Roquefort Cheese Risotto and Filet Mignon

And I'm going to show you how to cook risotto. I think a lot of people has misconception of risotto because there throw it a pot and they add water like rice and they boil it and they think that’s risotto—no. Unfortunately it just not work like that. So what we have here, let me explain this process. You can see this risotto is really what we do in a restaurant to speed up the process of actually cooking the risotto, we par-cook it, okay. So basically, what you’ll have, you’ll have a pot and we have a little bit of olive oil, onions, garlic, sweat it; tender, no color, and then we add risotto and add some butter to it and then what you do is you’ll actually cook the risotto and then you will see it to the point, you know, for like a pound of risotto, I use almost say a half pound of butter and half cup of olive oil. So you do use a lot of olive and a lot of butter. What’s going to happen is after the point we toast the rice, as we toast the rice what happen is the butter starts foaming, that’s when you know it. It’ll sound like the risotto actually sounds like sea shells. That’s the best way to describe it. So at that point when you add your white wine and then you start doing your stock, little bit by little bit, you cook it. So what we’ll do as we add water the rice kernels they start expanding, they get more water they start expanding. We would cook it to a point where it's only 80% cooked. What that does is when we actually use it in the restaurant; it's easier for us to cook up the risotto. It takes us 10 minutes instead of 25 minutes from doing a risotto. We just can’t do that unless if you have a time limit on the menu and said “Hey, if you want to wait 25 minutes for your risotto, that’s fine, depending if you’re not busy.” So hopefully that doesn’t always happen. So that is a par-cooked risotto. I'm going to show you how we’re going to finish that. Then we’re going to have some sauteed beef tenderloins strips with it, we have some Roquefort cheese, some sauteed mushrooms. These mushrooms, we’ve already pre-sauteed them and I have some caramelized onions. We have some truffle oil and then I also have some different cheese that we fold into it and a part from the parmesan cheese, we’ll do our cream cheese that we’ll fold into. Sometimes we use cream cheese, sometimes we use mascarpone, and it’s different. It just gives it a much more creamy thing to it. The biggest thing about risotto is to make sure that it's always creamy. So, I’m going to start here; since I already have this par-cooked and I already have some onions and garlic, this is already a little bit seasoned, not seasoned to the point where its to the taste is perfect because what’s going to happen is you still going to have the parmesan cheese which adds a lot of salt into the risotto, so you don’t want to do that. Chicken stock here, if you’re vegetarian you can use a regular vegetable stock, it's not going to work well with the beef topping though so I figured that we’ll just go ahead and we’re going to use chicken stock. One thing that’s also important with actually doing a risotto, you never want to use an aluminum pan. What happens with aluminum pan when you cook your risotto, as you stir it, the gray from the actual pot comes off into the risotto and it actually discolors your risotto. The best things to use are these. These are okay, they don’t really discolor and nothing comes off of them but stainless steel is probably your best bet to use or if you have one of those old clad pans. The same thing in the wares, you can use that too, you can do your risottos. So what we’re going to do is we’ll bring this to a boil and then I use a rubber spatula, you can use a wooden spoon. Try not to use a regular spoon, the same thing happens, when you scrape when cook your risotto and you scrape the pan, the same thing, it gives off onto the risotto. The biggest thing for me, I mean it's just a complete preference your risotto, the color of your risotto. If you have a saffron risotto, nice yellow, it's got to be nice and yellow. If you have a squid ink risotto, black, black as night. But for instance, when I do a regular risotto, I want my risotto to come out white. I do not want a black risotto or even a grey discolored risotto. So as you can see, we started boiling the stock and I didn’t add all of the chicken stock because we do not want to boil this. We are going to finish cooking it. Another biggest thing is if you add too much to it, what’s going to happen is you’re going to have to add more rice or you’re going to get to a point where it's actually getting overcooked and we do not want that. That’s one thing you want to try to avoid as much as possible. So I'm going to have this just come to a boil and then I'm going to show you what we’re going to do with the fillet. As you can see, you can see how much chicken stock that I’ve added to this, it's not a lot. Because you’re going to see as the risotto cook, like I said it's 80% cooked; now it cooks more. It's going to soak up more of the stock. It's very important to remember, I think a lot of people what they do as a mistake is they either add too much or too little or they