Meat – Page 5 – The Constables Larder

Romanos in sauce; Cuban Black Bean combinations

I discovered romano beans earlier this summer at our local farm in the Catskills and have been going back to them ever since, usually quick-sauteing or parboiling with minimal treatment such as lemon or a small amount of butter, or including in a cold tomato salad. I had not thought of slow cooking them with a rich sauce, but that’s where this bubbling fount of ideas called the food blogosphere comes in. Smitten Kitchen caught a New York Times article that I missed and brought this approach to my attention. So thanks Deb!

Tonight I wanted a hearty “one pot” meal, so I took a kind of bolognese approach and the result was delicious and filling.

Romano Beans in Meat Sauce

serves 2

2 handfuls of romano beans
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 large white mushrooms, or handful of smaller, diced
6 skinless plum tomatoes
1/3 cup tomato puree
1/2 cup red wine
1/3 cup of water
oregano
sage

In a large saute pan, pour in a touch of olive oil and brown your ground beef, then set aside. Add a touch more olive oil, and saute the onions, then add the carrots and mushrooms and cook for several minutes. Add in the whole plum tomatoes without breaking them open yet, add the tomato puree, and return the ground beef to the pan.

Add a couple pinches of salt and ground pepper, a couple pinches of dried oregano (or a bit more if using fresh), and a pinch of dried sage. Add the wine and water (or if using canned tomatoes, as I did, some of the juice from the can). Stir gently so as not to break open the tomatoes, loosely cover and let cook on medium low heat for 10 minutes.

While this is cooking, wash the beans, cut off the ends, and cut the beans themselves to 2″ length or so to make more manageable to eat. A nice aesthetic touch I picked up from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food is to slice the romano beans at a consistent 45 degree angle.

Break apart the tomatoes and taste for spices. Stir the beans into the pan, loosely cover, and cook on low heat for 30 or 40 minutes.

Part 2
Cuban Black Beans

I’ve already blogged this marvelous black bean recipe from Gregory Triana of Blue Cashew in High Falls, NY, so am just going to write a few notes here. Sunday was miserably humid outside, so we took refuge in air conditioning and that made making the beans possible. If you know you can be somewhat near your kitchen over a few hours, this is a great recipe for black beans, with a fabulous sofrito of green pepper and onion. See the recipe here. And you know I love Low and Slow cooking!

I make it differently almost every time, and often bump up the amount of green pepper, onion and cumin from the recipe. Making it is work, no question, but once made there are so many uses that are usually incredibly fast to put together.

You can make great quesadillas, by adding some corn, scallions, hot peppers of some kind, cilantro, shredded monterey jack cheese, and in my case, some smoked ham:

You can serve it as a side dish (that’s a sliced red jalapeno around it):

I’ll also mix it into a salsa, such as the below which has chopped tomatillos, a jalapeno, a red hot chili pepper, fresh corn niblets, cilantro, and the juice of two limes (obviously topped with some avocado). I think it’s an ugly picture (nothing to see here folks, move along!), but it tastes great with some chips!

And finally, this picture has no bearing whatsoever, except that I snapped a pic of some ingredients going into the black beans and liked it:

Why is it that tomatoes spelled with an “e” and tomatillos is spelled without? Ponder.

Ancho and Coffee Short Ribs, on Quinoa Pilaf

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.

Braised Pork, Poblano and Cream Sauce; weekend pictures

Work demands tonight required a speed meal so a few leftovers and miscellaneous fell together into a great little combo – a braised pork, poblano pasta and cream sauce to accompany pasta.

By the way, someone recently blogged another pasta sauce with leftover pork braise which gave me the idea, but when I went looking for it, I was at a loss even after much searching. I winged the meal in this post, but I’d love to try the other recipe so if you know what I’m referring to (it was just in the last few days) please post a link in the comments!

Braised Pork, Poblano and Cream Pasta Sauce (photo is pre-cream)

Served 2

braised pork, shredded (enough for two people)
1 poblano pepper, chopped
1 cayenne pepper (or a jalapeno), sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
dried oregano, sprinkling
salt and pepper
heavy cream and a touch of milk
pasta (preferrably egg noodles)

Shred the pork it into smallish pieces with two forks. In a saute pan on medium-low heat, saute a the onion and garlic in olive oil. Seed and chop the poblano pepper, then slice the cayenne pepper was sliced crosswise (into thin rings), keeping some of the seeds to add some heat. Add to pan.

