The Knife and Fork

Top Sirloin with Potato-Parsnip Puree - A Fine Return

2011-11-20T23:20:00.000-08:00

It’s time for my annual post to this blog. That’s right, it’s been a year to the date since I’ve posted anything here. Pathetic, I know, thanks to some gentle prodding by friends who will remain nameless (Brian, Erik, Tony and dad). Enough with past foibles, the subject at hand is perfectly cooked meat and a new friend in the world of root vegetables.

Don't waste the fat trimmings - they are white gold!

It is well established that the slower a hunk of meat cooks, the more uniform the ‘doneness’ is throughout. I still marvel that current recipes recommend roasting large pieces of beef at 350 or 400 degrees because that results in a huge variation in internal temperature from the roast’s center to its exterior. It may register medium rare/135 on the meat thermometer at its center but a cross section will reveal the full spectrum of doneness – a slow transition from rosy pink to Soviet gray as it reaches the exterior. Flavor and texture are seriously compromised.


Tied	to give uniformity and even browning.

Keeping this phenomenon in mind, I preheated the oven to 250 degrees while I prepped the top sirloin (top block) roast I got from the local butcher. The quality of meat from our local butcher is so superior to the supermarket that I gladly pay a premium for it, knowing I won’t be enraged at the dinner table when the “good deal” I got on sale turns out to be a glorified chew toy. The piece I got was essentially a super thick top sirloin steak. I seasoned the nearly 3 pound hunk with kosher salt, pepper and Penzey’s Italian Herb mixture. I let it sit at room temp for several hours for the salt to do its magic then tied it around the perimeter to cinch it up and form a plump, even mini-roast. I browned it in a heavy pot in the rendered fat from the trimmings, which tends to develop a beautiful browned exterior. Then it was into the oven for a slow finish to about 130 degrees.

I didn’t want to waste all the precious fond in the browning pot so I deglazed it with some Port and basted the roast with it through its cooking time. I had enough left that I simmered it down to make a port wine reduction to drizzle over the slices. I unapologetically use a digital meat thermometer to monitor the internal temp of roasts and was amazed at how quickly and steadily the temperature rose in this one despite the low oven temp. I kept backing the oven temp off until I finally just turned it off and let the residual heat finish the cooking. When it hit 130 I pulled and let it rest while I finished the side dishes. The digital thermometer probably saved me from a disaster.

The holy grail of done-ness.


The Food Mill - Indulgent gadget perhaps, incredible texture absolutely.

Note the removal of the woody core.

Speaking of side dishes, I made a Yukon Gold and parsnip puree that I had seen on Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, hosted by the rough-and-ready Anne Burrell. I boiled one pound each of peeled and diced potatoes and parsnips (I removed the core from the larger parsnips because they can be woody) in salty water for 30 minutes; ran them through a food mill and stirred in butter and cream (go to Food Network for the full recipe). The results were terrific. Silky texture, great potato flavor followed by the haunting, licoricey taste of parsnips. Absolutely tremendous.

Truthfully, the meat was so good that the port reduction was a detraction.

As you can see, the meat was cooked perfectly through. It looks rare but has the flavor and texture of medium rare and was completely uniform throughout.

Tiny Cat observed but never lunged.

Hanger Steaks

2010-11-20T10:26:00.000-08:00


If memory serves me correct, this is where I first tasted a hanger steak.

Several years ago on a trip in New York I saw something on a restaurant menu I had never seen on the west coast – a hanger steak. I was intrigued by the concept of an obscure steak, so with the encouragement of the waiter, I ordered it. Bottom line - I enjoyed its full flavor and didn’t mind the grainy, somewhat chewy texture.

The size and shape are very similar to a pork tenderloin.

My trips for work now take me only as far as Fresno so I had almost forgotten about the hanger steak until recently when I started seeing it appear on west coast menus. I ordered it at Route 246 in Solvang and it was terrific, much better than I remembered. A few weeks later I saw a scrap of paper on the meat case at our local butcher shop advertising “Butcher Tender or Hanger Steaks” for $8.99/lb. The butcher informed me that it comes from the diaphragm area of the cow and is close in proximity to skirt steak. This dispelled my misunderstanding that it came from the neck (courtesy of my waiter in New York).

I purchased two for the wife and I to enjoy as our Friday night dinner. Turns out what I got was the entire muscle divided in half with the membrane removed. Each steak weighed about 8 oz. They were so good that I bought two more the next Friday for a repeat performance. They were boneless with no exterior fat or silver skin and required no trimming whatsoever. I simply coated them in olive oil, kosher salt and pepper and grilled them over an oak wood fire the same way I would a normal steak. They seem to have the best flavor and texture at medium rare but the ends that reached medium were good too.

The texture and flavor are like flank steak or skirt steak. In fact, this is one of the most flavorful cuts of beef I’ve had after a rib eye or a prime grade steak. Last week I gave some a brief marinade before grilling them for tacos with my friend Brian, but I’m not sure it really improved the flavor. Much like some other newly popular cuts, the French have valued this cut for years and call it ‘onglet’. I categorize it with the flat iron, baja and the chuck eye steak as an undervalued treasure. Hopefully it will not be co-opted by the pop gourmands who start the food trend bandwagons that drive prices up. Maybe I shouldn’t have written this…

Chuck Eye Steaks

2010-03-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

In the early 1990’s my friend Sean and I would often go to San Francisco Giants games at Candlestick Park. This was before the new ownership group brought in Barry Bonds and erected real bleachers in the outfield. We sat in the multipurpose stadium’s equivalent to bleacher seats – “General Admission”. They were real seats, not benches, in the left field corner but were at a strange angle due to the fact that Candlestick was designed for several purposes but excelled at none of them. Despite their deficiencies, the $3.25 per seat price tag was all the incentive we needed. At one point we realized the open seating allowed us to choose seats near the left field foul pole, a scant few feet away from the high rent Lower Box Seats. One game a General Admission patron heckled nearby Box Seat customers and basically informed them they were suckers for paying six times more for essentially the same seats.

So what does this have to do with steak? The cow is a lot like seat prices at a baseball park. Someone in the Meat-Government complex divided up the cuts with strict lines and assigned varying quality and price levels to them. The cuts from the rib and short loin command a much higher price point than cuts from the chuck or round for good reason. A quality rib eye or porterhouse may be the greatest expression of steak but the rib/loin borders its inferiors neighbors, the round and the chuck (think Canada and Mexico), in a contiguous stretch . So how different can the north end of a rib loin be than the south end of the chuck? I don't think it's a precise anatomical line so someone arbitrarily decided where the rib eye ended and the chuck began. It was this thought that intrigued me when I saw some “chuck eye steaks” I saw at the store the other night.

My understanding was that the chuck eye was essentially the extension of the rib roast (i.e. rib eye). I found a couple chuck eye steaks with beautiful marbling and an overall shape similar to a rib eye. They were each about 8 oz. and were priced at $5.49/lb. For $6 I figured they were worth a try. I couldn’t make them for a few nights so I sprinkled them with kosher salt and drizzled them with olive oil, having great success with this process in the past.

Friday night came and my emotions ran the gamut from thinking they could be as sublime as the outer ‘ring of heaven’ on a prime rib (or rib eye) to dread, imagining them to be tough and livery tasting. I conjectured that, like other pieces of chuck, they would benefit from long and slow cooking. Perhaps they would become meltingly tender with slow, gentle heat in the oven. With a half-formed plan I started dinner. I began by using my trusty confit method – rendering excess steak fat trimmings in a cast iron pan for searing the tied-up steaks. So far so good but I could already see a different hue and grain structure than a rib eye. I started getting nervous. After developing a crusty exterior I put them in a 250 degree oven and browsed the internets for comments or recipes on this cut. It seemed clear that cooking them beyond medium rare was a mistake, so naturally I panicked. I pulled the steaks out of the oven and used a thermometer to test one. It topped out at about 150 degrees so I figured I had screwed that up (although the finger push test told me they were just right). The obvious antidote to a tough or dry or poorly flavored steak is augmentation - specifically sauce or toppings. I sautéed mushrooms and made a red wine pan sauce, hoping they would cover any shortcomings.

The wife made a mashed potato recipe that used Yukon Gold potatoes through a food mill and lots of olive oil and I sautéed up some swiss chard. We had a bottle of Carmenere from Argentina that turned out to be fantastic (we’re going to Cost Plus tomorrow to see if any is left). The mashed potatoes were excellent and deserving of a separate entry. The steaks – they were good. They weren’t out of this world and superior to their rib eye neighbor. If they were I wouldn’t be the first to discover this. They had a different flavor like other chuck cuts do (i.e flat iron and baja steaks). It might be off-putting to some but it’s not that strong. I was amazed how tender they were. I braced myself for some serious chew but mine was more tender than most rib eyes I’ve had. The flavor was less buttery than a rib eye or New York (or Porterhouse or T-Bone) but it was good and definitely not bland. They would take very well to a marinade.

Conclusion – if you see real “chuck eye steaks” and they look well-marbled I suggest you give them a try. Season liberally, sear over high heat (pan or bbq) and finish with some slow roasting. It could be replace the Flat Iron as the hip new steak (not the new hip steak).

Smoked Hamburgers

2010-01-08T23:35:00.000-08:00

Human history is filled with moments of breathtaking discovery. Lewis & Clark’s first glimpse of the mighty Pacific, Watson and Crick’s unraveling of DNA, Armstrong and Aldrin’s dusty steps on the moon, Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s ascent of Mt. Everest. Add to this epic list, Tom and Brian’s smoked hamburgers.

My first love - a Mecco electric water smoker

First, a little history. Back in the 20^th century I purchased my first smoker and a copy of an excellent smoker cookbook called Smoke & Spice. For years I referred to it when making traditional smoker favorites like ribs, pork shoulder and smoked sausages. I would often leisurely thumb through the book and was always intrigued by a recipe for “Humdinger Hamburgers”. For some reason, other than the corny name, I never gave them a try despite their relatively short smoking time, which makes them one of the easiest recipes in the book. I never put them out of mind and knew one day I’d see if they were as good as the book promised. Turns out, they were better.

If you want to smoke food, get this book.

Fast forward ten years. Our church was having its annual Men’s Barbecue Competition and my friend Brian suggested we enter. We strategized about our entry. Tri-tip – tired and cliché: Ribs – also overdone and difficult to pull off at a remote location. We had done a prototype of smoked hamburgers a few months prior so we decided to try them in earnest for the competition. Risky? Yes, but we might as well go down swinging.

I admit I wanted to put as much wind in our sails as possible, so rather than buy pre-ground beef I bought a chuck roast and sirloin ‘flap meat’ (looks like skirt steak) to grind up fresh. Brian brought his son Sam over and we ground the meat on my Kitchen Aid grinder. We dusted the patties with a traditional barbecue spice and placed them in the smoker. While they smoked over oak wood Brian and Sam headed to the church to light our charcoal grill parked in the staging area. After 90 minutes of smoking I shuttled the burgers over to the church.

After the smoking period the patties had a stunning mahogany patina. Unlike a grilled patty that shrinks, tightens and balls up while cooking, these had shrunk very little. Combined with the raw looking interior, they looked undercooked but I’m convinced they had reached at least 135 degrees in the center. Regardless, we finished them over direct heat on the grill for a crispy exterior and to melt the cheese.

Gentle cooking = juicy meat and minimal shrinkage. Look at that color!

We wanted to win the contest and didn’t know how these would turn out, so as an insurance policy we made sure the condiments were top shelf. Brian made a caramelized onion spread and I grilled red, orange and red bell peppers over an oak wood fire. We placed a roasted pepper on each patty and topped them with a slice of Tillamook black label aged white cheddar. We warmed the buns on the grill and gave them a smear of onion spread before laying the patties down. The flavor? Impossible to capture in words. Intense smokiness that didn’t overpower the juicy beef flavor. The sweet peppers and tangy cheddar were perfect counterpoints. We called our entry “The Smoked Offering” because I felt like I should honor God for creating such transcendent flavors for us to discover (btw, we won the contest but our real reward was the burger).

I reported the results to my friend Tony who promptly made the 3.5 hour drive with his wife to our house to make smoked hamburgers. The photos on this post are from his visit. This time I simplified the process a little with good quality ground chuck from the butcher. Not a problem - we climbed Everest again.

Don't be fooled by the raw look. It's cooked through but with

incredible flavor, texture and juiciness.

I use a New Braunfels smoker but these can be made on a charcoal grill or probably a gas grill that has a little smoker box for chips. Just have the fire on one side, add chunks or chips of wood, cover and keep the temperature in the cooking area around 225 degrees. I recommend finishing the burgers for just a minute over direct heat. And please don't destroy them with "bbq sauce".

The Malty Falcon

2009-08-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

In the early 1990’s I was fresh out of college, looking for a job, ready to take on the world and living at my parents’ house. Rather than spending time in job interviews I often found myself with my friends at a place called City Pub in Redwood City. These were the early days of so-called microbrews and City Pub sold several on tap. My favorite was a beer from Canada called McNally’s Extra Ale. In the world of wine there are fruit bombs - McNally’s was a malt bomb. The heavy use of malts made it almost sweet. For some reason it disappeared from bars and restaurants in California in the mid-90’s, although the brewery and beer still exist.

The trend in craft beer now is India Pale Ale (aka IPA) with each brewery in an apparent competition to see who can squeeze more hops into each bottle. I appreciate the bitter grapefruit taste of hops and have enjoyed this trend but I’m getting burned out on these over hopped beers. I want to move forward and go back to the past with a nice malty beer but they seem to be hard to find.

However, the Mendocino brewing company produces a thick beer ca

lled Eye of the Hawk that is a salute to the salad days of malty beers. A bit hefty at 8% alcohol, it’s readily available at Trader Joe’s. It’s not as sweet as McNally’s but it’s a ‘classic’ malt-oriented beer and reminds me of the good old days when I made no money, had no girlfriend and drove a 25 year old car with a mashed in front.

