white part)
1 oz chopped green garlic (greener part)
2 T green garlic puree (tops, blanched in hot water, cooled in ice water and blended with ice and 4T olive oil)
3 ea lemons, juiced
2 ea canned anchovies, minced
1T Dijon mustard
¼ C white balsamic vinegar
1.5 cup olive oil

1. Sauté the white part of the garlic in 2 T olive oil
2. Combine all ingredients except oil in a bowl.
3. Pour in the olive oil and stir with a whisk to combine well.
4. Store in refrigerator for up to 1 month.

Dining out with a restaurateur: What’s the measure?

Published March 13, 2009 Food and Wine 7 Comments
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Recently Jim and I had dinner with new friends at a restaurant near our house in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. We have this lovely old colonial home in the Mejorada neighborhood and decided to dine close to the casa at a Spanish restaurant facing the park; Meson Segoviano, Opting for the room without the florescent tube lighting (“but it’s air conditioned” the accommodating proprietor pointed out). “Ambiance matters” was probably a red- flag to our new friends that dining out with people who own an upscale restaurant might be an adventure….. with the jury out as to whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Who wants to end up dining with demanding jerks who criticize every taste, smell and detail because it’s not how it is at their own place.

I am used to dining with people I know where it’s usually, “please Betsy pick the wine,” or “you’re in the business you figure out how to divide the check’ (being a restaurateur does not mean your math skills are any more honed than the general public!). My friend Liz and I laugh when I once again correct her; “He’s the busser you don’t ask him what the specials are, wait for our server.” Other than those little “being the expert things,” I’m just like everyone else. I’m pretty easy to satisfy, will eat just about anything and am not a food and wine snob. These seasoned friends know that I don’t measure every other eatery against The Frog and The Peach.

So back to dinner with our new friends. There were 5 of us. The two other women and I opted for the pork specialty (3+ required to have this menu item) and were delighted with our ½ a little piggy head and all with crispy skin, extra tender super succulent meat in a somewhat greasy but who cares it tasted fabulous jus, and some bones big enough to see to avoid and if too small by this time we were friends enough to spit them out without anyone being offended. It was great! We were loving it! My new friend Robin popped the question about my take on the restaurant. My response was that my evaluation on a place is if I get what the concept is, what they are out to achieve, and think they are doing a good job at it, it seems to gel, then I am happy. I was indeed happy. Robin thought this was a good way to look at it; a healthy approach. Glad to get that out on the table, I believe we set the stage for many a memorable dining experience at any dive on any corner, any haute cuisine restaurant, or any place in between.

The Menu

The Menu. Cocina Economica calle 48 y 55.

About Merida dining: I would indeed starve to death in Merida if I snootily expected every restaurant to be like the F&P! I would be terribly disappointed if I used the F&P as the yard stick by which to measure every cocina economica, café and restaurant in town. That I don’t allows me to thoroughly enjoy Taco del Pastor  at Santiago Park, Arabe Taco (not sure I could find it again), Hamburgusea from the street cart vendor by Santa Lucia park, and panuchos at the cocina economica across the street from my house. Dining with a restaurateur need not be an exercise in how high into the air one can stick their nose. I can and do lick my fingers!

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