Sasha's Kitchen: Corned Beef and Cabbage

I was inspired to make Irish corned beef and cabbage, after our friend Keisha made delicious braised corned beef and cabbage for a St. Patrick's Day gathering.  I bought a corned beef brisket from Fresh Direct, which is pretty much the only place to find such things other than around St. Patrick's day.  The meat was excellent quality, as I have come to expect from just about everything at Fresh Direct.  It even came with a seasoning packet which I added to the brine (looks like it contained peppercorns, bay leaves, mustard seeds and possibly juniper).  The recipe is quite simple and the corned beef brisket has an excellent flavor.  The key to this recipe, other than getting a good cut of meat, is cooking it slowly, so that the meat falls apart. I don't use a show cooker, but I found that simmering for four hours was perfect.  I looked up some recipes online before adapting to come up with this one.

Sasha's Corned Beef & Cabbage
1 corned beef brisket of 3-4 lbs
1 cabbage, cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups baby carrots
2 onions, peeled and quartered
3 sprigs of thyme
small bunch of parsley
1 tsp mustard powder
add 15-20 peppercorns and 1 bay leaf if not using the Fresh Direct seasoning packet

Add all of the ingredients above except for the cabbage to a large stockpot or slow cooker.  Cover the brisket and vegetables by an inch or so of water.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for two hours.  Add the cabbage and simmer for another two hours, before straining most of the broth.  Remove the onions, thyme and parsley before serving on challah rolls, or if you can find it, irish soda bread.

Sasha's Kitchen: Corned Beef and Cabbage

Sasha's Kitchen: Moroccan Beef Tagine with Honey, Apricots and Butternut Squash

I recently received a gift card from ShopRite to do some holiday grocery shopping, and discovered that ShopRite had a huge selection of Kosher meats that were perfect for Passover. I picked up a cut of Kosher pot roast, that looked to be perfect for cooking for a holiday meal. I decided to use it in preparing a moroccan beef tagine, a lovely, cinnamon and fruit flavored Moroccan dish that is named after the type of pot it is traditionally cooked in. When we were in Paris last summer, I had hoped to try some of the tagines at many of Paris's Northern African restaurants but we didn't have time, and the one I had really wanted to try was closed for August vacation.  Never mind, it's actually not that hard to make at home, and you will have plenty of leftovers from this meal to avoid having to cook the next night. This would be perfect with couscous, which I left out since it's Passover now. The process for cooking the meat, as well as the high quality cut of Kosher pot roast from ShopRite that I used resulted in a very tender dish. Yum! This is perfect for just about any holiday meal, and was a big hit with my husband.

Sasha's Beef Tagine
2 lb lean pot roast or shoulder roast
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp coriander
3 T extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 large cloves of garlic, diced
1 1/2 cups low sodium chicken stock
pinch of saffron threads
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 14oz can diced tomatoes
1 cup dried apricots, halved
2 T honey
1/4 tsp pepper
1 granny smith apple peeled and diced
1/3 cup almond slivers
2 cups chopped butternut squash

Cut the beef pot roast or shoulder roast into 1 1/2 inch cubes using a butcher's knife. Place in a bowl. Mix 1 1/2 tsp of the cinnamon with the ginger, salt, coriander and turmeric (be careful, as turmeric stains), and toss to coat the meat. Add 3 T of olive oil to your dutch oven and cook the mean until browned on all sides over high heat, for about five minutes. Add the diced onions and cook over medium heat for about three minutes, before adding the garlic and cooking for another minute. Add the diced tomatoes, chicken stock and saffron, and bring the mixture to a boil. I used a bottle of lovely Spanish saffron brought home from Madrid. Bring to a boil and the reduce to medium low, and cook, covered, for about an hour and a half, until cooked through and tender.

Strain out the meat/tomatoes/onion and reserve the broth. Return the broth to the pot. Add the apricots (after soaking the apricots first in hot water for half an hour). Add the butternut squash and diced apple, as well as 2 tablespoons of honey and a tablespoon of cinnamon. I have some great honey that was made by a family friend who raises his own bees and makes his own honey, so I used that. Simmer for about 20 minutes until the squash is tender (but not mushy) and the sauce thickens a bit. Then add the beef back to the dutch oven. Serve hot.

Sasha's Kitchen: Moroccan Beef Tagine with Honey, Apricots and Butternut Squash

Sasha's Kitchen: Oxtail Bourguignon

I love boeuf bourguignon. It is one of my favorite French dishes, and we had the best boeuf bourguignon when we were in Paris on vacation in August. I have made the dish before, but this time I decided to try a variation of the Bon Appetit recipe for oxtail bourguignon. I made a bunch of minor changes, the most significant that I substituted organic turkey bacon for regular bacon, because, being Jewish, well, that's how I roll (or, is it don't roll, as per the Big Lebowski?) Anyhow, if I was to use regular bacon for this recipe, you are supposed to use only the fat. However, turkey bacon is much healthier and does not use load's of far, so instead I used canola oil, and added the turkey bacon in as part of the dish. Oxtail is a great meat to cool with in a stew of this nature, and it is a nice, inexpensive cut of meat. I bought mine from Fresh Direct.