Happy Birthday Old Forester

2009-04-02T22:37:00.001-07:00

A couple years back I purchased a bottle of bourbon from a large beverage store that I will refer to as RevHo to protect their anonymity. I wanted to try something different so I asked the gaggle of employees at the register if anyone had any knowledge of bourbon and could give me some advice. Not a single employee looked old enough to purchase alcohol legally so I was immediately pessimistic, and with good reason. A peach fuzzed kid accompanied me to the whiskey section and quickly it became clear that I knew more about bourbon when I was 17 than this squirt. I thanked him for his "help" and decided on Old Forester's Signature Bourbon for about $20. Over the course of the next year I would dip into the bottle but never really enjoyed it. Finally I decided that I should let the company know because perhaps I got a flawed bottle.

Old Forester Signature - A screw cap and mediocre flavor pushed me to complain

To make a long story short, I e-mailed Old Forester and they were very courteous and compensated me without me requesting it (btw, RevHo never responded to my e-mail). While researching the company I had noticed their "Birthday Bourbon" on their site and was intrigued. It is a limited annual release bourbon that had some nice reviews from independent websites (for more info see: http://www.oldforester.com/better/birthday.aspx). I put my name in at a good liquor store near my parents' house, realizing my rural community would probably never get an allocation, and was pleased to get a call in January informing me that my bourbon had arrived. On a recent trip my parents brought the bottle with them and we enjoyed a tipple before dinner. Here is my tasting report: A refined, classy bourbon. It's not thick and sweet like some of my favorite bourbons but more restrained, almost like a good rye. Perhaps this is due to its more modest 94 proof than the flamethrowers like Old Grand Dad 114 and Booker's (approx. 126). It actually tasted much better a day after I opened it than the first night. I got distinct toffee notes with secondary notes of apple, spice, vanilla, leather and wood. It's not as syrupy as some other rich bourbons but it's smooth and has complexity, like an old world wine. Overall I'd say it's a very nice bourbon. My parents paid $33 for it and at that price I'd say it's worth it if you want a sophisticated sipper. Of course there are several other attractive offerings in that price range. They presented this bottle to me as a birthday gift so not only is it truly a Birthday Bourbon but it was definitely worth the price. Attractive "I Dream of Jeannie" bottle and a classy bourbon turned me around on Old Forester.

Side Dish - Roasted Tomatoes and Onions

2008-12-17T22:54:00.000-08:00

A recent evening I had two beautiful pork rib chops slated for dinner but really didn't know what to serve with them. The wife was dead set on making polenta with a tomato mushroom ragout to go with them, but that was almost a standalone dish. I wanted something to complement the pork chops without being too heavy-handed. Taking a cue from mother, I used what I had on hand - a pile of marginal tomatoes and an onion. I simply halved the tomatoes and sliced the onions in slivers, tossed them all with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted them at 400 degrees while making the pork chops. I seared the chops in a cast iron pan and finished them in the oven with the tomato/onion mixture.

The sheet pan may look like hell but look at those stunning chops.

I pulled the tomatoes and onions when they were clearly caramelized and let them rest while I finished the chops. The chops were done when I pushed on them with my finger and they stopped yielding. Nothing is worse than a dry pork chop. I placed a bed of arugula on the plate for the chops to rest on and topped them with the tomato-onion mixture. The juices the chops yield while resting wilted the arugula and made an additional sauce that went great with the tomato-onion topping. Mother would be proud.

This would also be good with a chicken breast or firm white fish.

Shrimp Cocktail

2008-12-17T22:33:00.000-08:00

We hosted a dinner party the other night and roasted a whole tenderloin roast. I had cut off the narrow tail end of the roast that would have been overcooked and was planning on making it for dinner tonight. It was pretty slight, making me think I needed to fortify the meal so I bought some small shrimp from the grocery store. These weren't high grade shrimp but I had no choice - we don't have a Whole Foods in our area. The wife didn't like the "surf 'n turf" entree idea (good call - it's kind of a white-trash-with-money menu item anyway) so I decided to make Ina Garten's shrimp cocktail. I was interested in her technique of roasting the shrimp in olive oil, kosher salt and pepper rather than boiling them. It seemed like the flavor would be more intense and it was. As an added benefit, the production was easy. Large shrimp take about 10 minutes in a 400 degree oven while these shrimpy shrimp took about 6 minutes. The cocktail sauce was good but I think a remoulade sauce may have been even better. I tweaked Ina's cocktail sauce by using lemon zest in addition to the juice. Here is her recipe for this: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/roasted-shrimp-cocktail-recipe/index.html

A square plate makes everything look better.

Homemade Pasta - The Next Frontier

2008-09-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

The wife wanted to go to a garage sale up the street "first thing" Saturday morning. I agreed. Pinned down by cats on our bed that morning, as we are every morning, we finally managed to head out at 9AM (unshowered of course) with a strong cup in hand. Garage sales can be treasure troves of history, nostalgia and good deals but are more often a tour through a neighbor's debris with price tags attached. I'm amazed how some people can actually post signs and ask money for things that belong at the curb. The last few garage sales we've been to felt like we're walking through mini-landfills so I didn't have much hope for this one. Sure enough, there was a lot of neatly arranged junk so I was in a strict 'no buy' mode. While browsing, a box with an image of a pasta maker caught my eye. To my amazement, inside was a pasta maker. It was an Atlas, made in Italy, with a $3 price sticker. I stuck to my principal of not buying anything and everything else was worthless and/or depressing so we headed out. On the way to the car we stopped by the next door neighbor's ersatz yard sale. A passerby would have assumed they had knocked their trashcan over. We quickly left but on our way out the wife brought up the pasta maker. "It's $3! If we don't end up using it we can just give it away." She made perfect sense so we walked back to the original sale and forked out three singles for the Atlas.

The Atlas in action - the first stage of rolling out the dough

I've thought about making homemade pasta for years but have always been somewhat intimidated, I imagine in much the same way people are relcuctant about making a pie crust. The thought of buying a pre-made pie crust is anathema to me so it felt like the right time to take on pasta. I referred to a few of my cookbooks and it looked fairly straightforward. I followed the recipe from Cook's Illustrated's "Everyday Italian" book that uses flour, eggs and water and a food processor. After mixing it requires some kneading and resting. Now it was time for the $3 pasta machine. Not only was rolling the pasta through easy but it was strangely satisfying. The first dish we made was a strand pasta (i.e. spaghetti) in a vodka-tomato-cream sauce. I didn't snap any photos but I can tell you that the texture of the fresh made pasta compared to dried pasta is like cotton compared to polyester. Next we made ravioli stuffed with prosciutto, basil and cheese (ricotta and parmesan). This was a little trickier to assemble and we learned the hard way that you must roll the pasta thin enough or it will be too thick and tough.

The final product, in a basic cream sauce, was excellent and will only be better next time when we roll the pasta thinner.

In summary, I definitely recommend homemade pasta with a roller type pasta maker if you have the least amount of interest. It's not very difficult to use and the results are worth the little trouble. I had been tempted many times to buy Kitchen Aid's pasta roller attachment but never wanted to fork our $120. A new Atlas (or the other Italian one that is readily available) is about $60. Probably worth it but at $3 it was an especially easy decision (with a little help from the wife).

Bourbon Review - Old Grand Dad 114

2008-09-13T12:17:00.001-07:00

A few years back, when we lived in L.A., I held a blind bourbon tasting with some friends (and one person I wished didn’t show up). The winner by a Floridian margin was Booker’s followed closely by Elijah Craig (12 Year Old). At 125 proof and uncut, Booker’s is more like bourbon concentrate. The price is equally as hefty ($55 a bottle) while ‘best buy’ Elijah Craig was only $15 at the time (currently $22). Over the next few years I’ve tried several bourbons but nothing has quite reached the height of Booker’s.

The spirits cabinet was getting a little thin on bourbon and I enjoy the occasional tipple so yesterday I stopped by Beverages & More to restock with a nice but not extravagant bottle. Nowadays it seems you need to be north of $20 to get a decent bottle of this satisfying American invention. I wanted to try something I’d never had so I passed on reliable offerings like Elijah Craig and Elmer T. Lee (another excellent choice) and bought Old Grand 114. At first glance of the label you may think it’s Senator Robert Byrd’s private label whiskey and the 114 signifies his age but any likeness to his wrinkly visage is purely coincidental. The 114 stands for the proof, which is nearly the strength of Booker’s.

While making dinner I poured a jigger over a glass of ice and took a sip. Wow. I could practically chew it, it was so dense. Tons of flavor, very heavy and pretty intense at such a high proof. As the ice melted it softened and still tasted great. Essentially this is a poor man’s Booker’s – same basic profile but $26 instead of $55. Interestingly, they are both Jim Beam products. Regardless, Old Grand Dad 114 is a winner. I will be respecting my elders into the future.

I reacted similarly to Old Grand Dad look-alike Senator Byrd after my first sip of OGD 114

They don't make print ads like they used to.

Steak Confit

2008-09-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

What else can be said about how to cook a steak? Throw it in a hot pan, flip it once, serve it up, right? Not so fast. The home cook can employ a few techniques to elevate the home-cooked steak to a level that competes with steakhouse offerings. I'll use tonight's steak as a case study. Last night I stopped into our local market, which is more of an alky stop than a legitimate store but they have surprisingly high quality meat. Much to my surprise they had some USDA PRIME rib eye/spencer steaks. I violated my rule of thumb - when you see a great piece of meat buy it and worry about when to cook it later - and bought some prawns instead. I wanted to eat "light" last night. Over dinner I told the wife about the prime steaks and she chided me for not buying a couple. I thought about my missed opportunity the entire next day so I swung by the market on my way home that evening. They still had some prime steaks in the case but I ended up following my other rule of thumb - trust your eye when evaluating steaks (per earlier post on marbling). A couple steaks were as beautifully marbled as the Prime grade steaks so I snatched them up. My current technique with rib eyes is to surgically remove most of the big ribbons of fat that separate the eye from the "ring of heaven" and then use cotton string to tie up the steak in a tight, plump medallion. With such quick cooking,the large pieces of fat between the muscles do nothing to enhance the tenderness or juiciness of the steak but they make eating more cumbersome and awkward. I especially recommend this technique if you are preparing rib eye steaks for guests. No sense requiring your company to become amateur surgeons just to eat their dinner. The other technique I'm employing lately is salting meat prior to cooking. I do not pretend this is an original concept. Every one from the French to troglodytes (technically two different groups) have advocated salting meat and fish for preservation and flavor, but with the advent of refrigeration it is not utilized as it once was. I have no idea what the ideal time frame is but one cooking magazine stated that a minimum of twenty minutes is required to get any benefit. My barbecue cookbooks have you season the meat the night prior to smoking in order to get full benefit. A couple weeks back I salted a couple steaks prior to a weekend trip and cooked them when we returned. Four days of salt curing resulted in very tender and flavorful meat that was not excessively salty. The steaks in this article had about an hour and half of salt exposure, sitting out at room temp, prior to cooking.

The third technique I'm employing when pan frying steaks, and the point of this subject, is using the fat trimmings of the steak for the cooking oil. Rather than using a vegetable oil to sear the steaks I use the fat I've trimmed off the steaks. I put them in the cast iron pan and slowly render the fat while I prepare other elements of the meal then cook the steaks in their native fat. Why not vegetable oil? Perhaps the question should be "why vegetable oil?". Several of them have low smoke points and oils like canola smell nasty when they get too hot. Cooking a steak in its native fat results in beautiful browning and unparalleled flavor. From a health perspective I'm not too concerned because the steak isn't going to absorb much (if any) of the cooking fat, whether it's a trendy vegetable oil or rendered beef fat. Tonight's steaks were, and I don't say this lightly, New York steakhouse quality. I started with good quality steaks but I'm sure the salting and the cooking in their own fat (a la confit) made a difference. Trimming the excess fat and cinching them up with string created a fat steak that didn't overcook before the exterior was browned. The Catena Malbec from Argentina was a perfect compliment.

Gourmet Tonic Water?

2007-08-18T21:21:00.001-07:00

The gin & tonic was my first favorite cocktail and despite my appreciation for other mixed drinks, it retains its crown to this day. This appreciation didn't come out of nowhere. As a youth I enjoyed tonic water on the rocks with squeeze of lime, oblivious to its typical use as a gin mixer. I'm not sure why but I really liked the contrast of the sugar with the bitter quinine, not to mention the carbonation.

I'll save a gin round up for another day - the purpose of this entry is to discuss a tonic water I discovered the other day. While at Cost Plus (rebranded as "World Market") I came across Stirrings Tonic Water in a little four pack of glass bottles. It touted itself as a gourmet tonic so naturally I was curious. Canada Dry and Schweppes are the only worthwhile tonic waters that I've found. Every other one tends to be cloying and syrupy. I've been looking for a more dry tonic than the acceptable national brands, thinking it would enable the gin to take center stage. So I paid the $4.89 and took home the Stirrings. On a recent balmy night I ran Stirrings through the paces when the wife and I made ourselves evening constitutionals out on the deck (see picture).

Bottom line - it tasted good on its own and made a fin G&T. Is it better than the big brands? I'm not sure but it's definitely at least as good and perhaps better. The packaging in little glass bottles is far superior so that alone wins points. The Anglo-style label is attractive but close inspection reveals it is from Nantucket ("There once was a gin from Nantucket...") and it was Est. 1997. I don't think I'd brag about that yet. I'll buy it and use it for pre-dinner drinks when we have guests over. It would be nice to serve someone a highball of ice with a lime, a beaker of good gin and a bottle of Stirrings and let them assemble. Will that ever happen? Probably not.

* The Tower of London gin in the photograph is fine. The bottle is impressive but almost too novelty. The gin is clean and straightforward. Our top choice is Junipero from the Anchor Brewing Company but it's a little difficult to find. FYI, Tanqueray's new Rangpur is too sweet, unlike their delicious-but-killed Malacca.

