From
Bar Americain by Bobby Flay
Taste: 4 of 5
Difficulty: Moderate
Time: About 90 minutes
Cost: about $120 (Depending on the quality of steaks you buy)
I must admit, I'm a Bobby Flay fanboy. Not because he's a celebrity chef, but because he made the meal that made me want to cook. I was a picky eater for more than 3/4 of my life. I brought peanut butter sandwiches to school every day from 1st to 7th grade until I discovered roast beef deli meat. In high school to college I lived off of pizza and hoagies. In early adulthood I lived off of pasta, and anything Italian. I wouldn't touch anything new...until I had a daring moment.
I was in Las Vegas. Not the typical vacation for me, but nevertheless I was there with my wife and some friends. One night we were there, my wife and I had a night alone and we decided that we'd go "all out" one night and eat at a "nice" restaurant. At the time, I didn't eat at nice restaurants. A nice restaurant to me was TGI Friday's. My friend Greg mentioned that Bobby Flay had a restaurant there in Ceasar's Palace. I had never heard of Bobby Flay before, but Greg mentioned he liked "chipotle," which at the time, I thought he was talking about the fast food chain. I never watched food network. This was probably in 2007 before Bobby had 30 shows on the air, but he was just starting to take off in popularity. We booked a reservation at Mesa Grill. For some reason, maybe because it was Vegas, I thought I'd try something new and not get the filet mignon for once, which was always my go-to meal at a fancy restaurant. It was always the same, tender, juicy, safe, and flavorless. Instead, I asked the waitress what she recommended. She sang praises about the ancho-maple glazed veal-chop, so I just told her to bring it out. Now, if you like meat, you know that is not a risky meal by a long shot, but for me, at the time, you might as well have put a plate of worms in front of me. And even worse it came with a tamale. Ewww...corn husks.
The plate came to my table, and it looked like modern art. Bobby's trademark oranges and greens adorned the dish. I cut into the perfectly cooked veal. It was pink and dripping with juices. It had a crispy sweet brown coating on the outside. I took a bite and my eyes dilated. I have not been the same since. I never knew food could taste that good. I thought I had good food before. I thought a cheesesteak was the ultimate thing to eat. This blew it out of the water--levels above anything I had ever tasted. I took a taste of the tamale--it was just as good!!! Buttery, spicy, sweet mush in a tidy little packet--how convenient!
8 years later and I can't get enough cooking. My wife started it all by buying me the Mesa Grill cookbook which has that exact recipe in it. I have been collecting cook books since.
So, in short, you'll be seeing a lot of Bobby.
This book, Bar Americain, has been hit or miss for me. So, Bar Americain, (that is french for American, pronounced slightly snobbier) is Bobby Flay's recipe book from his third Manhattan restaurant. Their menu is mostly unique takes on traditional American dishes like chicken and waffles, Thanksgiving Day turkey, and even today's recipe, Philadelphia cheesesteaks.
This week I had some guests come over. These are my "taste testers," my daring friends who won't mind getting a bum meal or two...or three. They try out my food, I try to get some honest opinions, and I decide if it's worth serving at a dinner party later. There is the daring one, who is the original invitee because he'll eat anything weird; his younger sister who is very picky but she is a good sport, trying the things I've been cooking; and their cousin, who is kind of in the middle of the road between the two. They recently returned home from a trip overseas, and it was the perfect time to cook for them.
I went with the New York Strip Steak served Philadelphia Style, simply because I thought it would be a great comforting meal to come back to America after being away for 9 days.
The recipe is made of 3 main components that make up the traditional Philly cheesesteak -
1) the steak - 1 1/2 inch thick NY strip steak in this case
2) fried onions - slow caramelized spanish onions
3) the cheese wiz - in this case an aged provolone cheese sauce.
Caramelizing onions can take a while. Properly cooked, they take 45 minutes to an hour for me, but require the attention of a tomato sauce--you need to stir every 5 minutes or so they don't burn on the bottom. Caramelizing onions must be cooked slow--starting around medium heat on the stove top in a saute pan. As the onions start getting brown they start to dry up. The onion starts sticking to the pan. At this point you need to scrape this "frond" off the bottom of the pan so it doesn't burn. The frond begins to color the onions. As this happens you need to keep adjusting the heat slightly lower and lower. Otherwise the frond will burn and you will have burnt onions mixed with your golden brown onions.
