Most people hate the taste of beer to begin with. It is, however, a prejudice that many people have been able to overcome. ~Winston Churchill

My friend G. (who lives in another state) suggested we cook some dishes 'together' and compare them.  We decided to go with something French...which lead us to Mastering the Art of French Cooking (since I know we both have it), and we settled on Carbonnades a la Flamande - that is, Beef and Onions Braised in Beer as our first dish.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking (MTAOFC)

So the first part of the adventure took me to the store.  Julia said to get three pounds of 'lean beef from the chuck roast or rump'.  I am not too good with meat nomenclature - certain cuts are referred to differently in books and store and I don't always know the translation.  I ended up with some 'round eye roast' since it looked lean.  I'm not sure this is what she was after, but it turned out nice for us.  Although, I did have a little trouble cutting it neatly....maybe next time I will freeze it for 15 minutes or so to make it firmer.

The next new thing I learned was about beer.  Now, I'm not a big drinker - never have been.  So there's a lot I don't know about wine, beer, etc.  Julia called for a Pilsner, but I couldn't find it at my regular grocery store. We ended up going to a little liquor store and found some, but I still didn't get what was the big deal.  So I looked it up when I got home.

Pilsner

Turns out Pilsners are from Pilsen, in the Czech Republic.  They are what they are due to the particular hops that are used, as well as the unusually soft water there.  It is also 'bottom-fermented', which is a little beyond my ken.  Sometimes people call a beer a 'pilsner' when they mean something like 'premium', but that is a misuse of the word.

ANYway, it did turn out to be a nice beer and was worth the hunt.

Ok, so first I browned the meat:

Then I set it aside.

And cooked the onions for a bit in that pan.

Then I got out my nice braising pan and layered in half the beef, half the onions, and repeat.

Meanwhile, I put a cup of beef stock (I used Better Than Bouillon) into the pan and deglazed it.  That broth went into the braiser and my pan got most of the way cleaned up...

Then I put in one bottle of my Pilsner and an herb bundle (it's tucked into the liquid up there at the top), brought it to a simmer on the stove, and put it into the oven for about two and a half hours.  Julia said to watch that it stays just at a simmer, so I ended up turning down my oven just a bit.

That's just about it.  All that was left was removing the spent herbs, pouring the liquid off into a small saucepan and putting a red wine vinegar/arrowroot mixture into it and simmering that for a few minutes before returning it to the pan.  Viola!   (Sorry I don't have more final pictures, but they seem to have fallen into a black hole.)

In the last 45 minutes or so of oven time, I got to work on some Pommes de Terre Sautees - Potatoes Sauteed in Butter - also from MTAOFC.  This was pretty easy, though I did wimp out on a bit of technique.  Julia tells you to cut the potatoes into 'elongated olive shapes all the same size...cut them smoothly so they will roll around easily and color evenly' she says.  Pooh.  Sorry, Julia, I love you to pieces, but I don't have time for that.  I just cut them as uniformly as I could and made sure to stir them frequently.  I cooked them in some butter and olive oil for several minutes at a fairly hot temp.  Then I salted them and turned down the heat, covered them, and let them go for about 15 more minutes.  Then, off heat, I added a bit more softened butter and some minced parsley.  Yum.

These were both great dishes - we gobbled them up at my house!  A French "Meat and Potatoes" sort of thing.  The beef dish was a good company dish as you do most of the work up front and the braising just makes its own magic in the oven.  That leaves you plenty of time to attend to another dish or dishes if you want.  The Pilsner was nice in it - not overpowering or even 'beer-y' in the final taste - if that makes sense.  The potatoes were easy - so easy I won't even need to refer to the book next time.

They were both delicious!  Thanks, G. for the suggestion - this was fun!



~ks

Most turkeys taste better the day after, my mother’s tasted better the day before. ~Rita Rudner, comedian

Traditional Holiday Dinner - turkey version

A lot of us enjoy turkey on Thanksgiving, as did my family.  We actually bought two turkeys anticipating more demand than we had, so we ended up freezing the second one and I made it up for Christmas as well.  We sort of did the gathering in pieces and had part one at my daughter's home on Christmas Eve, where she served a beautiful ham and delicious home-made rolls and sweet potato casserole and green beans.  I brought the mashed potatoes, the cranberries, and some spiced nuts.  The Christmas day thing was just very low-key.  In fact, it was so low-key that we decided not to do a 'dinner' at all, but rather to treat the meal as the left-overs that we all know are so good.  We just had a lunch so we could all go home early and kinda crash.  I cooked up the turkey (explanation to follow), and removed all the meat from the bones.  We made sandwiches on nice bread and had a salad.  Then the day after Christmas, we had my son's brothers over for another round of holiday dinner yummies and some games.  (We highly recommend Apples to Apples!)