Escarole, The Mafia Green

2007-06-20T23:29:00.000-07:00

Escarole, not to be confused with Escrow, is a curious vegetable. I first heard about it in the Mafia Cookbook and I have ever since been intrigued. If you look up escarole recipes you’ll see methods of cooking that vary from a light, two minute sauté to 35 minutes of boiling. Not to mention that it can be used as a salad green. (The best salad I’ve ever made is escarole and other sharp greens, toasted walnuts, figs and crumbled blue cheese topped with a reduced port wine dressing, – unbelievable). So what’s a woman or a very masculine man like me to do?

Escarole is hearty and a little bitter so it takes well to longer cooking. The method I used tonight is as follows:
Briefly sauté shallots in a butter/olive oil combo
Throw in a few lemon slices and bay leaves for a minute of sautéing
Add washed and chopped escarole and sauté for two minutes to wilt
Add 1.5 cups of water (or stock), salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes
Serve, leaving excess liquid behind.

Notes: I topped it with minced kalamata olives. The salty, briney olives went well with the slightly bitter escarole. Other recipes use garlic and red pepper flakes instead of shallots. I would have followed suit but I thought the wife might show up after Bunko night, famished, which she did, and she can’t handle either ingredients. Next time I’ll try using only ¾ cup liquid and finishing the cooking process by reducing the liquid away and browning the escarole. It might tame it some more and bring out more sweetness.

Why Poach?

2007-05-27T23:28:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the 1980's, when I was in early high school, our family took a brief summer vacation up the coast of British Columbia. They called the stretch the "Sunshine Coast", which is all relative because to Pacific Northwesterners, a glimpse of the sun is a heat wave. It was a fairly low-budget vacation so instead of taking a charter boat and angling for trophy salmon, my dad, brother Eric and I rented a dingy with an outboard motor and some tackle and puttered out a few hundred yards off shore. We might as well have been dropping our lines into a swimming pool because a couple hours into it and nothing was happening. My dad's line was stuck on something but he insisted that he may have a fish. My brother and I had fun ridiculing him until, after several minutes of tugging and reeling, he pulled up a prehistoric looking fish. Turns out it was a rock cod and it was all we caught that day.

Back at the cabin my mom cooked it up for dinner that night. I don't know what made her decide to use a moist heat method but she did. She may have actually steamed it but the legend goes that she poached it. I have never tasted anything more bland in my life and from that moment on my brother and I have had disdain for poaching...until recently.

After watching a Food Network show on poaching I became intrigued because the host stated that if your poaching liquid maintained the target temperature for the meat then it could sit in the liquid endlessly and not over cook. Knowing that fish can pass that ideal window of doneness so quickly made me interested in trying this. I gave it a shot with salmon, using a classic poaching liquid and I was very pleased (mother is vindicated).

The key was keeping the liquid at a modest temperature - I chose around 150 degrees, using my remote thermometer for constant monitoring. The poaching liquid was water with some acid (lemon and/or white wine and/or vinegar), bay leaves and peppercorns. I'm sure real poaching liquid recipes are easy to find on the internets. Because it's such a gentle cooking method the window of doneness is pretty broad. I just squeezed the fillets to see when they felt done but you could always cut into them. It takes much longer than baking or broiling because the temp is so low.

If the liquid is a little shallow, you can cover it to make sure the top gets cooked (see photo). The upside with poaching is that you have substantial leeway as to when the fish is ready and you could even cut the heat and let it sit while you prepared other things. The other big benefit is that the fish turns out incredibly tender and moist. The downside is that it is fairly bland because it doesn't develop any crisp, browned surfaces that 'high & dry' cooking provide. Therefore, be sure to make a flavorful sauce to go with it. Anything from a lemon-herb sauce, homemade tartar sauce or a olive-caper tapenade would work. I know poaching works great with salmon but I still suspect that rock cod would be useless cooked this way because it's bland to begin with. Come to think of it, I think rock cod is pretty useless no matter what you do with it. And it's the ugliest looking fish I've ever seen.

Thanksgiving for Two

2006-11-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

I can't say we were cheated out of Thanksgiving because I'm the one who decided that we should stay home instead of traveling to my parents' house. After catering an event over the previous weekend and jumping back into work on Monday we had to do limit ourselves to loafing when Thursday rolled around. Thankfully, our friends invited us to have dinner at their place, which meant the only thing I needed to make was salad dressing. We slept in, read books for hours then rolled down the street for a dinner that we didn't cook. It was great. I still felt I needed to cook some sort of ersatz Thanksgiving meal. Well-rested, I decided Sunday night was the time. Just like chicken, with turkey I believe cooking the entire bird for the same length of time is a mistake due to the cooked thigh/leg = dry breast tradeoff. I killed several birds with one stone by purchasing a bone-in turkey breast half from the grocery store for just under $11. Not only was it affordable and the correct amount of meat for the two of us but I could roast it according to its characterstics and end up with a perfectly cooked result. Also, the leftovers solved our need for the week's sandwiches. I brined the breast for about four hours in a weak sugar/saltwater mixture in the fridge then rinsed and dried it just prior to roasting. I set the convectionoven to 350 (which is more like 400) , heated the oiled roasting pan on the burner, salted the breast and browned it, skin side down, in the pan on the stovetop. This step was to insure crispy skin by the time the breast was done cooking internally. Just before putting the roasting pan in the oven I threw into it a coarsely chopped carrot, celery stalk and onion with a bay leaf and some thyme sprigs and a cup of water. It roasted away for about an hour and fifteen minutes while I periodically added water to the pan to prevent the aromatic vegetables from scorching. As you can see, the vegetable turned an intense brown, which paid dividends when making the gravy. I pulled the turkey out when it hit 150 degrees on the remote thermometer (a wise investment), knowing it would rise about another 10 degrees while resting. I removed the spent vegetables from the roaster and deglazed the pan on the stovetop with some chicken broth and white wine. When the crusties were loose I strained it into a measuring cup. I melted butter in a saucepan and whisked in flour constantly to create a roux. I let the flour/roux get nice and toasty brown because I was not going to make another pale gravy. I then whisked in chicken broth and the reserved pan juices, which were a deep brown color. I periodically whisked the gravy while it simmered and made the green beans at the same time (boiled in salted water for four minutes, drained, dressed with a little butter). The gravy turned out great - close to the best gravy I've ever had (my mom's). The turkey breast was cooked perfectly - very moist, tender and flavorful. The wife made an old family stuffing recipe - simple yet delicious and the perfect accompaniment. The green beans played a perfect supporting role by not competing with the other dishes. The wine was a cheap white Pinot Grigio from Paso Robles. I would have preferred a more dry Italian Pinot Grigio but in the spirit of Thanksgiving I'm not complaining.

The "New" Baja Steak

2006-10-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

The other day the local grocery store ran an ad on the radio promoting a new steak called the “Baja Steak”. Red flags went up faster than at a Fidel Castro parade. For starters, anything that involves words like ‘baja’ or ‘malibu’ reeks of hokey marketing. Those are words used by places like TGI Friday’s and Applebee’s to promote super-salty dishes that just makes you thirsty for another giant beer.

Also, the cow has been around for awhile, making it tough to believe in newly discovered cuts that generations of impoverished people throughout the world have overlooked. The tongue-and-cheek spot said it was a new steak they found hiding out in the barn. Ha ha. The French savor animal parts like armpits and snouts so I doubt any edible cut has been undiscovered. Regardless, I was at least curious to find out from which primal cut the “baja steak” originated.

Later that day, an internets search for “baja steak” brought up countless Taco Bell related hits but that was about it. Harris Ranch’s website was no help either. By the following week I had nearly forgotten about it until I was at the aforementioned market and saw the baja steaks in the meat case. They were boneless, cylindrical and looked like a mini tenderloin roast.

“Can I help you with anything?”

I always tense up when talking to a butcher because I know I know I'll be talked down to. However, behind the meat counter, instead of the requisite pot-bellied, mustachioed butcher with a patronizing attitude, was a smooth-faced kid who I swear was flinging newspapers from his bicycle the other morning. Who am I to judge, he may know what he's talking about even if he doesn't insult me in the process.

I had to ask. “What’s the deal with the baja steak?

“People love it.” He was almost giddy. After questioning a little deeper he explained that it came from the shoulder clod, which partially explained why they renamed it a baja steak. People don’t like eating things with graphic anatomical names, especially when it’s a body part that we have ourselves, like the shoulder. Hence 'sweetbreads' instead of 'thymus gland' (or' pancreas'). The word ‘clod’ just adds to the disappeal so I guess the term baja steak isn’t such a bad idea.

He couldn’t tell me too much more but he told me more than I expected and he swore it was a big hit with customers. He said it cooked up like any steak but could not liken the taste to any other cut of meat. Each mini-roast weight about 10 ounces so I had to buy two. The wife likes good steak and if it really was good I’d feel guilty for not getting enough. At $6.99/lb. getting two was an easy call.

I planned on grilling them over a fire but the first rain of the year dictated a pan sear and hot oven finish. Cast iron got the nod for the sear and I finished them in a 400-degree oven on the same pan I had small, red potatoes roasting. Searing on all sides brought the internal temperature up to about 95 degrees, requiring about seven minutes in the oven to reach medium rare. While the finished steaks rested I made a red wine pan sauce and cooked the green beans. The green beans were boiled in salted water for two and a half minutes, drained, sautéed in a little butter for about two minutes, splashed with balsamic vinegar then sautéed for about a minute more.

The little roasts browned up nicely on the stove, smelling reminiscent of some beef dish I couldn’t put a finger on. At the table I immediately cut into the center of my mini roast and was pleased to see it was cooked perfectly to a deep pink throughout. The cross-section had the honeycombed structure of brisket. It was tender, at least as tender as a New York steak if not more so. The taste? Very good. Cuts from the chuck have a distinct taste. It wasn’t livery like hind quarter or “round” cuts often are and it didn’t taste anything like a loin cut (i.e. ribeye, New York, etc.). The pronounced flavor is good and not gamy. I must tip my hat to the youngster at the meat counter because he was correct. It’s an excellent cut of meat.

After a little more searching using the term “shoulder clod” I uncovered the story on the baja steak. It comes from the shoulder clod, which yields several cuts including the top blade (now conspicuously re-cut, re-priced and re-marketed as a flat iron steak, covered in an earlier entry). The clod section we’re concerned with is the “shoulder tender” which gets trimmed into the “shoulder petite tender roast”, aka the baja steak. It can also be cut into “shoulder petite tender medallions” but that seems like a waste to me. Better flavor and juiciness would come from the mini-roast. If you want to see where I got my info and dig deeper, start here and poke around:

http://www.beefinnovationsgroup.com/petitetender.aspx

It seems like crafty meat industry folks are carving up primal cuts in new ways and isolating pieces of meat that have been lost in the "roast" shuffle. I say “Hear! Hear!”

Tuscan Beans

2006-08-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

The Italian name is Fagioli a l’Ucelletto and I got it out of a little Italian cookbook. When I say “little cookbook”, I mean it literally – it’s a physically tiny cookbook from Chronicle Books' "Little Cookbooks" series. I had forgotten about this dish until something reminded me of it recently so I whipped it up as an accompaniment to pork chops. It goes great with any grilled meat and can act as a starch, a vegetable or both, but regardless it’s nice to have a salad or a green vegetable along with it.

"Little" Cookbook (cat shown for scale)

The ingredient list is straightforward: Cannelini beans (aka white kidney beans) – canned are fine, Progresso are widely available. Rinse off the smelly, gooey liquid they’re packed in before using. Tomatoes – canned diced or crushed are preferred but be sure to use a good brand like Muir Glen, Progresso or San Marzano. Rosemary – The official recipe calls for sage but I prefer minced fresh rosemary. If you don’t have fresh, which would be a big bummer, use sage (preferably fresh), thyme (fresh or dried), or fresh basil. Then go out and plant rosemary somewhere in your yard or the local park because the dried rosemary needles aren’t the same. Extra Virgin Olive Oil – don’t use the really expensive stuff – save it for dipping bread or serving at the table. Filippo Berio or Bertoli are fine. DaVinci is one of the best supermarket brands. Garlic – minced or pressed. If you don’t like garlic or want something milder use shallots. Saute the garlic or shallots in a generous amount of olive oil in a skillet until soft but not brown. Add the tomatoes (a little of the juice is fine), the beans and the rosemary. It only needs to simmer for a 15 minutes or so. You want the beans to heat through, the tomatoes to mellow, the excessive liquid to cook off and the flavors to meld. Add salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil to taste and don’t be niggardly with any of them, especially the olive oil. I like it best when you can see the green of the olive oil when you serve it up. Make a lot so you have leftovers because I discovered an additional use for them. I find Mexican breakfasts made with eggs and beans to be very satisfying as well as delicious. There’s something about the flavor and consistency of the earthy beans and eggs in the morning that tastes just right. I used this principle one morning with this cannelini dish. I fried an egg in a heavy amount of extra virgin olive oil, which gave it a beautiful, golden under crust, removed it to a plate and then heated up the cannelini dish in the same pan. I served the beans with the fried egg on top and it not only tasted really good but it kept me going for hours.

The Cast Iron Pan, Volume 1: Ugly Duckling or Black Beauty?

2006-07-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

The glass bottle, the paper cup, the cotton shirt, the paper sack – all time-honored vessels under attack for years by strange synthetic materials such as plastic, Styrofoam, polyester and teflon. Today's discussion item is the cast iron pan, a true iconoclast in the Emeril-dominated world of modern American cookware. I suspect many people have never actually used a cast iron pan but perhaps remember it as a prop in the film The Apple Dumpling Gang starring Bill Bixby and other Hollywood stars (see Special Edition DVD cover image, left). (Who can forget that hilarious scene – it was the first night Bill Bixby's character had to fix dinner for his new little charges and he tried to fry up a piece of salt pork in a cast iron pan, much to their consternation.)

