Pot Roast, Italian Style My Way

Pot Roast, Italian Style

The key to a perfect pot roast is to cook the meat until it is meltingly tender but not so much that it looses its flavor.  To accomplish this, keep your heat as low as possible and begin checking the meat at two hours.  You can use a boneless chuck roast but I think the bone adds body and flavor to the sauce.  Cooking dishes like this one makes me like winter.

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  1 4-5 pound bone in chuck roast
• 
  
  salt
• 
  
  2 tablespoons salt
• 
  
  4 ounces pancetta, chopped
• 
  
  1 large red onion, chopped
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  2 garlic cloves, minced
• 
  
  1 cup chopped celery
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  1 cup chopped carrots
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  1 14-ounce can stewed tomatoes, drained and tomatoes chopped
• 
  
  1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, drained and tomatoes chopped
• 
  
  3 sprigs thyme
• 
  
  1 bay leaf
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  1 1/2 cups red wine
• 
  
  3 cups veal stock
• 
  
  2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 
  
  2 tablespoons flour
• 
  
  salt to taste

Trim off excess fat from the chuck roast and season with salt.  Let sit at room temperature for one hour, up to two.  Heat a large saute pan over medium high heat, add the oil and sear the meat on one side until well brown.  With two tongs or a large spatula, turn over and brown the other side well.  Place meat in a large dutch oven and set aside.

Keep at least 2-3 tablespoons of fat in the pan and add the pancetta and slowly cook to render the fat and ultimately begin to brown the bacon, about 5 minutes.  Add the onions and cook for 2 minutes over medium heat.  Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds before adding the celery and carrots; cook for two more minutes.  Add both tomatoes, the thyme and bay leaf and simmer for an additional minute.  Add the vegetable mixture to the chuck roast.  Deglaze the pan with the wine and reduce for three minutes.  Add the veal stock, bring to a boil and reduce for an additional three minutes.  Add the wine/stock mixture to the chuck roast and bring the mixture to a boil.  Lower the heat and place a parchment lid over the vegetables and meat; cover and simmer, checking periodically for three hours, or until completely tender.

When the meat is tender, turn the heat off and let the roast rest in the sauce for half an hour. Remove the meat to a bowl or large plate and set aside while you finish the sauce. Strain all of the vegetables from the sauce; set aside. Defat the sauce by pouring the broth into a fat separator, pour the broth into a saucepan. 

Reduce the sauce until full of flavor and begins to thicken.  If the sauce is not thick enough and the flavor is perfect, mix the two tablespoons of butter with the flour and add the mixture, a few teaspoons at at time into the boiling sauce and whisk.  Let simmer for a few minutes before adding more.  It will take the flour a bit of time to thicken the sauce.  You may not need all of the butter/flour mixture, use just enough to thicken the sauce to coat the back of a spoon.  You can add a few of the vegetables mixture back into the sauce to create some texture. Use a light hand, too many vegetables will reduce the flavor of the sauce.

 Now it is time to prepare the meat.  I remove the bones, sinew and fat from the meat before I reheat and slice it.  As you can see the raw meat is broken down into sections divided by the bone, fat and sinew.  Once the meat is cooked I remove all of that to leave only the good pieces of meat.  Once you slice the meat your guests will not have to deal with the inedible parts.  This is not a necessary step but a nice one and really quite satisfying to do.  I then reheat the sections in the sauce and once hot, I remove and slice them into serving pieces.  You could cook the roast up to placing the sections into the sauce and refrigerate for a few hours up to a few days.  As with any braise, the flavor only gets better as the meat sits with the sauce.  Yet, I served this up right after I cook it last Sunday and I could not imagine it any better.

I hope you try and enjoy this wonderful Sunday Supper entree, my family sure did.

Tomatoes in Winter???

Grilled Hanger Steak with Shoestring Potato Salad 
*
Grilled Acme Herb Slab

I cannot believe I bought hydroponically grown tomatoes at the farmers market yesterday and paid good money for the "strawberry" variety which I normally dislike. I must have been channeling the summer of 2009 and was struck by the luscious red color of the fruit on the bright green vines that they clung to. I did not even try one (too full from huevos rancheros at breakfast) and just trusted the vendor's pitch that the strawberry variety was the sweetest. When asking my family what they wanted for dinner last night I suggested pork with sweet potato french fries and my husband immediately said, "hanger steak with shoestring potato salad". "Hummmm", I thought. That really is a summer meal that calls for sweet, suculent farm fresh tomatoes in the salad, but I do have those hydroponic tomatoes from the farmer's market. Those tomatoes that taste like the medium they are grown in; water. Yet, my husband doesn't ask for a steak very often and the thought of a juicy piece of meat made me say "perfect, that is an excellent recommendation". I immediately ran into the kitchen and tried one of the strawberry tomatoes and was floored. They were absolutely delicious! Kind of like the surprise you get eating a good strawberry when the tempurature is way to cold outside. I was ecstatic! I already had some arugula from the lobster risotto I made Friday night so all I needed was the hanger steak, some good quality blue cheese and a few russet potatoes.