Let me explain it dish by dish...

First, the star of the show, the turkey.  Last year I followed Alton Brown's advice for roasting the bird and it came out great.  This year I saw Cook's Illustrated had a way to BRAISE the bird.  I love braised foods, so I had to give it a try.

First, I broke it down.  I got to pull out my really nice meat cleaver for this.  However, since this recipe is for parts, they actually suggest that you buy a turkey breast and turkey legs.  That would save you the butchery, if that bothers you.  It doesn't bother me.  Buying in parts would also save you time, but then you don't get the other parts, which are good for stock.  Your choice.

I took the legs apart and cut the breast away from the back.  The stuff in the black pan got further broken down (read: hacked up) and I made a nice stock with it.   The parts on the cutting board got brined for about 6 hours.



Here's the bed of veg for the turkey:

Carrots, celery, onion, garlic, parsley, dried porcini mushrooms (which I rinsed and rehydrated in warm water - that water went into the braising liquid, too).

You rub the bird with butter, then roast it in a 500 degree oven for about 20 min.  This was supposed to develop the crisp skin that's so desirable.  I loved most everything about this recipe, but this one area fell a little flat.  For me, though, it was no big deal since I removed the skin in the end anyway.  I guess you could roast it a bit longer if you were after the crispy skin.  After the roasting, you put in the stock and some wine.

Then they want you to cover it tightly with foil.  Well, it's awfully hard to wrap a HOT thing tightly with foil!  Of course I had on my mitts, but I had trouble getting the foil to really form to the pan.  Enter my Engineer Husband - "Why don't you use some of those black clips?"  Now, I use these clips ALL the time in my kitchen and I love 'em, but I hadn't thought of that till he said so.  Naturally, it worked perfectly.  This gets put back into a lower temp oven for about two hours.  I checked mine at 1:45 hours and it had reached it's temp.

I got these turkey lifters a few holidays ago, but they've been cumbersome to use with whole big birds.  With the bird already in  parts, though, these were perfect transportation vehicles.

I also followed their gravy recipe and it came out really nice - and I'm not a huge gravy person.  However, I accidentally left it at home so the family didn't get to try it.  :-(

That's where Cook's Illustrated leaves you - serving the hot bird.  But I made this bird the day BEFORE the gathering - we always do this in my family.  

I cut the meat off the breast as neatly as I could and placed it on the left.  I hand-shredded the dark meat and placed it on the right.  Then I shredded as much of the remaining white meat as I could and put it with the rest of the white meat.

Then I put the braising liquid back into the pan with the meat to keep it moist.

Then I just covered it up and refrigerated it till the next day.  We warmed it in the oven and made delicious sandwiches with it.

Save the crispy skin thing, this came out very nice and I'd definitely do it again.

Orange-Cranberry Sauce.  This was done in a pretty usual way - to a point.  Berries, water, and sugar in a pan.  But I read another CI recipe and gave this variation a try....Added the zest of an orange to the cooking. Then, off heat, added two tablespoons of Grand Marnier.  I was a little afraid of it being a little too... well, boozy.  But I had a spare set of ingredients and could recover if it failed.  But it did not fail.  It was quiet nice and I will be making it again.  Soon.

Mashed Potato Casserole.  In another recipe from CI, I made this nice potato dish.

It called for Russets, but I had Yukon Gold, so that's how it went.  In these potatoes are all the good things...cream, butter, garlic, chives, eggs (don't worry, this dish gets baked).  They gave me the hint to swirl it with a fork to make it look fancy and get crispy golden peaks.  Everyone liked 'em.

Spiced Nuts.  For munching, I made these spiced nuts which I made last year and were a big hit.  This is the cinnamon version from ATK Family Cookbook.  This is so easy.  You beat an egg white or two (depending on how much you're making).  Coat the nuts with the egg whites - thoroughly.  This is what will make the spices stick to the nuts, so they need to get moist all over.  Then you drain them off in a colander for about five minutes - we don't need the excess.  Then you coat the nuts with your spice mixture and spread it out on a rimmed baking sheet or two - I used two for two pounds.  Bake it, stirring up the nuts and rotating the pans halfway through. 