Oxtail Bourguignon (derived from this recipe)
8 slices of organic turkey bacon
olive oil or canola oil
3 large fresh parsley sprigs
2 large bay leaves
3 large fresh thyme sprigs
1 T plus 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 T butter
1/4 tsp nutmeg
4 lbs meaty oxtail pieces, trimmed of excess fat
2 cups chopped onions
2 cups of baby carrots
4 large cloves garlic, peeled; 1 minced and 3 left whole
1 3/4 cups beef broth

1 1/2 cups red burgundy wine (I used an inexpensive Pinot Noir)
1 lb baby bella mushrooms, cut into 1/4 inch slices
6 small shallots, peeled and diced

Cool the turkey bacon until brown and crisp. Transfer to plate, and add some canola or olive oil to the dutch oven. Place parsley, thyme and bay leaves in a sachet. Meanwhile, combine the melted butter and tablespoon of flour into a paste and set aside. This will be used later to thicken.

Combine the 1 1/2 cups of flour wtih the sat, 1/2 tsp of pepper and nutmeg and toss the oxtails in it to coat. Working in batches, sear the oxtail in canola oil until brown on all sides, about six minutes in total for each batch.

Add the chopped onions, carrots and minced garlic to the pot and saute for about 6 minutes until the onions are soft. Return the oxtails to the pot and add the bouquet, broth and wine. At this point, I also returned the turkey bacon to the pot, since I wanted it to be part of the dish (just too good to waste!). Bring to a boil, and then cover and simmer in the Dutch Oven until the meat is almost tender. This took about two and a half hours for me. At this point, mix in the mushrooms, shallots (I preferred mine diced rather than blanched), carrot chunks and whole garlic cloves. The return to a boil and then simmer for about 30-45 minutes.  Skim off any excess fat, and stir the flour paste into the stew. Simmer until the sauce thickens slightly, stirring occasionally for about 6 to 8 minutes. Season wtih salt and pepper and serve.

Sasha's Kitchen: Oxtail Bourguignon

Sasha's Kitchen: Osso Buco

For my most recent braised meat dish, I decided to make some osso buco California-style. This is another cookbook review recipe, which I found in Tyler Florence's new cookbook,  which I received as a guest at the ShopRite blog panel welcome dinner (and got my copy signed by Tyler Florence).

Anyhow, this dish is a traditional Osso buco, which also incorporates elements of california cuisine. The idea of topping wine-braied veal with a kumquat-cranberry gremolata is a bit unusual and takes some getting used to. But it is really terrific, and much to my surprise, it was a great complement to the dish.  I confess that I don't really care for kumquats (I don't like eating the skin, which is how you eat a kumquat), so I substituted clementines.  Thus, with my various adaptions, below is the recipe that I used to create this California-style osso buco.

Tyler Florence's California Osso Buco with Tangerine Cranberry Gremolata (adapted by Sasha)
1 cup flour
4 2 inch pieces of veal shank
extra virgin olive oil (I omitted using any butter with this dish)
1 onion, diced
2 celery stalks (diced)
zest of one lemon
6 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 bottle California Zinfandel (or Brunello, Cabernet Sauvignon)
2 cups low sodium beef broth
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes

Gremolata
1/4 cups pine nuts
1 cup clementine or tangerine slices
1/4 cup dried cranberries
2 T chopped parsley

Coat the veal with flour and season with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a Dutch Oven, and add the veal shanks, searing on all sides. Set veal aside.

In the same pot, add the carrots, celery, onions, garlic, bay leaves, lemon zest and parsley. Cook for about 15 minutes. Then, nestle the veal shanks back into the pot and add the bottle of wine. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, until the wine reduces by half.  Add the beef broth and the tomatoes. Cover the Dutch Oven and transfer into an oven heated to 375. Cook for 1.5 hours, then uncover the pot and cook for another half hour. The braised veal should be very tender, and fall off the bones.

To make the gremolata, toast and puree the pine nuts in a food processor. Fold in the clementines, garlic, cranberries and parsley.  Serve on top of the braised osso buco, in a bowl.

Sasha's Kitchen: Osso Buco

Sasha's Kitchen: Holiday Brisket for the Jewish New Year

This year, my husband and I hosted the traditional Rosh Hashanah dinner for the Jewish New Year in our home, inviting my in laws over for a home cooked holiday meal. A traditional Rosh Hashanah dinner includes elements of sweetness throughout the meal, to wish everyone a sweet new year. This year, we prepared several favorites that I have already shared here on A Kitchen In Brooklyn, including my mandarin orange caramelized almond salad, traditional apples and honey, my apple pie (which I make with local organic apples), and a new recipe for whoopie pies (coming soon!), among other foods.  The main course of this meal was my brisket, which I prepared using a first cut Kosher brisket of the best quality (very lean and delicious).  The different between my brisket and many other holiday briskets is that it is a loot lighter - a small amount of tomato paste is added to enhance the flavor and color, but the sauce is not heavy on cans of tomato puree like most other briskets. The result is delicious, light and enjoyable.

Sasha's Braised Holiday Brisket

31/2 to 51/2 lbs of first cut Kosher brisket
salt and pepper to taste
3 T canola oil, plus more if needed
2 large onions, diced
3 garlic cloves, diced
2 T tomato paste
1 1/2 cups good quality red table wine
4 1/2 cups low sodium chicken stock
2 bal leaves
1 lb of parsnips, chopped
25 baby carrots
1 T balsamic vinegar
4-5 sprigs of thyme
1/2 tsp rosemary

Season both sides of the brisket to taste with salt and pepper. Using a large dutch oven, heat the canola oil and sear the brisket on both sides for about 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove the brisket and set aside for now.  Add the onions and garlic to the pan (and a bit more canola oil if needed). Cook stirring on medium heat for about 5 minutes until the onion is soft.  Stir in the tomato paste and cook for another minute. Add the red wine, chicken stock, bay leaves, thyme and rosemary and bring to a boil. The add the brisket and vegetables to the dutch oven.