Bill Bixby counting the money he saved buying cast iron instead of Emerilware.

ppressively heavy, ugly and cheap, the cast iron pan is the antithesis of modern cookware. All-Clad pans, considered the gold standard of the home chef, are shiny stainless steel, expensive ($125 for a 12-inch saute pan) and are virtual works of art. A 12-inch skillet made by Lodge, the iron standard for the 1800’s cook, go for $19.99 on Amazon. These stark contrasts don’t even take into account the increasingly important ease-of-use criteria. All-Clad’s stainless steel line pans are so smoothly polished that they release food almost as easily as a non-stick Teflon surface, but if that’s not good enough they have a Teflon surface line of cookware as well. A cast iron pan requires seasoning before its first use – a technique that involves coating the pan with oil then baking it in a hot oven for an hour…repeatedly. Don’t feel you’ve arrived after enduring the smoke, smell and messiness of the first seasoning because food will stick to the pan like your shoes to the movie theater floor until you’ve seasoned and used the pan several times. Oh, one more thing, you are directed to never use soap or a scrub brush to clean the pan no matter how stuck on that smelly salmon skin is, because that will strip away the precious seasoning oils embedded into the iron surface. You are supposed to “wipe the pan clean with a paper towel” and, unlike the radical modern cleaning technique of removing grease, you then coat the pan with oil before putting it back in the cupboard. Cast iron aficionados recommend bear fat as the best seasoning grease so look for it in the meat fridge next to corn pone and beaver steaks.

While an All-Clad pan never looks or performs better than the first time you use it, a cast-iron pan never looks, cooks or smells worse than the first time you attempt to use it. This initial hazing period understandably weeds out many first time cast iron cookware users. I believe the only people who stick with cast iron are those who have received promises and encouragement from friends or relatives who swear it will eventually pay off. Much like baseball, it seems fruitless and frustrating to the outsider but it is the highest art form to the indoctrinated. After an indeterminate number of uses and coatings with grease the pan gets darker and smoother until one day you find yourself wiping it clean with only some hot water and a paper towel. You also find yourself reaching for it over an All-Clad whenever you need to sear a steak or chop or chicken breast or filet quickly without overcooking it. This is the big payoff that keeps cast iron alive in the face of impossible odds. Its weight translates into thermal mass, which translates into a hot pan that stays hot when a cold piece of meat or vegetable hits it. Even some expensive pans can’t maintain a high surface temperature when hit with cold food and meat ends up braising and stewing instead of searing. There’s nothing worse than a piece of beef turning gray and pallid in a puddle of liquid instead of dark crusty brown like it should. Cast iron pans are also preferred for stir frying because they stay hot enough to quick fry a pile of cold ingredient better than most woks. The traditional, flared wok design is meant to take advantage of the flames licking up the side of the pan while cooking over an open fire. If you often cook over an open fire then get a wok for stir-frying, otherwise get a big cast iron skillet or dutch oven. Next chapter: The cast iron pan teams up with bacon and pork tenderloin to create a dish Bill Bixby would be proud to serve.

Building A Flatiron

2006-04-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

It's just a matter of time before someone on the Food Network says "the Flatiron steak is the new Hanger steak" or some other similar pomposity. In a blink of an eye this trendy cut of beef, possibly named after the famous building, is appearing in culinary magazines and high-end menus. The wife had one at a restaurant in Squaw Valley last September and loved it so I figured I better figure it out. The Flatiron building in Manhattan was designed strictly for skinny people I did the obligatory web search and learned that the flatiron steak is a "newly invented" cut from the chuck. If you look at a chuck blade roast at the grocery store you can supposedly see where the flatiron comes from. It is the segment of meat just north of the blade-shaped bone. According to the butcher at the local grocery store they only get two steaks from an entire forequarter, explaining its rare appearance in the meat case. He assured me he'd call me next time they produced a couple. He even took my name and number down on a greasy little notepad but three weeks passed with no call so I gave up hope. The Flatiron is section #1 Even though I knew I would somehow be talked down to, I had to ask the local independent butcher about it. There was no correct way to phrase the question without annoying him so I just asked, "can you get flatiron steaks?". His expression was worth a thousand belittling words. I could sense a little surprise, mixed with confusion at first, as if he had to think for a second to remember what a flatiron steak was. "Well...yeah...we can get it." I think catching him off guard like this initially put him on the defensive but he then instinctually went on the offensive. "To tell you the truth, we don't usually have them because, honestly, it's an inferior cut of meat." He went on to lecture me on the superiority of rib eyes and t-bones in an attempt to marginalize my interest in flatirons and, let's face it, to make me look like a stupid kid. So he was out as a potential source. Watch out for the center piece of impenetrable gristle I had almost forgotten about the flatiron when I came across a few packaged up at the forementioned grocery store. I fried them up for dinner a few nights later with dubious results. The flavor wasn't great and neither was the texture but I wasn't totally confident that I'd given the flatiron a fair shake. I had read somewhere to be aware of a length of tendon or some foreign, gristly body running down the center of these that causes problems and both of our steaks had them. I also let them sit in the fridge too long before preparing them. After this flop the flatiron was once again on the back burner.

Well-marbled and no built-in dental floss gristle running down the middle

A few months later the wife ordered one at The Hitching Post II and loved it. Withing a few weeks I saw them again at the grocery store. This time I found two well-marbled specimens free of any center gristle strip. At home I gave them a quick pound to increase the chances of a tender steak followed by a dusting of salt and pepper. Each one weighed about six ounces and measured a slight half-inch thick so I knew overcooking would be difficult to avoid. I heated the cast iron pan to smoking, poured oil in and seared away. I was able to get a reasonable crust on both sides while keeping them medium rare. While they rested I made a simple red wine pan sauce, in case the steak flavor was marginal.

Sliced on the bias, just like Bobby Flay and Emeril would do - bam.

The verdict - they were good. The texture was a little spongy but fairly tender. The flavor was nice but definitely different than a typical rib or loin area steak. You can't beat the premium steaks for flavor but the flatiron still tasted good and it was a nice change of pace. In the spirit of my fiscally minded friend Tony I'll point out the cost - about $4 per person. The wine we had with them, a split bottle of EOS Reserve Petite Sirah, cost more than the two meals combined. When a restaurant gets $25 for a flatiron steak entree and you can match it for $4 at home, I say don't leave the building. P.S. For information on the famous Flatiron building in Manhattan, check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatiron_Building

Boneless Chicken Ranch

2006-03-29T22:17:00.000-08:00

Greasy, gamy and gross. For many years that’s been my opinion of the dark chicken meat from the leg and thigh area. I remember the day I suddenly realized how I and countless other kids have been tricked into coveting the drumstick, as if it was the prized piece of the bird instead of the gnarly collection of tendons that it is. The chief propaganda piece being the Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials in the 1970’s showing some little twerp clambering for the inferior leg piece as if it were a treat the adults were sacrificing for him. Doubtless they needed to drum up demand for the piece of chicken that no thinking person would want. Fast forward several years to the early 90’s – I’m reading a promotional piece about the special Christmas dinner available at the Stanford Park Hotel restaurant, The Duck Club. They were serving traditional Christmas goose (what tradition?) and they explained how the legs and thighs were separated from the breast and roasted longer because their higher fat content required more cooking. Around the same time I ate dinner of roasted chicken thighs at my parents’ house and amazingly they were good. At this point I’m thinking there might be some hope for the half of the chicken I had written off. I think roasting a whole chicken is a hassle because the part that faces down is slimy and pallid unless you play human rotisserie for an hour. Therefore I got into the habit of butterflying a whole chicken (cutting out the backbone) and roasting it flat on a cookie sheet. It cooked faster and all the skin was crispy with no micromanaging. One time, when I was tending to a roasting chicken with tongs, the breast assembly easily separated from the leg/thigh assemblies. I checked the temperature of the breast and it was 160 degrees and needed to come out so it wasn’t like eating a piece of canvas. I decided to let the legs and thighs go a little longer. About 15 minutes later I pulled them out and the temperature was around 200 degrees. The skin was crispy and the meat was fall apart tender and moist without any characteristic greasiness. Dare I say it was tastier than the breast meat. I followed this Stanford Park Hotel goose cooking principle for a couple years until the other night when I was in the mood to make things more complicated. I remember from my idyllic childhood hearing my dad brag about his ability to bone a chicken and a duck (My dad can execute a few esoteric dishes very well but can’t fry an egg, boil pasta or assemble a normal sandwich). This concept has been flapping around in the back of my mind for years so I decided to give it a try. Boneless meat cooks faster than bone-in meat so my idea was to bone the leg/thigh but not the breast so they would all be done to my satisfaction at the same time. I butterflied the chicken by removing the backbone with kitchen shears, giving easy access to the thigh bone. I probed the boning knife around the thigh bone and scraped, almost like I was whittling the meat off, until the bone let go and came out pretty cleanly. I then cut any tissue and tendons at the base end of the drumstick (leg) bone, much like you would cut the foil around the top of a wine bottle with a knife. I then approached the other end of the leg bone with the boning knife from the underside of the thigh area and used the same whittling technique. I was trying not to disrupt the structural integrity of the chicken and, although it may be technically incorrect, it seemed to work pretty well. With the southern bones gone I salted and peppered the skin side of the chicken and seared it in a hot, oiled sauté pan on the stove. After a few minutes I flipped it to skin side up and put it in a 400 degree oven to finish cooking. I can’t remember how much longer it took until the breast was 160 degrees, probably 20 minutes, but that’s when I pulled it out (cooking time would change with the weight - this was chicken was only three pounds). While the chicken was resting on a plate I made a pan sauce in the sauté pan it roasted in, finishing it at the end with the juices the chicken expelled on the plate. The legs and thighs were not only cooked well but were very easy to eat without those pesky bones.

You could pay $20 in a restaurant per person for this meal that cost me approximately $5 total to prepare.

India Pale Ale

2006-03-12T22:10:00.000-08:00

The story goes that when the philanthropic Brits occupying India pined for ale from the motherland they had a heavily hopped version created to withstand the rigors and duration of the sea voyage, hence the name “India Pale Ale” or IPA. I’ve become so wary of any story like this because every time you hear one of these and retell it some wise acre always has a refutation up their sleeve. Therefore, I offer up this bit of history with no claim that it’s actually accurate, but it sounds good. What is accurate is that India Pale Ale is tasty stuff – God Save The Queen! The strong, bitter flavor isn’t for everyone but it is for me and anyone else who likes a hearty yet musty tonic.. I have two current favorites – White Hawk IPA made by the Mendocino Brewing Company of Red Tail Ale fame and Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s Hop Ottin’ IPA, pictured here relaxing in bed. The Hop Ottin’ hits you like a ton of pine cones. I don’t know how else to describe it. The White Hawk is equally as potent (they’re both around 7% alcohol) but it’s more malty and less piney. They’re separate but equally delicious. I’ve tried others but so far nothing can match these two. Mactarnahan’s is a lightweight, Full Sail is decent but not worth saving a dollar a six-pack, Pyramid is good but not quite their equal and that is about all I can remember right now. I’ll do some research and report back. Full Sail IPA relaxing with a book in its favorite chair. Good bitterness but weak in the body and only 16 cents less a bottle than the far superior Hop Ottin' and White Hawk IPAs

Morceau à Braiser (Pot Roast)

2006-03-12T21:55:00.000-08:00

Well-marbled meat is a temptress in plastic wrap. That sounds odd so let me explain. I was getting a few staples at the local chain grocery store when I passed through the meat case and surveyed what they had to offer. I didn’t necessarily need anything but I always like to know what they’ve got because you never know when you might find something special. In the chuck/pot roast section, a piece of meat caught my eye. It was a three pound piece of chuck striped so beautifully with veins of alabaster fat that it looked illustrated rather than real. I couldn’t not buy it. A few days went by until I had a free night to make it, causing it to turn a little brown on the surface but after a quick whiff I knew this was purely cosmetic and no need for concern. I figured I’d make a pot roast rather than cut it up for a stew, beef bourguignon or chili colorado. I also decided to give it a different approach than the typical pot roast with carrots and potatoes cooked down to near liquid form. I trimmed the ribbons of exterior fat, sprinkled it with salt and pepper and browned it thoroughly in a little corn oil in my pressure cooker (no need to waste extra-virgin olive oil on browning). After pulling it out I sautéed diced carrots, celery and onion in the same pan, deglazing the precious brown bits with the liquid released from the aromatic vegetables. The pressure cooker loses virtually zero liquid so I needed very little to cook the roast. I had about a half cup of Cabernet so I used it along with an equal amount of chicken broth. I squeezed in a quarter of a delicious orange I bought at the farmer’s market along with some pieces of the peel, threw in two bay leaves, a teaspoon of freshly ground coffee, a dozen peppercorns, salt, a tablespoon of double concentrate tomato paste and a couple smashed garlic cloves. I pressure cooked it on the first red ring for an hour while doing yard work and let it cool naturally. Three hours in a 325 degree oven in a conventional pot would be about the same. I pulled the meat out, confirming it could be plied apart easily with a fork, and strained the liquid through a double mesh strainer. I put the liquid in the refrigerator to cause the fat to congeal on the top for easy removal later. I occupied myself with other tasks, such as moving the flailing avocado tree from one part of the yard to the other, before returning to the fridge where the fat had formed a nice, solid crust on top of the liquid. I lifted it out with a fork directly into the trash can, leaving me with a flavorful sauce that wouldn’t make me feel like Orson Welles after eating it.

Don't let the Corning cornflower casserole dish and compost-like visual fool you - a restaurant would charge you through the nose for this meal.

My plan with the sauce was to make it flavorful and refined without that overcooked vegetable flavor that some braised dishes have. I had stripped it of any solids but I wanted the sauce to have some texture when I served it. I pursued the intensely developed flavor route and roasted a bunch of shallots in olive oil, salt and pepper in the oven at 350 for about 40 minutes. I soaked porcini mushrooms in hot water for 30 minutes, diced them up and used the porcini liquid (strained through a coffee filter to remove grit) for the risotto. I added the roasted shallots and porcini mushrooms to the sauce pan of liquid along with some cornstarch dissolved in milk to thicken it. After bringing to a simmer I poured it into the casserole dish the meat had been resting in and put it in the oven at 400 degrees/convection broil, on the middle rack so it wouldn’t burn.

