Dateline: February 28, 2021 Orange Beef Redux

I had a package of beef strips in the freezer and decided to make orange beef again.  I used the NYTimes Sam Sifton recipe again, as a framework and riffed on it.   

The riffs this time were adding more vegetables, broccoli again, green bell peppers, onions, and red finger peppers and jalapeno.  The big change was kind of Koreanifying it but sauteeing until crispy some dduk rice cakes.  These are the finger thickness 2 inch round rice cakes that are sold in asian markets either vacuum packed or frozen.  These were vac packed.  I grabbed a couple of handfuls from the package and cut them into thirds so they would be these crispy nuggets coated in orange sauce.

I proceeded as the recipe says by making the sauce.  I did not make it very sweet, I used about a 1 inch chunk of rock sugar instead of 1/4 c of light brown sugar as I don't like it when chinese food is too sweet.  It did not totally dissolve, so there was even less sugar.  I added an ounce of shaoxing wine as well did not reduce it by half.

For the woking bits, I fried the rice cakes first until crispy and held them in a bowl lined with paper towels.  I then fried the beef strips in 2 batches until they were nicely colored and crisp on the outside.  I used 3 T of cornstarch 1/2 t baking soda, and 1/2 t of salt in the dredge.    As the meat cooked I removed it to the same bowl as the rice cakes.  

1 precooked the broccoli florets in the microwave for 2 minutes and left them in there until there were needed.

Next I stir fried some extra ginger slices, dried red peppers until fragrant and then I added the onions and bell peppers.  Stir frying them until they got a little bit of color.  Then in went the broccoli, beef, rice cakes they got all mixed together.  Lastly I dumped in the sauce and cooked until well coated and heated through.  Dinner is served.

Dateline: February 26, 2021 Osso Buco and Gremolata

Fresh Direct had a lovely sale on osso buco, so I bought 3 packages of it.  Each package held 2 nice pieces.

Firstly, I patted each piece dry after taking from the package, and tied each on up like a lovely package.  

This was a waste of my time, because as soon as they went into the dutch oven to brown, the strings came off, so, either I have to learn how to tie meat better, or I need to get thicker pieces so I can tie in 2 locations rather than 1 place.

The finished plate with polenta and gremolata

Osso Buco with Gremolata

Ingredients

6 veal shanks cut into 2 inch rounds

2 large carrots sliced into thick rounds (I will blitz this at the end to emulsify the sauce.  You can chop                              finely and no emulsification necessary)

4 stalks celery, cut into 1 inch chunks, see above

1 large onion, cut into large dice, see above

3 cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped, see above

1/2 bottle of drinkable white wine

1/2 can tomato paste

1 14 oz can diced tomatoes with juice

1 - 1.5 quarts of good chicken or beef stock, I used chicken as I prefer the lighter finished product

3 bay leaves

2 large sprigs of thyme

salt and pepper

1/4 c all purpose flour seasoned with salt, pepper and granulated garlic 

1 piece tangerine peel, left whole

Oil for browning

Method

1.  Dredge each shank in the seasoned flour, shaking off excess.  Why?  So it doesn't burn in the oil.  Heat oven to 350°F

2.  Heat a large dutch oven and add oil.  When hot, add shanks and brown well on all sides.  This will need to be done in batches.  Hold the browned shanks on a plate.

3.  After the browning is finished, clean out the pan with a paper towel held by tongs.  Why?  You don't want the burnt bits of flour in your sauce, nor do you want the oil that burned those bits.  There will be some fond on the bottom of the pan.  You want brown or dark brown fond, not black.  Try to get as much of the black up as you can.

4.  Add fresh oil and add onions, carrots, and celery and a pinch or two of salt and pepper.  Saute and use the veggies to help pull up the fond on the bottom of the pan.  Add the garlic.  When most of the fond has come up, there will be stubborn spots, then add the 1/2 bottle of white wine, I used Damn Good Chard, it is very drinkable and nicely buttery.  Really work to get up those stubborn spots of fond and let reduce until its syrupy.  Clear a space and add the tomatoes paste and cook until it has a brick color instead of dark red.  Mix into veggies well.  Add a splash more of wine to loosen things up and then add the tomatoes with their juice.  Stir well.  Add 1 qt chicken stock.  Mix well.