Stir in half a teaspoon of ground cumin, a sprinkling of dried oregano and a few grindings of salt and pepper. Raise heat and stir for a few minutes, then turn the heat all the way down.

Pour in a small amount of cream, maybe a quarter cup (just enough to nicely coat everything — do not let it get soupy). I didn’t want the sauce to be too rich, so I cut the cream with a little bit of milk, and then added a spoonful of the starchy water from the pasta pot. Taste for salt and pepper and serve by spooning over the pasta. Note: we only had spagetti but I would have preferred egg noodles, campanelle or farfalle (in that order).

Weekend Pictures
Most of the cooking Lisl and I did over the weekend was for recipes that still need tinkering, but I thought I would share some photos from our flickr set.

We have a tree with little white peaches which can be great to cook with.

I loooooovvvveeeee fresh cranberry beans!

In our neighbor Gail’s garden

Drunk Lamb and Lentil Braise

When my friend John gave me two Mark Bittman cookbooks (I retaliated by giving him the Dean & Deluca cookbook and Jamie Oliver’s Naked Chef), I was looking forward to expanding my stylistic horizons through The Best Recipes in the World. Needless to say, John nearly fell over laughing when I told him that the first recipe I tried from the cookbook was… French. Gee, way to wander from your norm! Well, I didn’t have bloody pasilla chiles lying around John!! (but boy that recipe looked good), however I did have lentils!

This dish is like the classic daubes I learned to make from Julia Child’s Essentials of French Cooking years ago, only simpler. I changed Bittman’s recipe a fair amount to suit my purposes, but I’ll definitely credit the cookbook for reminding me of this great dish I haven’t made in a while. I called it a “drunk” braise because you sacrifice a bottle of red to the cause!

Serves 4

4 lamb loin chops (can do this recipe with beef instead if you aren’t a lamb fan)
3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 fennel bulb, chopped
3/4 lb dried green lentils (picked over to watch for small stones)
1 handful small orange lentils (optional)
1 tbsp minced garlic
3 medium bay leaves, or 2 large
1 large handful of chopped parsley
1 bottle of red wine (I used a zinfindel)
water
salt and pepper
olive oil

Preheat oven to 320F

Heat some olive oil in a dutch oven over medium high heat and sear your lamb for about 20-30 seconds each side and remove to a side plate.

In your dutch oven, bring the heat down to medium-low and saute your chopped onion and garlic until the onion starts to turn translucent, and then add the chopped carrots, fennel, parsley, lentils, bay leaf, half a tsp of salt, a few grindings of pepper, and the bottle of wine and turn up the heat until it is bubbling.

Nestle the lamb into the mix, cover, and place in the oven for 3 to 3.5 hours. Check the pot every 45 minutes or so and very gently stir. Flip the lamb halfway through. If it is simmering a little too hard at any point, lower the heat another 15F. If the dish starts to dry out (you want it to be nicely moist), add water. I would estimate I ended up adding about a cup of water. It is also important to taste for salt — too much will ruin this dish, but too little will leave this quite flat.

I served by removing the lamb to a cutting board, and shredding the meat with two forks. I then layered it on top of the lentils and vegetables, topped with some fresh parsely. This goes well with a red wine with some body, or a dark beer.

: : :

So that’s the normal recipe. In full disclosure, I’ll note that in this particular case, I started it two nights ago and cooked it for two hours (it wasn’t going to be done in time for dinner that night), and then placed in the fridge until I was able to finish and serve it tonight. Not wanting to put my dutch oven in the fridge, I shifted everything carefully to a deep baking dish. Tonight when finishing the cooking process, I didn’t want to make more washing up so I left it all in the baking dish, covered that with aluminum foil, and cooked it for another hour and a half tonight at 280F.

I love slow, low heat cooking probably more than anything.