While it heated through and formed a nice crusty top I finished the risotto and steamed some broccoli. The meat, as I expected was very tender and moist. The sauce was intensely flavored. The porcini mushrooms and coffee gave it an earthy flavor but it was balanced by the tang and sweetness of the tomato paste, wine, shallots and orange. I thought it was great and it had all the trappings of an over-priced restaurant meal (pot roast is cool now if it has things like porcini mushrooms and shallots in it). To answer my monetary-minded friend Tony’s inevitable question, it cost about $3.00 a serving for the entire meal. To me, that was dessert.

Are Truffles Overrated?

2006-01-02T22:14:00.000-08:00

It's easy to get annoyed with all the gushing coming from the food industry about truffles. They seem to be the easy, albeit expensive, button celebrity chefs push when trying to impress tasters in cooking competitions (i.e. The Iron Chef). It doesn't take much talent or originality to shave truffle slices on top of a dish to make it taste great. When I was a kid I recall caviar talked about as the ultimate rare food, now it seems truffles are the modern equivalent. So are truffles, or is the truffle flavor, overrated? No. At least not if you like that distinct truffle flavor, which I do, but I guess it's not for everybody. I actually have never cooked with truffles but the wife bought me a small, precious bottle of white truffle oil last Kwanza that I finally used to make a recipe I've eyed for awhile - veal chops with mushroom risotto and truffle oil. The veal chop was pan seared then finished in the oven while the risotto had a mixture of fresh and dried mushrooms. I drizzled the truffle oil over the risotto followed by parmesan shavings. It was one of the better meals of 2005. Truffle oil is so potent you don't need to use very much, assuming you're using good oil and not the Trader Joe's $5/bottle stuff. My advice is to pay the $15 and get some. All you need is a Santoku knife and you can start your own cooking show.

Cheap Red Wine Roundup

2005-11-22T22:25:00.000-08:00

When my Amway business really takes off I'll be able to drink only really good wine but until then I need to find some reasonable cheapies. I suppose I probably spend just as much money buying cheap wine and dumping it as I would if I just bought wine I knew was pretty good but like most value-seeking fools I get drawn to a "deal". The wife and I were at Cost Plus recently and to kill time while she selected soaps based on flowers I've never heard of I browsed the wine section. I figured it was a good time to grab a few bottles of sub $10 that I knew from experience were tasty if not memorable. The varied results are as follows:

The Amateur Hour Line-Up (Cline Zinfandel in trash, not shown)

Bogle 2003 Petite Sirah: as I mentioned before, I like this fruity one and it's one of the best of this motley crew. If you can't find it for $10 or less then don't bother.
Rosenblum Zinfandel (Vinter's Cuvee XVII): Sounds fancy but I wonder if 'Cuvee' mean 'scraps' in French. A bit of a bitey finish but overall it's pretty good and worth its $8.
Rosso Shiraz: I couldn't find a year, probably because the winery doesn't even know. The use of the "Shiraz" term is a bummer but for $6 at Trader Joe's it's worth it (but probably not worth $7) .
Cline 2002 Zinfandel: I know, only the Syrah is pictured, sorry, we drank the one bottle of Zinfandel we bought, or we stripped furniture with it, I can't remember.
Ravenswood 2002 Zinfandel: They call it 'Vinter's Blend' but I think they meant to label it 'Vinter's Blind' because that would explain why they bottled this Windex and called it wine.
Cline 2002 Syrah: One of the best of the lot. It's a little rough around the edges but has some interesting flavors. I think I paid $7 and was pleased.

Ravenswood and Cline's Zinfandel were disappointing because some years they are tasty and the best deal around but I guess 2002 was an off-year. Maybe Chuck Shaw bought up all the best Fresno grapes out from under them.

Marlbling: USDA vs. the human eye

2005-11-01T23:25:00.000-08:00

However long it takes a mouse in a lab to learn that touching the bell results in a shock, I'd take longer. I know that marbling, the intermingled bits of fat in a piece of meat, are the key to flavor and tenderness in a piece of beef but I still blow it. I see steaks on special and slough off my better judgment and buy some piece of meat so lean that this cow must have had an eating disorder. My logic runs from the thickness of the steak to the great price but it always ends up the same. The best judge is not the price or even the USDA grade. The highest grade, Prime, is pretty much a sure bet for flavor and while the next one down the ladder, Choice, is usually better than its subordinate, Select, there is no substitute for your own visual inspection. If this picture doesn't spell it out then nothing will. These two rib eye steaks were sitting right next to each other in the meat case and were both graded the same - USDA Select. The beautifully flecked one on the right was delicious while the other was Kevlar tough and virtually inedible. I fell on my cleaver and gave the wife the good one. I deserved to go hungry for pulling such a boner (although that outer ring of meat was still pretty good). Note the EOS Petite Sirah on the right - it was delicious.

Petite Sirah Update

2005-11-01T23:09:00.000-08:00

Here is a rundown of some I've tried lately: EOS - The Reserve is great, dense and about $25/bottle. One of the best ones I've had. They have another more expensive one aged in some special French oak that was one of the most interesting wines I've ever tasted but was almost $50. I think it may need a couple years to soften and I may need a couple years to save up. Bogle - Great Value, $8 if you hunt around, kind of grapey Concannon - Supposed to be good ("first producer of Petite Sirah") but the bottle I had was harsh without much character. Maybe it was a bad year ($14). Guenoc - like Bogle but a couple bucks more Turley - I had one at their semi-annual event and it was fantastic but not worth the $125 they were asking. What wine is worth that much anyway? Castoro - decent, nice and dry but not that much going on ($15) Peachy Canyon - hopefully they'll do another like the last one (which is long gone) because it was great ($21). Tobin James - solid, decent body and not too fruity. Worth the $18. Wolff - you'll probably never find this probably but it's nice and under $20. Full and dry. Victor Hugo - about as good as the winery's silly name although some people I know swear by it. I'll have to give it another try.

Penman Springs - a small, Paso Robles producer. Similar to Wolff, this was good and around $16. Current release just about gone.

Malloy O'Neil - Another Paso Robles winery and this was very good. We tasted a bunch of their wines and they were all outstanding. The PS is about $25, which was about the average price for all their wines. They make a bunch of intense, high-alcohol reds so either you like that or you don't. The tasting room opened in mid-November 2005.

David Bruce - Supposed to be really good but only okay. I got it for about $13 at Costco and wouldn't buy it again. In the queue: Fife, Vinum, Rosenblum, Nadieu and Stag's Leap (if I can find it at a decent price)

Sweetbread update

2005-11-01T22:46:00.000-08:00

I couldn't resist. While browsing the meat department at Spencer's I stumbled across the velvety, white flesh pressing up against the plastic wrap. The absurdly low price sealed the deal - I had to try to make sweetbreads at home. I asked the butcher lady and she said she'd never tried them let alone cooked them but "the cowboys buy them all the time". I wondered what they did with them as I tossed them into my basket. When I got home I scoured cookbooks and found the best information from my old Julia Child and James Beard recipes. Removing the outer membrane, soaking/flushing with cold water and par boiling seemed like consistent guidelines (although some think parboiling removes too much flavor but these are the same nuts who talk glowingly about mutton). I spent a fair amount of time cleaning them up by pulling and trimming excess fat and membrane while rinsing. I also soaked them overnight. All this was done covertly, without the wife's knowledge, for her benefit (the concept would just upset her). I really wanted to grill them but most recipes were for boiling or sauteeing. I was grilling chicken breasts for dinner the next night so I decided to use my best judgment and grill up the gland at the same time. As the waiter at Jocko's told me, they took a long time to cook. But unlike the sweetbreads I had at Jocko's a few months ago these were not too chewy. I grilled them for about 45 minutes with great results. The golden crust contrasted nicely with the interior that lacks any English language description I can provide. They were mild, tender and tasty. The wife refused to eat more than a piece smaller than my Adam's apple. She admitted it was good but she wasn't in the mood for secretion organ meat that night.

Salmon Cakes - Worth a Fry

2005-11-01T22:36:00.000-08:00

When it comes to seafood cakes, crab cakes may be king but good crab isn't always at your clawtips. Canned crab is so flavorless my cat would turn it's leathery nose up at it and "sea legs" (imitation crab meat) are an effront to anyone with a sense of taste and shouldn't be legal. On the other hand, decent salmon is readily available and makes a decent cake. My finite brain did not come up with this idea on its own - I stumbled across it in one of my Cook's Illustrated books (if anyone actually reads this post and actually wants the recipe, make a comment and I'll dig it up and post it). It was pretty straightforward - chop the salmon, mix with herbs and binding material, coat with panko Japanese bread crumbs then fry in an inch of hot corn oil until golden (3 minutes per side). I served them with a mayo based lemon-herb dipping sauce, roasted potatoes and broccoli. I really dug them and so did the "wind beneath my wings".

Fried Squash Blossoms

2005-11-01T22:24:00.000-08:00

At our Farmer's Market, which actually has farmers at it, a lady was selling baby squash with the blossoms still on them. The wife would often wax poetically about the squash blossoms she had in Italy before she met me so I was naturally interested in trying them. I knew they were a rare find because they lasted a matter of hours once picked. I seized the opportunity and tried making fried squash blossoms with dinner. For the recipe I culled the internets because my Italian books didn't cover it. All the recipes had different theories on how to handle them so I winged it with a basic batter and a ricotta/herb/pine nut stuffing. I stuffed, battered then fried them in corn oil for a few minutes. If you're actually interested in trying this a quick internets search will give you some decent recipes. Bottom line - pretty good. Let's face it, a fried flower doesn't have much taste so it's not like it's going to steal the flavor crown from truffles or hamburgers. I feel a tad guilty that I've removed the mystique surrounding the wife's memory of the "blossoms in Sorrento" but what good is a spouse if they can't shatter your delusions?

One Grill, Two Plates, No Pans

2005-08-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

Before hitting the grill - looks almost good enough to eat as is; the action shot; the finished product (on a fresh plate).

How to avoid washing pans

2005-08-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

I can’t remember why but the wife wasn’t coming home for dinner the other night so I was on my own. Cooking for just me is my chance to cook with and eat foods she won’t or can’t handle. Oysters, clams, mussels, kalamata olives, garlic, anchovies, chicken livers, nuts, blue cheese, anything spicy and cilantro (listed in a row they sound kind of disgusting). However I barely used any of these ingredients on this particular night but I did exercise my freedom from the stove and, more importantly, dishwashing, by cooking the entire meal on the grill. The main course, if you can call it a course, was Italian sausage made by a company called “Ray’s Own Brand”. I was stopped on the highway the other day while the flagman held us up due to road construction. While idling and waiting I glanced to my left and I noticed a little sign that had the Ray’s Own Brand logo on it stuck in front of the nearby house. Apparently that is Ray’s own house and he might even manufacture back there. I was tempted to pull over and knock on the door for a tour and some links but I had places to go. Nevertheless, I thought that was pretty neat because Ray makes some fine sausage. The vegetable course was a red bell pepper and scallions (green onions) while the starches were corn on the cob and French bread. I gave the red pepper and scallions a thin coat of olive oil while the corn received the olive oil treatment along with some chili powder. I threw it all on a hot grill, putting the corn on the fringes so it wouldn’t burn or cook too quickly while placing the pepper and sausage over more intense heat. The sausage tooked some tending so it didn’t burn and the red pepper needed turning after each quadrant fully blackened. It was fairly easy to jockey the food around to get it all to finish at the same time. I don’t even know how long everything took because I just moved things off as they started looking done. As my old co-worker Kyle would say, it’s not rocket scientry. At the end I toasted the bread on the grill over the coals, rubbing a cut clove of garlic over the craggy surface and topping it off with good olive oil. The meal tasted great and the best part was the dirty dishes were limited to a couple plates, utensils, tongs and a glass – all dishwasher items. My hands remained soft and silky and as it turns out, the only two things the wife wouldn’t have cared for were the garlic rubbed bread and the liberal use of oak wood smoke. With a few minor adjustments I think the wife would have dug it too.

10:00 PM Pasta

2005-07-14T23:08:00.000-07:00

I got home late the other night and didn’t want to eat too much lest I have more dreams involving a mountain lion driving me recklessly around a curvey road in an old car. A small pasta dish, the size you get in Italy where they expect you to eat pasta as a precursor to the main course, sounded right. The fridge seemed pretty bare but I had the remains of a roast chicken I had made for dinner a few nights earlier, a small chunk of blue cheese left from when I made blue cheese dressing about a week ago, and the first few cherry tomatoes off my tomato plant that is thriving in the front flower bed. The only herb I have in the yard is a rosemary plant and a hearty herb like rosemary seemed like a good compliment to the pungent blue cheese, so I snipped some off a sprig and minced it. The time it took to cook the thin spaghetti (9 minutes) was all the time I needed to slice the chicken, mince the rosemary, crumble the cheese and halve the tomatoes. I drained the pasta, leaving the pasta and a tiny bit of sticky pasta water behind in the pot then drizzled some olive oil over it to for a little flavor and texture. I’m lazy and hate doing dishes so I was determined to prepare the entire dish in the single pot. It actually worked out perfectly because I just threw the aforementioned ingredients in with the pasta and let the residual heat do the little “cooking” it needed. The liquid from the fresh tomatoes, the cheese and the pasta water constituted the sauce, which I boosted with a splash of cream and a sprinkling of kosher salt. After about 30 seconds of stirring I dumped it into a pasta bowl, ground pepper over it and dug in. I couldn’t believe how good it was and it was scraped together with ingredients I half expected to chuck in the garbage the next couple days. In all honesty, it was better than any pasta I’ve had at a restaurant in at least the last 6 months (yes, we are lacking good restaurants here).

