Patio Steak or My Freaky Purple Marinade

A Corning We Will Go . . . Part 2

Remember him? Last saturday I rubbed him down with a lovely spice mixture and put him in the refrigerator? Do you have one in your refrigerator? Did you flip him every day?

No? Well that's okay, baby steps . . . maybe you have this instead

You can start from here too.  Just insert an image of a day glow red piece of nitrate laden meat in for my nice au natural meat.

The meat is gritty with spices and you want to get them off of there. They've done their work! Their legend will live on.

Throw it in a nice big beautiful pot! You want one that will allow your meat to be covered with water!

Cover it with nice cold tap water and if you're feeling frisky a bay leaf. If you're dealing with the pink stuff then go ahead and use the little seasoning packet! Bring it to a boil.

Action shot! Brisket is tough and I'm going to cook it till it's "less tough." I don't want it falling apart because that's not conducive to slicing! When you've got it simmering throw a lid on it and let it bubble for a couple of hours. You want to be able to stick a meat fork in it easily.

If you need to get to work I'd recommend throwing this puppy in a crockpot on low with about a quart of water. It'd do the work all day long!

Two hours later it looks gorgeous!

But it is still seriously tough! So I flipped it over. I have trouble leaving things be, but we've discussed that before right? Put a lid on it and let it go some more! Two hours later it was good to go. It held together as one piece of meat but the surface meat started to separate when I stuck a fork in it. So I threw the meat in a pan in the fridge.

Brisket cuts so much better chilled! It's so beautiful! I could break out in song . . .

It slices so pretty! Oh my german half wants to break out the pumpernickel and saurkraut right now!

So I threw it in an oven safe pan and poured a few cups of broth from the pot over it. Go ahead and put it in the refrigerator until 20-30 minutes before you're ready to eat. About the time you start to cook the potatoes, carrots, and cabbage you'll want to throw it in the oven to reheat at about 325 deg F.

This meat is so tender and lean. It retains all its beefy character. It has the saltiness and aroma of a good corned beef. That broth is meaty and rich. It's the perfect sauce for your potatoes. I do cook those little red potatoes in the broth. Then I cut them open, butter them and pour ladle fulls of broth all over everything! The corned beef is full of wonderful salty tang. The spices and herbs rubbed into it balance the salt with wonderful aromas, they're our bitter component you know! This meat cries out for a sweet foil thus cabbage and carrots are a must! I like to steam them separately in plain water so that they're as sweet as possible. We also enjoy some nice beets with our corned beef too! Their metallic earthy sweet flavor pairs extremely well with the meat and the orange, fuschia, green, white combination on the plate sets my heart all aflutter! Oh and I've got to have some horseradish sauce too. The tang and heat are the only flavor component missing!

Erin Go Braugh!

A Tale of Two Beef Roasts . . .

A few of the fellas from church go on an annual "retreat" to enjoy some fellowship time. It also kicks off the Men's Bible study season. They fish, canoe, enjoy bathroom humor, and generally relax. Being men the food is very important. Well, it's important that there are large quantities of it at least. I prowl the grocery stores for months trying to get good deals on food for them and I always try to find some steaks that fit a church budget.

I was absolutely delighted to find them a giant strip loin for $4.29 a lb! Delicious I thought! How wonderful! big juicy strip steaks for all the men! We're from the Kansas City area and strip steaks are beloved.

I was going to be popular! I was going to be admired!
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Dear One came home from the trip.

The first question out of my mouth. "How was the food?!"

Dear One "That was NOT strip steak." There was a deep look of consternation on his face. He continued . . .

"It was a brisket . . ."

I ran screaming to the freezer.

After unloading all 13 cubic feet of it. I found two roasts . . .

Dear One tried to comfort me . . . "The label had fallen off, remember? It was sort of funny since you know we had the guy who manages meat packers and of course Bob who BBQ brisket all the time."

This was not funny! This made it worse! They don't even look alike . . . the guys or the roasts!

I know there are a few delicate few of you out there who are saying. Beef is beef? Two great big hulking pieces of meat, right?

No, no, no, sadly, no.

That strip steak is a marvelous meaty wonder. Tender, delicately marbled with fat that melts beautifully at low temperatures. A strip steak is delicious from well done to medium rare.

Not so much a brisket.

Brisket is full of large layers of heavy tough fat. Fat that doesn't melt until it's hit 212 F for an hour or more. Oh and you better reach that 212 F nice and slow or else.

OR ELSE!

You'd rather have jerky for a meal.  Jerky would be easier on your teeth. The brisket is full of long, strong, muscle fibers that while flavorful are tough as nails unless cooked properly.

Cooking brisket is the crown jewel of professional BBQers with years of experience and thousands of dollars of equipment. It's really not possible to cook a whole brisket properly over a campfire with a few hours notice.