Swiss Chard Gratin, Dry Rub Pork

Anyone who reads this blog has already noticed that sometimes I get in the mood to do a recipe and heat of the oven be damned! Tonight was one of those cases after I saw an Alice Waters recipe for Swiss Chard posted by The Wednesday Chef. It had to be eaten.

But before I talk about the recipe, I had a question for you foodies out there — I know that Alice Waters inspired, well, everybody, but who do you consider was particularly influenced by her within the following generations of leading chefs ?

Swiss Chard Gratin

Adapted from The Wednesday Chef who adapted from Alice Waters. This amount serves about 4 as a side dish. The use of a cast iron pan in making this dish reduces washing up!

1 bunch of swiss chard (8-10 large leaves)
1 cup breadcrumbs
unsalted butter
1 onion, diced
1 tbsp flour
1/2 to 1 cup milk
pinch of ground nutmeg

Tear up some bread and make pea-sized breadcrumbs in a food processor. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a large cast iron pan and lightly brown the breadcrumbs over medium heat. Remove and set aside in a small bowl.

Preheat oven at 350F.

Get some lightly salted water boiling in a large pot. Wash the chard and cut away the stems. Thinly chop the stems (just like chopping celery). Place the chopped stems in the boiling water and cook for two minutes, then add the green leaves of chard, and cook for another three minutes, then drain in a collander and press some of the excess moisture out of the leaves.

Add 2 tsbp of butter to your cast iron pan and saute the diced onion over medium-low heat until it turns translucent. Remove the chard from the collander, loosely chop, and add to the cast iron pan. Add some salt and continue sauteing for several minutes.

Add the flour and stir in well. Then add 1/2 cup of milk, the pinch of nutmeg, and stir and cook for another 5 minutes. You want the mixture to be moist but not soupy, so continue to add small increments of milk as you go to keep the proper level of moisture.

Remove from heat, and taste for salt. You can optionally add a little more butter here (say 1/4 tbsp cut into small pieces and sprinkled around). Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top evenly and place in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

Let’s just say that I did not leave leftovers.

Dry Rub Pork

I continue to experiment with dry rub combinations. Tonight I removed sugar all together and combined roughly equal portions of mustard seed, coriander seed, cumin seed, black peppercorns, and salt in a mortar for grinding. I rubbed the spice mix on the pork and let the chops sit for about 40 minutes before grilling — searing on high heat for 2 to 3 minutes a side and then moving to indirect heat on the grill for a few minutes more (these were big chops). The result was very good.

Dinner all combined was the grilled pork chop, side of chard gratin, and a side of some roma beans boiled for 2 minutes on the side and a touch of salt — all paired with a nice Malbec.

Pesto Rack of Lamb; Saturday in the Catskills

Last night had one of those amethyst skies that, should you see the effect in a Frederick Church painting your brain would rebel against the artist’s dramatic flair. However, there it was in full glory.

It was a glorious day for food as well. In the morning we popped up to Gills Farm and then Fleishers, the grass-fed and organic meat butcher in Kingston, NY. It was pretty cool to watch Josh, the proprietor, break down the lamb in front of us. We had cut a massive amount of basil from the farm, and so Lisl, Aussie that she is, turned to me and said “pesto rack of lamb?” I’ve never splurged on a rack of lamb before, but we decided what the hell. The quality at Fleishers is hard to resist. I’ll post some other pictures from the day below, but first the very simple lamb recipe that Lisl prepared:

Pesto Rack of Lamb

Trim any excess fat from the rack of lamb and smear pesto (see below) all over the meat.

Preheat oven to 450F. Place the lamb rack on a baking tray and roast for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat to 400F and roast for another 15 minutes. Remove from the oven (the very top picture) and then slice between the bones to separate each chop.

We served this with zucchini and some boiled potatoes lightly tossed in some of the remaining pesto (yes we on a serious pesto kick, but it wasn’t overwhelming). This is paired nicely with a pinot noir.

