08.14.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Italian, Leftovers, Pastas, Persnickety Bits, Veggies at 5:25 pm by julie
Oh lordy, it is 100F outside and close to 90F indoors—way too hot to think about cooking! But the house has been cleaned up and the baby is still asleep, so I’ve got time to revisit an old post I meant to write way back in early June, when the weather was still mild and reasonable—seems like ages ago. My mom came for a visit the second week of June, to keep Nolan and me company while Jeremy was away at a training for work. While she was here, we were incredibly busy remodeling our back room to make it fit for a home theater room (our previous HT room was a bedroom that had to be sacrificed for Nolan’s nursery; both are still works in progress at this point). Over the course of five days, we emptied, cleaned and repainted the room, purchased Roman shades and an area rug, and started putting together a new TV stand. We also had a drawing of Jeremy’s framed, got the dog’s toenails clipped, and—the point of this post—visited the Salem Wednesday farmer’s market.
Among other things, we came home from the market with Hood strawberries for ice cream, a bouquet of curly garlic scapes, and a huge bagful of fava beans. While Nolan napped after all the excitement and my mom worked on painting the baseboards, I macerated berries, buzzed up an easy recipe for garlic scape pesto, and got the favas shelled, blanched and peeled. When dinnertime rolled around, all I had to do was cook pasta and toss it together with the favas—quickly sauteed in olive oil—the pesto, and a splash of cream. The pesto turned out to have an intense garlicky heat, much more powerful than I had anticipated. A little went a very long way, so we had lots left over. (I mixed some of it into scrambled eggs, which helped tame the flavor but produced some awfully unphotogenic beige eggs, a disappointment since the pesto itself was such a sprightly spring green.)
As for the room, I keep trying to take photos that actually show what it looks like now. (You can see, a bit, its previous state in this photo, which was taken from nearly the same stance.) Alas, the problem is that I can’t back up enough with our camera’s lens to capture more than a corner of the room at one time. But this should at least give you the gist of it, complete with ugly purple couch and pretty German shepherd pup. What you can’t quite see to the left is the TV, and to the right is a built-in bookshelf, the stairs to the basement, another big window, and three hanging pots containing herbs that keep dying (I think it is just too hot back there now—currently wilting are sage, lemon thyme and basil plants). We still need to get some speakers and other equipment set up, and take care of a few finishing touches like more artwork, but I’m pretty happy with the result, considering our limited options.
My laptop is about to fuse to my knees, so I’m going to give it a chance to cool off. Man, that strawberry ice cream sounds really good about now… time to make a fresh batch of something cool and refreshing, I dare say.
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08.03.08
Posted in American, Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Cuisines, Dessert at 2:12 pm by julie
I don’t often follow, or even really notice, food fads. For instance, I completely missed out on that whole molten chocolate cake craze until this past June. I made a batch of Dorie Greenspan’s Korova cookies for Christmas in 2005, without a clue that they would become popular enough to rename World Peace Cookies in her Baking book of 2006—maybe I was actually ahead of the curve on that one. And I’ve never yet made a loaf of no-knead bread, popularized by the New York Times article, though I do mean to try it at some point.
The current foodblog fashion trend was also set by the Times, and this was one I couldn’t resist for long: big, chewy, golden brown chocolate chip cookies adapted from a recipe by Jacques Torres. Even though my heart will always lie with David Lebovitz’s low-and-slow recipe, I can’t help but try out other variations.
The Torres cookies are good ones indeed, and I can see what all the fuss is about. They have that classic flavor, with tons of bittersweet chocolate and just the right balance of buttery crunch and chewy innards. I divided my dough between two baking days (after about 24 and 72 hours, respectively), some plain and some sprinkled with fleur de sel. I didn’t have quite enough cake flour, so about an ounce of that was subbed with all-purpose. I used a 1/3 cup measure for a total of 2 dozen cookies, and baked some for 19 minutes, the rest for 16.
What we thought: While warm, all I could taste was chocolate (I used Ghirardelli bittersweet chips). Once they had cooled, all the cookies stayed soft in the center, though we both preferred the texture of the 16-minute cookies, which looked very underdone coming out of the oven. I liked the salt-sprinkled cookies more than Jeremy did, since he isn’t a huge salt fan, but since I also like dipping my cookies in milk, and salt + milk = yuck, I ended up leaving the salt off all the 72-hour cookies for that purpose.