get nervous at this point, they said should we add stock right now, just relax. That’s not your problem because you’re going to remember as you add the butter and as we add the mascarpone cheese and everything else, that also creates liquid. So you need almost space for that liquid as well so you don’t want to add too much of the chicken stock. Now, one thing with the risotto too, now it's fine as it boils but as the liquid starts evaporating and the rice starts sucking it up you have to look at it that it doesn’t stick. A risotto consistently has to be stirred. You cannot put the risotto in and walk away; risotto just doesn’t work like that—for rice, yes but not risotto. And one thing by adding a little bit chicken stock to it, what happens is as you add you stir, you get more of the starch out of it, understand. You get more of the creaminess out of it and that’s what happens with risotto too, whereas you just boil it you don’t create that energy to actually get the starch and the creaminess out of the risotto. Now, here’s something that I'm going to tell you, I have some bijou over here. Bijou is just actually—we take some of the meat and seared it with some onions and stuff and then we just actually cook it probably for like I think 10 hours. We actually make this but you can always use different vinaigrette or something with the risotto if you want. You don’t have to use a bijou. I use it. We’re going to use it o top, we use it in the restaurant. It gives a really good flavor to the actual risotto. So, here you can see my liquid is ready to start evaporating there. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to add some butter to this. Now, again you’ll say how much butter, you know what with a risotto you can add as much butter as you really want to. The more you add, the creamier it gets. I can tell you that though. It's really, really nice. Stir it in, I won’t add a pound of butter of butter to this because that’s obviously not the right thing to do but you can add a good amount of butter and you can see how creamy the risotto starts getting as well. What I'm going to do is I'm going to turn this one down and then put this to the back. I'm going to searing my meat there. So what you have is a nice hot pan, I have a little bit olive oil here and then I'm just going to take the meat and then season it with salt and pepper. For the risotto, they’ll ask me what pepper, I always use white pepper for a risotto. Depending if this is going to be a dark risotto, yes then I’ll use a black pepper but usually always for a risotto I like to use white pepper because the same thing, I want to keep my risotto as white as possible. That has been my whole purpose here. The pan is nice smoking hot, if you’re not familiar with the smoking hot term, that’s what we’ll be using there in the kitchen. You get it to the point where actually the oil starts smoking because then you’ll know the meat is going to be real nice and seared. Then, we’re just going to put this, very important to remember here is start with the meat first. Since the onions are already caramelized and the mushrooms are already cooked and like I said these are shiitake mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, you can use button mushrooms, it's really your choice, it all depends. Start with the meat first and we sear that. All right, add the risotto here and while that’s going. We’ll add our cheese now, if you don’t want to use Roquefort cheese you can just use a regular parmesan cheese, that’s fine but since this is a Roquefort risotto I have some of the Roquefort and in addition to that I also added parmesan cheese. Parmesan cheese is a bright cheese so it doesn’t give moisture but it gives a good flavor as well in addition to the Roquefort. So we’ll add some of the parmesan cheese, as you see I haven’t added any salt to this yet because I know the Roquefort cheese is salty, very salty. The same thing with the parmesan cheese, it is salty. You just stir that in, as our meat gets cooked in here, we’re going to add to in little pieces by yourself. You do not want to shake it too much. You’ll probably going to ask me that, well I don’t really do this at home, two things at one time. Stir my risotto, cook my meat but what you could do is you could sear this ahead, just keep it warm, keep it medium rare and then the last minute you could just add it on top of your risotto. You see the risotto here, see how nice and creamy it is. Now also you can see how it starts getting liquid again and that is because of our Roquefort cheese that we have in there, but that’s fine. You can see its going to dry up as soon as we add the herbs to it as well. If you want your meat well-done, you can sear the meat obviously a little bit longer. If you want it medium-rare, at this point I love it as medium rare, I prefer it medium-rare. All chefs I think prefer their meat medium rare. I'm going to add the mushrooms to it and the some of the caramelized onions set the flame to low. The reason why we go ahead and pre caramelized the onions is just it makes everything easier. It makes your whole life much easier. So I’ll take this and then just start flipping it a little bit. Make sure