Archive for the 'beef' Category
We didn’t grow up eating much steak. My Dad like to make lean flank steak stew – not my favourite at the time – and homemade burgers using extra lean ground beef cut with a hearty dose of oat bran. (Remember the stuff? It was all the rage pre-flaxseed.) As a result, I thought burgers tended toward dry and sawdusty, and my first restaurant burgers were a revelation.
Mike’s Dad, on the other hand, always cooked steak on Sunday nights. (Alternatively, chunks of meat retrieved from the bowels of the deep freeze, doused in a bottle of beer and braised.) The steaks were thin and cheap – minute steaks, like the ones you’d get at Ponderosa for $5.99 – and cooked to death. Like steak jerky. And yet he was shocked and offended when as a teenager, at one such Sunday dinner I asked if they had any ketchup.
I’ve since come to love steak, and am not as afraid of cooking it as I once was. In my twenties it seemed too risky an investment, even though Mike loved a good steak, to buy one and not cook it properly, or to wind up cutting into it a dozen times to ensure it was done, thus letting all the juices escape before we got a chance to eat it. I was a rookie, and to not cook a perfect steak was tragic. It was far easier to do a stew or beef bourguignon, or my Belgian grandmother’s carbonnade of beef flammande, all braises that required low, slow cooking and couldn’t easily be mussed up.
But at some point I had to get over myself and just do it. Like anything else, the more steak you cook the better you get a feel for it. I can’t be afraid of steak forever. At some point I had to become the master of my domain.
Cooking a steak isn’t that tough. Start with the right cut (the Canadian Beef website has great info on cuts, cooking times and temperatures, and makes a great reference), make sure it’s not fridge-cold when you cook it, and pat it dry with paper towels to produce a nice crust. A grill is great, but so is a preheated cast iron pan – you want it smoking hot. Drizzle a little canola or olive oil into the pan and slap it in – you’ll get a great sizzle, and if you leave it alone it will create a wonderful crust.
And really, it doesn’t need marinating, or rubbing, or any of that – but if you do want to pat it down with something delicious, try making a rub out of 2 tbsp good-quality chili powder, 1 tbsp cocoa, 1 tbsp finely ground coffee or espresso, 2 tsp flaky salt and 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper. Rub it on liberally and if you like, let it sit in its rub for an hour or so to allow the flavours to really get to know each other.
I asked a few chef friends – including Paul and Jonathan (coughnamedrop) – about their tips for a great steak, and what they think of this rumour that you’re only allowed to flip a steak once as you cook it. They agreed that this was hooey, that so long as you gave it a chance to develop a nice crust and were nice to it, didn’t toss it about on the grill/pan and were just generally nice to it, all would be well. 4-5 minutes per side for an inch thick steak should do it for medium-rare, and let it rest before you cut into it, otherwise all those lovely juices will gush out. 10 minutes is perfect – about enough time to get everything else together and on the table, don’t you think?
And if you’re heading out for a good steak, it’s worthwhile to look beyond the Keg and check out what some Calgary restaurants are doing. Hosted by Tourism Calgary, a few of my food writing friends and I went out last week for a bit of a steak crawl, to investigate the new ways Calgary restaurants are preparing steak, now that we’re not all about old-school steakhouses:
At the Spanish-influenced Ox and Angela, Chef Steve Smee has plenty of tapas on the menu, and served us a char grilled Spring Creek Ranch flat iron steak, served over a piquillo pepper confit with a creamy Spanish style aioli and brilliant mojo verde. Of course steak must come with potatoes, and ours were divine – whatever they were (I was too involved with my spuds to take notes – they may have been the Patatas Bravas with smoked paprika ketchup & aioli) as was the braised kale with sherry vinegar, and grilled sourdough with fresh garlic and tomato rub. (And FYI, they make their own churros, and serve them for dessert with a little pot of chocolate sauce.)