I like the advance prep aspect of this recipe, since I could make the dough while Nolan was napping and then bake at my next opportunity, but the cold dough was a pain to work with. If I use this recipe again, I’m going to portion the dough before chilling it, and then let it rest as 1/3-cup pucks, stacked in a container between sheets of waxed paper. I’m still not entirely convinced they were worth the extra trouble of waiting for the dough to rest 36 hours, however; a more scientific comparison might be in order, baking off both freshly made and well-rested batches of dough. 
Either way, you can hardly go wrong with fresh chocolate chip cookies, so I understand the wave of popularity!
Jacques Torres’ Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 C minus 2 T (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour
1 2/3 C (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 C) unsalted butter
1 1/4 C (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 C plus 2 T (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 lb bittersweet chocolate disks or chips, at least 60 percent cacao content
Sea salt
Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate in and incorporate gently. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.
Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet. Sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 16 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin, or cooled, with a big glass of milk. Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.
Source: New York Times
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07.27.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Foodblog Events, Italian, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Pastas at 8:37 am by julie
I was shocked and saddened earlier this week to learn that Sher of What Did You Eat? had passed away. I was a regular reader and admirer of Sher’s blog: she was a regular participant in many foodblogging events, including Daring Bakers, Weekend Herb Blogging, and Presto Pasta Nights, and her recipes were always really tempting. I admired her rescue and rehabilitation of wildlife, and enjoyed reading about the misadventures of her kitties.
The foodblogging community is honoring Sher today, and I decided to post a recipe featuring fava beans in her memory. Sher was a big fava fan, growing, harvesting, and cooking impressive amounts of the beans for the past several years. I went with pasta, but it was two days in the making, because Nolan was cranky from his 4-month vaccinations and didn’t give me much opportunity for cooking—I had just enough time to peel, blanch and shell my big bag of beans one evening before he woke up and spent about three hours fussing. The beans went in the fridge until the next night, when I used them to make a velvety green fava sauce for fettuccine, enriched with a bit of cream and ricotta, and accented with salty crumbles of bacon and feta. I like to think Sher would approve.
In further tribute to Sher, this will be my entry for Presto Pasta Nights #74, hosted this week by its lovely founder, Ruth of Once Upon a Feast.
Fava Fettuccine with Feta and Bacon
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1-1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 C chicken stock
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 C shelled, blanched and peeled fava beans
1/4 C ricotta
1/3 C heavy cream
3/4 lb dried fettuccine
Feta for garnish
Crumbled bacon for garnish
Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until hot. Add the garlic and saute briefly until light brown. Stir in the oregano, then add the stock. Bring to a boil, season with salt and pepper, and add 1-1/2 cups of the fava beans. Simmer to blend the flavors, about 3 minutes, or until the beans are tender. Meanwhile, boil water for pasta and cook fettuccine according to package directions.
Remove from the heat, add the ricotta and cream, and use a stick blender to puree until smooth. Return the sauce to the pan and add the remaining favas. Warm through and taste for seasoning. Drain pasta, reserving about a cup of pasta water, and toss with the sauce. If necessary, add some pasta water to the sauce to loosen it. Serve topped with feta and crumbled bacon.
3. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil and add salt. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 12 minutes. Drain, reserving about 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water. Pour the pasta into a warm serving bowl and add the sauce. Toss well and thin with the pasta water, if necessary, until the sauce is glossy and not sticky. Serve immediately and grate the cheese over the top at the table.
4. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the pasta. Just before serving, ladle a little hot pasta water into the bowl for a couple minutes to warm it up. Drain the water before filling the bowl with the pasta.
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07.12.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Dips & Spreads, Greek, Leftovers, Seafood, Shrimp at 2:39 pm by julie
I’ve never been too enamored with cooking magazines, other than perhaps Cooking Light, but I was offered a free subscription to Bon Appetit from Amazon.com a few months back, so I said what the heck. It’s alright so far, but I’m not overly impressed, and I haven’t gone out of my way to make any of the recipes.
