London Broil

I love London broil. I improvised the marinade but this is based on my dad’s recipe.

1 “London Broil”

1 cup oil, preferably olive oil

½ cup vinegar, in this case mostly red wine vinegar with a few shots of some nice ginger infuse vinegar I had

¼ cup soy sauce

As much franks as you like

½ cup some kind of alcohol, preferably strong. I used a mix of vermouth and gin.

The thing with “London Broil” is that it originally described a method of preparation rather than a cut of meat. Things sold as such are often a wide variety of lean steaks. This is important as the preparation requires that you know which way the grain of the meat runs, which can actually be a bit tricky to find. If you can’t figure it out, ask your butcher, but usually it is cut in such a way that it makes it a bit obvious.

Submerge your steak in the marinade, preferably in a sealed bag with the air squeezed out. My dad does this for about 2 hours. I didn’t do the full time, but I think that it is a good idea if you have the time.

While it is marinating, find a broiling pan. This is a pan that is slotted to allow drippings to, well, drip. When the meat is almost done marinating place the pan in the oven and turn on the broiler, with the rack placed relatively high, though maybe not mere inches from the heat.

When the oven has had a few minutes to heat up, get your meat out of the marinade and slap it on the hot broiling pan and sprinkle with pepper and salt. You should leave it in five minutes per side per inch. My meat was about an inch and a half thick and I left it for only 6 minutes per side. It was maybe a little underdone. I like rare meat so I just left it as is, but if you want a nice crispy exterior it’d be better to follow the directions to the letter, in this case more like 7 ½ minutes per side. If you like things extra crispy, try brushing the meat with honey.

Now this is important. First, let the meat rest. Conventional wisdom says ten minutes. It really is key. I left it just five minutes and it made a world of difference; go for the full ten if you can stand it. The second vital thing is the slicing. The cuts sold as London broil tend to be lean and fibrous. By keeping the meat very rare and slicing the meat thinly, perpendicular to the grain, it ensures that the muscle fibers are clipped short, and therefore the meat is tender instead of stringy. The classic London broil is cut at a 45 degree angle to the board. This is not strictly necessary per se. what is necessary is that it be 90 degrees to the grain. Most cuts sold as London Broil are prepared in such a way that the only way to cut perpendicular to the grain is to go for the 45 degree angle, but be aware that this isn’t necessarily the case. Again, if you aren’t sure, ask your butcher, or just experiment, dragging your friends and relatives along for the ride, until you get it right. Like me.

For good slicing equipment is really key. You want a good slicing knife that will cut the fibers without ripping or crushing the meat. I have often found that a good bread knife works very well for this, and Alton Brown swears by electric knives. However I recently discovered a very nice, very care-worn 8in filleting knife in my mom’s kitchen that took an amazingly sharp blade with only a little encouragement from my sharpening steelpenis. I tried it on the meat after getting a bit frustrated with the house’s newest and shittiest bread knife, and was very pleasantly surprised. If you have a good, think filleting knife, and you can get it sharp, the thinness and slicing power will more than make up for the lack of tearing action. This may be a good way to go.

A nicely made and sliced London Broil is ridiculously versatile, and if there are only one or two diners will last you for several days if you incorporate it into wider meals. It is also ridiculously cheap. I paid six bucks for something like a two pound cut, by far the cheapest in the store and it was not for lack of quality. The beef was flavorful and tender when properly prepared.

For this first meal of Broil I ate it with shredded cabbage and lettuce with franks over rice which had been drizzled with toasted sesame oil, salt, and pepper.

Read the next entry for what I did with the leftovers. Wahahahhahaa.  

some kinda pasta...thing

I made this. bitches.

1 1/2in ham steak, cut into 1 1/2 in cubes
1 onion, cut into half centimeter cubes
3 or 4 cloves garlic, depithed and minced
3 leaves radicchio or small cabbage
2 stalks well trimmed celery
1/2 cup dried ditalini
2 tbps olive oil
1/2 tbps butter
pepper, rosemary, sage to taste
1/2 tomatoe diced

cook the pasta, set aside. heat the oil and butter in a bigger pan with a good amount of pepper and the spices. add the onions. when the onions begin to go translucent add the garlic. after a minute or so add the ham and stir in, then let cook for a minute or two on a medium high heat. when the onions start to caramelize, stir for about a minute, then add the red cabbage and the celery. stir until the cabbage is well wilted then stir in the tomatoes and pasta. stir for a minute then serve hot, ideally with fresh grated parmigiana cheese. in a bowl. with a spoon. naked.

leftovers: the reckoning

everyone has their own favorite leftover recipe. undoubtedly most of you are wrong. here's two i did today.

turkey omelet.

when using up leftovers , and even in general, most people favor the white meat. this is an inexplicable, illogical choice. juicy white meat is a thing of joy, but it is as rare as the giant rat of Sumatra. when eating day old turkey the instances of juicy white meat shrink. this is why our glorious french god invented gravy and cranberries. this recipe is a thing you can do with white meat other than wishing it was dark meat.

