It is a cold snowy day here in Fargo. I arrived home from Japan on Saturday but I wish I was still there. Never the less, I was faced with firing up the snowblower today and getting out in the cold. So a warm hearty dinner was just the ticket. I call this a Refrigerator Beef Stew because it was made from a hodge podge of leftover ingredients I found while cleaning out the fridge today. I had about a half pound of sirlion that I didn’t use last night when I made my own shabu shabu. There were also some leftover cut up vegetables consisting of cabbage, green onions and bean sprouts. I added some celery and chopped garlic. I found a couple tablespoons of red thai curry paste, some red miso paste and a cup of garbanzo beans. The meat was browned and everything else was added. I threw in a couple handfuls of sticky Japanese rice and then cooked it all until it was thick and bubbly, about 25 minutes. It was slightly tangy, delightfully spicy and thickened nicely by the rice. Perfect for a cold evening.
Refrigerator Beef Stew on a cold day
Sendai Beef, and I do mean beef
On Monday I had the good fortune to be treated to a very nice Sendai meal. Even in a small country like Japan regional cuisines abound. In Sendai the local favorite is Sendai beef. Of course they try to rival Kobe beef and I have to say my meal I had recently with my hosts in Sendai was incredible. They brought me to a restaurant that specialized in Sendai beef cooked Korean style on a table gas flame grill. They eat many parts of the cow here and one of the most prized parts here in Sendai is the tongue. Here you can see beef tongue being grilled. I found the taste to be quite good but the texture was a little tough.
After the tongue was all gone, they brought out a plate of nicely marbled meat. This was more to my liking and it was tender and delicious.
Now the thing that makes beef tender and tasty is how well marbled it is with fat. Take a look at the fine grain marbling of this shoulder cut of beef. It was melt in your mouth tender!
Next came the ribs. These were also quite good.
After all that meat I thought we were done until they brought out yet another plate. I said they eat all parts of the animal. This is marinated liver and intestines. They also tasted pretty good but I’m not much of a liver eater. I found the intestines to be very chewy. I guess it’s good exercise for your jaws.
Divine Dining Redux #4 – Meatballs in a Creamy Mushroom Sauce
It’s been two months since my Divine Dining dinner and I have yet to post all the details of that wonderful meal. I can’t believe I’ve let this lag so long. I have another dinner to tell you about too so let me finish this up so I can move on. Let’s talk about the main course we enjoyed back in September. I served a homemade meatball on top of a bed of garlic rutabaga and potato mash with a rather simple sage-infused creamy mushroom sauce. They were excellent if I do say so myself and really not hard to make.
The meatballs were made from a mixture of ground beef and ground pork. I used 2 pounds of beef and 1 pound of pork. To this I added 2.5 cups of bread crumbs, 4 cloves of chopped garlic, 8 chopped sage leaves, 1 cup loosely packed fresh parsley, salt, pepper and Italian herb seasoning to taste. I also accentuated the flavors with a dash of worschester sauce, a dash of nuoc mam Vietnames fish sauce. This sauce smells really strong but you don’t notice it in the dish. It just ads a dimension to the overall flavor that is almost imperceptible. Don’t be afraid of nuoc mam. Finally I added a dash of hot sauce. I used a homemade habanero sauce I had on hand.
It couldn’t be simpler. I just mixed all these ingredients together well in my KitchenAid and formed good good-sized meatballs by hand. They were placed on a baking sheet and cooked in a hot (425 °F) oven until browned. Be careful not to overcook them as they could get dried out.
The sauce was made by first sautéing chopped mushrooms, onions and garlic. You can use as much or little as you like of these ingredients. I don’t recall exactly my proportions but I guess I used one small package of white mushrooms, one small onion and 3-4 cloves of garlic. Season with salt and pepper as these are cooking down. Once the mushrooms and onions were softened, I added a healthy branch of sage to the pan and added heavy cream to cover the mushrooms. This was cooked for just a few minutes until the sauce thickened a little bit. You could added white wine to this dish also. That would be good.