Place the covered dutch oven in the oven, preheated to 325 degrees. Cool until the brisket is done and falls apart with a fork - this took us about 2 hours for a 3 1/2 lb brisket, but could take up to three hours if you use a larger cut of meat.

Remove the brisket and the vegetables (you can discard the parsnips at this point, as they are only to add flavor). Let the remaining sauce stand in a pan for 10 minutes. The skim off the fat and reduce the sauce by half on medium high heat, for about 20 minutes. Add the balsamic vinegar to the sauce. Slice the meat with an electric knife (my husband does this part), slicing against the grain.  Serve immediately with the remaining vegetables and the sauce.

Sasha's Kitchen: Holiday Brisket for the Jewish New Year

Sasha's Kitchen: Food & Wine Pairing: Braised Beef Short Ribs With Wagner Vineyards Cabernet Franc

I'm not a huge red meat eater.  Most of the time, I am content eating pasta, chicken, veal, fish, grains, fresh fruit etc . . . As long as everything is farm fresh and organic, I don't need a ton of red meat in my died.   But every so often, once or twice a month, I get a craving for red meat.  I like my meat lean, fresh and organically raised, but yes, I do enjoy a meal centered around a nice cut of red meat every so often, whether it is steak, short ribs, brisket or braised stew beef like a beef bourguignon.  I am disappointed when my bi-monthly red meat indulgence is not a good lean cut of meat, because there is nothing I detest more than excess fat.  For last night's dish, I prepared boneless short ribs, which were a wonderful lean cut from Fresh Direct.  I braised the short ribs in a braising solution that was pretty much a mixture of a full bodied red wine and chicken stock, with plenty of herbs and vegetables mixed in.  I always add a small amount of tomato paste to my braises for flavor.  I generally avoid adding more tomatoes than that though, otherwise the sauce is too heavy and overpowering.

For tonight's dinner, I paired a full bodied wine to complement the red meat, the 2007 Cabernet Franc that I received from Wagner Vineyards, a Seneca Lake Winery which is well known as one of the top Riesling producers in the Finger Lakes, and in the United States as a whole.  I've tried a lot of great Finger Lakes Rieslings, but not yet a Cabernet Franc.  Cabernet Franc is similar to Cabernet Sauvignon, but buds and ripens a week or two earlier, which allows it to thrive in cooler climates like the Finger Lakes of New York, and Southern Ontario, as well as the Loire Valley (France).

Wagner Vineyards' 2007 Cabernet Franc was quite delightful.  It was a full-bodied wine that had hints of berries - mostly cherry and perhaps a bit of red currant.  It wasn't too dry, but had just a bit of a burst of cherry and a pleasant aroma.  I thought that it paired nicely with the red meat and the wine complement of the sauce.

Cabernet Franc Grapes: Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Sasha's Braised Beef Short Ribs

2 cups dry red wine (either use Cabernet or a red cooking wine)
2 1/2 quarts of organic, low sodium chicken stock or beef stock (I used chicken stock)
4 T canola oil
8-9 boneless beef short ribs (about 3 to 3.5 pounds)
salt to season
pepper to season
flour or matzo meal for dredging (use flour, unless you are doing this during Passover)
10 cloves of garlic, diced
1 onion, diced
3 large handfulls of baby carrots
2 stalks of celery, cut into small pieces
1 medium leek, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup parsley
2 tsp diced ginger
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup parsley
3 T tomato paste
2 sprigs of thyme
1 sprig rosemary

Heat half of the oil in a large Dutch Oven on medium high.  Season the boneless short ribs with salt and pepper and dredge in flour or matzo meal.  I used matzo meal so not to overtly break Passover (yet!, this holiday isn't lasting the full eight days for me though), but you would ordinarily just use flour.  Sear 4-5 minutes on each side until fully browned.  Set the meat aside on a plate.

Using the same pot, add the vegetables and herbs.  Add the remaining Canola Oil and brown the vegetables lightly for about 7-8 minutes.  Then stir in three tablespoons of tomato paste.  Add the wine, chicken stock and seared beef short ribs to the pot.  Bring to a boil and then cover the pot and put it in an oven that has been preheated to 350 degrees.  Braises the ribs for about two and a half hours in the oven.  When you open the pot, they should be tender and fall apart when you cut them with your fork.  You can serve with the sauce as is (we did and it was great) or you can reduce the sauce if you prefer a thicker sauce to accompany the meat.

Short Ribs

Sasha's Kitchen: Food & Wine Pairing: Braised Beef Short Ribs With Wagner Vineyards Cabernet Franc

Sasha's Kitchen: Miso Glazed Braised Chicken With Mushrooms

This recipe was very loosely and freely inspired by Momofuku's recipe for Miso Glazed Chicken.  However, I made so many changes, modifications, additions and adjustments that the final recipe is really a creation all in of itself.  My initial intention was to just follow the recipe, but in this case, my choice not to follow the directions and go off on my own served me well.  I'm quite pleased with my contributions.

This is a great recipe because it a very flavorful braised chicken, and i makes enough for several nights dinner all at once.  I made the Miso Glazed Braised Chicken last night for my husband and father-in-law, who was visiting after a long day at work, and we all loved how this recipe turned out.  I'm actually not a big fan of chicken - generally I consider chicken breasts to been too dry and not flavorful enough and usually prefer veal, beef or lamb.  However, this recipe used braised chicken thighs and was both juicy and flavorful by the time it got to my plate.  This might be my current favorite chicken recipe that I have experimented with.  It is definitely a winner and will be demanded again soon in my house!