2 tb turkey fat skimmed from stock, below.
3 eggs, beaten, with some  milk, maybe two tb, season with rosemary, thyme, garlic salt, pepper to taste
1/4 cup broccoli casserole, or a sane amount of gravy, nuked for like 30 seconds. i should probably do the recipe for the casserole first but i didn't cook it.
like a handful of white turkey meat in small chunks, also warmed up a bit.


preheat a big heavy pan, then melt the turkey fat into it. when it has heated to the point where water jumps when you sprinkle it in the pan, add the eggs and turn the heat down to medium. when the eggs start to form the shell, lay the casserole onto a less done part, then sprinkle on the turkey. fold over and let cooking complete, slide onto your plate.

turkey soup.

stock:
half an onion cut up roughly,
6 cloves of garlic
1 stripped turkey carcass
drippings from the turkey not used in gravy or pot pie. maybe like a quart or two, including some veggie stock and some wine.

soup:
half a bag of pearl onions, maybe like 10 or 15
4 white mushrooms
4 crimini mushrooms
a head of garlic
like 2 cups of small chunks of white turkey meat
2 potatoes cut up to half in pieces
the heart of a celery bunch and 2 stalks of celery
2 bay leaves
half a bunch of fresh dill
rosemary, thyme, parsley, pepper
1 c of some kind of small pasta

to make the stock:
strip the carcass. cut up the onion and take the piths out of the garlic. trow into a large pot with the turkey renderings and the carcass, and turn on the heat to high. when it starts to boil fill the pot with water. boil for  a few hours. go watch a movie or something i don't care. when it has reduced by an inch or two, strain off the carcass and the veggies and discard. return the stock to the pot and let cool, then skim off the fat into a container. save and use instead of butter when cooking.

soup, there it is:
peel the pearl onions and the garlic. cut the garlic in half to depith. trow into a big stock pot with maybe a half cup of olive oil and turn on a medium high heat. cut up the mushrooms into sixths, cut the celery into 1cm disks. throw in with the onions etc. stir a lot. throw in the cut up potatoes. start adding the stock. throw in the turkey meat and the spices to taste. cut up the dill and throw that in throw in the rest of the stock and fill the pot with water, simmer until reduced by an inch. taste that shit and see if its good. throw in the pasta. when its done eat it, ideally with a salad because lets be honest, you haven't had anything fresh in days and you are starting to smell of death.

whisking like a mofo

thanksgiving leftovers extraordinaire: turkey pot pie.

reserve 2 cups of drippings, stock, and wine from yesterday.
2 stalks of celery, cut small
2 potatoes, cut medium sized
like 8 smashed garlic cloves
6 mushrooms cut into like 6?
two handfuls of leftover turkey
half an onion
1/4 cup flour, packed
1/4 cup butter
pepper to taste
your favorite pie crust and topping

first make roux.

preheat oven to 425

melt the butter in saucie over a medium heat. when it starts to steam add the flour and start whisking. whisk. WHISK! you will eventually smell the smell you smell when you make kraft mac and cheese. keep whisking and cooking for a while. let the roux start taking on a light brownish color, and start smelling a more nutty flavor. take it off the heat. intermittently keep whisking it while you do all this other stuff to keep the fats and flour together.

basically boil all the veggies in the reserved drippings etc. if you want to do this right, brown the onions and garlic and mushrooms in a pan first but fuck it, im hungry. moving on.

by now the roux should be getting toward room temperature. add a bunch of black pepper to the broth. add the turkey to the broth. turn off the heat, and stir in until the boiling stops. get the roux into the broth using a rubber spatula. stir in until everything tightens.

here's how you should do the crust: seperate.  i cooked everything together. this was an error. still tasty. not a critical one. i was hungry. shut up. you whore.

get your favorite pie crust. put it into a tin or glass pie thingy. poke with fork, or weigh with beans in tin foil. bake for like ten minutes max. when its done, fill with the filling. now top with more crust, or use biscuits. bake until its done, probably ten more minutes.

serve that shit. eat it and love me. LOVE ME FOR THE DELICIOUS FOOD.

thanksgiving food

my wife apparent and i did thanksgiving with her grandmother this year. her grandmother is a classy lady and we collaborated on the food.