The key to making good quality shoestring potatoes is cutting the potatoes in a thin UNIFORM manner (I use a japanese mandolin; the Benriner), a large heavy pot to fry the potatoes in (I use a Le Creuset), filling the pot no more than one third full of oil (I use canola) and finding the sweet spot with your flame so it keeps the oil around 350 degrees. Use a thermometer to check the temperature initially then place the potatoes carefully in the hot oil. Place a handful and a half in at a time, too many potatoes will cause the oil temperature to drop too much. After the initial drop and boil, the oil will settle down and you have around four more minutes of cooking time. Once the potatoes take on a brown hue, take them out of the oil and place them on a sheet with paper towels or even better yet, a sheet topped with a rack so the potatoes have air circulation and will avoid getting soggy. I just read that in Thomas Keller's "Ad Hoc" cookbook and forgot to do it!! Until you know your flame's sweet spot for frying, check your oil's temperature before you drop in your next batch.

I grilled the hanger steak on my stove grill but it would be lovely over a wood fire. That is just a dream of mine, I really never cook over wood, or even charcoal for that matter, since I am spoiled with my range and my outdoor gas grill. But I know it would taste EVEN better with wood!

I cooked the steaks for a total of seven minutes, three minutes on each side on a high heat, then went one more minute thinking it still needed more cooking. I was wrong, it was a bit overdone for my liking and should have trusted my instincts (or what my husband told me) of three minutes per side. I let the steak rest for five as I tossed the salad with those marvelous tomatoes, arugula, blue cheese with a classic French vinaigrette, sliced the meat and sat down for dinner. We had left over bread (herb slab from ACME) from our clam appetizer last night and that bread, broiled was SO GOOD, I hated to waste it. I grilled some, brushed it with a bit of Italian olive oil my daughter brought home from Florence and sprinkled it with a bit of fleur de sel. Not recommended for this dinner, too many starches, but I just could not resist!

I hope you try this recipe from Susan Spicer's, "Crescent City Cooking". Please visit the blog post, "Grilled Steak with Shoestring Potato Salad", for a my complete secret to frying shoestring potatoes and for Susan's recipe.

Paella!!!

Seafood, Chicken and Chorizo Paella

Flank Steak with Harrisa

Beet Salad with Goat Cheese and Pecans

Ceasar Salad with Parmesan and Homemade Croutons

If someone asked me what my signature dish was, I would have to say Paella. It was the first dish my husband and I cooked together in college. He swooned me by cooking pheasant (that he shot and had in his freezer), rice pilaf and broccoli with hollandaise sauce, after a study session. Seeing that he liked food, I bought him a cookbook and it was in that cookbook, Julia Child and Company, that we found An American Paella in a Chinese-Style Electric Wok to cook and the rest is history.

Since then we have had years of consecutive Paella parties where we have woke up with with way too many people sleeping in our living room. Paella was the first dish we cooked at our christening dinner party in Barcelona, Paella was the main entrée for the Teacher’s Appreciation Luncheon and Paella was a station at my friend’s wedding. When I tell my family I am cooking paella, everyone comes home.

It was last summer that we cooked paella for my cooking partner’s 50^th birthday. She did not want to celebrate her birthday. I had to talk her into a party. All my suggestions of fun things to do fell on deaf ears. To me, a birthday is a REASON to celebrate, whether it is a luncheon, dinner cooked by loving friends or a dinner out. She loves to bike so I twisted her arm to a weekend party encompassing all of the above along with her favorite, a grinding bike ride. My partner in crime is an Iron Man triathlete and I ride with her and THAT is my claim to fame. Anyway, her 50^th turned from nothing, into a great, three day weekend of daytime outdoor adventures and nighttime kitchen fun.  You know, kind of like Woodstock.

The highlight of the weekend was us at my stove cooking two paellas side by side! I was famished after a 40 mile, difficult bike ride, so the dish we created tasted better than ever. My husband cooked flank steak with a harissa sauce and our friends helped make a Caesar and beet salad. Her birthday was a weekend to remember!

I have changed my paella a touch since I first made it, changed it enough to just perfect it! I hope you enjoy all the recipes!

