Filet with Apple Slaw & Stuffed Potato

Filet with Wine Glazed Mushrooms and Apple Pear Slaw

The most notable difference I encounter between America and Russia when I am cooking is the availability of meats. Actually I should say that meat is available no problem, but that there are major differences between American meat and the meat I cook with in Russia. The American public is rapidly becoming aware of the appalling conditions in which meat is raised and slaughtered. I'm not going to go into details about the system, however the result is that we get relatively inexpensive meat, marbleized with fat which produces more flavor.

By contrast, most of the meat available to me in Russia does not have this fat marble and so the meat must be cooked differently. Another big difference that is difficult to get used to is the way meat is cut and portioned. In most traditional markets, they don't have band saws and cutting equipment that is commonplace in American slaughterhouses and butchers. So as I walk the aisles of the marketplace, middle-aged women sling large cleavers with blood splattered across the front of their smock. They chop through a chunk of meat while calling out to me trying to get my attention towards their wares. It always causes a cold shiver to crawl up the back of my neck and I can't help but wonder if they have a hockey mask under the table somewhere. At least I know the meat is fresh.

Since meat is generally hacked up in whichever fashion they choose, premium cuts are often lost, unrecognized, and tossed into the pile for making farsh (ground beef). Occasionally I find steaks that could be called T-bone, but almost never a good filet. The filet is the most luxurious piece of meat on a cow. I remember the first time I cooked a porterhouse steak in Russia for my girlfriend. After taking a bite she couldn't understand the difference; why had I made such a big deal out of finding these 2 steaks? I told her she should now take a bite from the other side of the bone. Watching her eat bite after bite of the filet side, all I heard were unique noises of approval and a simple "wow". There is a difference!

So a good filet is definitely another one of those indulgences I don't pass up when I spend some time in California. Tonight, I made classic filets with a simple twist. Seared filet topped with a white wine, mushroom reduction and topped with some apple pear slaw.

We should prepare the slaw first so when the filets finish cooking we can simply top them and get to eating!

Apple Pear Slaw

1 medium carrot

1 fuji apple

1/2 anjou pear

juice from 1/2 lime.

 Peel the carrot, apple and pear and cut them into 1/8 inch (3 mm) matchsticks.

Place them in a bowl and cover them with the juice of 1/2 lime. The lime juice will keep the slaw from turning brown while we cook the steaks. Toss to coat everything with the lime juice.

You see the two filets here have a beautiful fat marble running through them which is a good sign of flavor. Start off by washing them under running water and drying them completely. Season the filets with salt and pepper on both sides. Preheat the oven to 350F (177C).

Add 2 Tbsp (30 ml) of olive oil to a pan. Don't use a non-stick pan because we actually want the nice brown bits to stick to the pan while we sear the filets for 2 minutes on each side.

After searing the filets on both sides. Place them onto a lightly greased pan (or use aluminum foil) and place them into the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes (depending on the thickness) or until the internal temperature of the meat reaches 135F (57C). 

You will notice in this picture, I have stuffed potatoes to go with the filets. The stuffed potato recipe is below.

While the filets are finishing in the oven, return to the pan we seared them in. You will notice lots of tasty little brown bits on the bottom of the pan. This is all great flavor!!

Add 1 cup of dry white wine to the pan and stir over medium heat, scraping all the tasty brown bits off the pan with a wooden spoon. Keep scraping and cooking for 2 minutes, allowing the liquid to reduce and being sure to scrape the pan clean.

Mince 1 clove of garlic, 1 small shallot (or 1/2 small red onion), and 2 mushrooms.

Add the mushrooms, onion, and garlic to the pan with 1 Tbsp (15 ml) butter. Stir gently until combined. Cook for 5 minutes until the liquid is reduced slightly.

When the filets have reached their perfect internal temperature of 135F (177C), remove them from the oven and place them on a plate. Top the filet with the mushroom mixture.

I have had this debate with my friends in Russia several times. Russians generally (and I hate to generalize) will overcook their meat until it is dry and without any color in the middle. Since there are not many controls for meat quality and preparation, there is a scare of disease. Russians compensate by cooking meats so much that nothing could survive (including the meat). We need to remember that juiciness is determined by temperature. Everybody loves a juicy steak right?

Most bacteria, including salmonella that might be in the meat, die at 140F (60C). By cooking our meat to 135F(57C), the carry-over cooking time will raise the internal temperature to 140C (60C) before it starts to cool again. this will give us dead bacteria (if it was ever there to begin with) and juicy meat!! Sounds like a win-win situation to me. Let the meat rest for 5 minutes before cutting so the juices will settle back into the meat and not just run out when the meat is cut. This rest time also allows the carry-over cooking to do it's job.

Top the steak with the apple slaw and serve.

Stuffed Potatoes

3 medium baking potatoes (russets are perfect)

1 cup (225 ml) cheddar cheese, grated.