Pesto (fast/lazy method)
While 101 Cookbooks has a very cool post on making pesto like an Italian grandmother, we were in a hurry so used the food processor. Making pesto is about tasting as you go, rather than scientific measurement. I stuffed several handfuls of basil leaves in the food processor with a handful of pine nuts, several pinches of salt, a clove of garlic, a handful of grated parmesan cheese, and a dousing of olive oil. Then it was just a matter of pulsing and adding more olive oil and increments of cheese/nuts/salt (whatever was needed), and pulsing again, until I was happy with the flavor and texture. Doing everything in the processor isn’t optimal (Jamie Oliver, for example, pulses his basil and pine nuts, but mixes his cheese, salt and olive oil gently in another bowl), but I’ll admit that I was moving fast and didn’t want the extra bowl to wash up!

Other Saturday pictures

Gills Farm still has tons of zucchini and now has sweet orange tomatoes.

We joined some friends for lunch and had to bring a salad to feed 9. This is just a combination of green and yellow peppers, red and orange tomatoes, radishes, red onion, feta cheese, basil, oregano, salt, pepper, and gently tossed with olive oil and a bit of white wine vinegar.

Walking into Fleishers in Kingston, NY

Josh breaking down the lamb that would produce our rack. Moments before we watched him break down a pig. If you go in there, don’t hesitate to talk to him — he is super nice and has a depth of knowledge about his meats as well as how to cook with them.

As we were walking back to the car, we came across a street fair organized by the fire department showing off these fabulous old engines from Kingston and surrounding towns. What a treat!

Rice & Beef Salad (exploration)

Tonight’s food experiment began with a beef marinade. The result ended up being an unusual but satisfying “salad” of beef, rice, yogurt, pickled onions and mint. The journey is below.

This started because I had about a pound of chuck (cut into two large strips), and decided to try marinating it with several tablespoons of soy sauce, a light sprinkling of sesame oil, the juice from two limes, some salt and pepper, and a dusting of red curry powder. Thinking more, I thought it would best served slow-cooked and flaky, so I cut the marinade short. I seared the beef in a cast iron pan very briefly, then poured the juice from the marinade into the pan with a little water (say a third of a cup). This was then cooked in the oven at 300F for 3 hours. I had it covered for the first two hours, flipped the meat halfway through, and added some more water when the liquid in the pan started to dry out.

The result was a flaky beef with an highly flavored crust (where the soy sauce concentrated from the cooking process and really stood out). Once tasted, I knew the beef needed to be directly complemented with some other flavors to balance out that crust. Using two forks I shredded the beef into small pieces. The other components of the simple dish just presented themselves in my head.

I cooked up 3/4 cup of basmati rice, quickly pickled a thinly-sliced red onion (see recipe here, which I very loosely followed and let sit for about 40 minutes), added several dollops of natural greek yogurt (critical to the dish), and chopped up some mint (optional but I liked the addition).

In all got mixed together in a bowl, then served warm. If you feel like trying this exploration yourself (I wouldn’t be posting here if I didn’t like the result), I recommend pairing it with a strong red wine like an Aussie shiraz or a hefty California zin.

So there you have it. I haven’t posted in a typical recipe format, because it was really just an ad hoc experimentation that used some flavors I’ve been playing with lately. The results, however, were satisfying and different (which, since I’ve spent so long cooking French-inspired food — yes, I learned how to cook from Julia Child’s Essentials of French Cooking — qA what I was shooting for). Now I’m going to sit back and see if you all think I’m nuts.

Dry Rub Pork #2, Stuffed Tomatoes with Black-eyed Peas

Well this was — hold on, I need to pour another glass of wine — an interesting night but the results were actually delicious (yes, miracles happen). You are going to say, you did WHAT with your oven in July heat? Well, let’s start with confessions. I left the grill on last night and so ran out of propane —

hey wait a sec, it was a long day of work and I was tired!
yeah?
well, that’s what my wife said too.

Anyway, the salient point is that outdoor cooking was out. I got home from work and the first question as I fed the munchkin was (well, the first question after, no you can’t “eat that plum / watch tigger and poo / pick mummy up from the train” … before eating your dinner) … ahem, was “what has to be used?” Answer: pork loin, the black-eyed peas I didn’t use for the salad the other day, and a couple of fat tomatoes.