Dear One said it was okay--they made do.

I suspect the peanut butter and jelly was put to good use.

Bombay Sliders

Can you tell I've been fascinated with east Asian flavors lately? I had difficulty coming up with a name that didn't involve the word "curry!"

I started off with a pound and a half of ground beef. It wasn't terribly lean just your average 80%. I've got a lot to feed!

Add a little salt.

Add some nice green curry paste! You can use my recipe or you can buy a can of it at your local Asian grocery.

Mix it in well! I used my hands. They're so good at mixing heavy things.

Make up some little patties! I was doing this earlier in the afternoon so after I made the patties I let them sit in the refrigerator for awhile. If you were working with something like ground turkey I'd think this step would be absolutely necessary.

Now for a sauce! Get yourself some GOOD plain yogurt. This type has a layer of hardened cream at the top. Mmm! Stir the cream back into the yogurt where it belongs.

We'll need about a cup of it.

Now give it a taste. Its so good I could faint. You can even paint it on your face for an at home acid exfoliation. My skin loves it. I had big plans for this yogurt. A lot of plain yogurts are gelatinous and have no flavor other than sour milkiness. Those yogurts need lots of "help" to form a good sauce. They need grated cucumber, salt, garlic etc. to give them flavor. This stuff, really needs nothing!

I want some mint. At this time of year this is the only mint I have around the house.

A little dried mint in the yogurt is all that's needed. It'll give the yogurt an extra hint of brightness. A little POW.

I'm heating up my griddle! My sliders are too tiny for the grill. They'd fall through! If I had to I guess I could try putting them on skewers.

Throw them on the griddle!

Flip! They're shrinking because I have the heat up a little high. But heck how would the family know to come to dinner if I didn't set the smoke alarms off? They're my own personal dinner bell!

The necessary accompaniments! A little raw purple onion would be delicious too. If your curry paste didn't have enough onion in it. It'd be tasty in the yogurt sauce.

My hubby doesn't like raw onion though . . . It's a flaw . . . I couldn't handle it if he was perfect though. There's only room for one perfect person in this house!

That would be the cat.

We added these to our sandwiches too! They're salty, spicy, rich, and have a texture not unlike a beautiful oil cured olive. It'll wake up your taste buds!

Slip it all in a pita pocket and sing!

This is darn close to the perfect sandwich! The meat is hot, tender, juicy, and full of herbs and garlic. The vegetables are cold and sweet. The sauce is creamy with an acidic bite that compliments the rich ground meat. The mango pickle adds a salty, spicy kick that surprises. The pita contains it all!

If you're not "into" messy sandwiches then slice everything up, including the pita, and make it a salad. Then you can be clean and lady like while you stuff your face with abandon.

Bombay Sliders

for the sliders
1.5 lbs of ground meat
1/2 cup green curry paste
1/2 teaspoon salt

for the sauce
1 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon dried mint

for the sandwich
6 whole pita pockets, sliced in half
tomatoes, sliced
cilantro leaves
cucumber, sliced
mango pickle or other spicy pickle of your choice

Mix ground meat, curry paste, and salt together throughly. Form into pattie and allow to rest in refrigerator. Mix yogurt and mint together and adjust seasoning with salt as necessary. Refridgerate yogurt mixture.  Fry patties in a hot nonstick skillet about 3 minutes per side. Warm pitas and serve!

Red Coconut Curry

Somebody asked for a quick and easy recipe and I was stumped. I didn't know where to begin! Then I thought let's go with some Asian condiments. They're deeply complex and a little goes a LONG way!

This is a six ingredient meal!

Aren't you excited?

I am!

Wait, it's seven if you count the salt. You can't leave out the salt!

This is a seven ingredient meal!

I'm still excited!

Wait, heck, it's nine if you count the "garnish." I'm very partial to garnish.

I'm not quite as excited as I was.
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First you'll need some meat!

I chose some pork loin because it was sitting in my freezer being lonely.  Here's the deal, I made this with pork and the pork is wonderful in the crock pot version of this meal. You are about to see the pan cooked version. The pan cooked version would work better with chicken or turkey breast. If tenderness if important to you, use poultry!

My pork looks a little stiff don't you think? It's slightly frozen you see. I gave it a really quick run in the microwave and then started to cut on it. Meat is so much easier to cut when it's frozen. You can trim the fat off at this point if that's important to you.

So I cubed it up into 1 inch pieces, seasoned it with salt and threw it in a Ziploc bag to finish thawing in a sink full of cold water.

I just can't help myself with the whole thawing in cold water thing. All of my formative cooking years were before the microwave became available to the middle class!