2 green onions, chopped

1 Tbsp (15 ml) butter

1/4 cup (59 ml) milk

salt and pepper

Clean the potatoes thoroughly under cold water. Do not peel the potatoes. Poke each potato 3 or 4 times on each side with a fork. This helps the moisture escape while they bake, instead of tearing a hole in the skin to let the moisture out. Bake the potatoes for 50-60 minutes, or until the feel soft when squeezed. 

Cut the potatoes in half lengthwise. 

Using a clean kitchen towel to protect your hand from the hot potatoes, use a large spoon to hollow out the skin. 

Continue to spoon out each potato half and put the scouped potato into a bowl with the grated cheddar cheese. Save the empty skins.

After all the potato halves are hollowed, add 1 Tbsp (15 ml) butter and 1/4 cup (59 ml) milk to the bowl.

Use a potato masher or a fork to mash the potato and cheese mixture with the milk and butter.

Once the potato and cheese is combined, add the chopped green onions and use a spoon to combine. We don't want to add the green onions before this time because the onions would also become mashed while mashing the potatoes.

Take each empty skin and use the large spoon to fill them with the mashed potato mixture. I usually overload the skins a little so I will end up with 1 or 2 extra unused skins. This helps in case you accidentally tear a skin too much while refilling them.

After filling the potato skins with the mixture, top them with some of the grated cheddar cheese and place them on a lined pan. Place into the oven on the highest rack and broil for 10 minutes or until the cheese melts and begins to brown.

You can enjoy these stuffed potatoes with many different meals, or even alone by themselves. Top them with bacon, sour cream, or many different condiment ideas you might have. Experiment and see what you like.

There was not much talking while we were eating these filets and stuffed potatoes. It's always a good sign when there's silence, it means people are too busy eating!!

Unfortunately, before you know it, you'll be down to your last bite!! So remember, find a good piece of meat, and we like marbleized fat when looking for a tender piece of meat. Don't overcook the meat!! Cooking meat until there is no color inside means there is also no juiciness and flavor inside, so lets cook it only enough to kill the possible dangerous bacteria, but not so much that we loose our flavors.

The filet is one of my favorite pieces of beef, and when I find it in Russia, it's a big treat. It's usually pretty cheap too because it's sold as just another piece of meat. In any case, finding some great ingredients to go with it, and using just enough heat to get the job done, is one of my favorite American Flavors.

Appetizer Night!

Sometimes it feels good not to eat a full meal, heavy with meats, starches, vegetables, etc. I am here in California for a few weeks while I am going through the unending difficulties of renewing my Russian visa, and looking forward to the forthcoming difficulties of actually registering the visa within 3 days once I land back in Russia. So, I take these opportunities to take advantages of the flavors that I miss from California that are not available or cost-prohibitive in my city on the other side of the world.

You've seen some of the dishes I've been cooking in California; usually a full main dish accompanied by sides and filling enough to even be considered too much food. Although we love to eat in California, there is also a collective focus on healthy eating, flavorful ingredients, and portion control. It is considered healthier to eat more, smaller meals throughout the day rather than overwhelming your body with larger quantities of food in one sitting and then starving your metabolism until the next great feast.

I haven't concentrated on sharing only healthy recipes here. There are a lot better places written by more qualified people if that is what you are after. My goal is to share some of my favorite, most basic flavors that I remember from my childhood and still enjoy to cook. This is my personal recipe box that I am sharing, including the influences on each recipe by local ingredients I am forced to use to create flavors from opposite sides of the world. The appetizers I am about to show you have amazing flavor and are healthier than most.

Flavor usually means fats and proteins, and a lot of calories. The image of the perfect American family traditionally shows families sitting together for 3 meals a day, enjoying plentiful meats, cheeses, breads, etc. and that image persisted through the last few generations as normal and healthy. Family economics these days generally require two incomes and that leaves a lot less time for meal preparation, and health research has proven there are better habits to eating. One of them being, eating light at dinner, allowing your body to concentrate on more important functions than digesting, such as healing cells, organs, and repairing the day's effects. So, even though I enjoy a nice hearty meal as much as the next guy, sometimes it feels great just to have an appetizer night. I created some light appetizers that included some of my favorite flavors that are a bit more expensive or impossible to accomplish back in Russia.

I made 4 different appetizers for us, each with a distinct separate flavor. These are very simple to put together and take very little time. Most of the time is spent finding the ingredients, but when they are put together, it is well worth it.

Shrimp Ceviche on baby Chinese cabbage.

Garden fresh vegetables and herbs will help this appetizer taste very bright and the flavors are unforgettable. The ingredients we need are:

1 lb. (450 grams) small cocktail shrimp, cooked, shelled, and de-veined
1 young head of Chinese Cabbage
1 ripe avocado
1 yellow bell pepper
1 ripe tomato
3-4 radishes
fresh cilantro
1 lime
1/2 red onion (optional)

Completely rinse the cooked shrimp and dry thoroughly on paper towels. Place the dried shrimp into a medium bowl. Dice the tomato into small chunks approximately 1/8 of an inch (3mm). We are looking for small pieces because each bite will have many small pieces of each ingredient, so make them reasonably small. Place the diced tomato into the medium bowl.