Paella

All colors of wine goes with Paella. Just make sure it is not too strong of a red. We like Pinot Noir, a Rioja, a Napa Chardonnay, even a French Rose

Serves 8

8 chicken thighs
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound chorizo (Spanish cure), cut into ½ inch slices
1 cup onions, chopped
1 ½ cups peppers (I use a mix of red, orange and yellow
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1 tablespoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup vermouth or dry white wine
4 cups chicken or shrimp broth (Swanson's is just fine but if you have some shrimp shells, a      nice, salted shrimp broth is lovely)
2 cups rice (if you can get Spanish rice, by all means use it but arborio rice will also work. Uncle Bens is fool proof.)
16 large shrimps, prepped, and seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper
6 large scallops, prepped and seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper
16 clams washed
Any other fish you want like squid, mussels, halibut, etc., just do a piece for everyone, do not crowd.
1 cup chopped, peeled and seeded, tomatoes
1 cup garbanzo beans
1 cup cooked or defrosted peas or green beans or a mixture of both

Heat the olive oil in a large paella pan over medium high heat and sear the chicken on both sides. Remove chicken and add chorizo; sear well on one side only, remove and add to chicken. In the fat from the chicken and chorizo, saute the onions two minutes or until soft, add the peppers, garlic and all the spices and cook until spices are aromatic, two more minutes. Add the wine and let it reduce for one more minute and add the chicken or shrimp broth; bring back to a boil. Add the chicken, cover with either a lid or piece of foil (if your paella pan is too big for a lid), reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes or until the chicken is almost done. Add chorizo. At this point you can let the mixture rest until you are ready. You could actually cook this recipe up until this point and refrigerate the mixture until you are ready.

From here on out, you have 20 minutes to a half an hour to finish the dish. I like to have my paella pan ready to go with all my accompaniments; rice, shrimp, clams, fish of your choice, tomatoes, garbanzo beans and peas or green beans. Bring your liquid back to a boil and add rice making sure all the rice has settled evenly on the bottom of your pan and not hanging out on top of the chicken, I shake the rice down into the broth. After that you want to stir the rice as little as possible, really not at all, to avoid making risotto and bringing out the starch. Open boil the rice until you see rice starting to float to the surface. This should take around 5 to 7 minutes. Add all of you fish, pushing them evenly down into the broth to cook. If you are cooking the clams and mussels in the paella, I place them hinge-side down, half way into the broth. (If you cook them separately, add a little of the wine in the pan to steam them and add them in at the end along with the broth, maybe the broth a little earlier, so it can absorb). Turn the heat down to low and strew on the tomatoes, and garbanzos and just a bit later, the green beans and peas. You are just heating up the garbanzos, green beans and peas. I then start playing with the fish, pulling out the fish that is cooked and placing in on top of the rice, on the side of the pan, like a warming tray. If it is getting to dry add more stock or wine, if it is too soupy, be thankful, the broth is WONDERFUL and in Spain many even ask for their paella "wet". Do not stir the rice though. If you feel the rice is not cooking properly for some reason, pop it into a 400 degree oven for a few minutes. Once the rice is al dente and the fish is cooked and vegetables hot, turn off the heat and cover the paella with a tea towel while you dress your salad. Serve directly from the paella pan with a Caesar salad with homemade croutons to soak up all the wonderful paella juices!!

Grilled Steak with Shoestring Salad

If I get one recipe out of a cookbook that I use as a family or entertaining dish on a regular basis, I consider that book an absolute winner. Susan Spicer’s, “Crescent City Cooking” is one of those books. I have had this book for close to two years and it is still one of my go to cookbooks when I need inspiration. I do not need to look in the index to find a recipe, the crumpled page, full of misplaced ingredients is my bookmark. From that book I cook on a regular basis (and as I am going through the chapter heading to find these recipes I am thinking, “I need to cook THAT”!) Salmon with Choucroute and Gewurztraminer Sauce, Pan Roasted Quail with Dried Cherries and Pinot Noir Sauce, Roasted Duckling with Orange-Cane syrup Sauce, Bayona Extra-cheesy Spoon Bread and Butternut Squash Spoon Bread Soufflé. A friend loved the quail with the cherry sauce and I immediately directed her to the bookstore to buy the book! I do change that recipe around a bit since I have a particular way to make a sauce but it is the Grilled Steak with Arugula, Tomato, Blue cheese and Shoestring Salad that I want to address in this blog.