The other night we tried a recipe for shrimp skewers with tzatziki and spinach from the most recent issue. As I had hoped, it was a fast, tasty meal—hard to go wrong with those flavors, and most of the ingredients are ones I always have on hand. Not only that, but it made a lovely and fairly healthy plate of food. The problem came when we sat down to actually eat, though: it was impossible for us to eat this neatly. Of course Jeremy was eating over WoW, and Nolan was awake at the time, so I had to hold him with one arm and eat with the other. But there were the skewers and tails to deal with, and the tzatziki, while delicious, was too thick to scoop up easily either with a bite of shrimp or a forkful of spinach.
I found myself wishing I had just removed the tails from the shrimp up front and sauteed them in a little oil and garlic, then tucked them in a pita with the spinach, feta and tzatziki. The portability and one-handed operation of a pocket sandwich would have been more than worth an extra trip to the grocery store or a few hours spent waiting for pita dough to rise. Considering all the other pluses to this recipe, it may happen yet.
Incidentally, I couldn’t bear to toss out the leftover tzatziki, but had nothing to eat it with. So for lunch the next day, I mixed a can of tuna with a few tablespoons of strained tzatziki, a bit of mayo and some feta cheese. It made one of the best tuna sandwiches I’ve had in quite a while.
Shrimp Skewers with Tzatziki, Spinach and Feta
1 C Greek yogurt
1 C 1/4″-cubes English hothouse cucumber
3 T chopped fresh dill
2 T fresh lemon juice
2 T chopped shallots
1 tsp chopped garlic
Olive oil
1 lb uncooked large shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 C baby spinach
3/4 C crumbled feta cheese
Mix yogurt, cucumber, dill, lemon juice, garlic and shallot in small bowl; season generously with salt and pepper and chill until ready to serve.
Prepare grill with oil. Thread shrimp equally onto 4 skewers and brush with olive oil; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill just until shrimp are opaque in the center, about 3 minutes per side. Divide spinach between 4 plates, and drizzle lightly with lemon juice and olive oil. Top each with one shrimp skewer, a dollop of tzatziki, and a sprinkle of feta.
Source: Slightly adapted from Bon Appetit, August 2008 (p. 45)—and will be more firmly adapted next time.
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07.09.08
Posted in American, Cuisines, Dinner, Eggs, French, Lunch, Salads at 9:53 am by julie
We had a good 4th of July weekend. For me, that constitutes getting to leave the house a glorious three times, including trips to the grocery store and farmer’s market. Nolan had never been to either place, and he was quite a champ, looking around quietly from his sling while we shopped. At the grocery store, we picked up fixings for an all-American sort of dinner: New York strip steaks, baby spinach for a classic salad with hot bacon vinaigrette, and (at Jeremy’s request) Boston baked beans. The steaks were coated in a mixture of oil and clarified butter and seasoned aggressively with salt and pepper, then cooked to a perfect medium on our cast iron grill. The salad was a tasty complement, with crisp bacon, sweet shallot, and hard-boiled egg.
At the farmer’s market the next day, our score included white asparagus, three kinds of wild mushrooms, dinosaur kale, and a big head of frisee lettuce. I would have liked to get more, but I couldn’t carry much with the baby, and Jeremy had his hands full with Freyja, who was in rare form trying to keep our little herd together. (Every time I went into a booth to buy something, she whined something fierce. Everyone stared at her, and several people commented on how protective she was being of me. She just wouldn’t let me out of her sight.) Anyway, I decided to use the frisee to make us another classic salad with eggs and bacon for lunch that day: a bistro salad with poached eggs and a sherry vinaigrette. Its similarity to the spinach salad was not lost on me, but the overall effect was quite different, mostly due to the extreme bitterness of the frisee. Tasty as it was, I think I prefer this salad in its fried egg sandwich incarnation, which cuts down on the volume of frisee.
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07.08.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Seafood, Shrimp, Sides at 11:48 am by julie
I’ve been working hard to build a stash of extra breastmilk in our freezer for Nolan. I don’t produce much more than he eats on a daily basis (especially not this past week, while he was having an extreme growth spurt and eating nearly double his usual amount), but since April I have been able to freeze at least one bag of milk most days. It’s an accomplishment I am extremely proud of, but it is also quickly starting to overwhelm our little refrigerator freezer. Every time I open the freezer door, there is a landslide of frozen meat and veggies.
