Category: Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb

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Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

34. Brisket a la Carbonnade p.423

the recipe

Sorry for the long interval between posts, I was out of town last week.

I’ve made this recipe twice, on the left is my first attempt, which was almost black, dry, and found me trying to deglaze the sides of my dutch oven to end up with a sauce. On the right is attempt number two (with carrots and parsnips thrown in a few minutes before the end), which fell apart at the touch of a fork, was loaded with flavour, and had more than enough gravy to go around. The difference? tinfoil, and a watchful eye.

This is a classic Belgian braised dish, a brisket, braised in beer, with onions. There are a lot of things to love about brisket. In this dish it capitalizes on the magical powers of braising, which can turn nearly inedible (and dirt cheap) cuts of meat into fillet mignon tender bites. It’s also more flavorful than the loin cuts, and has got a bunch more connective tissue. Connective tissue + long slow heat = gelatin = home made Jello time. Sounds kind of gross, but it makes sauces saucier and gives them a mouth feel you can’t get any other way. I believe unctuous is the word for this sensation, and I can’t think of a less appealing word for such a nice attribute.

This dish was as simple as you could wish for, I just browned the brisket, softened the onions, then added the brisket and the rest of the ingredients back into the pot. After bringing it to a boil I covered it and put it in the oven for the next three and half hours. No maintenance necessary, or so I thought. When I pulled attempt number one of this dish out almost all the liquid had evaporated, the onions were nearly black, and the brisket was starting to dry out. The next time around I paid a good deal more attention to it. I think the lid of my dutch oven doesn’t sit as tightly as I might wish, so I sealed it with tinfoil the second time. I also checked it once an hour, and added more beer as necessary. Attempt number two was superior in all ways but one. The first time around the onions had been cooking in so little liquid that they got really deeply caramelized, which added a great level of flavour which was missing in the second attempt.

I wouldn’t change a thing about this recipe. It takes four and a half hours, but you’re only working for twenty minutes. It uses a really affordable cut of meat, and packs huge flavour into every bite. It’s cooked in beer which gives you lots of room to experiment with different brews. And, it’s a great excuse to fondle your dutch oven.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

31. Pork Chops With Sautéed Apples and Cider Cream Sauce p.480

Sorry, no recipe this time

The sautéed apples and cider cream sauce were absolute stars, but the pork chops themselves were a pretty indifferent base for this recipe. It starts with the cream sauce (shallots softened in butter, cooked together with apple cider, cider vinegar, sage, chicken stock, and heavy cream), then the chops are cooked through in a heavy skillet, and the apples are cooked in the pan juices with a bit of butter once the chops are done. The apples caramelized beautifully, and took on the best of the pork’s flavours from the fond in the pan. The sauce was creamy with an enticing acid bite which contrasted the sweetness in the apples. As I’ve mentioned I love sage, and I’m always happy to see it make an appearance outside of turkey stuffings.

The chops themselves were indifferent. This is probably both my fault and that of industrial agriculture. I’m far from the first person to bemoan the lack of flavour in today’s pork. I’m too young to look wistfully back on the halcion days when every pig farm was just like in “Charlotte’s Web”, but the state of industrial pig farming today is pretty disgusting. Beyond the objections of PETA and everyone of any moral fibre, the pork that those factory farms produce doesn’t taste very good. More ethically raised meat just tastes more pork-y. Of course those sun-kissed and morally unblemished pigs are going to set you back a chunk of change. For that reason I’m going to continue eating pigs raised in deplorable conditions a good part of the time, and so are most people for the foreseeable future.

The problem with the mega-mart super pack chops in this recipe was the cooking method. They’re pan fried with salt and pepper, and that’s it. They give up their flavour to the sauce, and you’re left with dry tough and flavourless chops. The cheap-o chops just don’t do well with dry cooking methods. I raved about Pork Chops With Onion Marmalade, which was exactly the same meat, just using a wet cooking method. This kept the pork moist, and added a lot of flavour to the meat itself. Brining these chops before cooking them could have kept them moist and added flavour too. As it was they didn’t really add much to the dish.

A note on photography: Experience has taught me that photos of a big plate of meat really don’t look very nice. I’ll stop inflicting photos like the above on you ASAP.

Rating this one is a bit tricky, the apples and sauce were out of this world, and the pork wasn’t terrible, just indifferent. I suspect that if I’d used thicker chops, and ideally better quality pork this could have come out as a five mushroom recipe. I can’t really hold The Book accountable for me choosing to cut corners and buy less than stellar ingredients. On the other hand, most people making this recipe are going to use the same chops I did, and they should have tested this recipe with the ingredients their readers are likely to use.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

29. Pork Chops With Onion Marmalade p.480


the recipe

I made these for a bunch of hungry hungry boys during a trip to Toronto. It was a nice change from pizza and bar food. Our dinner was a quiet moment in the midst of a rowdy weekend. We sipped wine, listened to light jazz, and enjoyed some classic comfort food. Pork chops, green beans, mashed potatoes, and apple sauce; sounds like a stereotypical home cooked meal. It was delicious.

