Holiday Cooking Live

Hey, Cadre family. It's coach Dan. We're hanging out in the kitchen. Then I'm gonna do a little cooking and do a little talk about the next week ahead. I'm just sharpening my knife right now. I made some crepes earlier, and I was gonna share the batter recipe with you and then just show you what I've got. Look at the cravings. So the crepe recipe, very easy crepes are flour and egg and milk and water and melted butter and salt, and they're all mixed together. So here's my recipe. One cup of flour and then two eggs, and you mix those two together and then add a half a cup of milk and a half a cup of water and two tablespoons of melted butter and a quarter teaspoon of salt.

You mix the wet in with the egg and the flour, and you end up with batter. That will make these very thin pancakes. Sometime I'll actually show you how to make those, but I'm going to make filling for them now. And if you pop in, you can follow along. So I'm going to fill the crepes with shrimp and lobster that I'm going to saute in butter and white wine and finish with cream and some seafood stock. And then I'm also gonna make these little bellinis. These are little pancakes that you can serve smoked salmon on, or usually you'll see them with creme fraiche and a little bit of caviar, which we'll be having in a little bit, too.

All right, I'm gonna make my lobster and shrimp filling for the crepes. I'm also going to preheat the oven to 375, because when the crepes are all lined up in this pan, I'm going to put them in the oven and finish them off with a little bit of cheese on top. All right, let's get some butter in the pan. So I hope everybody had a relaxing day. Extremely relaxing day here. Just very, very easygoing. I know that's not always the case. And even though things have been easy going, they have been a little bit heavy because we've been dealing with some different things this year than normal.

And so after I get done cooking, I wanted to talk really quick about expectations, especially moving into the next week, because, I don't know. It just can be one of those weeks where we all have a lot of expectations about how things are go, and things don't always go the way we think they should, and that can be a problem. So I'm looking at this lobster tail, thinking, how do I want to get the meat out of this tail? So I think I'm going to split it, and I'm going to do that with scissors, and I'll split it down the belly, the bottom side, for a couple reasons.

One is it's easier to cut, and it's much easier to get to. There you go. How's that? For two reasons. Take the butter off until I get this lobster situated. So I found these lobsters on sale, these lobster tails. They're $6 a piece, which I thought was a really good deal. I love lobster, and I rarely ever get it because I think it's, you know, it's special delicacy. Do you know, years ago, they used to feed crustaceans like lobster to prisoners, that it was not desirable of cuisines? And look at us now, ordering lobster tail.

I'm gonna keep. Keep that little shell there. Let's get the heat back on. All right, so, like I said, after you've got the crepes finished, you're gonna want to fill them, and there's no end to what you can fill the crepes with. This is. This is Florida pink shrimp. Going to the camp with that elastic tail. Oh. Oh, it smells good. And then I'm just gonna dice the lobster tail up here, and actually, I'm just gonna do a chunk, a little chunk on the lobster, dude. All right. Oh, smells so good. Oops.

Shrimp overboard. All right, let's get this cooking a little bit. And I do like to add a little bit of seasoning, just some salt and pepper, and a little bit of dill. And let me get medell. I want to show you guys this. When I get my cameraman back, I want to show you guys my spice drawer. There's the dill. Just a little bit of dill on top. Okay. This shellfish does not take long. All right, so now we're gonna deglaze the pan, and we're gonna do that with a little bit of white wine. And what it does is you're going to get all of the flavor.

It's called fondant. It's flavor that's cooked on the bottom of the pan here, and we'll get all of that goodness off the pan. And deglazing is what they call this process. You can do it with chicken stock, vegetable stock, you know, any. Any stock wine. You can even use water. But the technique is to add liquid to the pan until all of that stuff right here is scraped off the bottom, and that is deglazing it brings the flavor of what you've cooked in the pan back up in with everything else. Right now I want to add some cream to this.

Some heavy cream. I'm just using it. Where is that? Oh, here's some cream. Was hiding. Okay. Heavy cream. Hey, guys. Who's joining me? Hi. Yes, a little bit of lobster. So this is lobster and shrimp that I am sauteing in a pan, and it's going to fill my crepes. And after we're done cooking, we are going to. We're going to talk about planning the next week and expectations. That was one of the things I wanted to talk about. All right, let me see. Oh, it's Brian. Hi, Bry. That's my bride. So, yeah, we're going to take my little kids.

I'm so glad Brian's got signed on. You know, we are. We were just taking the week off, but Sunday is my day and I wanted to go on anyway, so that's what I'm doing. That's what I'm doing. So every Sunday, I want to jump on with my Cadre family and go live and film cooking and then talk about weekly planning, different tactics, tips, tricks for a less stressful week ahead. Okay, so now, this is one thing that I absolutely love using it better than bouillon, and it comes in many flavors, but this is the lobster.

