Animal
435 Fairfax Blvd., Los Angeles

We visited Animal on Thursday night @ 9pm
Dish we will try to cook – Flat Iron, sunchoke hash, truffle parmesan fondue $25

Restaurant Visit
Our experience at Animal was absolutely wonderful. Maybe it was because this was our first dinner date for our new blog, or maybe it’s because Animal was that good, but we both thought the food was delicious and we highly recommend the restaurant to our friends. The place is fairly small which means you must make a reservation in advance. The crowd was a good mix and the place, while at capacity, was intimate and quiet enough to enjoy a conversation while eating. Animal is also laid back and casual. Our waiter could not have been more friendly and answered all our questions while also giving suggestions as to what we should order. He recommends coming with a group of at least 4 so that you can order many of the smaller dishes and get a good sampling of all the different tastes.

We started with the baby broccoli, pancetta, parmesan, soft egg and bread crumb dish. We were blown away. While it was very acidic, it was also the acidity that made the dish something we hadn’t tasted before.

We then had the barbeque pork belly sandwiches with slaw and the sweetbreads dish that included creamed spinach, capers, and hen of the woods (yes, we also had to ask what this was and learned that it is a type of mushroom.) Lemon wedges garnished the top of the sweetbread, which was a wonderful acidic surprise. Both of these dishes were good, but the baby broccoli dish was our favorite of the small plates.

For the main course, we chose the flat iron since we’d heard so many good things about it. We were not disappointed. The plate was visually appealing and the smell let us know right away we would enjoy it.

The fondue was a balanced blend of parmesan and truffle, not the typical sauce you’d expect with steak. The hash was perfectly cooked, making the potatoes and sunchokes both smooth and creamy. We ordered our flat iron cooked medium. The steak was cooked nicely and the seasoning was very tasty. We’re guessing it’s a simple seasoning of salt, a good amount of pepper and possibly butter.

The mystery component of the dish is the brown sauce that was spooned around the steak. When you tasted it alone, it didn’t seem to have much of a unique taste, yet when you ate all the ingredients in one bite, you could tell that the sauce was special. We were definitely intrigued.

Shopping
(prices reflect the cost of the package, not the portion we used.) The rest of the ingredients we already had in the kitchen.

Santa Monica Farmer’s Market-
Red Thumb Potatoes and Sunchokes $5.50
Parsley (bunch) $1.00

Whole Foods-
Flat Iron Steak (4 steaks) $14.74
Parmagiano Reggiano $11.77
White Truffle Oil $14.99
Cream Cheese $3.49
Shallot $.75

Recipe
Below is our take on the flat iron recipe. While we have no idea exactly how they cook theirs, we looked around online for a bit at different suggestions for cooking the steak and making hash. We then simply started combing the flavors we felt we could taste in their dish and had fun creating ours from there.

Serves 4

Truffle Parmesan Fondue-

2 cups Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese

2 TBSP Cream Cheese

1 1/4 TBSP Truffle Oil

2 cups Milk

1 TBSP flour

1 TBSP butter

In a saucepan, heat the butter until melted and then add flour. Slowly pour in the milk, stirring with a whisk. Allow mixture to cook until thickened, stirring constantly (8-10min). Add truffle oil, Parmigiano and cream cheese, stir over low heat until melted.

(Our fondue sauce was a bit thick but we believe we’ve adjusted the recipe to compensate. If however you find the sauce thick, add more milk until desired texture.)

Sunchoke Hash-

1 lb red thumb potatoes

1 lb sunchokes

1 shallot

1/3 cup parsley leaves

3 TBSP olive oil

3 TBSP vegetable oil

1 TBSP unsalted butter

salt and pepper (to taste)

Prep the shallot by finely chopping it. Pluck about 1/3 cup of parsley leaves from their stems. Set both aside (they will be used once the sunchokes and potatoes have been cooked and drained).

Rinse and scrub the sunchokes and potatoes. In a large pot, immerse the potatoes in salted water. In a separate medium sized pot, immerse the sunchokes in salted water. Bring the water in both pots to a boil. Let the potatoes cook for 10-12 minutes. The sunchokes will cook for about 7-8 minutes. Watch the potatoes and sunchokes carefully. They should end up half-cooked, don’t over cook.

Next, drain the sunchokes and potatoes. Let them cool enough to handle. Slice the sunchokes with the skin on (about a 1/4” thick). Dice the potatoes, also with the skin on (about 1/2” thick).

Heat a large skillet on medium-low. Combine the olive oil and vegetable oil in the skillet. Next, add the shallots and a pinch of salt and sauté until brown (about 6-7 minutes).

Add the cubed butter to the skillet. Then add the potatoes and sunchokes and turn the heat up to medium-high. Add salt and pepper to taste and mix the ingredients around. Let the hash cook in the skillet for 4 minutes without mixing, then flip the ingredients around and cook for an additional 4 minutes, or until cooked through. The hash should be fully cooked but not mushy, so make sure not to overcook.

Turn off heat and remove the skillet. Add the parsley and mix around.

Flat Iron Steak-

4oz flat iron steaks (4)

1 TBSP olive oil

2 tsp Salt

2 tsp Pepper

2 tsp Garlic Powder

2 tsp Paprika

Make a rub by combining the salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika in a small bowl. On a dish, generously sprinkle rub over both sides of the steak. Cover the dish and place in the refrigerator for an hour, up to overnight.

Remove dish from refrigerator and allow steaks to sit on counter until room temperature. Meanwhile, heat skillet on medium-high. Once hot, coat the pan with the oil and add steaks. Cook for 4-5 minutes on each side for medium-rare to medium. Take steaks from pan and allow them to rest for 5 minutes. Reserve pan and steak drippings to use for the brown sauce.

Brown Sauce-

1 cup Cabernet wine

salt & pepper to taste

1 TBSP unsalted butter

Using the same pan the steaks were cooked in, reduce heat to medium-low. Add wine to the steak drippings and turn heat up to medium-high. Scrape drippings with a wooden spoon and stir into the wine. Let the wine reduce by half (about 7-8 minutes). Add butter, salt and pepper to the wine and stir until the sauce becomes thick. Once thick, remove from heat.

Plating-
Place a serving of hash in the middle of a plate. Top with steak and pour fondue sauce over both. Then spoon brown sauce around the side of the plate.

Rating- We give our dish 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Well, we certainly challenged ourselves on our first cooking adventure by choosing a dish that had 4 main components! While our dish tasted good (and we certainly ate all of it), it was definitely not as well made as Animal’s. The brown sauce still stumps us and our fondue wasn’t as refined. But we feel we did well on the hash and the steak. We are excited to incorporate the truffle oil we bought into other dishes we make and the hash is something we will certainly get a lot of use out of. Not sure flank steak is one of our favorite cuts as we learned there is a strip of tissue (gristle) that runs up the middle of it, but the dish could certainly be made with a different cut of steak. Overall, we had a fun first week working on our blog. We loved the restaurant, enjoyed ordering meat directly from a butcher, and only minimally fought in the kitchen!

How would you rate our recipe? We look forward to hearing feedback from you guys on whether you think we got close or if we missed the mark, what would you add to make the dish better. Anyone know how to make a great brown sauce for steak? Feel free to email us if you have any questions on the cooking instructions and don’t forget to vote for next week’s restaurant!

Tags: Animal, Flat Iron Steak

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 12:50 am and is filed under Beef. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.