As a side note, cooking in someone else’s kitchen is a deeply weird experience. It’s almost like looking through their medicine cabinet. They keep their pots there? Why do they need HP sauce in an industrial size bottle? Is it a faux pas to joke about the bottle of Emeril’s spice mix? It also highlights how many little things you know about your own kitchen (Of course the top left burner only gives 2/3 the heat of the bottom right). Also, I’m almost guaranteed to cut myself when I’m not working with my own knives. I’ve started bringing a few of my own things with me when I know I’ll be cooking somewhere else, but it feels a bit rude.

These chops came together easily. They’re seared first, then cooked through in a broth made from the pan juices, onions, balsamic, and red currant jelly. I admit, I cheated and just used a jelly from the fridge, it was red though. The recipe called for boneless centre-cut chops; as I was feeding a crowd I bought the super-pack from the mega-mart. Some of them were boneless, some bone-in, all delicious. I think I tripled the recipe (sextupled the linked recipe), and the liquid proportions were off, but I adjusted and everything came out fine.

The key to these was the dried rosemary. Fresh herbs are superior to dried for almost all applications. This isn’t one of them. The rosemary is with the chops right from the initial sear, so they’re contributing to the flavour from the beginning and because the rosemary ends up in the broth it’s rehydrated by the time the dish is done. The rosemary flavour permeated the whole dish. I don’t think you could have gotten this penetration using fresh, I suspect a lot of the flavour developed during the initial sear. Fresh would just have burned, but the dried stuff held up well.

These were satisfying, came together easily, and didn’t cost a fortune. They’re a winner.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

25. Skirt Steak Fajitas With Lime and Black Pepper p.430


the recipe

As the title suggests these were extremely minimalist fajitas. Just grilled steak seasoned with lime juice and pepper. They are then served with grilled onions tossed with balsamic, and wrapped in tortillas with a a bit of fresh cilantro, salsa, and lime. I grilled some bell peppers along with the onions. The more Tex-Mex fajitas I’m used to add hot peppers, garlic, and cumin to the marinade but I didn’t miss it all. These were really clean tasting fajitas, simple and unfussy. The lime came through more than I thought it might given that it’s only a ten minute marinade. Increasing the time in the marinade might have helped to bring it through even more. Tossing the griled onions in balsamic was a nice touch, adding a hint of sweetness.

I tend to go a bit hog-wild with fajitas, adding beans, cheese, lettuce, salsa, sour cream, guacamole, onions, cucumber or whatever else is around. It rapidly becomes a burrito with some steak inside. I definitely appreciated the restraint of this recipe, they identified a few key flavours and let them shine. I would absolutely recommend this one, and look forward to making it again this summer.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

15. Grilled Porterhouse Steak p.434

Very similar to this recipe

This recipe has four ingredients. A big porterhouse, cracked peppers, salt, and fire. This is manly steak grilling time, the opportunity to show off your grilling kung-fu. You just dropped a bundle on these steaks and they are now in your hands. Don’t mess up.

I find grilling steak a bit intimidating, I’m doing my very best to learn the vagueries of how different bits of cow react to fire but it’s a big job. I’ve been practicing the palm of the palm technique for judging doneness, and trying to get a sense of how hot a grill really is by holding my hand over it for X seconds. But all in all last summer was full of very mixed grilled steak results. The steaks I was sure were just shy of medium rare went all all the way from bloody to crispy. I don’t seem to have this problem in a pan, it’s just when I get outside. I suppose a lot has to do with hotspots and the weather outdoors, but I think the common factor is me. I’m pretty sure that my grilling chi is out of alignment.

I’m also a bit confused about steaks themselves. The recipe here calls for porterhouses. Turns out all porterhouses are T-bones, but not all T-bones are porterhouses. Apparently this has to do with the amount of tenderloin on the steak… who knew? Looking at the above picture I suppose I didn’t get a porterhouse, or a T-bone, at all. As far as I can tell I used striploin steaks. Which are T-bones, without the tenderloin attached. Confused? I sure am. To add a fun layer of complexity, in Quebec meat is billed using its French name, English translations are sometimes spotty and always metric. Remember that your 12 oz porterhouse is really a 340 gram chateaubriand.

In the end I got some very nice looking meat, that I salted, peppered and slapped on the grill. This was the first time I’d used this particular grill, and had no clue how it behaved. All in all I think I did OK. Goldilocks would have been proud, our three steaks were overdone, underdone, and just right.