I made this dish for another friend and the husband LOVED the shoestring potato salad. Ah come on, who does not LOVE shoestring potato fries alone, but this recipe tosses them in with wonderful bitter lettuce, sweet garden grown tomatoes, savory-salt of blue cheese and the juices of a good hanger steak to make the perfect combination for an entrée. It really is a bit of pure heaven on the plate but creating the perfect shoestring potato is a bit difficult. There is an art to that and I helped some friends through the process with a series of emails that I will share here:

1. Use russet potatoes, not a cooking potato like a red, Yukon or white.

2. Once you create the shoe strings, pop them into cold water to remove some of the starch. Dry them before you place them in the oil or you will have a splattery mess. I use a Benriner Japanese mandoline to create thin even sized shoestrings. VERY important if you want them crisp and evenly browned.

3. Make sure your oil is at 350 degrees before you put the potatoes in. I actually use a deep fry thermometer to check the temperature and pop the thermometer in after each batch to make sure the temperature is right before I drop the next batch in.

4. I limit the amount of potatoes I put in the hot oil, I think it is about one potato per batch. One large potato should be good for the two of you, two will create a bit of leftovers which are great and will keep crisp in a zip lock bag.

5. I also use a lot of oil. I strain and save the oil in the refrigerator for the next time. BUT the amount of oil in the pot is extremely important. Use a large, heavy pot and do not fill past 1/3. If you do the oil will boil the oil over and you will have a complete kitchen mess.

6. I cook the heck out of them. It will take at least 4 to maybe 6 minutes to get them crisp. Some of them will be brown. I test them as I am cooking them.

7. I salt them RIGHT after I take them out of the oil. I think the salt permeates and sticks to the potato when it is hot.

8. In the past, I have made them beforehand and stored them at room temperature but with the wet weather on Friday, they became soggy. Maybe if I placed them into a Ziploc after they cooled that would not have happened. In the summer I made them and had NO PROBLEM so this was a new thing for me. So on Friday, I just popped them back in the oil to recrisp and they were absolutely perfect! Actually, most chefs do a twice cook approach for a French fry, cooking the first time just to cook the potato through, letting it rest then giving it a quick crisp. So if they come out soggy again, just bring your oil up to 350 and reheat for 30 seconds or so. You do not want them to get too brown.

So now that you know the scoop about frying shoestring potatoes, here is Susan Spicer’s wonderful recipe:

Grilled Steak with Arugula, Tomato, Blue Cheese and Shoe String salad

(A good red wine with this might be a Rhone style Cabernet Franc or Grenache to compliment the saltiness of the cheese and fries or a fruit forward Cabernet. If you like white, try a Gruner Veltliner or a Riesling)

The Steak

• 2 steaks of your choice, I use hanger steak
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Preheat your grill or broiler. At least 10 minutes before cooking, pat the steak dry with paper towels, rub it with a little olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Grill or broil on high heat to brown and sear the meat, then lower the heat slightly to finish cooking to desired doneness. If you like it rare, you probably don’t have to lower the heat, just get a good sear on both sides and pull it off. If you like it medium-rare, you will want to cook it about 3 minutes per side for a 1-inch-thick piece of meat.

If you serving rib eye, strip or filet, serve it whole. For hanger steak, it’s best to let it rest about 3 minutes, then slice it across the grain into thin slices.

Shoestring Salad

• 1 russet potato
• Oil for frying
• Salt
• 2 handfuls of arugula
• 1 ripe tomato, diced (in winter, just put in extra arugula)
• Classic French Vinaigrette
• 2 tablespoons blue cheese

Peel the potato, cut it crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick slices, then cut into thin matchsticks, or use a Benriner mandoline. Rinse the matchsticks thoroughly in cold water, then drain and shake or pat thoroughly dry in a kitchen towel. Heat 2 inches of oil in a deep saucepan over medium heat until it registers about 350 degrees. Fry the matchsticks to golden brown and crisp, 4-6 minutes, stirring a little to cook them evenly. Drain on paper towels and salt lightly. When they’ve cooled completely, you can store them in a Ziploc bag or an airtight container, and they will stay crisp for several days.

Place the arugula and tomato in a bowl and dress with the vinaigrette. Toss, crumble in the blue cheese, and add a big handful of shoestrings. Toss again and serve the steak.

Classic French Vinaigrette

• 1 tablespoon minced shallots
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
• 3 tablespoons red or white wine vinegar
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• ½ to ¾ cup olive oil or a combination of almond and olive

Whisk together the shallots, mustard, and vinegar in a small bowl and add salt and pepper to taste. Whisk in the olive oil in a slow, steady stream. After you’ve added ½ cup, taste the mixture. It might be perfect for you, but if it still tastes a bit acidic, add the remaining ¼ cup olive oil. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.