Cut off the top and bottom of the yellow bell pepper. Then, you can lay the bell pepper on it's side and use your knife to cut along the inside, cutting away the ribs and waxy inside of the pepper flesh. You will be left with a nice, uniform strip of bell pepper. Cut this strip into 1/8 inch (3mm) strips, and then cut those strips into 1/8 inch 93mm) squares. You can use other colors if you can't find a yellow bell pepper. I use yellow because it adds to the color variety in the final dish. Add the diced bell pepper to the bowl.

Take each radish and cut the top and bottom off. Next, cut one side of the radish and lay that side down flat on the cutting board. Use your knife to cut off the two new sides, making a square. Then lay this square on it's side and cut off the final remaining side with red skin. Now you should be left with a white block of radish. Divide the block into 3 planks and then stack the 3 planks on each other and cut them 3 times into straws, then cut the straws into a small dice. Add the diced radish to the bowl.

To cut the avocado, use your knife to cut into it length-wise and rotate the knife around the seed, cutting the meat but not through the seed. Twist the two halves to separate them and use your knife to lightly hit the seed so the knife sticks into the seed. Twist the knife and seed together out of the avocado half, and using your fingers, pinch behind the seed so your fingers gently push the seed off the blade. Use a large spoon to separate the avocado meat from the skin and lay it flat-side down on the cutting board. Make one horizontal cut on each half, then dice them by cutting 3 or 4 times in each direction. Add the diced avocado to the bowl.

Chop some fresh cilantro and add to the bowl with the juice of 1 lime. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and stir all the ingredients to combine. Let the mixture sit a few minutes to combine the flavors while preparing the baby cabbage spoons.

Cut off the bottom 1 inch (25mm) of the cabbage head. We want the leaves to separate from each other, but we do not want the very middle to fall apart. When you pull out the very middle, you will see where you should cut the bottom again to separate the smallest leaves. Cut as little as you can, and pull apart the inner-most leaves to preserve the cup-like attribute to them. These leaves will hold our mixture. Reserve the larger leaves for another purpose.

Use a large spoon and fill each cabbage leaf with as much of the mixture as it will hold. If you end up with more mixture than leaves, you can use a toothpick to hold together larger leaves with the mixture inside, or simply put any remaining mixture into a small bowl and put it in the center of the plate with the leaves surrounding it. Garnish with a sprig of cilantro.

Prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe

Cantaloupe is one of those fruits I have not seen in Russia and it is sorely missed. Every spring there is a definite onslaught of watermelon, and a few other melons I have not quite identified yet, but cantaloupe and honeydew melons are two that I always keep an eye out for and have been unable to find in Russia. So I took this opportunity to create this appetizer while I am in California. It's simple, it's basic, and it is not even relatively creative, however the flavor combination is truly worth revisiting often.

Simply cut a cantaloupe into 16ths, then cut each slice into half and wrap it with a slice of prosciutto. In Russia I will do something similar but since I can't find cantaloupe and prosciutto is twice as expensive as it is in America (which already isn't cheap), I will try wrapping a similar type melon with any thinly-sliced dry-aged meat we find locally. The contrasts of salty and sweet, meat and melon, will make every bite interesting.

Parmigiano Reggiano and pear stacked 'crackers'.

Aged Parmigiano Reggiano has a slightly crunchy, salty flavor which contrasts with the grainy, sweet pear perfectly.  Thinly slice both the Parmesan cheese and the pears and stack them, alternating layers. The reason to slice them as thinly as possible is because we want to create more surface area on our ingredients. More surface area means more of that ingredient comes into contact with our tongue registering more flavor. And it's all about flavor, isn't it?

Bacon Wrapped Scallops.

Scallops is another food that unfortunately I have not seen in Russia. Since scallops are mostly found on the east coast of America, it's no wonder why they aren't on every restaurant menu and in every market of Russia too. Not to mention that only recently I have started seeing cured bacon in a couple of our local hypermarkets in Russia. Our familiar smoked, cured American bacon is a flavor that almost all Russians have never tasted and still remains quited expensive when I do find it. Bacon wrapped scallops is another one of those American flavors I make sure I find while I am here.

Fry the bacon in a pan, but it's important not to cook it until it is crispy. We still want the bacon to be flexible enough to wrap around our scallops.

Check your scallops. Many scallops can be quite large and can easily be cut in half to create a bite-sized appetizer. Cut large scallops in half, rinse and dry the scallops thoroughly. If you don't dry them well, they will not caramelize in the bacon fat. Once the scallops are wrapped, using a toothpick to hold the bacon around the scallop, return them to the pan of bacon grease.  Fry each side only for 2 minutes. Do not move them around the pan, if they stick to the bottom they will release naturally as the cook further.

The hardest part about these appetizers, is getting one before they are gone! Be sure to make plenty if you have more than a couple guests coming. Sometimes it's really nice to just sample a few different flavors and enjoy a nice and easy appetizer night. These appetizers are some of my American flavors I wish I could recreate on the other side of the world. Who knows, maybe soon. Enjoy!!