Miso Glazed Braised Chicken (very loosely adapted from Momofuku)
2 packages Empire chicken thighs (with skin and bones), about 5 lbs
2 T Canola Oil
2 medium sized onions
1 pint package sliced mushrooms
2 portobello mushrooms, sliced
2 T diced fresh ginger
2 T diced garlic
4 cups low sodium chicken stock
1/2 cup mirin
2 T rice wine vinegar
2/3 cup soy sauce
1 cup miso paste
2 tsp Sesame Oil
5 large leaves of collared greens or mustard greens (I used mustard greens)

To prepare the recipe, first preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Place the chicken thighs (I had eight in my packages) on foil lined baking sheets and bake for about 40 minutes until slightly golden but not cooked through.  While the chicken is cooking, dice the onions, mushrooms and garlic and saute in the Canola Oil for about 8 minutes.  Then add the miso, soy sauce, sesame oil, chicken stock, vinegar and mirin to your Dutch oven and bring to a boil, stirring until the miso paste is dissolved.  Add the chicken and mushroom mix to the Dutch oven.

Lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees and braise the pot with the chicken and braising solution in the oven for about two to two and a half hours (mine went for close to two and a half hours) until the chicken is tender and falls off the bone.  Add the shredded up greens about ten minutes before completion of the braising to the pot.  Serve hot and enjoy!  The final flavor is slightly sweet because of the Miso but incredibly succulent and flavorful.

Sasha's Kitchen: Miso Glazed Braised Chicken With Mushrooms

Molly D's Kitchen in Seattle: Shoyu Chicken

For the first three years of college I ate in Haverford’s dining hall. Despite the institutional portions and budget the staff tried hard to please the students, so there was a decent salad bar and some notably crave-worthy baked goods (anise bread—who knew?) and desserts (those seven-layer bars!), but it wasn’t enough, at least not for me. Unlike friends from New Jersey or Boston, I only got home to Hawaii twice a year, and I knew I could stick it out and be okay if I could only taste some local flavors, to have a bit of Hawaii in Philadelphia.

From home I brought bags of li hing mui and lemon peel and tried not to go through them too quickly. (At least I never had to share: I learned that no one else wanted any after the first hall-mate who gamely tried a piece spit it out immediately.) I nibbled at the edges of my culinary heritage by going out for Japanese or Thai or dim sum, and for a few moments in those restaurants I felt the warmth of cozy belonging. While studying for finals I sequestered myself in my dorm room and ate long rice from a small rice cooker, sprinkling in jarred nori furikake for flavor. It wasn’t ideal, but it gave me what I needed at the time.

When I eventually had my own kitchen, I learned to travel into Philly’s Chinatown for ingredients. They were still fairly basic, but I had a much wider variety of noodles and rices and some of the other items that I had been carting back from home. I was only just beginning to learn to cook, so I made a lot of rice and fried Spam, waiting for trips home to satisfy most of my cravings.

Finally (and after I had moved to Denver) I was ready to be a bit more ambitious, and one of the first recipes I tried was for shoyu chicken. It’s extremely easy to make, the ingredients can probably be found even in small-town supermarkets, and it works well as leftovers. While I didn’t eat much shoyu chicken growing up, it’s a staple in my house today. My recipe is a minor variation on this one, from the excellent recipe portion of alohaworld.com.

Shoyu* Chicken

6 skin-on** chicken thighs

5/8 c soy sauce

1 ¼ c water

¼ c brown sugar

3 green onions, cut into 2 inch pieces

3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

2 slices ginger, crushed slightly

1. Place chicken in a large pot skin side up. Add all other ingredients and bring to a rapid boil. Lower heat to medium low and cover with lid.
2. Cook for an hour, turning chicken over halfway through to cook on other side.
3. After full hour, taste the sauce and adjust to your liking. If it’s too sweet, add more soy sauce; if it’s too salty, add more sugar.
4. Chicken is done when it is just about falling off the bone. You can leave it in longer than an hour if it’s not quite there yet.
5. When it is done, I recommend removing chicken from pot, turning the heat up to medium, and reducing the sauce down a bit to make a better sauce. Serve with rice.

*When I was growing up we called all soy sauce by its Japanese name, shoyu.

**You can take the skin off some of the chicken thighs if you’d like to cut back on the fat, but do leave some there for flavor.

Molly D's Kitchen in Seattle: Shoyu Chicken

Sasha's Kitchen: Boeuf Bourguigon In Only Four Hours

Boeuf Bourguignon and Julia Child.  The two kind of go together, and invariably draw references to the recent movie Julie and Julia.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  For my purposes, I like to cook and experiment with all types of cooking and dishes, whether they are part of a movie or not.  So eventually, if you cook enough, you are going to try Boeuf Bourguigon, as well as  other French classics like Coq Au Vin (as prepared by Christina in Budapest).  In my case, it has nothing to do with a certain blockbuster movie.  I prefer to think of it as today, I decided to do some French cooking and prepare Boeuf Bourguigon.

To prepare this recipe, I worked with a modified version of the Julia Child original recipe, which I used as a reference.  I made a bunch of further changes, some of which made the dish better (in my humble opinion) and some of which made it easier to prepare.  The recipe I am going to post may not be exactly the authentic Boeuf Bourguigon as approved by the French masters, but it is my version of the dish and one I am very happy to share with others.  I think it is a reasonably authentic and classic Boeuf Bourguigon, and the recipe is one that is relatively straightforward to follow.  My goal was to rework a basic recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon that is almost as good as the original, but can be done in approximately 3-4 hours, rather than 8-10 hours.  This is not to say there's not value in the original long-version, but simply that there's value and reasonableness for a more typical family with other things going on.  So, keep reading below, if you want to learn how to make a delicious Sasha-classic Boeuf Bourguigon.