turkey

someday soon i will brine a turkey but there wasnt time this year. we just rinsed the turkey and stuffed it and put it on 250 the night before, at like 2:00pm she turned up the heat and pulled it out at 2.30. this worked pretty well but we had to reheat it at like 6  which made the skin a bit tough, but it was still crunchy so i was happy. we must have gotten like two quarts of liquid out of it which was way too much for gravy so we'll be making soup tomorrow. be that as it may, the gravy was amazing.

i based this on alton browns gravy recipe, but he dosen't give these measurements, or many measurements at all. thus my rewrite. one word about wine. when you cook with wine the quality of the wine is important. we used a shitty rose, and it was pretty good, but a nice red would probably have been nicer. the other thing is in alton brown's recipe he uses all the liquid from the turkey. as i noted, there was way too much, so i think very little of the wine ended up in the gravy. when you do it, try to keep the deglaze liquid seperate and then add equal parts deglaze liquid and drippings liquid.

1/3c flour
turkey drippings
1c red wine
2c broth

take turkey out of pan, pour out liquid into a container. let it separate. if you have a fat separator, pour off 1/3c of it. if not let it settle and skim off the same amount. now put the roasting pan back on the stove on medium heat and add wine and stock, then whisk until all the burney bits come loose. add into the drippings, or else put aside. not in the roasting pan or in a sauciee if you have one, add the skimmed fat over medium heat. add the flour slowly until it is all in, and just whisk likek a mofo. let the roux toast a bit until it reaches a color you like, then begin adding the drippings and the deglazing liquid. whisk it in slowly until the gravy is a good consistency. feel free to add salt pepper and herbs, but i thought itr was just a great, turkey bomb in my mouth as is.

carrots. dis grandmother hates carrots, and so does di, so they just basically steam or boil them and serve. i saw room for an improvement. i found this recipe and it was pretty good, though i think it might have been better toasted in the broiler a bit to add some channelization. ftw.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/orange-glazed-carrots/detail.aspx



Ingredients

2 bags carrots
1/4 cup orange juice
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 pinch salt
Directions

Place carrots in a shallow saucepan, and cover with water. Boil until tender. Drain, and return carrots to pan.
Pour orange juice over carrots, and mix well. Simmer over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in brown sugar, butter, and salt. Heat until butter and sugar melt.

i was put in charge of the sweet potatoes with marshmallows this year, as they didn't do it in previous years.  again, time was pressing, so i shamelessly ripped this off the internet. the only thing i did differently was that i used 2 tbps of eggnog instead of vanilla.

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1850,146170-245195,00.html

SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE WITH
MARSHMALLOWS
8 average size sweet potatoes
1 tbsp. vanilla
3-5 tbsp. sugar (to taste)
1/2 stick butter
1/4 tsp. cinnamon to taste
1/4 - 1 tsp. nutmeg to taste
1/4 c. orange juice to taste
Marshmallows (lg. or miniature)
Cinnamon sugar (opt.)

Boil (or bake) sweet potatoes until done. Remove peeling from HOT POTATOES and mash well, removing all strings. Add all ingredients but marshmallows and cinnamon sugar; mix well. Spray or grease lightly Pyrex or Corning dish. Put a layer of potatoes, layer of marshmallows until filled. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar for added flavor. Bake about 350 degrees until HOT. Remove from oven and put marshmallows on top. Place again in oven to brown lightly. Serves 10 to 12.

Chicken Pot Pie

I LOVE chicken pot pie. for me it is a prime comfort food. It is pretty simple in principal but has a bunch of steps that can take a while. A key part is the crust. My mom makes the best crust, and I've been meaning to steal her recipe for a while. Yesterday I asked her about it, and it turns out shes been using the recipe from James Beard's American Cookery for years. So here's how I made chicken pot pie. I had a lot of filling left, u can use this as chicken soup base for later meals.

filling

2 tb olive oil

1/4 cup white wine or vermouth

1 chicken carcass (just the bones and skin and cartilage etc.)

2 large chicken breasts, chopped

2 stalks celery with leaves, sliced

1 medium onion, minced

2 shallots, minced

2 carrots, sliced smallish.

1 head broccoli, cut smallish

1 head of garlic, peeled and smashed and sliced.

1 cup flour

crust

2 cups sifted all purpose flour (I didn't have this in the house, I used 1 cup all purpose, and 1 cup bread four.)