5.  Put the browned shanks on top of the veggies in a single layer, if possible.  Push down on them and add enough additional stock to cover, if needed.  Add the bay leaves, thyme sprigs, and tangerine peel. Bring to a simmer and cover and place in a 350°F oven. 

6.  After 2 hours check on the shanks, they should be bubbling away nicely, lower temp to 300°F and recover.  In another hour, check again, shanks should be falling away from the bone. You want to keep those bones, there's good marrow eating in there!

beautiful silky sauce

7.  Remove pan from oven and turn oven off.  Remove shanks carefully from the pan to a separate clean plate or 2.  You want to keep them together as best as possible.  Remove the bay leaves and thyme sprigs.  If any bones have come free, remove them as well.  Using a stick blender, blitz the veggies to get a lovely thick sauce.  Taste and adjust spices.  Carefully replace shanks into the blended sauce along with any juices and bits of veg that may have clung to them.  Cove the pan and return to the cooling oven until dinner time. 

carefully returned shanks 

Gremolata

Chop together a long of parsley, lemon zest, salt, and garlic until it forms a paste and squeeze a bit of lemon juice in and mix well.  Serve with the Osso Buco.

This is a paste that is heavily redolent of garlic.  It completes the meal.  The braise is mild and this gremolata really picks it up.  Very addictive, and does not store well.  So make only what you will use in that particular meal.

Dateline: February 23 - 24, 2021 EVERYTHING BAGELS

I have been wanting to make bagels and I finally, said, do it!

So on Feb. 23, I got out the bread flour, the bread salt, the high gluten flour, the whole wheat flour, diastatic malt powder, yeast and molasses and went to town.

I followed the article in the NYTimes, How to Make Bagels that was published a couple of weeks ago. The process is not difficult, it will take 2 days and a lot of space in your fridge overnight.  Luckily, I have an outdoor deck which served as a de facto fridge until I made dinner that night, which freed up room in the fridge for the 2 sheet pans of bagels waiting to be taken to paradise.

Pre initial rise

Post Rise, pre shaping

The shaping consisted of cutting the risen dough into 12 - 13 equal sized pieces, I made 13 4-ounced sized lumps.  Each lump was shaped into a ball and then after 5 minutes, rolled by hand into a cigar shape about 9 inches long.  The ends of the cigar should be tapered so that the width of the bagel is consistent.  Take the tapered ends and roll them under your palm with the dough around your knuckles for a few seconds so that the ends will stick to each other completing the round.

Put a sheet of parchment paper that has been lightly greased and place the bagel rounds on them, 6 to a sheet pan, so you will need to have 2 ready to go.  Cover the sheet pans with plastic wrap and cover with a dampened towel and put into the fridge, on the deck, for at least 4 hours, or up to 24 hours.

Boiling and coating comes next.  I did not have malt syrup, but I did have diastatic malt powder and I used that instead with a tad of molasses for deepening the color of the boiling liquid to the color as described in the article.

I filled a bowl with 30 g of the assorted seeds and/or salt that were called for, I used black sesame, poppy, caraway, granulated onion, granulated garlic, and maldon salt.  I think next time I will used dried minced onion and garlic.

The boiling liquid comes to a boil, have a spider or skimmer near by because you will need to skim off the foam that is on the surface as the water boils.  I was able to get 4 bagels in the water bath at a time.  It's about 30 seconds a side and then they come out of the bath and are coated in the everything mixture.

These are then baked in a 450°F oven for 20-25 minutes.  What I found was that was too long, the first batch was in for 22 mins and came out very dark, the second batch was in for 20 mins and came out the same color.  I had convection on, so perhaps that makes a difference.  Maybe next time I will lower temp to 425 or 400 when I use convection.  

just out of the oven

blurry look at the crumb

The taste was divine and had a lovely chew to them.  As they got older, they got chewier and denser, so keep in mind there is no preservative in them, and therefore, they will not last as long as bakery ones.

It was a satisfying 2 day project and certainly kept me off the streets!