Until I can talk Jeremy into getting us a little chest freezer, my goal is to use up—or chuck, since while stashing bags of milk at the back of the shelves, I excavated a few unidentifiable freezer-burned items that have been there time out of mind—the food I’ve got in my freezer. (Probably just to replace it with more, what can I say? I particularly find the resealable bags of frozen veggies handy: broccoli, green beans, peas, corn, spinach and peppers.)
I started out with this Cuban-inspired dish, which uses frozen shrimp and peppers. I like to keep frozen shrimp on hand because they thaw quickly for last-minute dinners, and you avoid all that tedious deveining. I actually had this meal in mind some time ago, but didn’t think I had any coconut milk… turns out it was just buried in the back of the pantry. Because the shrimp only requires a small amount of milk, I used the rest in a really easy recipe for coconut rice I’ve made before, and it complimented the spicy shrimp and peppers nicely.
Enchilado de Camerones
1 T olive oil
1 C chopped onion
1/2 C chopped red bell pepper (I used a frozen blend of peppers)
1/2 C chopped green bell pepper
1/2 to 1 tsp crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp salt
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 C light coconut milk
2 T chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté 2 minutes. Add bell peppers, crushed red pepper, salt, and garlic; sauté 4 minutes. Add tomatoes; cook 6 minutes or until liquid almost evaporates, stirring frequently.
Stir in shrimp, and cook 4 minutes or until shrimp are done, stirring frequently. Remove shrimp mixture from heat, and stir in coconut milk. Sprinkle with cilantro if desired. Serve with coconut rice.
Source: Cooking Light
Coconut Rice
2 C uncooked basmati rice
1 1/2 C light coconut milk
1 1/2 C water
1/4 tsp salt
1 C chopped green onions (optional)
Rinse rice with cold water; drain. Combine rice, coconut milk, 1 1/2 cups water, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat; stir once. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes until liquid is absorbed. Let stand 10 minutes; stir in onions.
Source: Cooking Light
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07.01.08
Posted in American, Cuisines, Dinner, Meats, Sausage at 9:47 pm by julie
Now that I am officially a stay-at-home mom, I’ve been watching a lot more television than I used to, particularly when I have an armload of fussy baby who doesn’t want to be put down. That means a lot of Food Network, and sadly, it appears that Nolan particularly finds Emeril Lagasse fascinating. Give me that Louisiana Cookin’ guy
instead any day (anyone else remember that show from PBS?).
All the days of Emeril seems to be sinking in, though, at least a little, because I started craving red beans and rice, even though I’ve never had it before. I picked out a rather basic version of this dish to make and can’t vouch for its authenticity, but it was a delicious and very easy meal made from ingredients I typically have on hand, and gave me several days of leftovers for lunch.
And in a nod to the origins of my interest in red beans and rice, I made up a little bit of Emeril’s own “essence” spice blend (an incredibly poor choice of words, in my opinion) to use as my Creole seasoning.
Red Beans and Rice
2 T olive oil
1 lb kielbasa, sliced into 1/2-inch-thick rounds
1 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 (14 1/2-oz) can kidney beans
1 C canned low-salt chicken broth
1 tsp Creole or Cajun seasoning or 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 C cooked rice
Heat olive oil in heavy large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add sausage, onion and garlic and sauté until onion is brown, about 15 minutes. Mix in kidney beans with their juices, broth and Creole seasoning. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and simmer until flavors are blended and mixture is very thick, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes.
Divide cooked rice among large shallow soup bowls. Spoon bean mixture over rice and serve.
Source: Slightly adapted from Epicurious.
Essence of Emeril
2 1/2 T paprika
2 T salt
2 T garlic powder
1 T black pepper
1 T onion powder
1 T cayenne pepper
1 T dried oregano
1 T dried thyme
Mix all spices together; makes about 2/3 cup. (I just used vaguely proportional dashes of each spice because I didn’t need so much.)