Not really Petite, Not really Syrah, but really good

2005-07-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

I worked for a handful of catering companies right out of college in the early 1990’s, putting my history degree to good use, and the best thing about these jobs, besides the fistful of dollars handed to me at the end of the night, was the good wine I often had the opportunity to sample. The mother lode event was a catered dinner at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. It started with a wine tasting happy hour before dinner that featured several good bottles. When the event moved downstairs to the dining area I helped “clean up”. It was the first time I tasted Beaulieu’s George De Latour and, come to think of it, the last. Dinner was beef tenderloin with Caymus Cabernet, both of which I enjoyed very much while listening to the featured speaker talk about foreign policy issues. The fact that I ate and listened in the kitchen area while sitting on a plastic milk crate didn’t bother me at all. At the catering company’s small restaurant that only existed to meet a city requirement, I was the sole employee besides the kitchen staff. It was a small, lunch-only place with one very nice feature - a random array of good wine left over from events like the Hoover Institute dinners. It was difficult to use these odd bottles for catered events because they were in such small quantities so I generously offered to receive some of my compensation in the form of wine (my most prized paycheck was a bottle of 1986 Jordan Cabernet). It was at this time I first tried a Petite Syrah. I’m not sure what winery it was from, possibly Ridge, but I distinctly remember thinking it was really good. For the next 12 years I had more or less forgotten about the variety until recently when I started running into it at some local tasting rooms. I had read a few times before that Petite Syrah (or Petite Sirah) is not related to the Syrah grape and its name is a misnomer but from what I’ve found on this amazing thing called the Information Superhighway, is that it actually was derived from Syrah in the 1880’s by some French dude named Durif at the University of Montpellier (that’s not in Vermont, right?). Apparently it is a cross between Syrah and Peloursin, whatever that is, and was named ‘Durif’. How it came to have the Petite Syrah name is unclear and unimportant but thankfully it’s not still called Durif. If you really want to know more about this you can read here: http://www.winelabels.org/artsirah.htm A few months back the wife and I tasted the offerings at Peachy Canyon and liked some of the Zinfandels – the ones you don’t see in the stores. One of the last wines we tried was their Petite Sirah and it poured out of the bottle like black ink. Based on the color and thickness I expected a super intense, heavy, fruity wine. It was intense but dry and more understated than something like a Zinfandel. The wife wasn’t as impressed with it as I was so we ended up with the Schoolhouse Zinfandel but the memory stuck with me. A couple months later we went to dinner at Bistro Laurent for our anniversary and I noticed the Peachy Canyon Petite Sirah on the wine list. I ordered it and the waiter said, “I’m not sure if we have any left but if were out, I’ll find you something yummy.” (incidentally, ‘yummy’ is currently #1 on my list of Most Annoying Wine Expressions, knocking ‘monster’ down to #2). He returned with a bottle of the Petite Sirah saying that it was one of only a couple left and I was lucky because the winery had run out. Unfortunately my meal, venison osso buco, was a disappointment but the wine made up for it. Since then I have tried a couple other Petite Syrah wines and they’ve all been at least good and some great. The best value was Bogle at about $8. We have two bottles of Castoro Cellars Petite Sirah that we bought after tasting it at the winery and at $15 it’s well-priced. I’ve heard EOS makes a great one and the winery is not too far away so I’ll update this entry with a report if I try theirs. Please post any recommendations you might have in the Comments section. Perhaps you know more about wine than I do and I’ve said nothing new but if you’re not that familiar with Petite Syrah and you like a full-bodied wine but have had enough heavy fruit wine, give Tiny Syrah a whirl. To me it seems undiscovered by the masses but it’s pretty tasty so I expect it to eventually become trendy, at which point I’ll have to publicly disassociate myself from it.

2005-06-20T00:28:00.000-07:00

This is how I prefer to see sweetbreads, cooked and lounging in butter. They are delicious sauteed but arguably better grilled with some lemon squeezed over them.

2005-06-20T00:25:00.000-07:00

The throat sweetbread (thymus gland) and the stomach sweetbread (pancreas) at the early, disgusting stage.

Sweetbreads the other white (organ) meat

2005-06-19T23:33:00.000-07:00

If you ask someone what sweetbreads are, the first answer after 'disgusting' is usually the cow's pancreas or thyroid or lymph nodes or thymus or throat or some other organ that sounds wrong to eat. It turns out that most of these answers are at least partially correct. The term "sweetbread" refers to the thymus gland AND the pancreas. (Apparently the only ones worth eating are from a calf.) The pancreas or stomach sweetbread is considered more desireable than the thymus gland or throat sweetbread because of its shape and texture but I believe I ate the throat variety the other night and it was delicious, hence this entry. For some odd reason the concept of sweetbreads interested me a few years ago. I must have read some article where an indignant chef stammered on about how foolish people were to ignore this delicacy. I came across them on the menu of a French-ish restaurant in L.A. called Cafe Bizou and the waitress's high praise pushed me over the edge, so I ordered them. They were sauteed in butter and very tasty - mild, tender and only a little peculiar tasting. They must be loaded with some sort of fat or cholesterol because I felt almost dizzy with leadeness afterwards. Every so often in the last couple years at decent restaurants I've come across and ordered them when everything else on the menu was some hackneyed entree - seared something with a glaze, reduction, carmelization, nut and potato encrustacion or gratin..and wilted greens...in a demi-glace. Anyway, they've been good to very good each time I've tried them so my interest was piqued when I saw them on the menu of a local eatery and watering hole called Jocko's. This place is about as formal as a summer camp dining hall but it's a legendary spot, largely because they grill fat steaks over a big oak wood fire and have good prices on drinks. You get to watch the guys tend the grill from behind glass, kind of like you can watch your car get pummelled by brushes in the car wash. Also like the car wash, you anxiously watch your property, hoping everything turns out okay but expecting the worst because the process looks so out of control. After three visits to Jocko's and three Spencer steaks later I have to say it's been outstanding every time. We went to Jocko's the other night with our friend from out of town, Andrew, which was perfect because he's another person who will eat things he probably shouldn't if there's a chance it may taste good. When I mentioned the sweetbreads to him he said "Sounds great! I love sweetbreads!". Somehow I knew he'd respond that way so we ordered them as an appetizer (we couldn't not order steaks for dinner). The interesting angle to me was that they grilled them instead of pan sauteeing them. They took awhile but arrived crunchy on the outside and a bit chewy throughout. Their nugget-like shape makes me think they were the throat kind because the pancreas apparently can be sliced into uniform "steaks". They were so good that I couldn't leave any behind even though I knew I was heaping a lot on my poor digestive tract. Sure enough I didn't sleep so well but it was worth it. They were great. The wife even tried a couple and liked them, and she gets creeped out by the word 'gland' or 'pancreas'. So my humble recommendation is to keep an open mind about the thymus gland or pancreas next time you see the euphimism "sweetbreads" on the menu. If you're fairly certain it's a good restaurant they're worth a try.

2005-05-12T22:43:00.000-07:00

Stuffed chicken breast sealed with a lemon wedgie. The tomatoes, from our local farmer's market, were so sweet I thought I had sliced an apple, and it's only May!

Stuffing Meat: What's good for the pig is good for the chicken

2005-05-12T22:36:00.001-07:00

From a recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated I’ve been making a stuffed pork chop recipe with great success. The idea of stuffed pork chops first intrigued me about a year ago while living in Los Angeles. At a local meat market I noticed a row of swollen pork chops with their stuffing mixture garishly disgorging from their sides. The chops had been butterflied, allowing the stuffing to push out all along their perimeters. I asked one of the butchers about them and he promised me I would love them. He said to put them in a covered casserole dish with some apple juice or other liquid and bake them in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Not wanting to insult a glib butcher (they’re all this way) I accepted this without question even though everything I knew about cooking pork chops told me this would not produce something tender, moist or flavorful. That night, in the spirit of deference to a guy who has been cutting and selling meat longer than I’ve been old enough to ride the Matterhorn at Disneyland, I cooked them just as he said. They sucked. Sorry, but I don’t know how else to put it. They were gray, tough, dry and flavorless, just as I thought they would be. I pretty much forgot about the idea of stuffed pork chops until the Cook’s Illustrated article appeared. CI addressed the oozing stuffing issue by showing a nifty technique where you pierce the non-bone side of the chop with a knife then swing it back and forth to form a pocket without splitting open the whole side (sort of the cooking equivalent of laparoscopy). You then stuff the pouch with a stuffing mixture that actually tastes good and seal up the modestly-sized orifice with a lemon wedge that keeps all the good stuff inside. The salted and peppered chops are browned in a hot, oiled pan on the stove for about 3 minutes a side then the whole thing goes in the 450 degree oven for about 15 minutes. If not overcooked, the results are delicious. A couple nights ago I needed to do something with some boneless, skinless chicken breasts so I figured the pork chop stuffing technique might work. For moisture, flavor and because I had the time I brined the chicken for an hour (1/4 cup salt, two+ cups water in a Ziploc bag with the breasts in the fridge, rinse and dry thoroughly when removing). Cutting the pocket for the stuffing was tricky because chicken breasts are much more delicate than pork chops but by being careful I didn’t poke through anywhere. I made up a logical stuffing mixture and used the same browning-then-roasting technique from the chops recipe. They baked for about 25 minutes at a lower temperature (350)and the internal temperature was plenty safe for my salmonella concerns (which are probably less than most people’s). They were a solid and really not that much work. The trickiest part is making a big pocket without cutting through the side walls or all the way through to the other side. Going slowly and using a sharp knife helps a lot. I also recommend a lower oven temp (i.e. 350) than the chops take (450). It will take a little longer but I think 450 degrees will start to burn the outside of chicken breasts before they are cooked through. There is something kind of exciting about an entrée that is stuffed. It’s like getting a little gift inside your meal. Maybe it reminds us of the exhilarating childhood memory of bashing open a piñata and clawing at the cheap candy and trinkets that pour out of its belly. Or maybe not.

2005-05-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

When the meat pulls away from the bone like this the meat will be "fall off the bone" tender and the excess fat will have melted away. Think of these as prime riblets.

Rib Tips

2005-04-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

Under the heading, "Delicious, inexpensive, simple meals that require forethought" comes this entry on beef ribs. Our local mini-chain grocery store put beef ribs on sale for $0.99/lb, causing my taste buds to pulse in anticipation. Conventional Wisdom looks down at beef ribs in favor of pork ribs, perhaps because of their low meat-to-bone ratio, but this hierarchical attitude is a mistake. Pork ribs can be great but meaty, properly cooked beef ribs are arguably better. Often you see orange "Great on the Grill" stickers plastered on beef rib packages in the grocery store meat case, which may be why so many people pass over beef ribs in favor of pork spareribs or baby back ribs. At one point these poor sops probably bought a rack of beef ribs, threw them on the grill until they were brown on the surface and pink at the bone, like you'd grill a New York or Rib-Eye steak, then spent the next couple hours gnawing away at them like stray dogs trying to extract the meat (not to mention an hour flossing afterwards). Who wouldn't think poorly of beef ribs after an experience like that? Beef ribs, like pork spareribs (not baby back ribs*) are fatty and tough until they've been cooked thoroughly. They need to be slow cooked at 200 to 250 degrees for several hours to render out the excess fat and to break down the fibers to the point of tenderness. When cooked this way the ribs will be "fall of the bone" tender and will still be juicy and flavorful. This is the principle behind true barbecue but I wasn't in the mood to fire up the smoker yesterday. Instead of getting one big rack of ribs I purchased two small packages that contained a total of five individual ribs. (The only reason I did this was because the packages I selected seemed to be the meatiest ribs I could find. ) I trimmed excess fat off the surface of the ribs, sprinkled them with kosher salt and put them on foil-lined cookie sheet in a 250 degree oven. I pretty much forgot about them while I ran errands and put together a plastic garden shed. Four hours later I pulled them out, tented them with foil and made side dishes. I don't think most people think to slow cook ribs in the oven, which acts like a smoker without the smoke, but they should because the meal was delicious. For prime rib fans, you know that outer strip of super well-marbled meat around the outside of the prime rib? That's pretty much what the meat tastes like. As you can see from the photo the meat exterior is a deep brown color. It condenses down to a virtual 'meat concentrate' while not drying out. Unlike undercooked ribs, I was able to easily chew off all traces of meat from the bone and no floss was necessary (of course I flossed before bedtime last night, like every night). We had steamed broccoli and boiled new potatoes with a local Zinfandel that tasted like Port. At 16% alcohol it was the malt liquor of wines but it cut the rich meat perfectly (it was a Mission View 1996 vintage from Paso Robles but the winery must have changed ownership because it has a different name now). The ribs took almost no preparation time but did require me to put them in the oven four hours prior to eating. They cost about five dollars total but it was as good as any meal I've had in a restaurant in recent memory. The moral of the story is that Conventional Wisdom is an idiot - buy beef ribs.

2005-04-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

Tri-tip cooked whole, sliced into medallions and topped with a red wine pan sauce. This was even a little too rare for me.

2005-04-22T23:21:00.000-07:00

A shining example of well-marbled meat - note the stripes of fat running throughout and the beer meant to lower my cholesterol levels.

Butcher Shoppe 2 - Well-marbled tri-tip

2005-04-22T23:02:00.000-07:00

The butcher's didactic lecture on the importance of beef cows sticking to a strict grain diet to develop well-marbled meat was illustrated by a tri-tip I bought from him and cooked the other night. As you can see from the picture of it prior to cooking, the white, fatty striations are thick and bountiful. After browning in a cast iron pan on the stovetop then roasting in the oven at 350, I sliced it into medallions. In my zeal to avoid overcooking I pulled it out a tad early for my taste. I like tri-tip medium rare and this was firmly in the rare camp. At this level of "doneness" I generally find meat too chewy and metallic tasting so I put my slices back in the oven for finishing (the wife was fine with hers). I served it with a red wine pan sauce, pressure-cooked rice and an artichoke. It didn't really matter what I served as side dishes - the flavor was so good that it was the single best tasting tri-tip I've ever had.

