Category: Braise

Before I talk about this recipe, I wanted to highlight the Menu for Change fundraiser going on for the World Food Program. You can find out information at Steamy Kitchen or Chez Pim. It’s an inspiring effort. Another good cause I would point you too is Kiva, the micro-lending site. If you are into the food blogging community, you might join the 101 Cookbooks team over there.

The first time I heard of Rick Bayless was his appearance on Top Chef – Chicago. I was flipping through a Food & Wine book and ran across his Tomatillo Pork Braise recipe, which was originally in his Mexico One Plate at a Time cookbook. Always being one to try a braise, I kept reasonably true to his recipe, split the work for this over two work nights, and loved how it came out. It is deliciously tart and has a real kick.

Tomatillo Pork Braise, adapted from Rick Bayless

2 lb boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 to 1 1/2 lb tomatillos, husked and cut into half-inch slices
4 medium garlic cloves, peeled and halved
1/3 cup pickled jalapeno slices, most seeds removed
1 dried ancho chile, stem and seeds removed, and halved
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 cup dried Cargamanto Cranberry beans
water

Preheat oven to 300F.

Place the cut pork into a bowl and add the worcestershire sauce, stirring it around to coat the pork evenly. In a dutch oven, layer the tomatillos, then scatter the garlic, half of the cilantro, jalapenos and ancho chile (ie dried poblano pepper) on top. Sprinkle with 1 1/2 tsp salt. Then scatter the pork evenly over the top. Place in the oven for 3 hours. (Note: my picture shows a few cilantro stalks thrown on top for good measure)

During this time, you can cook the beans if you are doing this dish all on the same day (see note below). Bring the beans to a boil for 2 minutes, then drain. Refill pot with water an inch or so over the top of the beans and cook until tender. Drain and set aside.

When braise is done, remove the pork to a bowl with tongs.

Remove any excess oil from the braise vegetable mixture, and then puree in a food processor or blender. Place back in the dutch oven and cook over low heat. Add enough water to bring the sauce to the consistency of a creamy soup (I probably added 1/4 cup or possibly more of water to mine).

Stir in the beans, the rest of the cilantro and the pork and cook on low heat until everything is warm, then serve.

Notes:
1. Bayless recommends adding a little sugar if the sauce is too tart for your taste. I found it perfect without the sugar, but then I’m a big salsa verde fan.

2. If you don’t want to use beans, Bayless recommends placing potatoes, turnips or even carrots in below the meat at the start of the braising stage, and removing before the puree step. If you like beans, I think many variations will work here. Bayless recommends Great Northern. I used a Cranberry bean variant and think Pinto beans would probably work nicely too.

3. Bayless also suggests tossing in some fresh spinach and creme fraiche when pureeing the sauce, which does sound pretty good (I didn’t have any on hand)

4. because I was cooking this on work nights, and didn’t want to eat at midnight, I split it into two nights. The prep is pretty quick, so the first night I just had to get the braise into the oven and leave it for 3-hours. I placed the meat and sauce mixture in the fridge overnight, in separate containers. The second night, I cooked the beans, pureed and finished the sauce, added the meat and heated everything up together on the lowest heat setting (pot covered).

IN WHICH Pooh visits the butcher and does a Silly thing
Pooh, being a bear of very Little brain, was happily flipping through cookbook pictures, given that he was nearly always hungry and that words were best left to Eminences like Rabbit. Pooh did not exactly know what an Eminence was, but had a vague feeling that it had something to do with arugula and very expensive sea salt. As Pooh read, he hummed a little song:

Cooking for bears is like
Poaching with pears, and baking
a cookie or two.
You think we like honey but
the funniest honey…

At this point Pooh was wondering how honey could be funny, and if it really was appropriate to have two uses of the word honey right next to each other, but honey being what it was, Pooh decided that more was always better. Then he stopped, because on the next page was something called veal braised in milk.