The recipe (in the book, not the linked version) recommends searing the steaks for a couple minutes over very hight heat and then moving them to a cooler spot to finish cooking for ~15 minutes. They also recommend using a meat thermometer to check for doneness. This would have been a great idea if I’d had a meat thermomitor up on the island, and if my steaks hadn’t nearly finished cooking in the few minutes it took to sear them. The recipe does call for one and half inch steaks, mine were more like an inch thick, so this could explain the cooking times.

Overall everyone was delighted with their beef, I like mine on the rare side, and one of my dining companions prefers her steak grey. We all won. I think I butchered my adherence to the recipe pretty badly here, so I’m not sure I’m fit to comment on it. Pleasantly, summer is around the corner, and I’ll have ample opportunity to redo this. Yup, I’ll have to make a big succulent porterhouse in the name of science… life is hard.

a temporary rating of

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

12. Lamb Tagine With Prunes Apricots and Vegetables p. 510

the recipe

I’m not the hugest fan of meats in sweet sauces, and this certainly was sweet. Between the dried prunes, apricots, squash, sweet potato and honey it came close to cloying. There was a huge amount going on here, lamb isn’t a subtle flavour to begin with, and the all fruits and spices brought it near to sensory overload.

I know that Tagine’s and much North African cooking is based on these flavour profiles, but they are often more muted than they were here. The best Tagine’s I’ve had have kept the individual ingredients flavours distinct in each bite, with a mingling of their tastes in the sauce. Here I thought it blended too much, and it was texturally homogenous. I found the spicing to be quite nice, with ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg perfuming the sauce.

I would recommend cutting some of the fruit from this dish, and serving it as one of several elements in a meal. We had only this and couscous, and I really enjoyed the first few bites, I just tired of it rather quickly. The recipe also makes a whole lot of food, so my impression of this one may be tainted by having eaten days worth of leftovers.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

8. Steak Diane p. 427

I can’t find a recipe to link to, and that’s a real shame. This dish was a knockout. The classic version uses tenderloin, here The Book calls for much more affordable sirloins. The steaks were flavourful and ended up fillet mignon tender after a pummeling with an empty wine bottle. The steaks were seasoned with salt and pepper, then pan seared. I cooked down some shallots in the fat in the pan, and added a mixture of beef broth, Worcestershire, lemon juice, Dijon, Cognac, and Sherry (I used port). I reduced the sauce, and finished with butter and parsley.

The only change I’d make to this one would be to leave the parsley out of the sauce, it wilted kind of unattractively. I’d leave it out all together, but a bit in a chiffonade over the steaks would look nice.

This took all of 20 minutes to put together and it blew me away. I’m a sucker for a pan sauce because they rescue so much of the goodness you left behind in the pan, and can add complimentary flavours and complexity. In this case the sauce was exceptionally well balanced, and enhanced the flavour of the steaks without covering anything up. I loved that this took no time to prepare (dicing a whole cup of shallots was the most irritating part), didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and left a big impression with my guests. Traditionally the cognac is added right at the end of the dish and ignited table side, the recipe doesn’t call for it but big flames can do wonders to liven up a dinner party.

This was so good I’ve awarded it the first 5 mushroom rating of the project. Well done Steak Diane, well done.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

2. Saltimbocca p. 456

The version in The Book is very similar to this one with a slightly different ingredient list. I’ll give it to you here

8 thin veal cutlets
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 garlic cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
16-24 fresh sage leaves (each about 2 1/2 to 3 inches long)
8 thin slices prosciutto (about 1/4 pound total)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup dry white wine
1/3 cup chicken stock or store-bought low sodium broth
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Essentially The Book adds pepper, deglazes with both stock and wine, and finishes the sauce with butter. I haven’t made both versions, but the pan sauce The Book’s version produced was out of this world. I think the sauce benefited from the stock because the saltimbocca only sauté for a few seconds (about 30), and there really wasn’t a lot of time to produce flavorful meaty browned bits for the pan. As we will soon see, The Book is fearless when it comes to finishing things with butter.

The Book tells us to “secure prosciutto and sage with wooden picks threaded through sage leaves and meat” whereas the linked recipe recommends we use three picks per cutlet. I only used one skewer each, and I found they were prone to spinning around like little meaty pinwheels: use at least two skewers.

At the time I made this I wasn’t too familiar with sage, and this dish was a solid introduction. It is upfront and centre in the meat, and most of the browned bits scraped up into the sauce were sage. The prosciutto takes on a wonderfully crispy texture, and I imagine the thinner your slices are the crispier they’ll end up. The veal is only 1/8 inch thick, so overcooking is easy to do, and easy to miss. Next time I would be more careful about making sure the cutlets were of an even thickness, but even the overdone ones tasted pretty great.

Overall this was quick, easy, pretty, and packed with flavor.