CharCut Roast House was on the list, of course, although they’re known more for alternative cuts of meat (think pigs’ head mortadella and house-cured sausages) than a classic steak. (However, I did eat one of the very best steaks of my life there last year – a grilled flank steak with chimichurri and smashed potatoes. Divine.) John and Connie lived up to their reputation and showed us how to make blood sausage before trimming and steakifying a whole heart. Once marinated (in olive oil, red wine vinegar and rosemary) and grilled (quickly, like any other steak – it is a muscle, after all, like most other cuts) it looked almost like flank steak, with a finer texture. It’ll be on the menu for awhile – they didn’t think Calgarians were ready for it, but it’s a hit.
I had never been to Anju – and I need to make up for lost time. They do Korean-inspired tapas, apparently have the best wings in the city, and as a prelude to our steak sampler chef Roy Oh brought out his famous crispy fried tofu with kimchi and braised oxtail tortellini (divine!) before or soy-marinated grilled steak, washed down with soju.
We also stopped by Rouge – one of my favourite places (and some of my favourite people) – but not somewhere I might consider to go for a good steak. I’ve been wrong before. We had paper thin shabu shabu-inspired paper-thin beef in elk broth and beef tartare, all impeccably executed by chefs Paul Rogalski and Mike Dekker. With fab wine, natch.
And last but not at all least, we popped into Raw Bar at the Hotel Arts, where Chef Duncan Ly and his team specialize in Pacific Rim cuisine, but blew me away with their soya braised short rib crusted beef tenderloin with a coconut-sweet potato puree, wilted and cream snow pea leaves and orange teriyaki jus. Of course they’re also known for their cocktails – we had the Apple Cart Daisy. I didn’t even jot down what was in it, but it was delicious.
So there you go – how to make your own steak, and where to go to get one. (Although I’m quite certain there are plenty more great steaks in YYC – so much meat, so little time! I may need to conduct further research.) I had half written this post when I heard that Canadian Beef is offering up more scholarships to Eat, Write, Retreat – which I would love to attend, not least of all because it’s in Washington, DC (I’ve never been!), and so I offer up this post as my entry. Here’s hoping!
February 17 2012 | beef | 11 Comments »
I’m a negligent mum, taking off right at dinnertime thrice this Sunday-Monday-Tuesday to make myself presentable and go eat and call it part of my job. (Sunday and Monday is-was like a pub crawl, only with steak and no boom-box-bus. Tomorrow I’m going to dinner at Rouge. Don’t hate me.) And so I made a pot of something yummy the boys could dip into in my absence.
A cottage pie is a shepherd’s pie, made with beef instead of lamb. Which is how most of us make shepherd’s pie nowadays, but if I were to post this as shepherd’s pie I’d almost certainly open up my inbox to a barrage of emails saying “that’s not shepherd’s pie! Shepherd’s pie is made of lamb! Get it? Because of the shepherds and their lambs… which they apparently eventually eat.)
You could, of course, start with ground lamb and be perfectly safe in calling it shepherd’s pie.
You could also take liberties with the vegetables that go into it – sauteed mushrooms are sublime (unless you have a 6 year old who recoils at mushrooms), or parsnips with the potatoes that go on top. You can totally mess with the veggie elements without changing its identity.
Someone on Twitter just suggested I call it cow pie. Now there’s a good idea. Forget cottage pie – let’s call this cow pie!
Anyway. It’s a good thing to have in the fridge to dip into whenever you need to.
Cottage Pie
1 lb. lean ground beef
1 onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 can or 1 1/2 cups beef stock or broth
2 Tbsp. tomato paste or ketchup
a couple glugs of Worcestershire sauce
2 carrots, diced
1/2 cup frozen green peas
salt and pepper
4 large potatoes, peeled (or not) and diced
1/4 cup butter
1/4-1/2 cup milk
a big handful of grated cheese (old cheddar is fab)
Preheat oven to 375F.
In a large skillet set over medium-high heat, cook the ground beef and onion until the onion is soft and the beef is no longer pink. Sprinkle the flour overtop and stir to distribute it, then pour in the beef stock, add the tomato paste and Worcestershire, and stir to blend well. Bring to a simmer and cook for a minute or two, until the gravy thickens. Add the carrots and peas, season with salt and pepper and pour into a baking dish that will accommodate it.