Pooh had never eaten veal braised in milk before, but he knew that he must like it, not in a Tigger-looking-for-breakfast kind of way, but with a I-must-make-this-recipe-right-now feeling. So by and by, Pooh set off for the local butcher. Pooh knew in the back of his head that veal was expensive, but he figured that since it was a braise, it should be a cheaper cut, as most well-behaved braises are. After waiting in line, Pooh came to the proprietor.

“How can I help you,” said the butcher.
“A boneless leg of veal, about 2 or 3 pounds please,” asked Pooh.
“What part of the leg?” asked the butcher (who tended towards the irascible).

At this point, Pooh was very Confused. The recipe hadn’t called for a part, just a leg, although obviously Pooh wasn’t going to be cooking an entire leg, but still it felt Highly Irregular. The butcher rattled off a list of parts, then asked what it was for, and then rattled off some other parts. Pooh thought to himself, “WWOD?” (What Would Owl Do), and then nodded his head, trying to look sage but not doing a very good job. He also snuck little glances at the line of customers behind him, waiting for him to Hurry Up and make up his mind.

“Yes,” said Pooh, figuring that yes would be faster than no, and definitely faster than maybe.

The butcher disappeared and after a few minutes his Helper brought out a wrapped piece of veal and went over to the cash register.

“That will be $72.68,” said the Helper.
“_” said Poo, taken aback.
“!” said Poo, trying again and attempting to recollect why he had gone to the butcher’s in the first place.

Now Poo, being a bear and a stuffed bear at that, cannot really look stricken, but if Pooh could look stricken, then that is how he would have looked.

“How much is that per pound?” asked Pooh, cautiously.
“Twenty-two dollars,” stated the Helper, who was starting to look at Pooh a little Suspiciously.

Pooh, feeling a little miserable now, not to mention a little foolish, bought the veal and took it home, and attempted to avoid telling Mrs. Pooh just how much he had spent on a part of a leg of veal. He could not tell if he was angry at the butcher for not warning him, angry at the veal for being so expensive, or just angry at himself for being such a Silly bear.

However, when Pooh cooked up the veal braised in milk for some visiting Relations, everyone agreed that it was a delicious meal, a very tender and subtle cut of meat, and a lovely way to cook it. But Pooh learned the lesson of always, always asking for the price ahead of time.

Veal Braised in Milk, adapted from Tori Ritchie’s Braises and Stews

1 3lb boneless leg of veal
1 vidalia onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
3/4 cup Riesling (on the sweet side)
whole milk
coarse sea salt
coarsely ground pepper
olive oil

An hour or so before cooking, wash and dry the veal. Rub it all over with 2 or 3 tsp of coarse sea salt and 1/2 to 1 tsp of coarsely ground pepper. Let the meat come to room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 320F.

Set the flame to medium-high and heat up a couple tbsp of olive oil in a dutch oven large enough to hold the veal, and when the oil is quite hot, brown the sides of the veal. Set the meat aside and lower the heat to just below medium.

Add the chopped onion and cook for a minute or two, then add the celery and carrot and the wine, stirring and scraping the browned bits on the bottom of the pot. Cook for about 5 minutes and return the meat and any juices to the pot. Pour in enough milk so that it comes halfway up the side of the meat. Bring the milk to a boil, then cover and place in the oven.

After an hour, flip the veal. If it looks like the liquid is bubbling a little too much, lower the oven temperature to 300F. Cook for another hour, and check tenderness with a fork.

Remove the veal and tent with aluminum foil. The milk in the braising liquid will appear quite coagulated but that is expected. Let the liquid cool for a several minutes, taste it for salt and pepper, then carefully puree it in a food processor or blender.

Slice the meat, spoon the sauce on top, and serve.

* * *

Any resemblance between me and the Pooh character above is entirely coincidental. But what an amazing coincidence! The meal (which happened several weeks ago) was truly delicious, and I comforted myself with the thought that I fed 5.5 people (counting Munchkin) a restaurant-quality dish for a lot less than if we had eaten out, however I still felt like a bit of an ass.

