Sunday Night Bites: Wine! Tears! Survivor! Earthquake! and Jac With A Flaming Gun!

For this latest edition of Sunday Night Bites we decided to look at the menu of a place that Ryan visits far too often, The one and only Chateau Marmont. In fact, he's been twice this week...you could say that he's a VIP or at least a functioning alcoholic. This idea all started on Jac's birthday when she ordered the halibut and shared a bite with Ry. Since then, in this year of the fish, Ryan has enjoyed it on numerous occasions. The potato crusted slab of protein is quite spectacular when done properly and lacks the greasy element that is often found in crusted fish.

Trader Ralph Bristol hooked us up with the most solid ingredients - gorgeous steaks of halibut and the most gargantuan shallot that Jac had ever seen. Ryan arrived at 5:19pm smelling of booze and suntan lotion - both he and Jac were exhausted from their weekends but committed to the task at hand and to you, the reader. Of course, Ryan's weekend was far more glamorous than Jac's - She spent the entire weekend house hunting while Ryan spent his time with young Hollywood in Malibu, Laurel Canyon, and Beverly Hills.

Ryan was assigned a new task, which he found eerily similar to his last task from several weeks back, peeling potatoes. However, this time, Ryan was promised the use of Jac's beloved food processor which she has lovingly named "the Rob Lowe." One of the many purpose of this machine is to shred things into sexy and carefully dishevelled Rob Lowe like pieces (Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Sunday Nights @ 10pm).

We left the potato peices to drain in our fancy chinois and worked on the sauce and the side dishes. http://www.williamssonoma.com/products/cw053/index.cfm?pkey=xsrd0m1%7C16%chinois&cm%5Fsrc=SCH

From here, Ryan chopped flat leaf Italian parsley and the ginormous shallot (which made him cry like Calista chasing the helicopter) and added them to the boiling dry white wine, worcestershire sauce, and smide of lemon juice. We let this sauce reduce by half while Jac worked on the side dishes of tomato and spinach. The completion of the sauce marked the commencement of kitchen chaos.

The fish, coated with mayonnaise and seasoned by Jac (as pictured), were covered with the shredded potato mix and dropped into our favorite deep saute pan. This was when the shallot hit the fan. The potato mix divorced the fillets and our Chateau dreams were momentarily shattered. While Ryan presided as president of the nervous breakdown committee, Jac silently hatched and quickly implemented her crisis management plan: "Two eggs!" she hollered and the remainder of the emergency stash of "shredded potatoes from the Rob Lowe." From there, we cooked the hash browns on their own, and then later reunited them with the fish before it entered the oven.