Making the cheese sauce can be tricky. Basically the recipe calls for a standard bechamel -- one of the 5 mother sauces. First you make a roux, which is a mixture of flower and butter that is cooked for a minute, then warm milk is slowly whisked into the roux. The sauce has to simmer down some until it thickens. This is where I always mess up, and it can be tricky. The tricky part is, when is it done? I always used to read recipes literally when it came to time. "boil for 5 minutes" Times are never exact in cook books. Always look for other clues in a recipe of when something is done. Color, texture, temperature: I have found these to be the better judgement for when something is ready. So use times as guideline, but not rules. The sauce is ready when you feel it is thick like a cheese sauce would be--it won't look like milk anymore, it will start sticking to the wooden spoon. Don't rely on any cheese you are going to put in to thicken it. It will thicken a little but not as much as you think, and once you put that cheese in you're done. You can always make it thinner by adding more milk (Tbsp at a time). Take your time with a bechamel and it will get there.
Cooking the steak was a big controversy for me. When I do steak, I get the best I can find. We are going all out--prime where possible. I'm not spending all this time and energy eating a bad cut of meat. However, that means ruining the steak is a big deal because I'm also out a lot of money. The recipe calls to "broil" the steak. I had never broiled a steak before. I've done pan-searing and grilling. I understand restaurants all have these super powered 1500 degree broilers that cook a steak in one minute, but my oven does not do that. I decided to take the risk and try it instead of pan searing it. I made sure the steak was right under that flame. I have a decent oven, but it's not restaurant quality. The timing was about right in the recipe 4 - 5 minutes on each side. After the first flip I was discouraged, it looked like cafeteria steak when I turned it over, zombie gray with some minor char marks from the broiling pan. But when it finished 5 minutes later it actually had a nice crust on it. The inside of the steak was the best I did of cooking a steak. There was hardly any dark parts around the medium-rare centers. The steaks on the outside of the broiler near the back and front came out medium rare and the two in the centers closest to the broiler flames were more on the medium side. Take that into account when broiling.
I plated each of the steaks. I made sure each plate had generous portions of the creamy provolone sauce. My wife and guests dug into their food. I took a bite, and thought, "wow, this is amazing." The rub on the steak added a bit of spice, the onions made it sweet and the cheese sauce gave it a creamy rich tang. I had 2 empty plates, the picky one, who is a tiny thing cleaned it up, the moderate one cleaned it up as well. However, the experimental friend, did not finish. He said, "my honest opionion, I think the sauce was a bit too much." I was stunned. The sauce? The cheese? That is the bad part? I looked at the other plates, and indeed the sauce was left over on their plates too. I noticed that no one was actually complimenting the steak. What went wrong?
I'm not sure. It could be they were cleaning their plates to be polite. It is really hard to tell what guests are thinking. Unless I get praises heaped on me, I can't help but try to think what went wrong. I'm paranoid like that. But then, I keep thinking about how stingy restaurants are about sauces, and how I always want more of the sauce after I finish the plate. Sometimes I want to lick the plate clean just to get that remaining bit of sauce! But maybe it's so good because there isn't too much sauce. Maybe too much of a good thing is bad. Had I gone easy with the sauce and let the steak be more pronounced in this dish would it have been better? I think it would have. I will take this into consideration next time I cook.
The real winner here was the potato chips. I just could not get enough of them. I tried to duplicate myself from the Bar Americain cookbook. I'll compare the ones from the restaurant to the ones I make in my next entry. These were really good!
The crab cake was beautiful and meaty. I mean really beautiful. The green basil sauce it rested on smelled strong and sweet. Look at the dark green swirls. I really liked the presentation here. The taste was amazing too, but...I almost felt like it was a bit undercooked inside. I'm not sure if that's the way it was supposed to be--I'm not a crab cake veteran or anything. Crisp outside, but the binding was a bit delicate--but tasty. I don't want to say it was bad. The tarragon tartar sauce added a bit of "tang" to it with just a tinge of anise flavor. 
But holy butter, batman. As the grits started cooling down, I saw a bit of butter separation in there--it was a layer of oil that must have come from adding a stick just to my dish. It actually started getting unappetizing at that point--but not enough to not make me finish my meal.. I was very sad after I ate there. I must say I was a bit disappointed.
