mis en possible

I took the same marinade and cooking technique used in the post about the ‘London broil’ and approached a decent-sized Ribeye the same way and then sliced that pretty thin (eighth of an inch or so) . Sure, it takes for ever and a day to cook this way, but it tastes pretty good when all is said and done.

And just to completely bastardize a decent dish, I took pasta (capellini) and made a beurre rouge with an added heaping of crushed garlic and for visuals and tasty floral notes, I added some edible flowers. For some reason the deep red color of the sauce gets distributed around the pasta… not quite as bold a look as I though I might have. In any event, it was tasty, though in all honesty, I could really do without the flowers.

I think I may open a dinner with this at some point. Although it’s rich, it achieves a good peak about 3 bites in which to me seems like a good starter.

At the aforementioned Whole Foods, I acquired the aforementioned grass-fed beef; two cuts to be exact: a rib eye and a “London Broil” which is odd, because a London Broil is what you do to certain types of steak. It was flank or something, pretty tough cut and about 12 oz worth, so I decided that I’d try a marinade:

1/2 Cup Mushroom-Flavored Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon rice-wine vinegar
2 ‘quarter-size’ pieces of ginger, finely-diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely diced
1 shallot, finely diced
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon dark sesame oil
1 tablespoon grapeseed oil

I let the marinade sit overnight and the next day poured it over the seasoned and trimmed steak and vacuum packed it. Into the refrigerator for 24 hours for a ‘get some flavor’ timeout.

Picking up on a recent article in Cook’s Illustrated, I liberated the steak from its packaging, gave it a quick bath and dried it off. Horizontally, I inserted a meat thermometer timed to go off at 115 degrees. I put it in a cold oven and turned it to 200 degrees. About 40 minutes later, out came the steak, out came the thermometer, and in it went into a bit of olive oil in a smoking hot pain — 3 minutes one side, 2 minutes the next. After letting it rest for 5 minutes, I sliced it about 1/4 inch thick across the grain and served it over the top of some mixed greens on top of jasmine rice, with a ginger, soy and lime vinaigrette.

The result? Pretty much perfect medium-rare and a ton of flavor. I was iffy on the dressing (as you’ll see, it’s not posted here), but the rest was really good. I don’t generally do a whole lot with Asian flavors, but this worked really, really well. The remainder of the beef I sliced paper-thin and it will be headed toward a sandwich very, very soon.

And thumbs up for the grass fed beef. It’s odd, but you can actually taste the difference. It’s no waygu, but it’s good.

I love easy, re-usable food and this time a year (if you’d not yet noticed), I love pasta. The tomato basil cream sauce from a few posts ago made its way into a plate of fideo pasta to which I added some pesto, basil oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and topped with a few leaves of fresh oregano. This was lunch for Zoe and I (she skipped the raw oregano leaves, but insisted on an extra pinch of cheese). Rich, warm, and comforting.

Fideos are a great pasta if you’re on a budget. They’re usually in the Mexican/South American section of the grocery store and a package is around $0.50 to $0.75, the yield of which will constitute a meal for 3 and some leftovers (unless someone’s really hungry, I suppose). The sauce — which is roughly detailed a few posts ago — will keep for a week or so and a quick warming brings it right up to snuff. The pesto was added cold and was purchased at Central Market where it’s made on site (though I’ve used a few good pestos that were jarred).

We got taken on a wild detour on Sunday due to the marathon that was blocking off half of the town. Instead of getting to Central Market like we normally do, we ended up downtown at Whole Foods, where a treasure of things were waiting — grass fed beef, edible flowers, spicy baby basil, and … and … and… white truffles!

Unfortunately not the kind from alba which would have broken our bank (they’re currently running around $3000/lb), but the new Oregon truffles which I have to say are not all that bad. The price is certainly better, but still pretty steep (They were around $40/oz) and we made off with enough for a dish or two if used sparingly.

So how to highlight the taste of white truffle? Non-invasive pasta? Check. Mild garlic/butter sauce with shallot? Check. Bit of a white win reduction in that? check. Truffle shaver? Crap, nope, have to rely on my knife skills (for whatever that’s worth; not much on the going market I’m afraid).

So simply — angel hair pasta, a white wine/garlic/butter reduction sauce, a bit of cheese and the basil, and then shavings of the white truffle. I savored every bite.

No, they’re not alba truffles, but they’re damn good and I’m going to keep buying them every time they have them. Call it a new addiction, but I likes me some fungus.

This post has absolutely no substance, it’s simply to show off my wife’s baking. The above are the result of a new sourdough culture (named ‘Fred’) she’s been tending to and I’ve enjoyed the living daylights out of it. Sourdough, rosemary sourdough, sourdough raisin… and it’s all as good as it looks.

I don’t bake unless I absolutely have to so I often just stand in awe of some of the things she produces.