When I was next at Fleishers up in Kingston, a butcher shop where I feel a lot more comfortable, I asked the owner Josh Applestone about butcher etiquette. He agreed that once I had let them cut the meat, I had to buy it (“that is, if you wanted to ever go back there!” he laughed). He also thought that the cost was rather high, and noted that some butchers carry veal because they can get away with sky-high prices. It was foolish of me to allow myself to get intimidated, and to fail to learn the price before I made a decision, but lesson learned.

I don’t know that I will be splurging again on such a cut anytime soon, but it was a very interesting cooking method, and I might try it again on veal shoulder, if more reasonably priced, or some very good quality pork.

Yesterday I decided to do another braise, and since so many of my creations lately have been tomato-based, I decided to riff off of the spice rub from a recent recipe from Sass & Veracity, her Beef Chuck with Vegetables in Red Wine. I used a dark beer and had a few other alterations, but the direction definitely came from Kelly.

But first I wanted to touch on an interesting discussion that Kelly kicked off a few days later that was focused on food photography/blogging and revolving around “food photo snobbery”. You should read her blog and the comments it elicited, but to pull a few lines, Kelly wrote: “The problems begin when a judgment is made about the quality of the dish by looking at the photo alone. If this is all about photos, then why post a recipe.” She also noted to me “If one is taking the time to think about content and “readers” are only scanning the pretty photos, then blogging becomes as impersonal as a pretty cookbook can be.“

I can’t resist going big picture for a second. This notion of quality is a recurring one in this era of online creation. When blogging first gained traction, there were (and are) debates over writing quality. YouTube, Flickr, and Second Life — wherever there is “user generated content” — all spur discussions of good versus ugly.

I love this video by Ze Frank (Internet artist/philosopher for lack of a better description), where he’s riffing on “ugly” MySpace pages, and how the lowered cost of creation tools is opening up design to everyone, which is a very cool thing. (Ze is a trip of non-stop ideas — I once shared a taxi with him on the way to a conference and thought my head would explode, but in a good way).

When it comes to food blogs, I appreciate authors who put effort into their pictures (and I count Kelly as one of those). Food photography is damned hard. I’m fighting with it constantly, especially since I do not use fancy equipment of any kind. I like a blog post that shares not just via words and measurements, but through images as well. I’ve probably driven half of you away by this point with all this text and just one picture so far! But I sally on! My personal preference leans towards more natural photos, just as my food preferences lean towards “peasant food” rather than foams and haute cuisine.

Photography is an art form, and as such quality is a subjective thing. Everyone should have confidence in their own subjective tastes, and ignore self-appointed critics. Look to improve, but not to be something you are not! Robert Henri, an influential early-20th-century American painter (he led the Ash Can School / Group of 8), nailed it when he said of art: “The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art. He needs no one to give him an art education; he is already qualified.” (I should note that the Group of 8 got hammered by the art establishment of the time, so it’s no surprise that Henri was saying “stuff your pedigree!”)

Now, speaking of un-fancy photos, on to the pot roast, I mean braise, I mean whatever the heck it is! This one spent part of the time in the oven, and then was booted to the top of the stove to make room for Lisl’s loaf of bread. If it is both a braise and a pot roast, that make it a broast?

And for the record, I find that it is very hard to take pretty photos of braises once plated. I tried for this meal and they were so damn boring, I left them off.

Beef Pot Roast in Beer

2 lb beef chuck roast
2 tsp coarse sea salt
2 tsp peppercorns
1 tsp mustard seed
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp brown sugar
6 slices smoked bacon, sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
base of a bunch of celery stalks
1 dark beer (I used a stout)
1 cup of water
2 large onions, loosely chopped
2 bay leaves
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
4 large carrots, peeled
Handful of medium red potatoes, peeled

Preheat oven to 350F. In a mortar, grind up your mustard seeds and black pepper, then mix in the other spices (salt, paprika, oregano, brown sugar). Rub the mix all over your roast.