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup butter

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

aprox 1/4 cup cold water

egg wash (optional)

1 egg

cup water

so start by stripping the carcass and simmering it in a pan or pot. I have this thing from La Crusette and no one can tel me what to call it. is is shallower than a standard stock pot but deeper than a skillet. At any rate it was deep enough for the chicken and mom simmered that thing ion there for like 12 hours. it was good and chicken-y.

So now make the crust. Put the flour and salt in a bowl. I used Kosher salt, and this was an error, though it did make the crust crunchy. Use table salt for this one. fr rilsies. Next blend in the fatts. I did it the fork method, which takes a lot of wrist strength. I used to make short work of this but I was hurting last night. some might suggest since I have been seeing my gal saturday I may not have been exercising my wrist as much. That would be a shameful suggestion. Shameful.

You can also use a pastry blender or two knives. 

After you are done with the blending the particles should be roughly pea sized. now get the water and add it in a little at a time, stirring it in in-between. When you are done the dough will still be crumbly and wafery and not look done. I ended up adding too much water. When you've added all the water, turn the dough out onto wax paper or tin foil and squeeze it together. If it holds together you are done. If not, maybe add some more water.

When the dough is done, divide the ball into two halves. Wrap one up and put it in the fridge. Put the other out onto a clean, floured surface. Flour a rolling pin, and roll the dough in flour. Roll out the dough until it is 1/4 in thick. Grease a pie tin. fold the dough into quarters, then unfold into the pan. A key thing is to not handle the dough too much. Human hand oil is bad for pastry dough. trim down the edges and put with the other dough ball. take some tin foil and place it in the uncooked crust, and then fill it with weights or uncooked black beans or uncooked rice. Preheat the oven to 400, and bake for 15 mins.

Strain the chicken stock into a stock pot and toss the carcass. In the pot you had simmered it, put some olive oil and fry the onions and the shallots until golden, then add the rest of the veggies. When they are starting to look a little cooked add the wine or vermouth. Stir in, then start adding the stock until it is just covering the veggies. Bring it to a simmer and add the chicken. Keep simmering. Add the cup of flour to a cup of water and stir until smooth, then add to the simmering mixture. Simmer for 20 or so minutes. 

By not the Pie crust should be done. Take out the tin foil and weights. Take the unused dough from the fridge and roll it out to 1/4 in thick. Ladle the filling into the cooked crust. As before, fold the uncooked dough into quarters, the unfold on top of the pie. Trim, then smash the edges down with a fork, and poke vents in the top. 

The oven should still be at 400. Place in the pie for 20 mins. Make the egg wash. After the 20 mins are up, brush the top of the pie with the wash, then bake another 10 mins, but check after 5.  

Eat that shit with a spoon.

heaven in my face

This may be the best thing I ever made.

continuing my tradition of cheating, I have shamelessly ripped off Alton brown's excellent guide for searing scallops. you basically cant go wrong. In my defense, it is less a recipe than a very basic guide. see here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/seared-scallops-recipe/index.html
i also kind of riffed on this white wine sauce: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1655,142187-240198,00.html

This has been one of those meals where I would not change a thing. so fucking good. there may be those who say i used too much butter. fuck you man. taste this then tell me that.

i suppose you could probably use margarine. if you must be a DICK about EVERYTHING. Seriously though, i think the success of this is down to the liberal use of quality butter, a very very nice wine, and the fact that if you served Alton Brown's seared scallops on my fucking dick then it would be the tastiest dick you ever ate.

11 big sea scallops
8ish shrimp? lets say a half pound, maybe a quarter.
brick of butter, i used this awesome butter fromt he local russian food store, i think krowka is the name and masto wiejskie is the russian words for whipped sweet butter.
cup of white wine, i used barklay classic savangion blanc
1 large onion, cut as small as you cam. minced would be good, but dont let me make you take out the food processor if you dont want to. i did cm squares.
4 large mushrooms cut into four slices and then cut in half.
1 zucchini cut into very thin discs then cut in half.
1 lb whole wheat rigatoni
5 scallions cut small.
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt
garlic

steam the shrimp, set aside

boil the pasta in generously salted water, strain and set aside

sear the scallops in 1 tb of the butter and the olive oil, per Alton brown's recipe. set aside, preferably with the shrimp.

in the same pan as the scallops, put in as much garlic as you want and the onions. let them start to take on some color, and throw in the mushrooms and the zucchini. stir fry them a little with a tb of butter, then add the wine when everything has started to wilt a bit. add 2 tb of butter, cover, and let simmer for 15 mins.

put the pasta in a bowl, put the shrimp and scallops in as well. when the sauce finishes simmering, throw it on. stir, and top with the scallions.

drink the wine, put the food in your face, be fucking merry. so goddamn good.