Stew

12 oz beef fry bacon (a healthy alternative to regular bacon for the health-conscious and those who do not eat pork products, but feel free to substitute with regular bacon if you prefer)
1 T canola oil (or extra virgin olive oil)
3 lb lean stewing beef, cut into 2 inch cubes
2 large handfulls of baby carrots
1 onion, diced
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 T flour
1 T tomato paste
3 cups red wine (chianti, bourdeaux, burgandy, or high quality red cooking wine)
3 cups beef stock (approximate; see below)
1 tsp diced garlic
1 sprig thyme
2 sprigs rosemary
2 bay leaves

Braised onions
18 pearl onions
1 1/2 T unsalted butter
1 1/2 tsp canola oil
1/2 cups beef stock
salt and pepper to taste
2 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs parsley

Sauteed Mushrooms
1 lb diced mushrooms
2 T butter
2 T canola oil
4 T brandy

First, prepare the beef fry bacon by sauteing in a dutch oven (Le Creuset!)  in 1-2 T of canola oil.  Cook until crispy, the same way you would prepare bacon.  In a separate pan, saute the onion and carrots in olive oil, for about 10 minutes, until the onions are tender. Remove the bacon and keep the fat/oil from the bacon and use to sear the beef chunks lightly.  Before searing the beef, coat with the 2 T of flour.  I seared very lightly.  Return the bacon to the Dutch Oven, and add the carrots and onions. 

Next, to the Dutch Oven, add the wine and the beef stock.  You can add more or less beef stock, to get the right amount, but make sure the total amount of liquid covers the meat, just barely.  I used store-bought organic beef stock, and that makes a delicious dish.  You could, of course, prepare your own beef stock from scratch, but this takes hours, and I really didn't feel like spending the time today - although perhaps on another day when I had specifically allocated the entire day to the project.  It still was very good tasting so I don't think I sacrificed too much here.
Add the tomato paste, thyme, rosemary, garlic, bay leaves, salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil and then put in the oven, preheated to 325 F.  Cook for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours, until the beef is tender. 

In the meantime, here is how I prepared the mushrooms:

Add the 2 T of butter and 2 T of canola oil and allow the butter to fully melt aat high heat.  Cook the mushrooms about 5-8 minutes.  When the mushrooms are just about done, add the 4 T of brandy and cook for another minute.

To prepare the braised onions, dice the onions and heat the butter and oil in a skillet.  Add the onions and saute for ten minutes over medium heat.  Add the 1/2 cup of beef stock and simmer for 40-50 minutes.

When the meat is tender, remove the Dutch Oven from your oven and empty its contents, collecting the sauce separately.  Distribute the mushrooms and onions over the meat.  Skim the fat off the sauce and simmer the sauce until reduced to 2 1/2 cups of a sauce thick enough to coat a spoon.  If the sauce gets too thick, add a little bit more of the beef stock.  Keep boiling if you need to to reduce the sauce to get it just right.  I served the dish with the sauce, and seasoned with the parsley.  I think I just made French cooking quite a bit easier, but still fun and tasty.





Juliachild

Sasha's Kitchen: Boeuf Bourguigon In Only Four Hours

Sasha's Kitchen: Ancho Chile Braised Lamb With Blue Corn Tortillas

One of the things I love most about living in America is the richness of its melting pot of cultural traditions, and its inherent diversity.  When each of our families came to America, we all brought our own cultural traditions, and those traditions gradually mixed into a constantly evolving American identity - and an ever changing American cuisine.  This reshaping of the American culinary identities, based on the cultural traditions of people from all parts of the United States (as well places outside of the United States, as the world becomes more global) is one of the reasons that I started this food website with different writers from places all over the United States and Canada.  Tonight, I noticed similar themes expressed in the epic Iron Chef America Battle tonight between Bobby Flay and Mario Batali that I watched while preparing this.  (We can save my obsession with the White House Kitchen Garden used in those recipes for another day).  I love cooking using all of these different traditions combined with traditional cuisine and not only my own heritage (Ashkanazi Jewish, Eastern European and Swiss).

Tonight's recipe uses one of the new featured indedients for the month of January on Akitcheninbrooklyn.com, lamb, prepared in a traditional way, by braising a boneless leg of lamb, mixed with flavors of the American Southwest.  If you are interested in other ways to prepare lamb, you can find my New Years Eve recipe for rack of lamb with fresh herbs here.  Inspired by Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook, I prepared a similar southwestner-inspired lamb, rubbed with ancho chile powder (which I must emphasize, is not spicy at all).  Chef Flay's recipe (which differs significantly from mine, but certainly inspired me) is on page 172 of his cookbook.  Both my recipe and his are attempts to combine a pretty traditional dish - leg of lamb - with flavors of the southwest, in a way that makes sense from a culinary-taste perspective.

Here are the ingredients that you will need for this recipe:

1 three pound boneless leg of lamb, trimmed of fat (I bought mine from my favorite butcher and Italian Market here in Park Slope, M&S Prime Meats)
3 T canola oil
two big handfulls of baby carrots
lots of ancho chile powder - at least 4-5 T (note: this is not spicy at all)
3 stalks of celery, cut up
1 large onion, diced
4 1/2 cups low sodium Chicken Stock
3 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 cup creme fraiche (or lowfat sour cream if you prefer)
Fried blue corn tortillas
Parsley for garnishing
Scallions for garnishing

First, like Bobby Flay in his recipe, I rubbed the leg of lamb on all sides with the ancho chile powder.  I used the powder sparingly to creat a full coat, so I cannot begin to quantify how much I used.  Ancho chile powder is not spicy - it is made from dried polambo peppers and has a raisin like taste.