Dateline: February 23, 2021 Vegetarian Couscous Redux

I had been jonesing for that couscous dish again.  I had in mind some tweaks, and so, I did it.  The original recipe is a Melissa Clark Creamy chickpeas and pearl couscous .  This version used collards, tuscan kale, chickpeas, cannelloni beans, roasted red peppers, sun dried tomatoes, plum tomatoes, canned tomatoes, preserved lemon, garlic, shallot, red wine, balsamic vinegar, chicken stock, and of course, pearl couscous.

I started as Ms. Clark suggests, pre-roasting the tomatoes, shallots, wine, vinegar in a 450° F oven.  While that was going on, I chopped the collards and kale, preserved lemon, roasted peppers, sun dried tomatoes, and heated the stock.  I then added in the couscous, greens, beans, lemon, peppers and tomatoes and the boiling stock.  Mixed well, covered with foil and back into the oven it went for about 20 minutes.

The feta got drained and chopped in the meantime and after the 20 or so minutes, it got added into the casserole and mixed in.  Foil was removed and it was back into the oven for a final cook.  I went a few minutes longer than suggested because there was a bit more soupiness as I didn't drain canned tomatoes and used more couscous than called for.  Final dusting of cilantro and dinner was done.  This was still delicious.

Dateline: February 22, 2021 Rotisserie Chicken with Roasted Vegetables

I had a very cute small chicken that needed cooking.  I wanted rotisserie chicken, so I stuffed the cavity with some fennel stalks and fronds and a tiny half onion left over from another night.  For the vegetation over which the chicken would slowly rotate I had some cubed up rutabaga, aforementioned fennel, onion, brussel sprouts, red bell peppers, carrots, and a couple of small white potatoes.  

Everything got chopped up and doused with olive oil, garlic, red finger pepper, and a chopped up preserved lime.  Yes, a preserved lime.  I tried out preserving citrus fruits other than lemons in saline solution and have limes and oranges sitting in the fridge.  The limes add a level of sourness that the preserved lemons do not.  In judicious amounts it will work.  Because I preserve mostly Meyer Lemons, the sharpness of the acid was a bit of a surprise when I tasted a tiny piece before dumping it into the veggies.  In the finished product, it did not overpower at all, in fact, it seemed to be a factor that pulled everything together a bit tighter.

As I was prepping things for the meal, I was also making chicken stock.  I read an article in Cook's Illustrated that discussed the differences between bone broth and stock.  Who knew, I have been making bone broth for 30+ years, OG hipster here!  It seems that the big difference is the amount of collagen that is present in the finished product.  Bone broth has lots of it, stock, not so much.  How do you know if you have collagen in your stock/broth, let it cool after cooking.  Does it set up, and look like Jello, you have a lot of collagen in that batch.  You can always cheat and add powdered collagen to a finished product to duplicate that particular umami-ness.

As a music history professor would tell us, "Label that digression in your notes".  Back to the chicken.

I rubbed it with some oil, and salted and peppered it, ran the skewer through, tightened the prongs and poked the end through the hole in the back of the oven.  I never had a built in rotisserie in an oven before, I will never be without one going forward.  I started the temp at 400° F for about 35 minutes, or until you could smell the chicken.  I lowered the temp to 350° F and added a cup of chicken bone broth to the sheet pan below.  Set the timer for another 30 minutes, and voila!   Chicken-y nirvana with unctuous roasted veggies with a touch of char to them.  It hit every bell for me!

Roasted Veggies

Rotisserie Chicken

Dateline: February 19, 2021 Sheet Pan Dinner #4, variations on a theme

Again, I didn't want the same old, same old.  Thursday, in our weekly call with Alan and Lyn, tajine came up.  Hmmmmm, I could do a variation on that theme.

Ingredients

6 boneless chicken thighs

2 T Tajine Spice Mix, divided.....see note/photo

4 medium Yukon Gold or other gold potato, cut into wedges

1 broccoli crown, cut into florets

1 tiny head of cabbage, the size of a navel orange, or equivalent amount from a larger head, cored and                  cut into 1 inch wedges

1 large onion, sliced

1 Yellow Bell pepper, any color will do, seeded, sliced into strips

1 Anaheim pepper, or other long narrow green or red pepper

1/2 Butternut squash, seeded and cut into wedges

1 c steamed string beans (leftover from the night before)

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1/4 c olive oil

1/2 red finger pepper or other hot pepper. sliced thinly

1/2 c white wine

1/2 c Castelvetrano olives, drained

pimenton - see note

sumac - see note

1 preserved lemon, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

1/3 cup chopped cilantro for garnish

Method

1.  Sprinkle 1 T of the spice mixture on the chicken and rub it in well.  Keep to the side, or refrigerate.  Set oven to 400° F.