not to scrape the pan because I know the wife would be real unhappy with you. All right, season this. Now for the meat, I'm actually going to start seasoning with pepper. Add some nice black pepper on there. The herbs that I have here is just chopped chives, chopped parsley, some chopped chervil, some chefs would put some chopped tarragon in these as well. That’s going to go in the last minute in it as well. Get that nice and hot, risotto is getting there and I know just because I’ve always tasted it this risotto by now is seasoned well and it's got a good salty taste to it and what I want to do to make it even more fattier or even more heartache, here we go, a little bit of the mascarpone cheese. Throw it in there and our risotto is basically almost done. Let me pull this off to the side, right there. My sauce is a little bit hot. One thing that you’ll see with the risotto is, right at the end I’d give you a perfect example, and this is what’s happening. As we added the cheese a little bit is too liquid but I know my risotto is ready. What we use to do at the restaurant at this point is, we take some of raw risotto, throw it in there and then cook this for just like two minutes and it will actually bring everything together. The way we serve the risotto in the restaurant, it cannot be soupy where you put it in a bowl it kind of has to just slightly run but it doesn’t have to go flat down or if you put it in it shouldn’t stay at the bowl too dry. Flat on a bowl, too soupy you don’t want that. It's very really important. Of course the Italian and the French they always have this debate—who makes the best risotto. The French like it all done and the Italians like it al dente. The French like it thoroughly cooked, they don’t want it to stick. Me? I just like it al dente, it has to have some crunch to it but we always say it shouldn’t have to have a chalky taste in mouth. When you bite into the rice and it taste like chalky, that’s when you know it is under cooked. Now you’ll probably going to ask me what happen with this rice, since the other rice that has been cooking for 10 minutes, what happened with the other ones that I just put in, for some odd reason, it just fits in perfectly. You don’t have anything to worry about it. It adds a little al dente rice at the end. This is basically what the consistency I'm looking for, so you have your choice. I usually add a little bit of thin herbs to the meat a little bit thin herbs to the risotto and then right at the last minute, I have some white truffle oil which really makes the risotto just unbelievable. If you have fresh truffles, please go ahead, be my guest, add you fresh truffles into it but the white truffle oil just perfumes the risotto beautifully. When you eat it, I mean you taste it, it is just unbelievable. So this is the consistency that I'm looking for my risotto right here. As you see it, I just stir the risotto too, it emulsifies the risotto. If you just let it sit and boil it will separate. The oils and the cheeses and everything because of the fat that are on it, it will separate. That’s what we going to have right here, you can taste it if you want. I always say you always have to make sure you taste everything so I don’t want to kill you guys, so I’ll go ahead and taste it just in case. Okay, not bad. It's not bad at all. Spoon it in and sometimes in the restaurant I have one of my cooks as she cooks the risotto all the time, she’s pretty good at it right now. But in the beginning she was a disaster and what’s nice, you see these people actually going form having no clue or concept of how to cook risotto to actually truly understand what it is a risotto is all about. Once you have a good a risotto, you will become the biggest critique on any risotto you have in every restaurant. After the other and after the other, it sure as like everything else with a nice steak, once you’ve had a good steak, you will critique a restaurant if they don’t have good steak. So this is all over the restaurant. Sometime we sold 30-40 orders, I mean it is really, it is a great dish, it goes great with the cover name just make sure that you either start eating before two days or after that, stop eating for two days because you’re going to have to make up for all the cholesterol that’s in here. So, just a little bit bijou to finish it off and then we’ll sprinkle a little bit more parmesan cheese. Here’s again something, this is Indian. This is called bundi which is actually like almost like a rice puff or like a rice cracker. Everything for us in the food, all we do is about the crunch. I love crunchy stuff, textures. Yes, this is al dente, yes you have the meat but you don’t have something going—that nice and crunchy there. So with the bundi you can do this. If you can’t find bundi, you what works perfectly, white bread cut it in small cubes, toast them off, make a small crotons, perfect in your risotto. It really makes a big difference. So, here we go that is our Roquefort cheese risotto with some sauteed tenderloin tips; I got pungent medium mushrooms, the bundi and some truffle oil and some bijou. We hope you’ve enjoyed it make sure you eat this in lunch and not in the supper. Bon apettite.