2005-04-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

Short Ribs with Delicious but Deadly Crust

Weeknight Meal - Good baked chicken breasts

2005-04-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

A good baked chicken breast seems to be strangely elusive. It seems so simple but avoiding flabby skin and dry meat is difficult. From a 2004 issue of Cook's Illustrated I found an easy recipe that produces crispy skin and juicy meat. This is a solid weeknight meal. I made it with mashed potatoes and braised cabbage. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and put a rack in the middle slot Line the bottom of a broiler pan with foil (if not available, line a cookie sheet with foil) Smear under the chicken skin a mixture of softened butter, salt and any herbs you want (lemon zest is good) Smear olive oil on the outside of the skin and sprinkle with salt and pepper Put on pan and roast for 30 to 40 minutes for decent sized bosoms. Check with thermometer (160 degrees) or finger push to test for "doneness" Let rest for 5 to 10 minutes. If not overcooked they will be juicy and the skin should be crispy. The butter keeps the meat moist without the need for brining. It's a subtly flavored but very satisfying dish and easy to make.

Cheese of the Month - Smells Like Compost, Taste Great

2005-04-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

The other day at Trader Joe's I was in search of a different cheese so I bought a wedgie of Rougette, a triple cream cheese from Germany. I knew nothing about it but it looked like a brie with an orange-tinted rind and figured it was worth a try. Before dinner I put out this cheese with a couple others as an appetizer and I was struck by the piercing stench that filled the air. Our friends Mark and Stacy were visiting with their 18 month old and they, along with the wife, refused to give it a try. I can't blame them, the aroma was probably a ringer for their daughter's soiled diaper. To me the smell was somewhere between rotting garbage and sweaty socks, but I had to try it. And it was delicious, tasting like brie with a little kick. The smell is so strong that it penetrates the ziploc bag I'm keeping it in and I'm disgusted with it until the cheese actually hits my tongue. The smells bad-tastes great paradox is one of the strangest in the culinary world and I'm sure many people miss out on some great cheese because of it. If you are somewhat adventurous, give Rougette a try. It was about $9/pound.

Quickest Dinner I Know - Broiled Salmon

2005-04-14T22:31:00.000-07:00

Short of opening up some toxic bag of prepared food, broiled salmon is the quickest meal I know of. When preparing salmon simply like this you must keep one thing in mind -like a hernia test, nothing is hidden from your audience. Poor quality salmon will be exposed for what it is so only use this method when you're confident in your raw material. I recently used some borderline salmon and even my emergency lemon tarragon sauce couldn't make up for its lackluster flavor and texture. It was wild Alaskan salmon that had been frozen and was sold defrosted. My gut said to go for the fresh farm-raised stuff but I was lured by the ruby color of the wild stuff. (To a certain extent I also considered the alleged problem farm-raising causes when the salmon inmates escape from the farm and mess with the locals. Who knows if that's true or hype.) The distinction between good and inferior salmon is not always clear because I've had bad salmon from Whole Foods while the grocery store produced a respectable fillet (once). These examples are abberations so I generally follow a couple rules - buy it fresh (not frozen or previously frozen), get it from a trusted source and don't get it from the big chain grocery stores that give you "Member Rewards" cards. (I should add that I've had good seafood from Costco when they roll out their weekend seafood roadshow.) To prepare, pre-heat the broiler (leave the oven door open so it doesn't cycle the heating element on and off) and put the rack in the highest position; rinse the salmon with cold water; dry thoroughly with paper towels and remove bones with a needle-nosed pliers (optional); after placing on a foil-lined cookie sheet, rub with extra chaste olive oil; sprinkle with kosher salt and grind pepper over it according to your taste. When the broiler is nice and orange put the salmon/cookie sheet on the top rack. Unless you have some unusual rack arrangement in your oven or your salmon is incredibly thick it shouldn't be too close to the heating element. If you put it one rack lower it may never form the nice, mahogany crust or the crust will take so long to show up the salmon will be fish jerky. Once under a hot broiler it will cook quickly so don't flip on an episode of Momma's Family thinking you have some time. I crank on the exhaust fan and/or open the kitchen window because sometimes there is a smoky, mini-fireworks show from the oil sputtering and igniting when it hits the element. It makes the wife nervous but it doesn't seem to cause any real problems. After about four minutes it will probably be done or at least close to it. Pull it out and push on it with your finger. If the fattest part of the fish feels like your pushing into someone's double chin it's probably still raw in the center. I like it a touch rare in the very center but if it needs to go back in and the crust has pretty much formed, put it back one rack lower so it doesn't burn the top. You can also put it several racks lower and close the oven so it roasts to finish cooking. The key is not overcooking it (aka ruining it). For a small fillet the total cooking time is rarely more than 6 or 7 minutes. A full-length fillet takes significantly longer. I often get the salmon ready for the broiler then prepare green beans and start the respective cooking processes at the same time. I put the green beans in a pot of boiling, salted water for four minutes and they're always perfect (assuming you're using full-sized green beans and not the little French ones). I drain the water, leave the cooked beans in the pan, squeeze some lemon over them, throw in a pat of butter and let that melt while I put the salmon on plates. To keep it fast I serve it with bread. I don't care about wine "rules" and like red wine with salmon (something lighter, like a Pinot Noir or Merlot*). The whole dinner - from grocery sack to placemat - can take 30 minutes or less if you hurry. If the salmon is good quality, it's a toothsome meal. * The trendy anti-Merlot sentiment, driven by the new wine "connoisseurs" whose wine knowledge is based on watching the overrated Sideways, has made me want to turn my attention back to Merlot. I admit that I pretty much stopped drinking it a few years ago when I discovered some other varieties but I had a glass the other night and it was refreshing to have a red wine that wasn't decribed as "big" or a "monster" or "explosive" with "tons of fruit". Sometimes a little guy is just right. Bucking the Sideways trend is reason enough to choose it.

Good Mexican Food in Kettelman City

2005-04-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has found himself traveling between San Francisco and L.A. on I-5 knows there is a dearth of decent food available to motorists along the entire route. The arrival of In & Out Burger a few years back was a red letter day in I-5 dining but there's a limit to how many times you can only enjoy a Double-Double (or tolerate raucous kids on some "team road trip"). Harris Ranch, at roughly the halfway point, seems so promising but the food is underwhelming and prices exploitative. Maybe you've wondered, as I have, if there is anything beyond the roadside fast food clusters but have declined to risk heading east or west into the middle of nowhere. At least at one point along the highway I’ve discovered the antidote to the I-5 meal problematic. My recent weekly trips to Fresno include heading west on Highway 41 from the coast, which bisects I-5 just before it passes through Kettelman City. On my first trip through I was curious to see what was in Kettelman City proper after so many years passing by, out of sight, a few miles away. * About two miles east of the gas stations and the Taco McJackers Jr., right on the highway, sits a little shack that puts out a nice spread of carnitas and organ meat. I'm not sure of its official name because the signage is dominated by the word "Carnitas" in huge letters but if you take the Kettelman City exit and head east a couple miles you can't miss it. My first trip I had two carnitas tacos - delicious. While I was waiting for my order a guy who may have been the owner or manager gave me the guided tour of the glass case full of offal. I recognized the kidneys and the pig snouts but I needed his help identifying the rest. He spoke reverently about some organ that he loves to eat so I told him that I might try that next time. Next time was this evening, on a trip back home, and I ordered a carnitas burrito. The guy ringing up my order asked who was going to help me eat it, which I suppose I could have taken as a personal slight about my stature but I think he was only boasting about the size of their burritos. He stated that they use the biggest tortillas available for their burritos and the final product weighs about 1.5 lbs. When it was bagged up he threw it on the scale to prove his point and it weighed in at 1.47 lbs., which visibly distressed him. At $3.50 for the massive log I figured I had room in the budget for something from the hot case. I passed on anything that I recognized from medical illustrations and opted for chicharrones. I chose the version with meat attached because fried pork skin with no meat seemed too decadent. The burrito was a meal and a half so the skin is sitting in a brown paper sack on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to build up an appetite. Although I haven’t tried anything beside the carnitas I suspect the other traditional meats they serve would be good (chile verde, chili colorado, etc.). Don’t let the slaughterhouse spread in the front window scare you – the tacos and burrito rank as some of the best I’ve had, and I’ve had a lot. I marvel how most people slog through the fast food in view of I-5 when outstanding food is only a couple miles away. I was one of those people but now I know better and I highly recommend a visit if you’re passing by. * I actually had been out to the edge of Kettelman City once before. It was sometime around 1990 when my college roommate, Mark, and I were returning from LA to Berkeley in my 1967 Mustang when we stopped for gas at about 10:00 PM. Prior to the trip, Mark prophetically jested that if I didn't replace my erratic starter motor we would be trapped in Kettelman City. The words were echoing in my ears when the turn of the key produced nothing but silence. The nearby 76 station had one starter motor in stock for my car, which they thankfully tested before selling me, revealing it was bad. We had no choice but to spend the night where we were until the Napa Auto store in Kettelman City opened in the morning. We rotated between J's Coffee Shop (now the site of In & Out) where we tried to stay awake and the Mustang where we tried to sleep. At 5:00 A.M. we began the couple mile walk from the gas station to Kettelman City. Fortunately they opened early, had a good starter in stock and we hitched a ride with some sort of public utility employee on the way back. I crawled under the car and installed it with the tools I had on hand and we made it back safely. As it turns out, the Napa store is the first establishment you come to as you approach KC, as I now call it, and I pay homage every time I pass.

The Butcher Shoppe - Pork Chops

2005-02-19T23:19:00.000-08:00

As you probably know, the dietary do-gooders have villified fat so much that today's pork is much leaner's than your grandpa's pork. I recently saw a 1940's era picture (the golden era when pork consumption in the U.S. exceeded beef consumption) of a typical farm pig alongside a photo of a modern day pig and it was like looking at old and current pictures of Oprah. The modern pig was svelte while the classic pig was corpulent and jowely, like we all remember from the storybooks. So today's slender pork is dry, tough and flavorless. Perhaps a more truthful slogan would be "the other bland white meat". To make things worse, most recipes gravely instruct us to cook pork to an internal temperature of 160 degrees for "safety" (they don't mention parasites but that's what they mean). Cooking to 160 ensures any subtle flavors and precious juices that might have been in the meat originally are long gone and the worrisome parasites that don't really exist in modern pork anymore are surely dead and safe to eat. To counteract act these problems we do have a few choices: 1) eat only pork shoulder, ham, bacon and sausage that have enough fat to make them worthwhile and forego pork chops and roasts 2) hunt down heirloom pork that is raised by a few pig farmers in NY and who knows where else and pay a fortune to have it shipped 3) brine lean pork in a salt water solution before cooking to retain some moisture and to add some flavor 4) buy factory farm pork (i.e. Hormel) that has been pumped with some funky sodium phosphate solution to simulate good pork, which just makes it taste weird I advocate options 1 and 3 and I'm looking closely into 2 but recommend against 4. In the context of this current state of pork I entered the local butcher shoppe a few days ago. The glass case was littered with papers promoting different cuts of meat for sale but inside were only chuck roasts and a few other random beef cuts. I wasn't sure if they were out of most things but I asked the butcher if they had any pork chops available. "Sure!" He almost jumped out of his apron. I said I didn't see any in the case and he explained they cut them to order, any thickness I wanted. Hearing this, I felt my knees buckle a little and I asked for two bone in chops, about an inch and a half thick. A minute later I watched as he toted around a long rack of pork to the band saw for cutting. Two thick-cut rib chops weighed in at nearly two pounds and at $4.99/pound I felt I was getting my money's worth. As I mentioned earlier, this was the first real meal I cooked in our new house with our new cooking equipment so I was excited to make anything. I brined the chops in saltwater (about 1/3 cup salt and four cups of water) for about an hour, dried them off, salted them generously then seared them in a hot pan with a little corn oil for about 3 minutes a side. They developed a beautiful golden crust but were obviously far from done so I placed them on a cookie sheet in the preheated oven (350 degrees-convection roast) while I finished the potatoes. I deglazed the chop pan with some cognac then added sour cream when the chops were coming out of the oven. The critical mistake I made was splashing in a little extra cognac at the very end to moisten up the quickly drying pan sauce. Adding an alcohol so late does not give it time to burn off most of the alcohol flavor and leaves it with a sharp, unpleasant taste. I tried to simmer it down but I knew I blew it. lightly coated the chops with the sauce, knowing it wasn't great. One key was pulling the chops out of the oven at the right time. I've been burned by putting too much trust in my instant read thermometer so now I use it to give me an indication but ultimately trust my instincts. I push on the chop (or whatever meat) to feel the resistance. The finger push method merits an entry of its own, which I will work on soon. These chops spent about 12 minutes in the 350 oven after the pan searing and rested for about five. They were cooked perfectly. Overall the chops were outstanding. I don't know where the butcher gets his pork and maybe the thick cut and brining had something to do with it but they were some of the best pork chops I've ever had (not the sauce - it was marginal) . They had that unctuous, bacon-like richness that good pork has. The flavor was milder than the shoulder or ham cuts and it was moist unlike supermarket chops. I suspect the internal temperature peaked out at about 140 degrees and was lower against the bone but I'm not worried about trichonosis. I'll be back at the butcher shoppe soon to pay my compliments and pay for another package of something delicious.