2.  Prep the veggies and place on a sheet pan and distribute them equally, mixing colors and textures.

3.  In a bowl, put olive oil, garlic, hot pepper, preserved lemon, olives, and 1 T Tajine Spice Mix.  Mix well and drizzle over the vegetables.  Lightly dust the top of the vegetables with pimenton, salt, pepper, and sumac.

4.  Place chicken thighs on top of the veggies and lightly coat with cooking spray or olive oil, pimenton and sumac.  Put in oven for about 30-40 minutes until thighs are cooked through and potatoes are soft.

Pre Oven 

Dressed in Cilantro

Note: 

Pimenton is Spanish Sweet Smoked Paprika

Sumac is a Mediterranean spice from the Sumac plant, it has a lemony flavor, you could sub zest and juice for it.

Tajine Spice Mix:

front of package

back of package

Dateline: February 18, 2021 Just for the Halibut (see what I did there)

 I had some very fresh halibut from FD that I wanted to cook.  I rooted around in the veggie bins and found some string beans, and the left over veggies from the night before....what was left of them.  Bill had finished off the broccoli, so it was just potatoes, bell pepper slices, and some onions or shallots.  But, I didn't just want the same old flavorings, I wanted something different....ROMESCO SAUCE!

A eureka moment.  Did I have everything....almonds, check, roasted red peppers, check, tomatoes, check, garlic, check, onions, check, pimenton, check....I was in business. 

I used a NYTCooking recipe from Florence Fabricant for the Romesco Sauce.  Naturally, I made a few changes as I always do.  I used white wine instead of water and used lots of piquillo peppers from a jar I had sitting around that really needed to be used.  I used my homemade red wine vinegar as well.

I blitzed the toasted almonds in the VitaMix for just a few seconds, didn't want almond butter!  I sauteed the onions and added garlic, peppers, vinegar, wine, and spices.  My tomatoes were canned that I scooped out trying not to take too much juice with them.  This then got added to the blender jar and after adding in a bit more of the tomato juice and some water, I got the blender to puree everything into loveliness.  And it tasted great, needed a bit more salt and pimenton, but other than that, delish.

For the veggies, I put them in a pan, added a few more potatoes and bell peppers and stuck it in the oven until I was ready to cook the fish.

The fish was 2 halibut fillets, about 8 oz. each, they were a beautiful white firm fish.  I rarely, if ever, have cooked halibut before.  I decided to gently pan fry in the cleaned pan from the romesco sauce.  I heated up some oil and patted the fish dry and then oiled with some olive oil and salted and peppered it.  I cooked presentation side first, that was the side without the skin for this dish.  Gently flipped the fish when it had started to become opaque about 1/2 of the way up the side of the fish.  After flipping, I shook the pan to keep the fish from sticking to the pan.  Sprinkled a bit of pimenton on top of the cooked side and waited until the opacity had climbed to the middle on the other side.

This was a delicious dinner.  The romesco sauce went beautifully with everything, veggies, taters, fish, you name it.  It was just plain YUM.

Dateline: February 17, 2021 Sous Vide Picanha and Baked Veggies

In my quest to create more room in the freezer, I grabbed a big hunk of picanha and decided to sous vide it.   

I seasoned the steak with a mixture of smoked salt, dried garlic, and ground pepper.  Bagged into a large vacuum bag and set up the sous vide rig.  As the steak was frozen still, I had to sous vide for 3 hours!  In the mean time, I set up the sheet pan with broccoli florets, fingerling potatoes, some chunked sweet potatoes and additional white potatoes.  I oiled them and seasoned with salt and pepper.  I added for good measure 1/3 of a yellow bell pepper and 1/2 an onion and scattered that over the veggies.  They went into a 350° F oven for just about an hour....when I started to smell the broccoli, I pulled it out and tented with foil for a few minutes.  I turned off the oven and stuck the pan with its foil into the slowly cooling oven.