In a dutch oven on the stove top, cook the bacon until almost crispy, then remove. Sear the roast on both sides and remove, and deglaze the pot with the beer and water.

Add the roast back in, and sprinkle the bacon and onions around. I also chopped the “foot” off of some stalks of celery to add flavor, and tossed in an extra celery stalk, 4 cloves of garlic, and a couple bay leaves.

Let this cook for 20-30 minutes at 350F, then lower to 290F. At the hour mark, flip the roast. Let this cook for another 2 to 3 hours, flipping the roast once more, then basting it every 40 to 60 minutes or so. Keep an eye that the liquid doesn’t get too low, and add some stock or water if it does (with the heat set this low, I did not have to add more). Add the carrots and potatoes with about 1 1/2 hours left and turn them about halfway through.

As noted, my pot was booted from the oven but I kept it warm at the lowest setting on our gas stovetop. I removed the roast, carved it across the grain (top picture), and served on a bed of egg noodles with the potatoes and carrots, generously spooning the fabulous liquid from the pot on top.

Back in January 2003, Gourmet Magazine wrote up a recipe for short ribs braised in coffee and ancho chile sauce. I put it aside to make. I can’t believe it has taken me over FIVE FRIKKEN YEARS, but there it is. Somehow, I can’t come with any creative excuses. It was good though! As usual I didn’t follow it exactly, so here is my attempted description of our meal:

Ancho and Coffee Short Ribs

4 lb short ribs
3 dried ancho chile chiles
1 dried chipotle chile
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons molasses (or maple syrup)
1/2 cup coffee
salt
smoked paprika

Preheat the oven to 300F.

Bring a pot of water to medium boil and boil your ancho and chipotle peppers for 20 minutes, then drain. Taste the liquid – if it is not too bitter, save.

In a blender, combine the ancho and chipotle chiles, the garlic, onion, molasses, and 1 tsp of salt and puree. Gourmet also recommends adding a tbsp of lime juice (I didn’t have any limes when making this, but the concept sounds good).

In a heavy bottomed pan or dutch oven, heat up some olive oil on medium high heat and brown the short ribs in batches, then set aside.

Pour the puree into the dutch oven and cook on the stovetop for several minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups of either the chile boiling water or regular water, and the 1/2 cup of coffee. Then add in the short ribs and spoon the sauce over the ribs so coated. Cover the dutch oven and put in the oven for 3 hours, occasionally checking to turn the ribs and spoon more sauce over them.

In our case, we made the short ribs in advance one evening and placed in the fridge for a couple of days, rather than wait hungry for them to finish. We then placed the ribs and braising sauce in a saute pan and warmed back up on very low heat until bubbling, tasting for salt and adding a sprinkling of smoked paprika.

Before you serve, spoon out any excess grease/oil, then remove the bones, tendon and any excess fat. Serve on a bed of quinoa pilaf, with a hefty red wine (a cab sav, zin, shiraz, malbec, or solid chateauneuf de pape would all work nicely). While I didn’t use a garnish, I imagine that some chopped parsley or finely chopped jalapenos might be a nice addition.

Quinoa Pilaf
Gourmet recommends serving this dish on a bed of polenta, but I decided to use my Rancho Gordo quinoa. Having never made quinoa, I checked my Bittman How to Cook Everything and discovered a nice little “quinoa pilaf” recipe. It is very simple and delicious and I will definitely be making quinoa more in future:

1 cup quinoa (repeatedly washed)
1 3/4 cup water (or stock)
1/2 onion, finely chopped
salt and pepper
olive oil

In a saute pan, heat up some olive oil and saute the onions for several minutes on medium heat, then add the quinoa and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add in the water (or stock), a few grindings of salt and pepper, reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 15 mintues. Taste for salt.