Moving Part 2 - Local Food

2005-02-19T22:59:00.000-08:00

No need to bore you with the rest of the move because there are important food items to discuss. The town we moved to, we'll call it Stars Hollow, has a population of around 17,000 with a downtown area dating back to the late 1800's. Presumably by intention, the downtown does not have any chain stores that homogenize so many towns across the country. Our first morning we went to the little diner/cafe for breakfast. $7 got me eggs over easy, hashbrowns, linguica sausage and wheat toast. Everything was cooked perfectly and my coffee cup never got below half empty. The wife had pancakes, eggs and slab bacon for just under $6. We'll most likely become regulars. The next day we visited the butcher shop downtown. They heavily promoted their sandwiches, especially a tri-tip one with an apricot bbq sauce. I had no choice but to order the tri-tip while the wife had the hamburger. Both were outstanding, largely due to the quality of the meat. The hamburger suffered somewhat from the cooking method - a virtual steaming process on a George Foreman grill - but the quality of the meat was so good that it still tasted great. Most interesting was the owner. While the kid made the sandwiches I asked the owner about the local cows that can be seen grazing on the nearby hillsides and if he ever gets his meat locally. Apparently I hit a nerve because he began his diatribe with "I don't know what line of work you're in, but in the meat business..." He went on to explain that it was a common myth to think that the local, grazing cows would produce the best meat when in fact they were mostly retired dairy cows and their grass diet made for lean, dry, flavorless meat (I declined to bring up my recent experience with the grass fed ribeye steak). He said that a strict grain diet was necessary to achieve proper marbling and the impending hamburger would prove it. After stealing a few bites of the wife's burger I can't argue with him. Since that first visit I have been back for several sandwiches and pork chops. The roast beef (made on the premises) was nothing short of outstanding. Since my initial visit, when I got the "stupid kid" treatment, I've established a good rapport with the owner and he has been both friendly and helpful. For more information on the pork chops, see the next entry.

Moving Part 1 - No Cooking/Eating Out

2005-02-19T22:02:00.000-08:00

For the past several weeks the wife and I have been embroiled in the process of moving from Los Angeles to an undisclosed location in another part of California. One of the most trying aspects of the moving process was the kitchen shutdown. It began during the packing process and extended many days after we arrived at our new place. We eagerly unpacked the boxes labeled "kitchen"first in the hopes of becoming operational but candles, corn syrup and wedding present vases seemed to be all we could find. In fact, tonight was the first proper meal I've cooked in about two weeks (more on that later). When you can't cook your own food for days on end and you eat out virtually every meal, restaurant food quickly loses its appeal. You begin to realize how much they rely on salt and fat to impress you with a quick flavor hit. Don't get me wrong, I hold salt and fat in high regard but when used excessively, as most eateries do, they make eating out drudgery. I don't get how some people eat out most nights. Maybe they're the ones who die unexpectedly at age 40. I can't really remember the order of eating events the last couple weeks but I do remember a few meal snippets that exemplify how important timing is to good eating. During one arduous moving day I was brought an Apple Pan hamburger for lunch (which was delicious) and an In&Out hamburger for dinner. By the time I was eating my second hamburger of the day I realized there is a hamburger envelope and I had exceeded it. Our final meal in L.A. was at a little Italian joint owned by a little Italian guy in a little strip mall on a stretch of Venice Blvd. in the Palms/Culver City area. (It's funny how the word "Venice" in the Italian context conjures up charming canal images while in the Los Angeles context the canal loses the "c" and the image is much less charming. ) We ordered our favorite appetizer - thinly sliced eggplant rolled around a stuffing of ricotta cheese and pine nuts covered in a tomato sauce - and we split an entree-sized pizza. Normally this would have been a light, toothsome meal but after so many restaurant visits in a row the flavors were so flat and salty we couldn't even finish it. Getting three to four hours of sleep a night for several nights in a row is unhealthy for normal people but for someone like me who usually logs 8+ hours a night it was devastating. I ached from days of packing and hauling boxes around and felt bound up by the restaurant diet. This is the state in which I hit the road for our new home at midnight in an old Honda with bald tires in the driving rain with a complaining cat next to me. Before logging the first hour of driving the wife called from the other, nicer car and asked if I was drowsy because I had started driving much slower. Fessing up, I pulled off at a gas station in Camarillo for a cup of coffee and Krispy Kreme donut. I must admit, it pumped some life into me but instead of getting two large coffees as I should have, I only bought a medium. By the time we hit La Conchita the cup was dry and my eyelids were made of lead again. Normally the caffeine laden swill from a gas station keeps me awake for hours but my epic fatigue rose to the occasion. I toughed it out to Buelton where we finally found an open gas station and reloaded. It must of helped some but it didn't really feel like it. Nevertheless, thank God we made it safely, arriving at 3:30 A.M. Three hours of sleep on the floor later and the movers called to tell us they were a couple minutes away.

Grass Fed Ribeye Steak

2005-02-04T23:42:00.000-08:00

While the wife was enjoying libations and farewells from her co-workers (my former co-workers) at a Santa Monica watering hole (emphasis on hole) I pondered what to have for a solo dinner at home. I declined the invitation to fight Friday evening traffic into Santa Monica where I would overpay for a drink and try to avoid talking to former co-workers who lower my view of the human race. It's really not that bad, I like most of my former co-workers. They weren't the ones who decided to lay me off. It was a smelly Frenchman and his suspiciously hyper-masculine sidekick, who are both long gone too. Back to dinner. By 6:30 PM something was bothering my stomach. It could have been the sausage sandwich and beer lunch, the absurd "Chantico" drinking chocolate* from Starbucks or the double espresso I downed at 6:25PM. I figured I'd eat something simple and straightforward to spare my giblets any unnecessary strain. A calzone from a neighborhood pizza joint that only takes cash seemed like a good option but I balked with the phone in my hand. Too much meat, cheese and white flour. So I went to Trader Joe's to see if any fish looked good. Sure enough I found something - a ribeye steak. It was small, well-marbled and boasted its grass-fed heritage. At $15/pound it wasn't cheap but I was curious so I bought it along with $20 worth of other stuff I didn't need and headed back home. I remembered I still had a few brussel sprouts left to cook so I braised them in water and cream while I heated the cast iron pan to smoking. I generoulsy coated the steak with salt and coarsely ground pepper and pan-fried it for about 3 minutes per side. While it rested I poured some red wine in the steak pan to deglaze the crusty goodness. I then added about 1/4 cup of my poor-man's demi-glace that I had made a couple weeks prior. I won't bore you with the details but I got the recipe from an old issue of Cook's Illustrated. I really didn't expect anything from the pan sauce but I figured it was worth a shot. After it reduced by about half the steak was fully rested and the sprouts were ready too. The steak turned out to be really good. Cooking perfectly to a solid crimson throughout helped but I could tell the quality was there. It wasn't a 28 day dry-aged beauty from some mafia steakhouse but it was good. The real surprise was the sauce. Whoa! It rivaled any red wine pan sauce I've had from a restaurant...and it was an afterthought! The brussel sprouts tasted great (cream = good) and the glass of $7/ bottle of Columbia Crest Cabernet tasted at least as good as the $20 bottle of Wente I served with the short ribs a few nights ago. I expected little and was richly rewarded. In case you're wondering, the wife had a few chicken strips at the bar and a bowl of cereal when she got home but she had a nice time with co-workers. I'm glad I stayed in. * By the time you read this Starbuck's may have pulled the "Chantico" from their stores. It's basically melted chocolate ice cream. Cloying doesn't begin to describe it. I can't believe I drank the whole thing but at $2.75 I had to. It really is just another shameless Starbuck's gimmick. The name alone is ridiculous. I had to see where they claimed to have come up with it. Per Starbuck's website: "The name 'Chantico' comes from the Aztec goddess of hearth and fire. Chantico was said to provide homes with warm comfort and heat for cooking." I'm embarassed for them. I only tried it for business research reasons (I'm serious - I have a vested interest in what the latest cafe beverage trends are). Soon I'll tell the story of the espresso machine in my garage.

Salad for Dinner?

2005-02-04T23:33:00.000-08:00

The wife demanded a light dinner due to all the rich ones we've been having recently. My first reaction was, naturally, horror. She specifically mentioned salad, which dovetailed nicely with our lack of any meat item in the fridge for other ingredients to orbit around on the dinner plate. I warmed to the idea of a dinner salad as I assembled red leaf lettuce, cherry tomatoes, hearts of palm (buried in the fridge sometime in 2004 but amazingly still viable), carrots, parmesan reggiano, pepper coated salami and homemade ranch dressing. While the pasta-cum-salad bowls chilled in the freezer for that restaurant-like feel I sliced the tomatoes in half to avoid the gushy mouth explosions, shredded the carrots because raw carrot slices are just annoying, julienned the salami and sliced the hearts of palm. It assembled quickly, was tasty and I felt great afterwards. The wife loved it too.

Braised Short Ribs

2005-02-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

Last night we hosted a little dinner party for two friends - an engaged couple who I will refer to as Helmut and Gertrude (to protect their identities). The featured dish was braised short ribs. Short ribs are one of those dishes I make that are fairly simple to prepare but taste so good that I almost feel guilty they didn't involve more work. When I get compliments about them it feels as if I got an 'A' on a term paper that I purchased, if that makes sense. Typically I trim the excess external fat from the ribs, brown them in my pressure cooker (in batches so I don't crowd the pan), saute coarsely chopped onions and carrots in the empty pan, deglaze the pan with some liquid (wine or broth) then add the full compliment of liquids to create the braising liquid. Usually the liquid is a cocktail of red wine, chicken and/or beef stock and tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes. I recently started adding one shot of espresso to the mix with very good results. For this batch I switched from red wine to white wine and used only chicken stock because I didn't have any homemade beef stock on hand. I completed it with tomato sauce and espresso along with a couple bay leaves and whole pepper corns. When it reached a simmer I returned the browned short ribs along with the liquid that had pooled around them into the cooker and capped it. I brought it up to the first pressure line, stabilized it and let it go for two hours. I usually cook it at the second, higher pressure setting for one hour but I wondered if a gentler, longer cook time would produce more tender meat. Two hours later the ribs were fall apart tender, with the bones slipping right off the meat, so I sequestered them to their own bowl. I poured the liquid and vegetables through a standard mesh strainer into a separate bowl, discarded the vegetables and put the sauce and the meat into the fridge overnight. As mentioned previously, I completed most of the short rib preparation the night before so I could remove the 'fat frisbee' from the top of the braising liquid after a congealing night in the refrigerator. Also, with most of the cooking done, Helmut and I had time to soak in the hot tub before dinner (Gertrude and the wife preferred watching 'Lost', the modern incarnation of Gilligan's Island). After removing the fat from the sauce, I heated it back to liquid consistency and poured it through a fine mesh strainer in order to give it a smooth texture. I returned it to a simmer on the stove without a lid to reduce and thicken it while the short ribs slowly heated in a 250 degree oven in a casserole dish. The sauce didn't thicken much so I added cornstarch (mixed with a small amount of cold milk prior to adding to the sauce). After thickening I added the sauce to the short ribs and returned the casserole dish to the oven to complete its heating. To round out the meal I boiled russet potatoes, pressed them through a ricer and stirred in sour cream, butter and buttermilk. Not rocket science - just fluffy mashed potatoes ready to soak up any juices from the short ribs. I boiled green beans in a pot of salted water for four minutes, drained them, tossed in a little butter and squeezed a wedge of lemon over them. The short ribs were fantastic. They seemed especially tender which may have come from the kinder, gentler pressure cooking or from their high quality (purchased at Whole Foods) or both. The sauce was excellent and curiously very similar to the red wine-based sauces. So similar that I have no strong preference between the two. With the fat removed from the sauce the dish wasn't nearly as heavy as short rib dinners often are. Washing it down with a bottle of Wente Reserve Cabernet completed the dinner nicely. Helmut and Gertrude said they enjoyed it. Notes: Pressure Cookers: I highly recommend pressure cookers. If you don't have one this dish can be made conventionally by putting the pot in the oven at 350 degrees for about 3.5 hours instead of cooking under pressure on the stovetop. However, some of the sauce will evaporate unless the pan has makes a tight seal. Short ribs - in case you're not familiar with these, they are short, thick rib sections from the chuck/prime rib area. They are very well marbled with fat and sell for about $4/pound in my area. They are not the long ribs that are frequently barbecued/smoked.

Simple Alfredo and Brussel Sprouts

2005-02-01T22:33:00.000-08:00

Tonight I spent most of my kitchen time making braised short ribs for a dinner tomorrow night so I needed to whip something up quickly that would satisfy me and the wife while we watched Gillmore Girls and Scrubs. Oh yeah, and the cupboard was pretty much bare except for a few staples. Following the time honored axiom, 'when all else fails throw butter and cream at the problem and it will taste good', I thought a pasta Alfredo would work. I melted some butter in a small sauce pan, added some heavy cream then, when it was bubbling, added grated parmesan (reggiano) . The whole process took less time than it took the pasta to cook. To balance this gluttony out somewhat I made brussel sprouts as a side dish. They were braised for about 10 minutes in a little chicken stock and then fortified at the end with a splash of cream. I added some pressed garlic to mine (the wife and garlic are enemies) and a dusting of ground pepper. Tonight's meal turned out well and the short ribs are 80% complete and fall apart tender. I'll elaborate on the short ribs next time. Oh yeah, and I figured out the problem with group #2 on my commercial espresso machine and it's relatively inexpensive and simple to fix (more on the espresso machine, rags to riches story later).

Morel and Crimini Mushroom Impregnanted Chicken Breasts

2005-02-01T18:12:00.000-08:00

This toothsome little dish came from a French recipe cookbook that is actually quite hard to find. The recipes are good and each one features several full color pictures of the preparation and finished dish. For this one I seared a full, double, bone-in Rocky chicken breast in an All-Clad saute pan until the skin was golden and crispy, then set it aside to cool while I prepared the stuffing mixture in the same pan. The stuffing is a mixture of rehydrated morel mushrooms (I rehydrated in my homemade chicken stock) that are sauteed with sliced crimini mushrooms and shallots. Brandy (or Cognac) is added and reduced along with cream. The mixture is then stuffed into each breast (I cut pockets into each one) and held in place with toothpicks. Rather than finish cooking in the pan with more cream and the mushroom soaking liquid, as the recipe directs, I finished it in a 350 degree oven, partly due to its cumbersome size and partly to retain juiciness. I heated/reduced the cream and mushroom liquid which I fortified with chicken juices from the breasts after it had finished baking. The sauce was drizzled over the breasts and served with steamed aspiration (or is it broccolini?). I got my starch through the White Hawk India Pale Ale that I drank while cooking. The wife loved it, as she should have, and so did I.