Saturday Night Short Ribs

Posted on January 8, 2012 by SlowDownAndCook with Meals not So Fast

Making a simple English Short Rib recipe: Prepped the ribs with a friend’s home-made Hawaiian salt, pepper, and oregano; browned them in a Dutch oven with olive oil, removed them; added carrot, onion, and celery to the Dutch oven, softened; added a cup and a half of homemade chicken stock (didn’t have any beef for stock); brought to a boil, returned the bibs, and put in the oven, covered, at 350ºf for an hour and a half. We removed the ribs, used a hand blender (the smoothie maker) to mix the vegetables into a gravy, boiled it down a bit, and poured the gravy over the ribs and pasta. Wow.

Starch: zita pasta

Green: Snap peas

Should be good.- Update: it was fantastic.

Posted in Beef | 2 Comments

Mum’s Spaghetti Sauce

Posted on January 3, 2012 by SlowDownAndCook with Meals not So Fast

This is the sauce on which I was raised. We had an enormous second freezer that was supposed to store huge amounts of frozed food; most of the time, it stored one large tub of this very good suace, and the odd bit of forgotten ginger root. I don’t think there is any meal I associate more with my childhood than this spaghetti sauce.  Here it is, in my mother’s words (I truly appreciate the final tip):

Once a long time ago you asked me to write up some of my recipes – here goes!

Spaghetti sauce:

Sauté onions, celery and carrots until soft.

Quantities – one large onion, three good sized carrots and four stalks of celery.  One odd trick – I always snapped the celery on two – which usually separates the toughest fibers running down the stalk – and then I remove them –

Next I add 1 ½ lbs of ground beef – I use ground sirloin or some other good cut – not too fatty.  This is an important step – I sauté the ground beef until it is really brown and smells well done.

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Next I add about three tablespoons of flour – and cook that stirring until the “raw flour” smell disappears, and it smells like bread – then add liquid.  It is important to time this correctly – the smell has to be that of cooked flour – or bread – and NOT of burnt flour –

The liquid; the best is my own chicken stock – however I do add water and some of the knorr swiss bouillon powder (or cubes) and it works well: about two cups –

Next the tomato part of the recipe: I add two full cans of tomato puree and a smaller can of chopped tomatoes.

Last but not least I add some herbs; this is variable according to what is available – but some oregano, some basil and sometimes some “herbs de Provence”.

I let the whole sauce simmer for some time – being careful that it is a low simmer and not so hot that it sticks to the bottom of the pan and burns.  Should this start to happen, I immediately grab another large saucepan and pour the sauce into the new saucepan leaving behind anything that has stuck to the original saucepan.

Posted in Beef, Pasta, Sauces, Tomatoes | Leave a comment

Accidental Christmas Dinner

Posted on January 2, 2012 by SlowDownAndCook with Meals not So Fast

My wife celebrates Christmas on the 24th, and I really don’t do anything. So, on the 25th, we went on a long hike, and then realized that it was nearing 5 p.m. and we had no food. The thought of eating at a Denny’s felt like complete failure, so we started driving north on the El Camino, and (thought we had) found an open Safeway. So, my mind went to a good glass of wine, at home, while making some great meal (the fillet mignon at Safeway is not bad); a manager met us at the door, to tell us (and the steady stream of fellow procrastinators), that they were closed. Now, the thought of sitting in a restaurant, tired, and dirty from hiking, seemed really, really bad. As we were almost giving up, and almost on the freeway (Hillsdale, San Mateo), I caught a glimpse of an open market; it was a middle eastern market run my Muslims -open on Christmas.  Though we did not need goat, we no know where to find it.  It was a god send.

The fun of exploring a new food find was enhanced by the various languages occupying separate decibel frames – from the soft, almost whispered sound of many Indians, to the young middle easterners whose gestures are those of an angry Italian, and a sound that makes so little sense, the combination makes one at once intrigued, and yet as though one should apologize for interrupting to ask where the garlic is kept (by the way, it is on the sidewalk). Of course, for all I know, they were talking about Modern Family. It was wonderfully odd to step from the abandoned streets into this hubbub of activity in a tiny space, packed with spices, and different Peoples, waiting at a few tiny tables, for, what we call, exotic food.

We left with a large piece of middle price beef – some sort of chuck, with an odd name; some garlic, onion, potato, carrot, and celery. We seared the beef, removed it, softened some onion and garlic in olive oil, replaced the meat and simmered it for two hours in the vegetables, red wine, and beef stock. Removed the beef, pressed the vegetable stew, and simmered it to a thick gravy with beurre manie. It was fantastic. We served it with mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables.

A Christmas dinner with thanks for living in a multi-cultural society.

Posted in Beef, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Roasted Half Chicken w/ Vegetables

Posted on January 2, 2012 by SlowDownAndCook with Meals not So Fast

This is a great way to make an excellent chicken dinner for (at least) two people, and the recipe gives you the option of serving the vegetables as they come out of the oven, or using them as the base for a gravy.

Cut a chicken in half, removing the back bone (or have the buthcer do it).  Leave the skin on. Rinse, and pat dry. Preheat the oven to 350°f.

  • Rub salt liberally into the chicken, and lighlty under the skin; let sit.
  • Add ground pepper and Herb du Provence, rubbing into the skin and meat as with the salt; rub olive oil into the skin. Set aside while you prepare the vegatables.

Vegetables:

  • Cut, into bite size pieces: Carrot, Onion, Celery. Place them in the bottom of a quarter sheet baking pan; add salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, and a pinch of Herb du Provence- go easy on all.

Place a rack in the sheet over the vegetables; place the chicken, skin side up, on the sheet. Place the baking sheet in the oven, middle rack, uncovered for 30 minutes. Remove the baking sheet, and add a half cup of stock (does not really matter which), and cover tightly with foil, and place back in the oven for 25 minutes. Remove; change the oven to broil, and remove the vegetables ( a slotted spoon works well, as it leaves behind the heavy oil and rendered fat).*

Place the chicken, uncovered, at the same rack position, under the broiler for ten minutes. The temperature will rise a few degrees after removal (but less than if taken straight from a closed oven); you need 165 º.

The chicken will need to sit for at least ten minutes when it comes out of the broiler. Therefore, from the time you remove the vegetables, you have twenty minutes before serving; *during this time, you can press the vegetables through a strainer, and boil down with some wine and thickener, and you have a nice gravy, or just serve the vegetables as they are, over some starch- mashed potatoes are excellent.  Simple, and so bloody good.

Posted in Diner Food, Roasted Chicken | Leave a comment