I was fortunate this year to have a bumper crop of rutabagas in my garden. I love the combination of this hearty root vegetable with potatoes. I just diced up both the rutabas and potatoes and boiled them until tender. To that was added a healthy dose of roasted garlic, milk and cream, salt, pepper and butter. Mash just like you would do to the potatoes.
Oven Pot Roast
It has been a long time since I’ve had pot roast. Meat so tender it falls apart in shreds. Hearty, comforting root vegetables glistening with pot juices. Aromas of thyme and winter savory wafting from the bowl. And the best part about pot roast – LEFTOVERS. A perfect meal on a cool fall day.
I started with a 2.8 pound arm roast. This one was nicely marbled with fat which is so important for a tender and juicy end product as it slowly cooks.
I seasoned the roast liberally with some salt, pepper and yellow prepared mustard. You don’t really taste the mustard in the end but it does add another dimension to the flavor that would be lacking, I think.
The roast was first seared in a hot heavy pot with a bit of olive oil for about 5 minutes on a side. This also creates another layer of flavor with the caramelized brown bits flavoring the whole dish.
Some of the other ingredients for this pot roast are shown below. I made a bed of onions, garlic and fresh herbs (thyme, winter savory and sage). A bit of red wine was used to provide moisture and flavor. I like a fruity zinfandel.
I placed the onoins, herbs and half the garlic on the bottom of the pan under and placed the seared meat on top. Additional garlic and yellow mustard were sprinkled on top and then about 1/2 cup of red wine was added. The pot was covered and placed in a 250 degree F oven for its long slow cooking. I left it alone for three hours.
After three hours a couple of cups each of carrots and rutabagas were cut into large chunks and added to the pot. The temperature was raised to 275 °F and it was allowed to cook covered for another hour and a half until the vegetables were thoroughly softened.
You can see the end product at the top. Notice how much moisture is in the pot. This comes from the onions and the meat mostly. It is a delicious broth flavored with the meat, herbs and subtly by the mustard.
Eating Local – Beef
Of course I love to cook (hence the blog) and I love exotic ingredients from around the world. But our family also tries to support local food producers as much as we possibly can. That means getting locally grown produce from our CSA and from the area farmer’s markets. We also buy our beef one cow at a time. Well, we usually split a whole cow purchase with a friend so we get half a cow at a time. This is usually about 300 pounds of meat after processing.
A half a cow will usually last our family about a year and a half. We don’t eat beef every day. We were getting our beef from a North Dakota farmer in the past but this year we bought from Evavold’s Oak Grove Farm across the river in Battle Lake, Minnesota. The cows are pasture raised and spend most of their life grazing on grass. During the winter months they are fed corn silage. They are natural without added hormones or unnatural supplements. We think this is the best of both worlds. Grass fed beef produces meat with a higher amount of omega-3 fatty acids but sometimes leads to leaner, less flavorful meat. On the other hand, cows that are fed a grain based diet have great tasting meat but almost no healthy omega-3 fats. The combination of feeding at Evavold’s should provide just the right balance of healthy and good tasting meat.
The cows are humanely slaughtered and hung for two weeks before being processed at J & B Meats in Barnseville, MN. Another reason we like to buy local beef a cow at a time is because the meat is processed from a single cow and not mixed with hundreds of other animals in a large processing facility. I believe this tremendously reduces the risk of salmonella or other nasty bacteria contaminating the final product. I feel better about cooking my burgers medium rare when it is from a single cow. All the meat is vacuum packed and frozen so it stays fresh and tasty for a very long time.
Our recent half cow purchase gave us many different cuts of meat including ribeye steaks, T-bones, all kinds of roasts, about 80 pounds of ground beef, and various other cuts. I even requested the oxtails which usually don’t come with the cow and are nearly impossible to find in our local stores. The best part about all of this? It only cost us about $2.60 per pound for a product that is exponentially better than you can get in the grocery store. They even drove it up and delivered it to our house for free.