Meanwhile, pour cold water over the potatoes in a medium-large pot and bring to a boil. When they’re very tender, drain and mash them (rough or smooth) with the butter and milk and spread over the beef mixture. Scatter the grated cheese overtop. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the top is golden and it’s bubbly around the edges.
Serves 6.
February 06 2012 | beef | 16 Comments »
In a perfect world, I’d spend every day playing in the kitchen, experimenting with new ingredients and cuisines, making stuff and posting it here. OK, there would likely be a few other things involved in my perfect world, but wouldn’t that be swell? In the real world, as in other peoples’ worlds (and the opposite of so many others’ worlds), some days I find myself at IKEA looking for a new desk chair, because the stuffing on my old one has somehow worked its way to the outside of the upholstery. And on this particular day, having tried to reel in my appetite, I was starving at said IKEA visit, and thus cranky, and impatient in the as-is section, and then in line, and by the end of it there was no time to go get Swedish meatballs. But it occurred to me that IKEA doesn’t actually have a monopoly on Swedish meatballs.
And if I put my mind to it, I might be able to make them my very own self.
This is the kind of revelation I’d love to dedicate my working life to. Making meatballs, and passing them on. That’s a worthy pursuit, isn’t it?
So here’s the Secret of the Swedish Meatball: you don’t really need a formula. Whether you start with frozen meatballs or make them yourself. (I generally don’t bother with unnecessary binders – like egg – or ingredients like breadcrumbs that were initially added to stretch pricey beef – but it doesn’t matter at all what you add – just do what you like.) Adding a pinch of allspice and/or nutmeg will give them that distinctive Swedish flavour. And if you cook them in a heavy skillet on the stovetop, you’ll create lovely crispy dark bits in the bottom of pan, exactly the kind that make for wonderful gravy.
To recap, you make gravy by shaking flour into fat in a pan – fat + flour won’t get lumpy – then whisking in liquid, like stock or wine. It will bubble and thicken, and turn into gravy. You can add more stock if it’s too thick, or a big glop of sour cream to creamify – spellcheck says that’s not a word, but I contend that it is – the gravy into something like what you get on those deliriously good Swedish meatballs. (If you use low fat sour cream, turn down the heat. Be gentle, or it could separate.) You can totally do this, and wing it even.
If you need a recipe, here you go:
Swedish Meatballs
Adapted from Cookie, October 2008. If you want to streamline things, start by gently shaping pure ground beef into balls, straight out of the package – don’t bother mixing anything in.
1 lb. lean ground beef
1 small onion, coarsely grated
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
1/4 tsp. allspice and/or nutmeg (optional)
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. butter (optional)
1 Tbsp. flour
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup sour cream
Lingonberry or cranberry sauce (optional)
In a medium bowl, gently combine the beef, onion, breadcrumbs, egg, spices and salt and pepper with your hands, and shape it into 1-inch balls.
In a drizzle of oil in a heavy (cast iron is great) skillet set over medium-high heat, cook the meatballs, rolling them around as you need to, until deep golden and crusty and cooked through. With a slotted spoon, transfer them to a bowl and set aside.
Drain the excess fat from the pan, leaving about a tablespoon. Add the butter (if you like, or just leave the drippings in the pan) and the flour, and whisk to combine. Add the stock and stir, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan, until the mixture boils and thickens. Whisk in the sour cream and stir until it has the texture of creamy gravy. This whole process will only take a few minutes.
Return the meatballs to the pan and roll them around to coat. Serve with cranberry or lingonberry sauce. Serves 4-6.
January 13 2012 | beef | 15 Comments »
Now, it could have been the appetite I worked up at the gym, intensified by then not nibbling at all between the time I got home and managed to get dinner on the table. (Which was, to be honest, only about 20 minutes.) But this was really good. And easy. A bag of slaw would have streamlined it even further, but at this moment we have no fewer than 4 full-sized cabbages hogging a good quarter of our fridge space, begging to be used. This week’s theme just may be slaw. (More possibilities than colcannon.)