There are many ways you could go with the spices, there are several variations in the cookbook, but my family likes the cinnamon sugar version.  There are a few more spices than that, but that is what I think of when I think of these nuts.

I make two pounds for the holiday gatherings.  That lasts a couple of days.  I use equal parts walnuts, pecans, and almonds.  They are always a big hit with kids and adults alike.

Dessert.  I don't think there was a pie anywhere this season for us...But we had lots of other sweets around.  I made Mexican Wedding Cookies a.k.a. Russian Teacakes, but didn't get a picture of that.  I also made these Oatmeal Fudge Bars:

These are pretty rich, so I cut them into pretty small squares.  This is also the first chocolate recipe that I have tried where I also used a bit of espresso powder.  Now, I don't like coffee, nor do I like coffee-related desserts like Tiramisu or mocha ice cream.  But I keep hearing how just a little espresso powder 'enhances' the chocolate. So I gave it a try - and these are very nice.  The chocolate seems, I don't know...more sophisticated?  I will be trying other recipes using that espresso powder.

Well, that's about it for me.  Clearly it was a Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen holiday for me.  Darn them.  They keep putting out books and magazines and I keep thinking I don't need another one, but then I see the new issue and there's stuff in there I want.  Well, I do love what they do, and I recommend their TV shows and books to anyone trying to learn how to cook and/or bake.  They're on PBS as Cook's Country and America's Test Kitchen.

Hope everyone's holiday was lovely and filled with loved ones.  Merry Christmas!  and Happy New Year!

~ks

Soup's not dinner, Jerry. ~Kenny Bania

My husband and son would agree.  Not huge soup fans, particularly of the thinner ones.  And my husband really only enjoys them when the weather is cold.  Well, there are times when I could just LIVE on homemade soup and bread!  I didn't make bread tonight, but I did make a simple soup.

Ingredients for Sweet Potato Vichyssoise, and the cookbook.

Healthy Cooking for Two (or just you)

Looks like I didn't catch a picture of the completed soup by itself, so we start from the ingredients.

I made this once before and my seven-year-old niece tried it.  She's so cute...I guess the word "vichyssoise" is a lot for a kid to wrap her head around, so she called it "Sweet Potato Squishy-Squash".  I will never, ever forget that!  

This is a pretty easy soup.  It called for leek but I didn't have one so I subbed an onion.

Things get cooked.

Things get blended.

Pretty yummy way to get your beta-carotene.  Also, this cookbook is nicely set up with two sets of quantities for the ingredients - for two servings or four usually.  This is nice for smaller households.  My sweet potato weighed in at 1 lb, enough for the four-serving portion.  But I only defrosted 2C of chicken stock, the two-serving amount.  I figured I could just add water if I needed to, but it turned out pretty nice the way I did it.  It was thicker, so hubby liked it.  I did use butter and chicken stock, but I think this could be made very nicely as a vegan/vegetarian soup with just a couple simple modifications.

Now, that really isn't quite enough for dinner, unless your appetite is off for some reason.  However, I didn't have any meat defrosted, so I had to resort to an old fall-back.

Pierogies and sauteed onions.

Ok, that may not look like much but we hardly said a word during dinner....just a lot of quiet happy-noises.

The Victory Garden Cookbook

The pierogis are simple enough...buy at store, boil a few minutes, drain, saute in a little butter - and you don't even have to saute them if you don't want to.  You know what they are, right?  They're like fat little raviolis but stuffed with mashed potatoes and cheese.  How can you go wrong with that?  But I like a LOT of sauteed onions to go with them.

I love this cookbook - Marian Morash is so good about explaining all kinds of things about each major group of veggies.  She gives you gardening advice if you are so inclined to that.  She gives you a bunch of basic information about the item, basic ways to cook it, and some more complex recipes, too. I turn to this book for new ideas, and also for reassurance sometimes.  I think it's out of print (I heard they were going to reprint it at some point...not sure if it happened?)  Anyway, I've only seen it in a used bookstore once, whereupon I snatched it right up.  (I LOVE used bookstores for cookbooks!)

There go six medium onions...and I wish I had done more!

Here the onions are about done and the soup is waiting in the wings...ain't it purdy?

And there's the little dumpling darlings getting browned up a bit.


This recipe is vegetarian in the looser sense of the word, but it isn't vegan, since the pierogis had cheese in them.

This is a pretty easy put-it-together-quick sort of thing.  The pierogis could also be used as a side dish, but I never have.



~ks