Category: Main Courses
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Savory Goat and Wild Mushroom Hand Pies
Empanadas, pasties, hand pies, meat patties, clangers, sfhias, kreatopitas…little meat pockets surrounded completely in crust and small enough to fit in the hand are popular across the earth, from Natchitoches to Nigeria, and from Jamaica to Jaipur. We recently served these rustic goat hand pies at a FRANK dinner, to nearly rabid acclaim. The flavor…
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Laughably-Easy Lard (or Bacon Fat) Pastry Crust
The perfect pastry crust eludes most of us…seemingly thousands of infinitely-thin layers that are tender, but shatter in your mouth while still remaining moist and succulent. It usually involves massive amounts of butter cut into the flour at just the right temperature to just the right texture…then a chill in the fridge…then the addition of…
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Sous Vide Scotch Eggs
The Scotch Egg was invented in a pub in London, and it was an intriguing, if crude, concept. A hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage, breaded and fried or baked to a crisp. But hard boiled eggs are truly one of the worst inventions of mankind. Yes, they are a convenient and nutritiously dense snack. …
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Benny’s Legendary Rosemary Fried Chicken
My pumpkin carrot cake may be more famous, but that’s only because it appeared on MasterChef. This rosemary fried chicken has elicited the same response from virtually everyone who’s ever tried it: “This is the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted.” It’s that good, folks. After you taste it, you’ll never want fried chicken from…
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Crispy Fish Tacos
I’ve had quite a number of requests for the recipe for fish tacos that I served as my “signature dish” on MasterChef. It’s certainly not my signature dish, but it’s one of the only things I make that could be made in an hour, so that’s what I made! Fish tacos are one of the…
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Beurre Blanc (white wine butter sauce)
Beurre blanc is a classic French sauce made with butter, white wine, and shallots. I recently made this sauce at a cooking demonstration to prove how important it is to cook with quality wine, and I promised I’d post the recipe. It’s a very simple sauce to make, and it goes fabulously with fish and…
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Coq au Vin
This is one of my favorite dishes on earth. “Cock in Wine” is the translation…a mean, tough, stringy old rooster slowly braised in red wine. It has become a French classic, but it arose from humble farmhouses, rather than sophisticated bistros. I grew up eating dry, tough old roosters. And any time a rooster attacked…
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Venison Meatballs
Venison is one of my favorite meats. The last meal I cooked before leaving to film MasterChef was venison tenderloin. (Ironically, the dish that sent me home in 5th place from MasterChef was venison tenderloin…I was trying to cook it the way Ramsay cooks it, rather than my own special way.) Venison is the most…
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Kangaroo Loin with Mushroom Sauce
**PLEASE NOTE** A video on how to make this dish is located at the bottom of this recipe! Yes, yes…you’re shocked and a bit disgusted that I’ve posted a kangaroo recipe. Folks…kangaroo is the venison of Australia. It’s their most common game meat. It jumps into the road in the middle of the night and…
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Scotch Eggs
I had never heard of a Scotch Egg until I watched MasterChef season 1 and Ramsay was bemoaning the lack of a Scotch Egg appearing in an egg challenge. When I heard what it was…a boiled egg wrapped in sausage, breaded, and deep fried…I was bound and determined to offer up a Scotch Egg to…