And I like to take just a tiny little bit and put that in there. Take the rest of my fiddles. And this will run through this sauce, make it really, really rich. Now, another thing we're going to do is thicken this sauce. We're going to thicken it with a little bit of flour and a little bit of water. Looks so good. It looks so good. I think I do want to add a little bit of garlic. A little bit of garlic. Here's the garlic. I chopped this up earlier and. Oh, I'm glad I added that. Jack's glad I added it, too.

Our dog Jack's right here. So this can be a wild time for peeps. It's an unusual time for us this year. And so things aren't feeling normal, whatever normal means, right? And so I just like to acknowledge that, you know, that oftentimes we aren't in the space people are expecting us to be in or that we're expecting ourselves to be in. And it can be tough. So just, I want to just acknowledge that and just mention that giving yourself permission just to feel whatever it is you feel, whether it's the holiday spirit or grief or whatever all right, we're gonna add a little butter and a little flour to this and stiffen this up nice.

Not this much, but I have this out earlier for something else. Now, making a roux is one way to thicken a sauce. That's one way to skin a sauce, but you can also do it with just a little bit of flour and water. Then you just go ahead and make yourself a little thickening agent. That's what you do. And when you pour it in, it'll thicken your sauce up really nice. I'll just use this same spoon that I used for my lobster stock, shrimp and lobster stuffed crepes. I'm looking at that casserole dish and the sauce.

I'm here, and, you know, I'm the only seafood lover in the house, so I might actually downsize my dish there. In fact, I think I will do that. I'm gonna make sure my oven's on. I saw that was. I put it on, but it's. It was off. Now it's packed. All right, let's get this rolling. We're gonna thicken the sauce up. Watch that. Just sticking right up. Medium high heat. Oh, man. Oh, my gosh. That looks fantastic. It's perfect. Look at that. Oh, wow. That's beautiful. Beautiful. Cut the heat. You can thin it down even a little bit more.

Let's just kill that. Oh, this is perfect. Oh, wow. So after I make the seafood ones later tonight, I'm making Brian's favorite, which is chicken and wild rice. And we also might do a smoked salmon and cream cheese, but I made a lot of crepes. We also have nutella, so you can do. We might do some sweet crepes. Guys could taste that. Oh, my gosh. It's so good. The sauce is so creamy. Really, really good. Okay, I am gonna get a smaller casserole out. And actually, it's not even casserole. It's just gonna be a little fiesta plate.

That's what it's gonna be. All right, so you take your filling, put it inside your little crepe like that. Take a little parmesan cheese, sprinkle that over, and then roll it like that, and seam side down like that. Then I'll do four more. Usually a recipe, you'll have four, three to four crepes per serving, maybe sometimes two. I don't know. I'm just making that up. Okay. A little bit more of that. Flip it one way. Close my face. And then you roll it over, seam side down, just like that. We'll have two more.

I think this is the perfect plate. For how many? We ended up with lobster and shrimp. This is a lobster stock with cream, dill, salt, and pepper. Very, very simple. Oh, man. I almost spilled that entire drink. I'll often do that. I'll make a drink. But I get so caught up in cooking that I forget that I have a drink. But cheers. Cheers, everybody. Cheers, everyone. All right, let's get the rest of this filling in here. For sure. Want the shrimp and the pieces of lobster? I was mentioning earlier, the lobster tail is on sale for $6 a piece, which I thought was a really good deal.

So I grabbed. Grabbed some of them. Okay, so here's this and that, right? And then we just roll it over like that. Scooch them down. Scooch down. You gotta make room for your new friend. Okay. And this is actually really, really good, because this is one of the things I love about crepes, that the ends. Sometimes the ends will get crispy when they're in the oven. Okay, now what we do is we take the leftover sauce, and you don't drown the whole thing, but you just come down the side center, the center of the crepes with the seafood sauce that's left over.

Right. Beautiful, beautiful. Mmm. Oh, my gosh. Alright, done. A little bit of parm, and then I don't know if you guys know this, but keeping your parsley just in a glass of water, it's one of the best ways to keep parsley fresh for a really long time. I've had this for a couple weeks in the fridge with a little baggie over it. Like a greenhouse effect is also really good. So I'm just gonna tear the parsley. Just. It's, like, as fresh as fresh can get. Just freshly torn. Right? Just to give it a little bit of color.

And this is gonna go right in the oven here just until it sets. And you used to get a nice brown color on the top, and the cheese melts, and it's all deliciousness. Oh, my little dealio's not working. That's fine. All right, so now I want to show you guys something so fancy. So fancy. All right. I worked in so many restaurants where we had the doily trays, right? We had to take silver trays, like, then line them with doilies. Crazy. These are too small for this tray anyway, but. All right, so what we would do is make these little tiny bellinis, these pancakes.