Now I've peeled some fresh ginger root and I have some fresh garlic all peeled too! Do you see it up there in the upper left hand corner? The garlic closeup didn't work out.

Now chop up your ginger and garlic together at the same time! You can use the pre-minced stuff, you just get a brighter stronger flavor from fresh.  Heck you could even use the dried powdered versions of these. If you were desperate . . . you know . . . cooking in a strange kitchen . . . making curry while camping . . . there are all sorts of emergency conditions when you could substitute them.

Good enough!

Now just enough vegetable oil in your pan to see the heat! I know my pan is ready when the oil gets shimmery. I don't have a picture of shimmery but you'll know it when you see it! If you get smoke you're past shimmery!

Throw the garlic and ginger in! If you're using powdered just skip this step. Powdered ginger and garlic do not benefit from hot oil. They'll just get brown and bitter!

Stir it around until you think you've walked into a Chinese restaurant. Your house is going to smell like this the next 24 hours. I think that's a good thing! Perspective, its all about perspective! This only takes 30 seconds or so.

Now for some coconut milk! I use the full on non-light version. I have this deep personal suspicion that it prevents wrinkles. Have you ever looked at those Asian women? No wrinkles!

Now if you see something labeled "cream of coconut" head the other way. It's a sweetened syrupy concoction suited for desserts and pina coladas!

Pour it in.

Grab some red curry paste! Now my Hy-Vee has recently started to hide this in the organic section and I don't know why. It's not organic! Us non-hippies enjoy curry! What the heck? What if you have no curry paste available to you? Substitute a couple a tablespoons of curry powder instead. Call it Yellow Coconut Curry and it'll be between you and me!

My coconut milk has actually started to boil while I open my curry paste. Put a big dollop in. I used about 2 tablespoons for this recipe. It's a good start. I personally could use the whole dang 1/2 cup container but others say it's too hot for the children . . .

We interrupt this recipe for a small story. My daughter first tried curry when she was 18 months old. It was entirely too hot for her but she insisted in the way only toddlers do that she wanted it. It was so hot she cried at the first bite. Then she howled when I took it away. She insisted on eating every bite of a curry that was HOT! 

Now if I could only get her to eat spaghetti sauce . . .

Back to the recipe! You just put the curry paste in.

There it is. Sitting like a lump!

I'm squishing it with the spatula! You thought spatulas were just for pancakes didn't you!

Oh look it's all mixed in now! You can see the little bits of garlic and ginger sticking to the spatula. Mmmm, I love naturally orange food!

Throw in your meat!

Mmmmm, meat!

Stir it around until it's cooked. I just checked it with a knife. My pork took over 10 minutes to cook! I had some pretty big pieces you see. The quicker you want your dinner the tinier you should cut your meat!

Oh look! Our friend cilantro is here! Let's chop up some of it's leaves and tender stems!

Oh! Our buddy, scallion! Let's take off its roots and slice 'er up!

I turned off the heat and added scallion and cilantro. Now I mixed them in because they make it taste so good but feel free to just use them as a garnish. They make everything pretty!

Oh it smells so exotic! The curry paste has all sorts of yummy bitter and sour flavors in it! You salt the meat to your taste of course. The coconut milk adds the tiniest bit of sweetness. I would choose to add more sweetness to this with a side dish. Some lovely sweet green peas, rich orange carrots, crisp delicious cucumbers or even a really good iceberg lettuce salad!

Naan or steamed basmati rice would finish this out perfectly!

Oh and you've got to have beer with curry! It's a must. Anyone you want will do but if you want to feel authentic go with your favorite IPA. IPA does stand for Indian Pale Ale. They're meant to cut the heavy, spicy, sweet richness of a classic curry.

Red Coconut Curry

2 lbs meat, diced 

1 14 oz can coconut milk

2 Tablespoons red curry paste

1/4 cup minced ginger root (2 Tbsp of pre-packaged paste or 1 tsp powdered)

1/4 cup minced garlic cloves (same for pre-packaged minced, or 1 tsp powdered)

1 tsp vegetable oil

salt

garnish

1/2 cup minced cilantro

1/2 cup sliced scallions

Stove Top version: recommended meats-->chicken breast, turkey breast, fish or shrimp

Season meat with salt. Heat oil in pan over medium high heat until shimmer. Add garlic and ginger. Stir until fragrant. Add coconut milk and curry paste. Bring to a boil. Stir until well mixed. Add meat and cook until done to your liking. Garnish with cilantro and scallions. Serve.

Crock Pot version: recommended meats--> pork loin, chuck roast

Dice meat into 1-2 inch pieces. Season with salt. Add meat to crock pot. Mix ginger, garlic, coconut milk, and curry paste together and pour over meat. Stir. Cook all day over low heat. Garnish with cilantro and scallions. Serve.