When the steak was finished, I pulled it out of the water bath, patted it dry from the juices in the vacuum bag and then torched it on the fat side to crisp up the fat and give the meat a good look.  Without the torching, the meat is kind of grayish, and very unappealing.  After torching, it looks like a good steakhouse!

Sliced steak, quite rare

Baked veggies

I tried slicing the steak in two different directions to see which would be the more tender, and definitely slicing against the grain created a more tender thin slice, not that the steak was tough either way, but it was a little bit more tender in the across grain cuts.

The meal was rounded out with a winter salad of cukes, tomatoes, onions, and celery with a sherry vinegar and olive oil dressing.

Cooking sous vide is very easy and allows one to have a cocktail without screwing up the meal timing!  It is all about the cocktails, after all.  I am currently on a Manhattan or Boulevardier kick, depending on which Bourbon or Rye I am pouring.  I am very particular about my Manhattan or Boulevardier cocktails!

Dateline: February 16, 2021 Chorizo, Rice, and Black Beans

I needed to clear up some space in the freezer, so out came the homemade chorizo and then I had to figure out what to do with it.

As I didn't think about dinner until late afternoon, I pulled out the instant pot and decided to make some kind of stew-ish thing.  

Ingredients

1 lb chorizo, hopefully, homemade, broken into chunks

2 14 oz. cans diced tomatoes, undrained

2 14 oz. cans black beans, drained and rinsed

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped 

1 c basmati rice

1 c water

2 T chili powder

1 t cumin powder

1 T smoked paprika

1 t mexican oregano

saffron threads, optional

2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced with extra T of the sauce

1 chopped red finger pepper

salt and pepper to taste

Method

1.  Heat Instant Pot and briefly saute the sausage to render some of its fat.  If the sausage was lean, which mine was, there is no need to drain out the fat.  Otherwise, remove as much fat as you can.  Add in onions, garlic, finger pepper, and a bit of salt and pepper.  Stir to combine and cook until onions are translucent.

2.  Add in chipotle peppers and extra sauce, canned tomatoes, beans, chili powder, paprika, cumin, saffron, oregano, and option saffron, if using.  Stir to combine.  

3.  Adjust Instant Pot to pressure cook on high for 20 minutes.  Allow to reduce pressure naturally for 5-8 minutes, then quick release.  Taste for seasoning.  Add rice and water and close the lid and adjust time for another 5 minutes of high pressure.  Allow to release naturally.  If you get a burn message, add more water and stir well.  The rice should absorb almost all of the liquid in the pot.

This was almost like a jambalaya, which was fitting as it was Fat Tuesday!

This was very spicy and addictive at that!  We both were blowing our noses but kept reaching for more.... the power of spice.  If your chorizo is not very spicy, add some more chipotle peppers to build the heat!

Dateline: February 15, 2021 Vegetarian Sheet-Pan #3

In rummaging through the pantry, I came across a box of Israeli couscous.  That then sent me on an expedition into what to do with it.  I came across Melissa Clark's Couscous with Feta Cheese on NYT Cooking.  Using it as a framework, I tweaked it, naturally, of course.  

I had a bunch of collard greens, which I sliced into ribbons after taking out the thick stem in the center.  I didn't have a pint of fresh cherry tomatoes, so I used 2 cans diced tomatoes and I added 1 red finger pepper chopped up, a couple of oil cured sun dried tomatoes, vegetable stock, 1 can chickpeas.

This is the set up before baking.  After the suggested time, I then added in the pearled couscous and stock and put it back in the oven again.  After the suggested time, it was still a bit soupy, so I returned to the oven again.  I pulled it out and then crumbled in the feta cheese, stirred, and returned to the oven again to melt/soften up the cheese.

Finished product with its garnish of cilantro.

This was a real keeper.  I was absolutely amazed at it.  It had the necessary spice for me, courtesy of the red finger pepper and I could hardly believe that it was vegetarian.  Not vegan because of the cheese, but that could be remedied easily by using tofu or other substitute.

Husband unit loved it.