Well, we didn't make them, but we passed them. So here's the Bellini mix. So just like the crepes, where you have the batter and you put it in the pan and we'll do the process at some point. But here is the bellini mix. It's a cup of flour, three quarter teaspoon salt, a half a teaspoon of baking powder, three quarter cup plus two tablespoons of milk, three quarter cup plus two tablespoons one egg and one tablespoon of melted butter. And you mix the dry ingredients together, add the dry ingredients to the wet, which is the milk, egg and the butter, and create a batter, and then pour it in a frying pan and make these delicious little bellinis bl aina.

And I'm going to show you one variation that is pretty popular for bellinis. I will. Okay, we got the caviar, we've got orange and the black. And I'm going to teach you how to make creme fraiche. So creme fraiche is heavy cream. One cup of heavy cream, one tablespoon of buttermilk, mix it in a glass jar, cover it with a cloth, and let it sit on the counter. Eight to 24 hours. It's going to get thick and stir it up every now and then. And that is creme fraiche, my friend. All right, that's what we're gonna do here.

Do you think the neighborkins would want some of these? All right, now, you're never supposed to use metal spoons with caviar because it bruises the eggs, but I don't think we have another option. So that's what we're gonna do. And if it's bruised, look, sorry. So this is the beans. This is what you do. Bruises, right? So bruising. Look at that. I want to get the dill on again. Just a sprinkle of dill on each one. What's your expectation of that? What's my expectation? Well, I don't really have any.

I expect it to taste good. I hope it does. Alright, that's it. The little bellinis. A little bit of caviar, a little bit of dill. A couple chives crossed on. That is really nice. Later tonight, we're gonna do a smoked salmon and creme fraiche and a little bit of dill and. Yeah, so, all right, so I'm going to move this over here. No, that's fine. Just leave it. I'm all set up on solo. All right. We'll see how our crepes are doing. Man, that sauce is crazy good. Wow. I love it. You know what? I'm gonna make a couple more of these.

These Bellini deals with some smoked salmon. Right now, that's what I'm doing, a Bellini. And it's just meeny. So I'm using my hands. Yes. It smells really good. Really? Yeah, you know, it smells buttery and rich. Buttery and rich. Hi, guys. Whoops. All right. Sorry about all the freaky camera. Stop. Well, I'm fine. I got it set right here. It's perfect. I'm good. That's okay. You're good? All right, we gotta test it out. Oh, man, this looks so good. Shrimp and lobster and lobster stock cream sauce.

Mmm. Mmm. Wow. Oh, my gosh. You guys are so good. All right, I'm gonna make this again and post the recipe, but you watch me make it. Alright. So I wanted to talk about expectations because I had some expectations. I've had a lot of expectations recently, and it gets complicated when you start expecting things that don't go your way. There's this. This phrase, expectations are premeditated resentment. And when I really thought about it, it's so true. Expectations can get us in trouble a couple of different ways.

One, they can get us in trouble with others because the expectations we put on others most often don't come to fruition as we had expected or planned. So there's that. But there's also the expectations that we put on ourselves. And sometimes those are really realistic, unrealistic. Hold on, I gotta take another bite of this. It's so good. Oh, my gosh, it tastes so good. So I like to think about expectations in those two ways, both of ourselves and others. And when we talk about expecting things from others, I have a story that I wanted to share with you.

Maybe you have one similar that you can relate to in your own life. But I've worked in service for many, many years of my life, although I. Well, food service, although I'm doing different things now. At a time, I was waiting on an individual who was very curt, extremely short, and seemed to be difficult. So I went and shared that with somebody that I was working with. And she went and had a conversation with him and she came back and said, there's a reason that man is short. And Curtis, that he had lost every member of his family in a car accident, his wife, all his kids.

And I was so wrapped up in my own crap that I thought his attitude was about me. You never know what other people are going through in their lives. And when it comes to expectations and how we put those on other people, that's something I don't think about often. Enough, and I wish I would think about it more. So when we think about solutions for expectations, a few things come up. One is, you know, don't personalize everything. Don't take everything so personally that you're observing in other people that it may be an expectation you're putting on them that isn't realistic, or they may be putting expectations on themselves that they're not meeting.

So if we try to keep ourselves out of it, sometimes that's better. And then you never want to assume why other people are doing what they're doing again. That's. You never know what somebody else is dealing with at that moment in their life. You know, we only have control over our own, excuse me, over our own actions. And sometimes it's just such a relief to let yourself off the hook and back out of expectations, try to erase them from the board. And, you know, if we remove expectations from other people and expectations of different situations around us, it's good for us, and it's.

And it's also really sharing kindness to other people. So I just wanted to leave that thought for moving into the next week. Keep an eye on expectations, cut yourself some slack, and don't leave until you try. You watch me try one of these little bleedies. Delicious. I'll be making more. Thank you. Brian. I'm glad you were here. And follow me here on Cadre for more Sunday night dinners with tips and tricks for the week coming ahead. Have a good night, everybody. Bye.