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06.24.08
Posted in American, Cuisines, Dinner, Meats, Pork and Ham at 10:21 am by julie
Finally it is starting to feel a bit like summer around here! About time, too, since it is the end of June…
Even though I have very little time for cooking of late, I’ve made a few dishes that are definitely going on our hit parade. This easy braised pork dish is one of them: it requires very little prep time, and the result is an outstanding balance of savory, salty, sweet and spicy, with a touch of heat and a luxurious mouth-feel. You will want to serve it over rice to soak up all that lovely sauce—even more so with the reheated leftovers!
I didn’t have any Chinese five-spice, which I have had miserable luck tracking down in grocery stores, so I made my own makeshift blend based on Pim’s recommendations. Needing so little, I just did pinches of freshly grated star anise, ground cassia, coarsely crushed sichuan peppercorns, ground cumin, clove, and coriander, but I will certainly make a larger amount with whole toasted spices, if I ever get a spice grinder.
Hawaiian-Style Braised Pork Ribs
3 1/2 lb boneless country-style pork spareribs, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
3 T vegetable oil
6 garlic cloves, chopped
2 T chopped peeled fresh ginger
12 oz low-salt chicken broth
1/3 C soy sauce
1 T dark brown sugar
1/4 tsp dried crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
1 1/2 T cornstarch
Sprinkle pork with salt and pepper. Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add 1/3 of pork to pot and sauté until brown, about 6 minutes; transfer to bowl. Repeat with remaining pork. Add garlic and ginger to pot; sauté 1 minute. Return pork and any juices to pot. Add broth, soy sauce, sugar, crushed red pepper, and five-spice powder; bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until pork is very tender, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Scoop out about half a cup of braising liquid and whisk it together with cornstarch in a cup to dissolve; mix back into pork. Simmer until gravy thickens slightly, stirring occasionally, about 3 minutes. Season with pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cool slightly and chill. Rewarm over low heat.)
Source: Slightly adapted from Epicurious.
Update 7/27/08: Jeremy brought home 6.5 pounds of boneless pork ribs from Costco yesterday, so I made a double batch of this braised pork for dinner (and many many leftovers) tonight. I got some Chinese 5-spice from Penzey’s recently, and used a quarter teaspoon of that and added cumin, coriander and Szechuan peppercorns to it for my personal blend. I also used chicken stock that I made last night from a rotisserie chicken carcass. It came out beautifully, just like the first time, and I served it with stir-fried red cabbage from the accompanying Epicurious recipe, adding a bit of garlic to the ginger.
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06.15.08
Posted in American, Cuisines, Dessert, Fruits, Pies & Tarts at 9:27 am by julie
For a while there, it was starting to feel like we already had our summer this year: exactly one weekend of 100F weather about two weeks ago in the midst of a neverending torrent of cool, grey, windy, rainy days. It’s June, for heaven’s sake! At last it is starting to warm up a little. Anyway, we had a surplus of apples in the house, so in honor of the faux-fall weather, I made some apple dumplings for dessert last week.
This is a combination of recipes that works well for me. I generally make the full batch and freeze the extra apples before baking, so we can have apple dumplings on demand for a while. In this instance, I only had time to prep 2 apples before Nolan started fussing, so I refrigerated the dough overnight and used it the next evening for another two apples. It is a soft dough because of the shortening, and didn’t even require warming up to room temperature before I could roll it out. I used gala apples because that’s what we had, and they worked nicely in this context, but I typically use Granny Smiths. I also prefer to serve this with vanilla ice cream, but we didn’t have any.
Apple Dumplings
1 C AP flour
1 C white whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2/3 C shortening
1/2 C milk
6 apples, peeled and cored
Lemon juice
Cinnamon sugar
Brown sugar
Unsalted butter
1 1/2 C water
1 1/2 C sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 T butter
In a food processor, combine the flours, salt and BP. Add the shortening, and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs; add the milk all at once and pulse just until the dough forms a ball. On a liberally floured surface, roll out the dough into a rectangle about 1/4″ thickness; cut into 6 squares large enough to completely enclose an apple.
