Hungry Frenchman

Trout with capers and green beans

This is another classic French dish, but it works very well in the US, since you can get very easily some very good quality trout. I bought some at whole foods, and it worked out beautifully. It is very simple to make, and will impress your guests for sure while delight them when they eat it :).

In some salted boiling water, throw the green beans, some pepper, and thyme. After 4-5 minutes, once the beans are cooked but still crunchy, remove from the heat and keep warm.

Ask your fishmongers to prepare the trout "butterfly" style. In other words, the fish becomes flat, one side with the skin and the other with the meat. Put some butter in a very hot pan, and once melt, put the fish, skin side down. Let it cook on that side until the very top is still pink but the inside seems cooked. Remove from the fish from the pan, throw more butter in it. Add some capers, lemon juice. Let it cooked for a minute, then add the beans and let it cooked for another minute.

To finish, put the fish on a plate, skin side down, and lay over it some beans, capers and the juice from the pan.

Enjoy!

Ame, St Regis, San Francisco

So yes it's pricey. As usual, when you pay lot of money, you expect high quality. But you know what? I've paid lot of money in many restaurants, and didn't feel it was always worth it. In the case of Ame, it just was. First, the service. Impeccable. If you compare with many SF restaurant, where everyone is very chilled, Ame has a high class service. Very similar to French laundry or Gary Danko. Second, the food. Very original (finally a restaurant which invents stuffs and flavor, very similar to Cortez in that matter), modern, surprising... I love when I have this feeling of eating something that i couldn't cook at home. Well, the least I can say, is that there was no way i could have cooked the amazing meal I had yesterday night. Great sashimi and crudo (some real cool flavors in there!), amazing soup, a black cod from out of this world (even the Nobu black cod may not be as good). We also had some beef cheeks, which actually i wasn't a big fan of. But that's more because i don't like beef cheeks in general. Third, I had some very cool cheeses. American cheeses! Yes! An American cuisine restaurant (ok some influence from asia) served me some US cheese. And you know what? It was de-li-cious. Really good! I love to discover new things, and this was a true finding. Last but not least, the wines. We had a wine pairing, and it was spot on. Even the red burgundy on the black cod, which could have seemed surprising, was really nice. The combination of the cod flavors with the light red wine was really nice. Can't wait to go back...