Day Off Meal

Most chefs like to cook simple food on their days off.  This is because in their restaurants, they get to cook their own food with the full resources of the kitchen.  Being a cook and not a chef, however, I do not get to cook my food in the kitchen.  Therefore, I like to use my time off as well as my private chef gigs as a sort of creative outlet.

My favorite way to cook a meal is to simply go to the grocery store or mercado and see what speaks to me. Once I get a couple ingredients in my basket, I start to conceptualize the rest of the dish around these components.  I got a taxi (for 50 cents!) about two hours after the public market had closed, so I opted for the grocery store.


The first ingredients to catch my attention were beautiful purple potatoes and very long string beans.

This got me thinking about fall ingredients (at least in Chicago) and I grabbed butternut squash.  I decided to grab some hearty steaks to stand up to the vegetables.  At this point I remembered one of my favorite dishes from Sage Grille (where I staged during my Senior year of High School) : Venison with a sweet potato pure and juniper sauce.  This became my inspiration for the meal.  I wanted that tart flavor of juniper with the sweet squash.  Since there are no juniper berries in Nicaragua, I attempted to emulate this taste through a sauce of balsamic vinegar, dried cherries and chicken stock (future post to come on the importance of making stock). 

Once home, I tasted the mysterious purple potatoes (raw).  Tasted like a cross between potato and jicama!  After pan roasting them, the potatoes lost much of their vibrant purple color which had initially attracted me.  However, they tasted great and their sweetness really came out when cooked.

I Marinated the steaks with canola oil, onion, balsamic, lime, parsley, garlic and ancho chiles.  Sauteed the squash with cinnamon and blended with yogurt.  The puree was very tasty and had a velvety texture.  The fault of this dish was the steak being slightly chewy.  Next time I cook beef here, I will make a point of tenderizing it first.  However, I totally captured the flavors that I can still distinctly recall from the Venison dish at Sage- a victory in my book.