Prime Cuts

We have a very busy and long day ahead of us as we prepare for our Luigi Bosca wine dinner that we’re hosting at the steakhouse tonight.  To follow up on our episode of Prime Cuts TV from Monday on how to properly use a sharpening steel, we thought we would bring you an episode showing you how to now use your newly sharpened knife to dice a tomato.  

Tomatoes are something that can be a little tricky to cut especially if when you want don’t want any seeds in your dice.  Well today we show you how to unzip a tomato and no, we haven’t started drinking any wine yet and yes we said, unzip a tomato.

Warning: Always be very careful when using a knife especially to dice vegetables as the blade can get wet causing the blade to slip or your grip on the vegetables to slip.

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You’ve probably always wondered what that steel rod was that came with your knife block.  Maybe you knew that it was for sharpening your knife but wasn’t really sure how to use it.  Well, today’s episode of Prime Cuts TV explains how to properly use a sharpening steel.

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In future episodes we will explore other knife sharpening techniques.  As always, we hope this episode of Prime Cuts TV was helpful to you in expanding your capabilities in the kitchen

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This week for Fresh Fridays we wanted to bring you a recipe that just about everyone loves, Chicken Marsala.  A common misconception is that it’s a hard recipe to prepare.  We both think a lot of that comes from the fact that the marsala sauce is homemade and sometimes making sauces from scratch can be daunting to some.  However, we promise that this recipe is simple and something you can whip at home with ease.  We’ve both spent years making marsala, especially Joe while he worked at his previous restaurant because they ran it as a special almost every weekend.

As always, we hope you try this out at home and enjoy with your friends or family!

Ingredients

1 large chicken breast
flour for dredging
1/4 cup chopped button mushrooms
1/4 cup sliced onion
1/4 cup Marsala wine
1/3 cup heavy creme
2 tbsp butter
salt and pepper to taste
vegetable oil

Linguini or fettuccini to serve over

Preparation

• Begin by  cutting the chicken breast in half butterfly style.
• Pound the two halves of chicken to create a uniform thickness.
• Dredge the chicken lightly in flour seasoned with salt and pepper, shake of excess.
• In a LARGE saute pan melt butter with a little bit of veg oil.
• Saute chicken till golden brown on both sides and slightly crisp on the edges but not yet fully cooked.
• Remove chicken from pan and set aside, add mushrooms, and saute for 3-4 minutes till they begin to soften.
• Add onions and saute till soft.
• Add Marsala wine to pan, and stand back as the alcohol will ignite, when the flame subsides, scrape pan with a wooden spoon to deglaze and mix all cooking bits into the sauce, these will flavor and thicken the final sauce.
• Reduce this down to a syrupy consistency with a rich brown color.
• Add heavy creme to pan, and reserved chicken breasts, reduce till the sauce has a light brown color and is thickened considerably, approximately 5-6 minutes.
• Check for taste and season with salt and pepper, serve over pasta,  Fresh fettuccini is my favorite for this, but many types work well with this sauce.

Remember this dish will only be as good as the Marsala wine you use to cook it with, so rather than buying a huge cheap bottle, try and find a small bottle of something decent.  If you tell your wine salesman that you are looking for wine for the purpose of cooking they will usually have a few bottles that are suited for just that purpose.

Enjoy!

You can download a PDF version of this Chicken Marsala Recipe.

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Photo by: Sea-turtle

Lately Joe has been crazy over steak on the bone and he wanted to share that passion with everyone.  If you’ve never had a steak on the bone, read about Joe’s obsession below and then run out and try one!

Over the last 6 years as my steakhouse has developed and matured, so has my taste for steaks, either cooked by myself or cooked by other people/restaurants.  At first I thought it was my inner chef’s unquenchable curiosity to know more and be more knowledgeable about my topic of expertise.  I now know that that curiosity is only part of it,… I am simply put, a big ole carnivore…I love meat, red meat in particular.  When my family asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday this year, I told them “I want to go to Ruth’s Chris and eat a 50 dollar steak and a wedge salad”.  This confused my family  very much as they tend to think that after being a grill man for the last 7+ years of my life I would be sick of steaks.  But honestly, as much as I like to talk about the different cuts or cooking methods being better or worse than each other, (and I do every day) I simply don’t think that I have ever met a steak that I didn’t like, or for that matter wasn’t able to finish.