DRY RUB PORK
I’ve fallen in love with dry rubs. Tonight’s combination came out really nicely (query: do they all?):

1 tsp salt
1 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp smoked paprika

I ground up everything but the salt and brown sugar in a spice grinder (okay it was Lisl’s coffee grinder but we won’t go there, will we? no, I didn’t think so). I had just over a pound of “family style” pork loin and so rubbed the spice mixture over it and let sit for about 20-30 minutes.

Since my grill was not an option, I broiled the pork on both sides in the oven for 2 minutes each side on a high rack (and sitting on a broiling pan), and then dropped it down to the middle of the oven and baked it at 300F for about 1.5 to 2 hours. Halfway through I pulled it out of the oven and dribbled olive oil and some apple cider vinegar on the top. Result? Killer. The outside crust was crunchy and the lower-heat cooking kept the inside moist. I should note that the pork loin was still in one piece, not sliced into “boneless ribs” as some butchers are doing these days — if you have smaller pieces you’ll have to reduce cooking time to keep the pork from drying out.

STUFFED TOMATOES WITH BLACK-EYED PEAS

2 large tomatoes
1.5 cups cooked black-eyed peas
1 handful of Italian parsley
1 large shallot
Red wine vinegar
olive oil
salt & pepper

In my case, I already had some leftover black-eyed peas, but if you are starting from scratch: soak 1/4 lb of black eyed peas for several hours, then drain, cover with fresh water, bring to a boil, then simmer loosely covered for 30 minutes (note: if you don’t have time to soak, no worries, just cook until tender, probably another 20 to 30 min).

Mince up a shallot and lightly saute it in some olive oil (note: if you want to save the extra cleanup, skip the sauteing and just mix them in raw).

Chop up a large handful of Italian (flat leaf) parsley.

Combine the peas, shallots, and parsley in a bowl. Add a pinch of salt and ground pepper, a teaspoon of red wine vinegar, and a tsp of virgin olive oil. Add more vinegar to taste. Keep on mixing and adding salt until you are just a hair past how much salt you would normally have in the dish.

Take your tomatoes and carve off the tops of both (just like taking off the top of a pumpkin). Carefully take a small spoon and scoop out the flesh and seeds in the middle of the tomato, and let any liquid run out.

Get the oven up to 450F. Stuff the tomatoes with the mixture, place in a small baking dish, dribble some olive oil on the top and around the sides of the tomatoes, and place in the oven for 20 minutes. It should all melt together nicely when you cut into it.

Final Notes:
Another confession (there’s been a lot of that in this post it seems): you’ll see in the picture at the top something in the stuffed tomato that looks suspiciously like bacon. That’s because it is bacon. I had a misguided notion, but I can say that both Lisl and I had enough forkfuls missing the bacon that we were convinced it was much better without. Which is why I have the gall to put the vegetarian tag on this post, since my vegetarian friends can make the stuffed tomato dish. We’ll just pretend the bacon never happened. Photoshop, anyone?

Dry Rub Pork Loin (boneless “ribs”)

1 tsp smoked paprika
1/3 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground black and red pepper
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp brown sugar

Flat pork loin, cut into 6 boneless “ribs” about 4.5″ long, 1″ thick, 2″ high
1/2 cup beer
Soy Sauce, approx 3/4 tsp

I’ve long wanted to try a dry rub barbecue and tonight I decided to take the plunge.

First, the meat: Adams Fairacre Farms is probably my favorite NY market outside of Manhattan (in particular I like the Kingston market and found the produce and butcher to be a bit better than the Newburgh store). They cut their pork loin into flat boneless “ribs” which they call “family style”, and this is what I used tonight.

Next the dry rub: The spice measurements above are rough since I eyeballed proportions using a smallish kitchen spoon. I mixed the spices all together: paprika, pepper, cayenne, salt, brown sugar, cumin, ground coriander. If I had been less pressed for time (and trying to minimize cleanup), I probably would have blended it all together with a bay leaf as well. The measurements above were enough for the 6 smallish pieces of pork I was working with. I placed the rub in a baking dish and rubbed the pork pieces around until covered by the mix. I covered with plastic wrap and let marinate for about an hour on the counter (if longer, I would have placed back in fridge).

I then mixed about half a cup of beer (I was drinking an excellent summery brew from the Ommegang brewery in Cooperstown, NY – their Witte Ale) with about half or a full teaspoon of soy sauce and brought out to the grill in a small bowl with a teaspoon.