This particular slaw is sweet and gingery, with no oil. (You could add some, if you like.) The original requested red jalapenos, which I don’t expect many to have on hand (nor make a special trip for), and because the comments unanimously reported it to be too hot, I, being of wimpy palate, demoted the jalapenos to a pinch of dried red pepper flakes. Easy, sufficient, and it made removing my contacts later this evening that much less painful.
This is a keeper. If I was the sort to plan a dinner rotation, with pork chops on Mondays and chicken on Thursdays and pizza on Fridays, this might just snag the Tuesday spot.
Grilled Asian Steak with Sweet Ginger Slaw
adapted from Bon Appétit, June 2008
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 Tbsp canola oil
2 tsp sesame oil (optional)
1 Tbsp freshly grated ginger, divided
2 garlic cloves, crushed or sliced
1 1 1/2 lb flat iron or flank steak
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
pinch red pepper flakes
4-5 cups thinly sliced cabbage (or half a bag of prepared coleslaw)
a few green onions, chopped
Stir together the soy sauce, canola oil, sesame oil, half the ginger and garlic in a zip-lock bag or bowl; add the steaks and turn to coat. Let them sit for at least half an hour, or refrigerate overnight.
In a small saucepan, whisk together the rice vinegar and sugar and bring to a simmer; add the ginger and red pepper flakes and remove from heat. In a medium bowl, toss together the cabbage and green onions. Drizzle the warm vinegar mixture overtop and toss to coat.
Preheat your grill and grill the steaks to your desired doneness – 4-5 minutes per side for medium-rare. Let rest for at least 5 minutes before slicing thinly against the grain and serving atop (or alongside) the slaw. Serves 4.
September 16 2011 | beef and on the grill | 10 Comments »
It seems you’ve been getting a lot of leftovers lately. (Figuratively speaking, of course. Or have you?) Although I’ve been cooking like mad, prepping and photographing in an almost-always-near-disastrous kitchen with an often grumpy sous chef-slash-dishwasher, I can’t share most of the results with you. Sue and I are in the final stretch of the bean book, finishing up edits and photos and working on the layout and design, and the recipes and images for Alice Eats are due at the end of April (which my calendar tells me is in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS) and if I’m not done I’m pretty sure Pierre will maim me. I’ve seen how good he is with a knife. And this week I’m working on stuff for Swerve, the Herald, Parents Canada, Readers’ Digest, City Palate and Family Kitchen. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, it’s just that I haven’t been sharing. Also, I’m feeling a little tapped out when it gets to be dinnertime.
This morning I covered traffic reporting on CBC (tomorrow too, I’m trying to go to bed now), which meant a 4am wakeup (and a 1am, 2am, 2:30am to make sure I wasn’t sleeping in), so I was ready for dinner mid-afternoon. I had pulled a frozen steak out of the freezer (which meant Mothers Little Helper has been playing on a loop in my brain all day). I just finished working out some recipes for a peanut butter company in New York that I may be in love with, one that makes peanut butter infused with maple and honey and chocolate (not all at once) and so have peanut butter on the brain. Also a glut of peanut butter. And a half can of coconut milk in the fridge. The combination may sound odd and a little lowbrow, but trust me – it worked. As much as anything because the sauce picked up the browned bits from the pan, enriching it far beyond the sum of its parts. Very much yum.
Also? I have some New York peanut butter for you if you want some.
Quick Peanut Butter Beef Curry
1 steak, cut into bite-sized pieces or strips
canola oil, for cooking
3 garlic cloves
2 tsp curry paste (or to taste)
a big spoonful of peanut butter
half a 14 oz (398 mL) can coconut milk
Pat the beef dry with a paper towel and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Drizzle some oil into a large, heavy skillet (cast iron is ideal) set over medium-high heat. Brown the meat, getting some good colour on it – don’t worry about cooking it completely through. (It is a steak, after all.) Transfer to a plate.
Add the garlic and curry paste to the pan, then the peanut butter and coconut milk. Stir to blend and melt the peanut butter, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
Cook for a minute or two, until well blended and thickened; return the beef to the pan and heat through, simmering a little longer if the beef is still too pink inside. Serve immediately, over rice. Serves 2-4, depending on appetites.
April 18 2011 | beef | 13 Comments »
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