Jean Tang: Hi, I am sitting in a cozy little neighborhood restaurant called Landmarc. It’s in a neighborhood called Tribeca which is all the way in downtown New York City.
Two things make this place really different from your ordinary little neighborhood and spa. One is that there is an open grill in the background where you can watch cooks making meat. It’s really fabulously and fun. The other thing is that you’ve got a wine list that’s 24 pages long full of half bottles which means you and your date can have something different every single time.
I am standing here with the Chef/Owner, Marc Murphy. Hi Marc!
Marc Murphy: Hi. How are you?
Jean Tang: And Frank Proto who is the Chef de Cuisine and we are making a pork chop with caramelized onions and apples and spinach.
Marc Murphy: So first of all, what we’re going to do is we’re going to chop up some garlic, some shallots and some onions and we’re going to get them into our pan. We got our pans over there on the grill. They are warming up, getting nice and hot, so it can caramelize.
Jean Tang: That is a really thin slice.
Marc Murphy: A little shallot. Well, you just chop them off a bit. And we’re going toss all this into that pan. We’re going to put a little olive oil. Frank, can you throw them all over one of those pans over there?
Okay, now we’re also going to be throwing in some thyme and a bay leaf.
Frank Proto: This gets taken off afterwards; it’s just near the flavor.
Marc Murphy: And of course a little salt and pepper.
Jean Tang: So, you are seasoning with authority.
Marc Murphy: Absolutely.
Jean Tang: Beautiful.
Marc Murphy: And once you see a little color, you just—you give it a little toss.
All right we’re going to peel and core our apple. So you got the core and then cut it again in halves. So we’re going to cut it in eight basically. So, while those—our onions are probably about a half way done, we’ll toss these apples in there with it and let them cook with the onions and all that flavor will get together in there and have a good time.
Next thing we are going to do, we could actually start now is cooking up our pork chop.
Frank Proto: Usually before we grill things, we put a little oil on.
Marc Murphy: Just because then they get a nice—they get—well sear it nicely then the salt and pepper will stay on it.
This is salt and pepper, what we are going to do here at Landmarc is we—we’re a very busy restaurant and I actually do it at home now too. We always make a salt and pepper mixture.
So let’s toss our pork chop on.
Jean Tang: Now, what if people don’t have a grill at home?
Marc Murphy: You could pan sear it. Now, you see our onions have a got nice color there. We’re going to go ahead and toss our apples in now because—sometimes also a little trick.
If all of a sudden you turn around and they got a too dark and you saw, oh gosh over here, it got really dark and oh what am I am I going do.
Jean Tang: Yeah.
Marc Murphy: Throw a little water in or a chicken stock.
Jean Tang: All right.
Marc Murphy: And it will loosen up what’s on the bottom of the pan and it will come right off and it will even out the whole sort of caramelization through the small pan.
Jean Tang: Slows it down the cooking a little, right?
Marc Murphy: And it slows it down a little bit but what’s really great about is it just takes you a little of burns and off the bottom which is not that bad, it’s still good, it’s a nice flavor still.
Frank Proto: For the spinach we basically cook the shallots and garlic with it, just a little shallots, garlic and get them a little brown. And we’ll just put the spinach in.
Marc Murphy: Quarter turn the pork chop, just turn in at 45º and what happens is—then you’re going to get those picture perfect grill marks like you see on ads, on TV and stuff.
Well the spinach is done when it’s wilted. As you can see it’s not—it’s wilted.
Frank Proto: It’s wilted.
Jean Tang: It’s wilted.
Marc Murphy: Not quite sure how to explain this.
Frank Proto: And the most one, we don’t cook our pork too much. We cook it to medium, medium rare.
Jean Tang: Yeah.
Frank Proto: It’s still juicy and it’s not like a dry piece of concrete.
We’re going to take it off, let it sit for two to three minutes, it basically relaxes the muscles, the juice kind of flows back into it. If you cut it now, it’s going to be—the juice is going to pour out all over the place and you can have a dry pork chop.
Jean Tang: Okay.
Marc Murphy: So Frank right now is he’s chopping some shallots that we’re going to be tossing in that pan. I am going to put a little olive oil in that pan. When we threw our shallots in, we get those—we just clarify those a little bit.
Frank Proto: Pork adds a little sweetness to that wine has a little acid to it. And we’re going to cook that until it’s almost dry.
Marc Murphy: If you’re having a dinner party and you got one leftover from two or three days ago, it’s preferably, you know you’re not going to want to drink it but it’s perfectly good for cooking with.
This has been reducing for about 15 minutes. Now, that it’s nice and dry in there. We’re going to then pour our veal stock and we’re going to reduce that to about a half. We already have one of the sauces that is ready right here.
Jean Tang: So, that is the thickness we’re aiming for me—I mean that almost looks to me like molasses.
Frank Proto: It’s a little thin on the molasses, basically what they say is it is a—coats the back of the spoon, you could run your finger through it and it leaves a line.
Marc Murphy: So, what we’re going to do to plate this dish, we’re going to take our onions, our apples and now, we all remember we’re not going to put these on the plate, we’re going to take the time out because you don’t really want to chew on that.
Jean Tang: Oh my God, the smell. The smell!
Marc Murphy: Take some apples and once again you know, you can plate this at home or you could put this on a big platter, you know to make it what you’d—whatever you like.
Throw your caramelized onions on there. Can you smell it through the camera, a little spinach, laying your pork chop up there. Now, see that juice from the pan? That was the juice that while it was resting those couple of minutes, you don’t want to lose that. You want to throw that right on top of that because that is really good stuff and then just Frank would just—would be throwing some salsa on there.
Frank Proto: Just put some of these over the top and around and we’re all done. That’s the plate the way we serve it.
Jean Tang: That smells so good.
Marc Murphy: Simple and delicious. There you go.
Jean Tang: Wow, look at that.
Marc Murphy: I put a little onion and there you go.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services