On the hot portion of the grill, I seared one side of the pork then quickly moved to a more moderate heat. When I flipped to a new side, I repeated this process of searing briefly then returning to moderate heat. I took my beer/soy liquid and, using the spoon, gently poured some liquid over the pork periodically as it grilled. I probably grilled the pork for about 15 to 20 minutes, removing from heat when firm.

It came out absolutely delicious, with the cayenne providing a little kick but not excessively so. We rounded out the meal with some corn, grilled mushrooms, and Lisl whipped up a wonderful arugula, basil, tomato and red onion salad, dressed with olive oil, white wine vinegar and grey poupon mustard. Our teenage niece is visiting from Sydney, Australia (Lisl is an ozzie ozzie ozzie) and the meal was a hit. Score one! The whole thing was pretty efficient to execute and clean up after, and given that both of us had to go back to work, score two!

Tomato Beef braise, Fennel/Tomato salad, Cauliflower dinner

It sometimes drives Lisl nuts when I create a two-color-palette meal, but I clearly have a tendency in that direction, as evidenced by the above photo. Today I got away with not having anything green on the plate! Granted that time for both of us was limited, but still there was enough to put together a decent meal.

This meal came about because the local butcher, the owner of an excellent store called Crisfields, sold me on a cut of what he called “super chuck” (once he starts pitching me on something, I usually fold like a house of cards). The steak was a 1.5 inch think cut of chuck, shaped not unlike a typical brisket cut, but with much more marbling.

Tomato Beef Braise
2 lb flat cut of chuck steak
1 yellow onion
4 carrots
3 celery stalks
2 tins of italian peeled tomatoes (14 oz)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Fresh oregano
Bay leaf

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a dutch oven on the stove top on medium-high heat. Salt and pepper both sides of the beef and once the pot is hot, sear on both sides for a minute or two either side. Remove and set aside.

Chop up a yellow onion and 3 or 4 garlic cloves and saute in olive oil over low heat for a few minutes until onions start to turn translucent. Take 3 celery stalks and 4 peeled carrots, and put them in a food processor and pulse until very finely chopped (I wanted the flavor but not extra chunkiness, hence this step). Add to the pot and saute for a few more minutes. Add two tins of Italian skinless tomatoes and about half a cup of wine (in this case I used white but red would do). I think I added about two teaspoons of salt, a bunch of ground pepper, bay leaf (or two) and a nice handful of fresh oregano. Once this is all simmering for a bit, break up the tomatoes with your spatula and nestle the beef in the sauce. Spoon some sauce over top to make sure there is moisture on all sides of the beef.

In my case, I didn’t have the ability to start this recipe during the day, so I put it on when I went to bed the night before, and set the oven nice and low at 225F. In the morning I spooned away some of the melted fat, moved it all into another container, and placed in the fridge. That night after work, I put it back into the dutch oven, got it simmering again on the stovetop, added salt and pepper to taste, tossed in some more oregano, and left uncovered in the oven at 250F for another hour or two.

This ended up delicious and flaky, but so rich that I decided to serve it with some cauliflower, simply steamed, to have a healthy but neutral addition, and then whipped up a tomato and fennel salad to add a bit of acidity. This was probably my last braise for a little while, given the rapidly rising temperatures.

Cherry Tomato and Fennel Salad
Half a fennel bulb
A handful of cherry tomatoes

I sliced the cherry tomatoes into 4 slivers and placed in a bowl. The fennel bulb I washed then sliced as thin as I could with a sharp knife. Because I didn’t have a mandolin to cut it really fine, I decided to soften the fennel a touch by steaming it for about 2 or 3 minutes, then adding to the bowl. I dashed some olive oil, rice vinegar, salt, pepper, and lemon on top to complete.

P.S. I’m not going to give myself awards for food photography any time soon, not least because I am usually hungry so hurry it along, but it was nice to discover that I could manually set the white balance on my little Canon digital, and that helped remove the orange cast I was seeing with night shots. I can always aspire to be like Aun, a high school friend, who takes the dreamiest pictures of food ever.