Dip an apple in lemon juice, then roll in cinnamon sugar. Place in the center of a square of dough, and stuff its core with alternating spoons of brown sugar and little cubes of butter, packing it down until you run out of room. Gently pull the dough up around the apple and seal it, trying to avoid leaving any holes that the juices could run out from. They are supposed to be homey and rustic-looking, so patch away if you need to. Place in a small glass or stoneware casserole or pie pan large enough to hold all the apples you want to bake. Repeat with the remaining apples. (If you don’t want to bake and eat all the apples in one sitting, you can wrap each extra one in aluminum foil at this point and freeze them.)
Preheat the oven to 375F. In a small saucepan over medium high heat, bring the sugar, water, cinnamon and nutmeg to a boil. Remove from the heat, add the butter, and swirl to melt. Pour the sugar syrup over the apples, and bake at 375F for 35 minutes, or until the apples are tender when you insert a knife. As they come out of the oven, spoon the caramelized sugar syrup over the apples’ crusts before it cools. Serve with vanilla ice cream if desired.
If you froze some of your apples, you can bake them off right from the frozen state. Just remove them from the foil, stick them in a dish and cover them with freshly made sugar syrup, and bake them for a few extra minutes, until the apples are tender.
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06.01.08
Posted in Beef, Cuisines, Meats, Thai at 8:37 am by julie
So this was kind of fun. I’ve had a sort of off-hand interest in making the beef rendang from Molly Stevens’ All About Braising for a while now, since reading rave reviews of it on eGullet. However, Molly’s version includes a few ingredients that I am pretty sure I couldn’t get in Salem, and have never actually seen in real life, such as fresh galangal and turmeric. (I’m not even sure I had realized dried turmeric came from a root, for that matter.) The ingredients essentially add up to a red curry paste, in which beef is slowly cooked with coconut milk until all the liquid evaporates, and the beef is fried in the remaining coconut oil and gravy-like remnants of curry.
After our last order of Curry Simple sauces arrived, I looked over the booty and began to wonder if I might be able to use some of it to make a simplified version of beef rendang. Jeremy brought me home a beautiful 3-pound brisket, and the next day I cut it into cubes, trimming off the fat cap as I went, and tossed it in my big Dutch oven with some whole star anise, a chunk of ginger, and enough red curry sauce to cover. It simmered ever so slowly away into the evening, and after a few hours of periodic stirring, I had a potful of tender beef covered in a rich mahogany gravy. Served over rice, it took no more of my time to prepare than does our favorite masaman curry, just spread out over the course of an afternoon, and the flavor was fantastic. Mind you, we haven’t eaten the red curry yet in its more basic form, but cooking it down with the beef made it complex and savory, with hints of sweetness, citrus (from the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, I imagine), and heat. It was a bit spicier than the masaman and yellow curries, but nothing a tall glass of water, a pile of rice, and a scoop of white chocolate ice cream for dessert couldn’t solve.
If I ever track down a source for fresh galangal and turmeric—there must be some in Portland somewhere, right?—it would be fun to try my hand at mixing my very own curry paste. In the meantime, we’ll definitely be making this version again!
Simple Beef Rendang
3 lb beef brisket, trimmed of fat and cut into 1 1/2″ cubes
2 T olive oil
3 star anise, whole
1″ chunk of ginger, peeled
1 family-size packet of Curry Simple red curry sauce
In a large Dutch oven over medium high heat, cook the brisket in the olive oil just until the meat begins to get a good sear. Add the star anise, ginger, and just enough red curry sauce to cover the meat. You may not need the whole packet; the excess can be refrigerated or frozen. Stir to combine and bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low. Simmer very slowly uncovered for 2-3 hours, stirring every 25 minutes or so, until the curry sauce reduces to a thick gravy. If desired, skim off any excess fat before serving over rice.
Source: Loosely based on All About Braising, by Molly Stevens
Update 6/1/08: Tonight’s dinner was a panang-ified chicken curry with onions and peppers, using the remains of the red curry packet. (There was just enough leftover from the rendang to make 3 servings.) I added a tablespoon of peanut butter to the sauce, as recommended by the Curry Simple website. I’ve never had panang curry, but Jeremy said it tasted a little like what he’s had before. In this incarnation, the red curry sauce was definitely spicier than it was in the rendang—it was pushing the limits of my heat tolerance, but I went back for a little more, so clearly it didn’t bother me too much.
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