We’ve fallen in love with Perle pasta. It has all of the warmth and comforting depth of gnocchi but it cooks faster which is a wonderful trait when managing the timely demands of a 2-year old. It takes a mere minute and thirty seconds to cook and you can actually cheat and do it in a fairly small pan. They don’t turn out perfect but they’re perfectly edible in just a few minutes.

I’ve been toying around with some really good canned chopped tomatoes we’ve started picking up at Costco of all places. I’m usually not a fan of canned chopped tomatoes, preferring to use whole peeled instead, but this stuff is great for making a quick sauce. I don’t have a recipe, but here’s the basic formula:

Half an onion, small dice. 4 Cloves of garlic, small dice. 1 Shallot, small dice. Saute the onion in bit of olive oil over medium heat until translucent. Add shallot and garlic and saute for about 2 more minutes. Add about a tablespoon of tomato paste and saute for another minute or two. Add in 1/4 cup dry white wine and let it reduce a bit (3-5 minutes). Drain the tomatoes and add only the solids. Let it simmer for 10 minutes or so. Add in 1 tablespoon dried parsley, 1 tablespoon dried oregano, and 2 tablespoons of dried basil. Let it simmer for another minute or two. Transfer to a blender and blend like crazy. While blending, carefully remove the top and add cream until desired flavor is reached. Naturally, season and re-season at just about every step.

The smoked gouda adds something to this combination of flavors that you just couldn’t get with Parmigiano-Reggiano (which would be my normal go-to flavor addition).

The grocery store had these little gems the other day: beta sweet carrots. I wasn’t sure what to make of them or what to do with them. When I’ve picked out odd looking carrots before, I’ve always been disappointed that once you peel them, they look just like normal carrots.

These, though, are not. Before I read a few pages about them, I’d already cooked them so I’d half figured they were part carrot part beet (yes, my hands are still blue). The purple exterior penetrated the carrot around an eighth of an inch or so. They were visually stunning, a quality that, unfortunately due to my negligence, didn’t make it into the final dish (I blanched them about 90 seconds too long, I think).

The result? They’re sweet, a bit earthy, and very carrot-y. I blanched them, shocked them, then used a light champagne and raspberry vinaigrette and garnished with chopped parsley and chive. Simple, good, and very interesting looking. What more could you want from a carrot?

In the previous entry, which now seems so long ago (work busy, etc, etc, excuses excuses), I had experimented with trying to make a sauce out of carrots for Gnocchi (yes, store bought, sue me). The sauce was pretty rich and I didn’t much like it’s light color and the dish was good but not really good.

Tonight I finally got around to trying this dish again and went a few different ways with it. First, the sauce now has a base of onion and tomato paste, and the carrots are simmered in vegetable stock rather than poached in cream. A bit of cream was added after the sauce had been through the blender.

To that I added a saute of black trumpet mushrooms (in butter with a bit of onion) and some crisped pancetta and chiffonade of parsley.

Nothing terribly fancy or complex, just a number of components. The recipe is pretty close to being something I’d feed to someone else, but still needs a few tweaks. So probably a while before I post a recipe for this.

For Christmas this year I received a copy of Twelve Months of Monastery Soups by Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette. In general, I read recipe books like books rather than follow recipes verbatim, but as an experiment on in trying my own sanity, I have embarked on actually attempting to make a number of these soups.

To the book itself, there are pros and cons to the recipes contained therein. Sometimes there is enough direction that it still leaves a bit of improvisation to the cook, other times there are simply not specific enough directions to guess the intent of the recipe author. The author relies on bouillon cubes a fair amount which I have thus far mostly avoided in favor of freshly made stock. Bouillon cubes tend to be filled with high levels of salts which make it both unhealthy as well as difficult to judge proper seasoning. He is non-specific about some of the temperatures at various stages of cooking and often relies on only time when doing things like a saute, leaving out the visual and aroma indicators of when the food is cooked to the proper stage.

The very first soup in the book, and my first target, is Saint Basil Soup; a misleading title to the layman which may lead him to believe that it has H’s favorite herb somewhere in it. Alas, no, it is named after Saint Basil (go figure). Indeed, the recipe has some of the issues mentioned above, but I only deviated when there was room, even going so far as to make a special trip to the store for vegetable bouillon, which, as it turns out, was tomato with chipotle. Obviously a variation from the middle-eastern origins of the soup, but it was the only vegetable bouillon that was vegetarian.

So thinly sliced some carrots, a bit of mushroom, onion, the usual saute for the latter, then water, a few bullion cubes and the vegetables. Cover and let it go for half an hour. Add some parsley in and in 10 minutes, we had hot, filling and really pretty good soup. I’d definitely make it again as it’s quick, easy, flavorful and filling. I will probably try a riff on this soup to avoid the bullion at some point and maybe try to increase its depths a bit.

And no, I didn’t degrease the soup. I should have as it made for a much more unappetizing picture, but… we were hungry.

As for the book, if you can make a soup and occasionally swap out an ingredient or two, this book will give you lots of ideas. It’s missing some of the fundamentals about how long you saute things, what temperature to cook them at, etc.