Next, I heated the canola oil in my dutch oven on medium high heat, and seared the lamb on all sides, which took about 10 minutes.  Then I added the carrots, celery and onions to the pot and mixed for a minute or two.  Next, I added the braising solution - in this case the chicken stock, and seasoned sparingly with the thyme, bay leaf and rosemary.  I then put the entire pot in the oven at 350 F and cooked for about an hour and a half, until it was fork tender. 

Next, I removed the lamb and the vegetables and prepared the sauce.  (Actually, my husband Brad did this part, while I worked on the spiced-pumpkin creme brulee that I will be writing about in the next couple of days).  To prepare the sauce, we strained the liquid from the braising solution into a saucepan and boiled until reduced to a sauce for about 20 minutes.

As you can see from the picture, I served the dish in a blue corn tortilla, with scallions, parsley, creme fraiche and cojita cheese (which Bobby Flay described as a firm-textured Mexican cheese that is today generally made from cow's milk).  The carrots and celery are much to tasty to go to waste, and make a nice side dish.

You can purchase blue corn tortillas and fry them to serve, or if you prefer, it also makes a tasty lamb dish on its own with the vegetable side.

Sasha's Kitchen: Ancho Chile Braised Lamb With Blue Corn Tortillas

Sasha's Kitchen: German Street Pretzels & Braised Beer Short Ribs (from Marcus Samuelsson)

As part of doing this project, I am trying to experiment with new types of cuisines, new culinary experiments and new cultural influences in my food. I had heard quite a bit about the Chef Marcus Samuelsson, and I decided to purchase and review his new cookbook, New American Cuisine, in a series of posts over the next several weeks.

Marcus Samuelsson, a well known American chef, was born in Africa (Ethiopia) in 1970 and, after tragically losing his mother at a young age, he and his sister were adopted and raised in Sweden. He currently lives in the United States, where he is currently an advisor to the Institute of Culinary Education, in New York. He came to New York in 1991 to serve as an apprentice at the Scandinavian restaurant, Aquavit, where he eventually became executive chef at the age of 24. He subsequently has published numerous books exploring his cultural and culinary roots, including a Scandinavian Aquavit Cookbook and an African cookbook.

Samuelson's new cookbook, A New American Cuisine is intended to be a cross-section of the culinary influences that make up the melting pot that is America. It includes influences of his multi-cultural background, as well a mixture of the the variety of cuisines and ethnic traditions that have become part of American society. What's interesting is that his recipes aren't really German, Japanese, Ethiopian, Creole or French per se, but they often mix different culinary influences and it is this that make them distinctly American. Really, then there is no such thing as American food without adding a cup, dash and a pinch of the different ethnic and cultural traditions that make up America. We have become such a melting pot that we don't even notice it that our cuisine seamlessly mixes these influences, just like we do in our everyday lives.

With that background, it is not surprising that the President invited Marcus Samuelsson to be the guest chef at his first state dinner (yes the very same state dinner that was crashed by the wanna-be reality TV stars). The link above includes a full discussion of the state dinner and menu.

I decided to try two of his German-American Dishes: Beer Braised Short Ribs (page 277) and Caraway Pretzels (page 117).

Beer braised short ribs are a dish I have been meaning to try as I am not crazy of the other short rib braises that I have tried that use a very heavy tomato sauce. Samuelsson describes his beer braised short ribs as having been influenced by the Germanic traditions he discovered in Milwaukee, but they are purely American (rather than simply German) because of the Asian influences in his recipe.

The recipe, found on page 277 of his new cookbook is as follows:

2 T red Chile paste
3 pounds beef short ribs
1/2 cup of soy sauce
4 cups beer (I used a lager, Blue Point Toasted)
q tsp salt
3 T olive oil (I used truffle olive oil)
2 red onions, diced
one three inch piece of ginger
3 bay leaves
4 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup mirin
2 T ketjam mains (An Indonesian soy sauce; I substituted regular soy sauce)
1 T honey
2 scallions
1 T butter
I also added a couple handfulls of carrots, which were delicious with the braise




First, I smeared the chile paste on the short ribs, as Samuelsson instructs, in a baking dish. I added a mixture of the beer (1 cup of beer, although he only says to use 1/2 a cup, and 1/4 cup of soy sauce). I allowed this to marinade for 4 hours, rotating the ribs once.

Next, I heated the truffle olive oil and sesame oil in my Le Creuset Dutch Oven (I love Le Creuset and it is so pretty; I wish it was cheaper). I added the garlic, ginger, bay leaves and onions and sauteed. Then I added the ribs, beer, rest of the soy sauce, chicken stock and mirin and brought to a boil. We cooked for about two and a half hours at 350 F (he says 300 F but we wanted it done a little faster).

After the braise was done, the ribs were removed and we prepared the sauce by mixing 2 cups of the remaining liquid with 1 T honey, 2 T soy sauce, another 1/2 cup of beer, 1 tsp salt and the butter. Then I added the scallions. The sauce was delicious with the ribs and had a beautiful color. You could taste the flavors of the beer, but without the alcohol. This was great because it didn't have the heaviness of most tomato-based braises.




We also made his recipe for Caraway pretzels, on page 117, which are supposed to be similar to German street pretzels. These were delicious and came out perfectly the first time.

