mis en possible

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.

Enough with the salads already, let’s get on to a really ugly root vegetable: celeriac (celery root). The extent of my use of this little gem had been primarily as a flavor component to mashed potatoes or just by itself in a puree as a sauce. It played a background or an addition to a dish

After the wife made a surprisingly good cabbage soup (I say this only because I’ve never been impressed a cabbage soup recipe, not to critique her soup making skills which are often better than mine), I decided to take the celery root and give it front and center stage for a soup. On top of that, I decided to forgo relying on a canned vegetable stock (we’ve run out of our frozen batch) and just use water (as suggested, rather sternly, by Mr. Ruhlman). The absence of the stock, which tends to tint things a bit as I use stock with some tomato in it, gave the soup a very bright white appearance which I found visually appealing. I had to dig out my non-white dishes, though!

A bit of white wine, onion, potato, the aforementioned star, some cream cheese, cream, bay leaf, thyme, carraway seeds, truffle oil and micro-greens later, the result is… not finished yet. It was good, but not perfect. A bit too rich and missing something, though I’m not sure what. I enjoyed it. The daughter enjoyed it. My wife took a batch to work for lunch. It’s just not ready for a recipe yet.

Tricks to try when preparing celeriac:

• use a super-sharp knife to trim the skin, or a serrated knife
• Don’t cut the tops off; use them as a handle if they’re healthy enough (cut and discard before cooking)
• have a water bath with a touch of acid ready; very few, if any vegetables oxidize faster than this one
• slice in thin slices rather than cubes; I’ve found these cook more evenly

Bon appetit!