Cooking: meat sauce
Meat sauce is one of those things that everyone should know how to make. Now I know its easier to go and buy the canned stuff, and believe me I've been tempted several times to do it myself. It's not that much extra time to make a meat sauce yourself though, and since you know what you put in it, it'll be a lot more healthy. I was low on cash today so I skipped out on some of the ingredients that I normally buy, no basil, parsley, mushrooms, wine or celery. So what came out of it was a more Japanese Youshoku version of the sauce. Now I'm going to depart from my normal post by actually posting a pseudo recipe. I say pseudo since some stuff is approximation I don't usually measure when I cook.
What you will need:
1 16oz whole roma tomatoes plain, no basil
1 carrot finely chopped
1/2 a yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic minced
1/2 lb ground beef chuck
beef stock
olive oil
tomato paste
ketchup
salt
pepper
(2-3 servings)
Assembly instructions:
Open the can of tomatoes put in bowl and crush with your hands, remove the hard part where it connects to the stem. Heat some olive oil in a skillet, add onions and cook till they begin to turn translucent 1-2 mins. Add garlic cook for additional minute, season with salt and pepper. Add carrots cook for another 2 minutes. Add the beef and break it apart. Once beef broken down into small particles add the tomatoes. Add a little beef stock. At this point your going to need to taste the sauce. If its too tart add some ketchup. If it sort of bland add some more tomato paste, salt and pepper. This is where the experimenting comes in. Remember this sauce is going to reduce to maybe 2/3 to 1/2 its original size so flavors will become more concentrated.Bring to a low boil this will allow the sauce to reduce and thicken anywhere from 30 mins to beyond. Once at desired thickened pour and pasta mix it up or just spoon on top. Add some cheese and your done.
Braised lamb shank
I made this last December, but never really got around to do a write up on it. This was my first attempt at a braised lamb shank. To start out I made a wet rub out of garlic, rosemary, balsamic vinegar, and olive old that i marinaded the raw shank in for an hour. After I seared it in a pot and then added beef stock, the remaining marinade juices, and some sun dried tomatoes. The veggies are potatoes and carrots I lightly roasted. The sauce is a reduced and thickened up braising sauce. The flavor was there, but sadly the meat was tough. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to create a good long braise so the connective tissue didn't break down enough. If I had another 2 or 3 hours it would have been fork tender.
Thomas Keller Book Signing
Thomas Keller was in town to sign and promote his new book, Under Pressure Cooking Sous Vide. I am a big fan of his work and went down to the ferry building and got not only his new book signed, but also his other cookbook at I own, The French Laundry Cookbook. I have been looking for a cookbook for Sous Vide items and this is the first one I have come across. Been flipping through a couple of pages of it and it looks like it was designed for professionals. Even though I am not one I think I will attempt a few of these recipes.
Potato and Leek soup
Soup is one of those dishes that can make you feel all good inside. Its a comfort food and on the cold nights in San Francisco it really hits the spot. I usually don't do soups, but I am making one of thanksgiving so I thought I would go on a test run with this soup before going onto the main event. The biggest thing I was trying to accomplish was a smooth texture, above all else that was what I wanted, just to make sure the techniques I was doing worked. To get the soup smooth I put it through a blender and then strained it through a seeve, then repeated. This resulted in a very smooth soup with almost no chunks or changes in textures.
Something new: Paella
Paella is a dish that I have been looking forward to making. It's the quintessential Spanish dish combining saffron with rice, meat and seafood. Finding ingredients for this dish shouldn't be hard to do, but for some strange reason it was for me. I ended up going to 3 supermarkets and a butcher to find some chorizo. Normally it shouldn't be that difficult to find, but I was looking for some fresh made stuff or some Spanish chorizo which is a lot harder to find then I thought. I ended up with some from whole foods, not the greatest in the world, but it worked.
I was a little dissapointed with the taste, I think it was under seasoned. It wasn't really that bad, but I think I could have made it a lot better then I did. The thing with Paella is that it is hard to make a small batch so I ended up with a ton of it. Next time I will have to scale back or wait for a long time to make it again
Hamburg Steak
Hamburg steak is a Japanese dish that has it origins in a classic western dish, Salisbury steak. Many may know of this dish from frozen dinners or school lunches, and this variation isn't much different. It also a component of another dish that I make called Locomoco which is a Hawaiian dish.
This version is made from a combination of ground beef and pork mixed in a 5/3 ratio. To this diced onions are added, I usually caramelized them before I mix them in. This gives the onions a sweeter more mellow flavor not as raw of a taste, plus the softer texture melds well with the meat. Next is a couple of eggs and breadcrumbs to bind everything together.
Chicken teriyaki
I have said it before, and I'll say it again, but a good majority of Japanese cooking can be done with 4 simple seasonings, soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and sake. When these 4 ingredients are combined in varying ratios you can get many different sauces, teriyaki sauce is a good example. Lots of Americans know this sauce, and you can buy bottles of premade sauce at almost any market. It is the common word that is used when a chain restaurant or fast food place wants to add an exotic twist to their menu, either that or a pineapple slice. These teriyaki sauces have a different consistency and tastes then the basic sauce. usually its additional spices of flavorings. These additions, at least to me, make the sauce less like a teriyaki and more like something else.