1 T dry active yeast
1 T dry active yeast
2 T sugar
2 T brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp plus 1 T salt
4 cups flour
1 T baking soda
1 egg plus 1 T water for wash
2 T cheddar cheese
1/4 cup caraway seeds

First, I combined the yeast (I used more - 2 packages of 1/4 oz each, and I suggest that you do the same), water and sugars and let the yeast activate for a few minutes. Then I combined this mixture in artisan mixer with the flour and 2 1/2 tsp salt to form a dough.



Samuelsson says to let this rise overnight - but I didn't want to wait that long, which is why I added the extra yeast and my dough rose just fine in about 3 hours. The I divided into 10 balls (he says 12, but I only made 10 perfectly sized pretzels). I rolled it out and shaped into pretzels after printing out a picture of a pretzel from the Internet to use as a model.

Then I let them rise for about 45 minutes, as he instructs in his cookbook (they didn't change much), and then boiled in water with the baking soda, much like is done with bagels. I boiled for 20 seconds or so on each side. Before baking at 400 F for 20 minutes, I did the egg wash and sprinkled with healthy amounts of lowfat cheddar cheese and caraway seeds.

20 minutes later, the end result were some delicious German pretzels, which were a big hit. We have some friends living overseas in Germany now who are visiting for the holidays and I plan to test them on our friends tomorrow night and see how they measure up to the real thing (if my husband doesn't eat them all first!).






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Sasha's Kitchen: German Street Pretzels & Braised Beer Short Ribs (from Marcus Samuelsson)

Molly D.'s Kitchen in Seattle: An Introduction, and Oxtail Tacos

Introduction to My Kitchen

Hi from Seattle! I was all set to write my recipe for today, but as I thought about it I realized my cooking style needs a bit of an introduction:

I'm a lazy cook. I don’t want to plan my grocery shopping way ahead so that I can follow a recipe, and I don’t want to wash a mountain of bowls and measuring implements when I’m done.

I have a diverse background of food influences and I like trying new foods. My refrigerator door is full of Asian condiments, I have over 20 types of sweetener, and I’ll buy unfamiliar items because they sound interesting. But a home kitchen can only stock so much, and many items only stay fresh for so long, so I don’t count on having on hand standard recipe items like parsley and chicken breast.

I love understanding how techniques and ingredients work and what they do for a dish--what to put together and how to do it. In most cases I’m happier doing something on my own than following a recipe.

What this all adds up to is that my cooking tends to be thrown together based on what I have and what I feel like eating. Sometimes what I make works and sometimes it doesn’t, and I hope that as I develop my cooking sense, I’ll make fewer mistakes and more great meals! Today's post is one experiment that worked.

Oxtail Tacos

This afternoon I took the bus to Pike Place Market, one of my favorite places to find unexpected ingredients, and spent several hours wandering through the maze of little shops. By the time my feet hurt, my bag was full of chocolate bars, fresh corn tortillas, little bags of ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, a palmier, a jar of brined lemons, Turkish delight, ground chipotle and pasilla peppers, piloncillo, and a new-to-me hot sauce.

When I got home I was starving, and I figured I should start in on the huge stack of tortillas. I decided to combine them with the oxtails I’d been thawing in the fridge, and while I’d never cooked oxtails before, I had been told to go with braising, which was also perfect for chilly late fall. I know relatively little about Mexican cooking and even less about Latin America’s wide variety of peppers, so the pasilla was also an experiment. As usual, I put what I had on hand into the braising liquid. The combination and cooking method might not be authentic, but I chose flavors that would complement each other and taste good reduced into a rich, savory sauce.

Here’s the basic recipe; measurements are guesstimates.

Ingredients

3 oxtails

1 leek, cut into big chunks

2 or 3 cloves garlic, sliced

1/4 c rice vinegar

1 T ground pasilla pepper

1 T ground chipotle pepper

1 tsp. cinnamon

2 tsp. salt

Corn tortillas

Directions

1. Stand oxtails on their ends in a medium-sized pot/saucepan with a lid and put all other ingredients except tortillas into the spaces around them.
2. Pour water into pot until it reaches halfway up the sides of the oxtails.
3. Place on heat and bring to boil, then turn heat down to low and cover pot.
4. Come back every so often to make sure water hasn’t all boiled out and to turn the oxtails over once or twice during cooking.
5. After two or three hours (this recipe involves minimal work but a lot of waiting), the meat should be tender enough that you can push it off the bones into the reduced liquid.
6. Spoon chunks of meat into tortilla. Dip each bite into a vinegary, spicy hot sauce to cut the richness and add heat. So good.

 Serves two.

Notes on the Ingredients

• Vinegar: There wasn’t enough flavor initially, so, inspired by adobo, I added the vinegar. I’m sure it would be fine with a different type of vinegar or without any at all, but I wanted tang without extra flavors, and rice vinegar was the mildest I had in my pantry.
• Pepper: At first I used only the pasilla, but I found it too mild so I added the chipotle for heat and smokiness. I’m sure other pepper varieties or Latin-American-inspired spices would taste great, just different.
• Leeks: I had leeks on hand, but onions would probably serve just as well.
• Cinnamon: I had just bought the cinnamon and remembered it from other Mexican dishes so I thought I’d throw it in, though I can’t tell if the amount I used made any difference.
• Corn tortillas: I love flour tortillas, but I suspect they’d be a bit bland and doughy next to the deeply flavored oxtails. Also, I understand that there are several ways to soften tortillas, and I went with steaming because it was convenient. We ate our tacos over the still-simmering pot of oxtails, so I softened each tortilla one at a time by laying it over the little tripod of oxtail bones and covering the pot. Depending how much steam there was, the tortilla was tender but not yet gummy after anywhere between 30 seconds and a couple minutes. (This is also why there are no photos of the finished, plated dish--there were no plates!)