If you were to ask me what my favorite steak was, right now I would have to reply with two words, or rather a letter and a word… T-bone.  For those who don’t know, T-bone is basically a NY Sirloin on the bone.  Steaks on the bone to me embody the essence of what steak eating is all about, physically and metaphorically.  For one, just to look at a thick steak on the bone is to see something primal, rough,and real. Look at a thick cut T-bone on a plate with no room for sides, garnish or anything else.  Then look at a perfectly trimmed, petite piece of filet mignon, garnished with edible orchids and a lot of empty space on the plate and tell me which gets your blood boiling hotter.

The taste of steak on the bone is different too.  The marrow flavor permeates the beef which does not cook as evenly when the bone is left in (and I’m not saying this as a bad thing at all).  The outside edges of the steak are cooked a little bit more than the center part next to the bone, which has a little jewel of meat that regardless of temperature (for the most part) tends to be nice and red, and contains the true flavor of beef.  The smell that comes from a steak on the bone is different too,  and I don’t know how exactly to describe it, but it smells more like steak.  The bone bits char while on the grill and release their last bit of precious marrow, dripping on the fire as it cooks. If I were a rich candle company, this is the sent I would capture, nothing smells better.

Simply put there is something special about steaks on the bone, and I think that most serious steak lovers will agree with me on this one.  So, for all who read this I implore you, the next time you go out to your favorite butcher or steakhouse, go outside your comfort zone, be a little bit more of a rustic carnivore, and try steak on the bone.  As I often tell my servers, tell your customers that  ”A T-bone is just a NY Strip with a bone in it, and a little piece of filet on the far side of the bone” and if that hasn’t sold them, then the delicious marrow smell of another customers T-bone as it sizzles on its way past them usually does.

I LOVE STEAK ON THE BONE!

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Photo by: epc

No, no, neither one of us are looking for a new job (well, how much are you offering? )! One of the things that is envious of all those celebrities on Cribs is that most of them have personal chefs that whip up fantastic meals every night.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the same thing?!?!  What if it only cost you approximately $12/day for great menu options created by award winning chefs?  Cool huh?!?! 

Well, the other day we found just the service for you, thanks to our friend Chris Brogan when he posted a reviewof Personal Chef to Go.  Personal Chef to Go is a gourmet food service which ships freshly made meals directly to your home.  The concept was created by two award winning chefs, Chef Gene Castelluccio and Chef Blair Grossman.  Now I’m sure you’re thinking that this is probably just a glorified microwave dinner.  Wrong. Every meal is delivered fresh, yes fresh not frozen, directly from their kitchen to your home or office.  There is a weekly menu which is made by the chefs from scratch.  Chef Castelluccio and Chef Grossman cater their menus to 3 different types: Busy Singles, Couples on the Go and Family Favorites.  Make sure you check out those links to see the amazing menus they have up right now!

We can’t wait to try these meals and will be placing an order with Personal Chef to Go sometime within the next week or so.  As soon as we each get our meals we will post reviews for all of you.  We are going to plan on trying the Busy Singles (for Joe) and Couples on the Go (for Justin) menu options.  Stay tuned!

If you’ve tried Personal Chef to Go please leave a comment below and let us know what you thought of it.

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Over recent weeks we have covered some of the fundamentals to help you become a professional chef in your home kitchen.  We went over tips on how to choose a knife (our preference is Shun) and now today we bring you a video from our friends at Food Gear on how to choose the proper cutting board.

You may be asking yourself what this has to do with Meat the Press Mondays.  It’s simple: having the proper cutting board along with the proper knife are critically important.  While you can get by with a lesser quality knife, please do not skimp on your cutting board.  Not following basic care guidelines and/or not buying a quality cutting board can put you and your family in danger because of stored bacteria, cross-contamination, and more.

If you can’t see this video in your RSS reader, you can view it here: Food Gear – Simple Tips to Choosing the Right Cutting Board.

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Notice anything different around here?  We hope you like the new changes.  We wanted to streamline all of our media and make it more accessible to you.  We are going to continue making improvements over the next couple weeks.  As we make these changes, please let us know what you think either in the comments, email us, or hit up Justin on one of his networks (listed on the right).

Oh yeah, and one more thing: we finally have a logo! Let us know what you think!

Thanks for the continued support.  We hope we keep bringing you quality content that is helpful and informative.