Notes on the Final Result:

• The oxtails turned out great. The braising liquid reduced into an incredibly rich and savory sauce for the chunks of meat.
• The best surprise was that the leeks totally collapsed into the richness of the sauce. I’ve never been a huge fan of leeks, but each time I picked one out of the sauce it felt like a treat.
• The fat and long simmer really tamed the heat of the pepper, so the final product was way less spicy than when I tasted it earlier in the cooking process.
• This recipe serves two, but it doesn’t make a lot of meat. Because it’s so rich you only need a couple tablespoons of meat per tortilla.

Molly D.'s Kitchen in Seattle: An Introduction, and Oxtail Tacos

Sasha's Kitchen: Braised Oxtail - Sweet Spiced Oxtail, Duck Confit Salad, Goan Spiced Crabcakes and Better Guacamole

Tonight's dinner is a recipe I first made sometime around late 2007 when I first bought the Tabla cookbook, by Floyd Cardoz, who specializes in American food infused with Indian spices at his New York City restaurant, Tabla.

Like most of his recipes, this one infuses some great Indian spices and has a strong and wonderful cinnamon flavor which complements the oxtail well.

What is oxtail - it is exactly that the name implies. Interestingly, although oxtail has become somewhat of a culinary delicacy in recent years, it is very affordable. It's not something I have been able to find in most manhattan or brooklyn meat markets (hence I have not made it since late 2007). However, fresh direct now carries it. I purchased about 2 lbs of oxtail from fresh direct earlier this week which I have now defroasted, for about $13.

The recipe, on page 159 of Cardoz's book, requires a spice blend of cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns, coriander, cumin, mustard seeds, chile, turmeric and a small amout of cayenne). I suggest adding about half of the suggeted amount of the peppercorns - they're a bit strong for my taste.

In addition to the oxtails, the braise also requires canola oil, onion, garlic, celery, carrots, ginger, red wine, tomato paste, brown sugar, vinegar, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves. These are all pretty ordinary ingrediants for any braise. However, what makes this recipe unique is the spice mixture. This particular recipe, like much of Indian cooking is a bit on the sweet side, but not overpowering. And it's an interesting mix between the Indian spices and the oxtail.

I should mention that there's a couple other recipes in this book that I highly recommend - and which I will include in this entry, since I have made both within the last two weeks - goan spiced crabcakes and the waldorf salad with duck confit.

As far as the crabcakes, this recipe involves a tomato base that incorporates some interesting spices as well (cumin, corinander, turmeric, cayenne, ginger and garlic). I made this recipe awhile back for our foodie friends Eric and Lauren, and Eric indicated that essentially this is a homemade variation on a tomato curry, meaning that the mixture of the spices themselves is how you make curry. This was certainly news to my husband who loves this dish but had always professed to hate curry. The recipe then calls for lump crabmeat, as well as a small amount of whitefish mouse. The whitefish mouse is easily made in a miniprep food processor (one of my favorite kitchen toys) by pureeing the 3 oz of whitefish with egg and egg white. In addition, salt, pepper, lime juice and panko bread crums are incorporated into this recipe.

There are a number of ways to serve this - the book suggests serving with guacamole, which they refer to as an avocado salad (page 18 of the book). I've long made my own guacamole in a mojete and I have always made it with 2 avocados, 1 tomato, some onion, a couple tablespoons of lime juice, a but of jalapeno to taste (depending on how spicy you want it), and dashes of salt and pepper. However, since reading the Tabla book, I satarted adding a teaspoon of cumin to my guacamole and it's wonderful - it just enhances the flavor in a truly wonderful way. I feel like I finally perfected guacamole. The mojete is essential - you cannot make real guacamole without one. It maximizes the surface area of the avocado or something like that, and enables you to puree the avocados and mix the guacamole the way it is suppose to be made. I believe we got ours from crate & barrel. The mixture of the crabcakes and avocado/guacamole is wonderful and the two flavors complement each other well.

Other ways I have served it include a red pepper sauce which I have made (and one day will blog about, I am sure), or various types of chutney which are certainly worth experimenting with. I am sure one day I will have to devote an entire blog entry to various chutneys, but that is best saved for another day.

On to the duck confit salad. This is basically an american recipe ( a waldorf salad) with a bit of a twist. This is found on page 29 of the Tabla cookbook. However, I have not followed most of the recipe at all, but simply use it as a guide. The first step is making the dressing - a spice orange juice reduction. Basically, I reduce the orange juice with star anise, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. This creates a very flavorful orange juice reduction. The dressing calls for adding a chicken stock/ginger/shallot reduction as well - I don't get this at all. It adds very little to the dressing and in my opinion, it not worth the time spent reducing the chicken stock. So, I skipped this part and simply mixed the OJ reduction with some canola oil and that's my dressing. Then, I cut up some gala or honeycrisp apples for the salad. Recently, I've been getting these from the local farmers market here in Park Slope. Then I added the duck confit, walnuts and a bit of Chaat masala to the salad and that's it. I don't usually bother with the cilantro, chives, chile and other ingredients as I do not feel they are necessary. This salad is a great dinner salad and it works as a weekday meal since it doesn't take a very long time to prepare.

Sasha's Kitchen: Braised Oxtail - Sweet Spiced Oxtail, Duck Confit Salad, Goan Spiced Crabcakes and Better Guacamole