Chuck – Machaca

Good evening, campers, and Happy Monday.

First, a thank you to those of you who wrote in with your beef suggestions. It sounds like people want to see some offal. I’ll get on it.

But not yet. I got another request, this one from my wife. And since she knows where I sleep, I do what she asks. And she asked for machaca.

Actually, she asked for spicy shredded beef of some variety for use in tacos and enchiladas. That’s machaca. (Take away the H, and it’s a 2006 political gaffe. Different beast. But I digress.)

Historically, machaca is a dried and preserved meat, kinda like beef jerky. When a cook uses it, they rehydrate it somewhat, pound the hell out of it to tenderize, and shred it.

I’m not trying to preserve this meat, so I don’t have to dry it. I can achieve a similar effect by braising it.

And by “it,” I mean chuck. I’m using a chuck roast – a roast cut from the chuck primal, or shoulder, of the beast.

The chuck primal does a lot of work moving the animal around, and so it has a lot of connective tissue. Since I’m braising it, all the connective tissue in the meat will have plenty of time to convert to delicious gelatin throughout the long, slow, moist cooking process. The braise, therefore, favors cheaper, tougher cuts of meat with more connective tissue – like chuck. But “cheaper” does not mean “less delicious.” The last time I used chuck on this blog, I well and truly wrecked it. I’m interested to see how it turns out when I don’t flamboyantly destroy a quality piece of meat.

Friday, I zip home and whip up a quick marinade. Worstershire, lime juice, garlic, pepper, cumin and some canned Chipotle in Adobo Sauce. That stuff is magic.

I let it soak overnight. Saturday, I slip out with some friends to catch some waves. Surfing is one of those activities that remain fun, even if you suck at it. Needless to say, it remained fun.

Back at the house, I’m salty, sandy, and ready to cook. I promised my wife this dish for dinner.

The mise:

I pull the meat from the marinade and gently pat it dry. I don’t mind if the chunky garlic bits stick to the meat, but I don’t want the liquid. Messes up the maillard reaction. A quick sear on all sides, and out it comes.

A diced onion, a poblano chile, and a jalapeno chile go in over medium for a little sweat. Looking for soft onions, not brown onions.

That done, the meat goes back in, along with cumin, oregano, a little cayenne-based pepper sauce, and some diced tomatoes.  I realized too late my tomatoes had gone south, so I cheated and used canned. I’m a horrible person.

Alright. The recipe I’m basing this on doesn’t recommend adding any more liquid to the pot. I think this is crazypants. I just don’t trust the vegetation I’m using to give out enough liquid to braise properly. So I supplement with beef stock until the meat is about three-quarters fully covered.

I bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Nothing  left to do but wait.

Estimated cook time is two hours. It’s 6:40. That puts dinner at 8:40. Not as early as I’d hoped, but respectable.

I scamper off to YouTube.

You’re welcome.

Two hours later, I check the beef. It should be falling apart lovely. As yet, it is not.

I put it back on for another half hour.

Still no.

Another.

And another.

“Honey, is dinner ready yet?”
“Can’t rush genius, baby.”

Tick m’n'f’n tock.

Finally, as the french say: “le meat, she fall apart.”

What time is it?

Tomorrow o'clock.

I pull the meat and shred it. Back into the liquid, and reduce until it’s almost dry. Soon, it almost is.

Dinner’s ready.

Who's hungry?

Dinner has become lunch.

Everything goes into plastic and into the fridge. My wife made some lovely homemade tortillas, so at least when lunch does finally come, it should all be worth it.

Sleep.

The next day, we prepare for Sunday lunch the meal I began preparing Friday evening. Machaca on homemade tortillas. I opt for unadorned meat-on-tortilla, because I want to taste all the work I put in.

Verdict: Lovely. Smoky and rich, and quite frankly, well worth the time. This will likely become our default beef-for-Mexican-dishes… It really provides a depth of flavor that ground beef with dried spices doesn’t really match. And given that my chuck roast was two and a half pounds, I’ll have plenty of this on hand to dole out whenever.

The Wife Says: 8.99. It would have been a 9 if she could have had it when she smelled it cooking… you know, like around dinner time. She said she really sees a lot of potential in this one. This could be a ten. Encouraging.

Next up: disco flashbacks.

(Much love to Casey and Lolo for the YouTube link.)

Chuck/Round – Dude Stew

I know. The title of this post sounds like hot tub time at a frat house. I assure you, that is not how I spent my Saturday.

Tonight, my lovely wife attended a Drag Queen Tupperware Party at a friend of ours’. I believe the Tupperware is sold by – and largely to – drag queens, rather than being an emporium where one could purchase a sensible product line to keep your drag queens fresh. But I could be wrong on that.

Regardless, D and I are kicking it by ourselves tonight. No ladies. No chicas. No wives or mothers. Just a coupla dudes bein’ dudes.

Maybe we’ll watch some football. Maybe we’ll rebuild the transmission on that old ‘78 Firebird I got up on blocks (Huh? shut up). Maybe we’ll wrassle some ‘gators. Who knows.

It’s also gonna be a crazy weekend. I likely won’t get to cook at all unless I do it tonight.

Luckily, I have help.

The crew.

Alright.

We’re looking for a no-fuss, relatively quick meal. We had swim lessons this morning, so we’re also looking for something hearty. Something stick-to-your-ribs. I’d also like to use some of my recently-delivered organic vegetables that I got in on Wednesday.

It’s summer, but we don’t play by anybody’s rules but our own. Let’s make stew.

This dish uses either chuck or round… I’m not entirely sure which. The butcher who partitioned my beastie was under orders to cut stew meat from both primals. From the looks of it, I’m guessing round. It doesn’t seem to have the marbling I’ve seen in the chuck I’ve used from this steer.

The mise:

You got anything for me to do?

This dish is pretty simple. We do have some prep, though. First, we peel some garlic.

I got this.

Gotta peel onions, too.

That's how you do that.

And carrots.

And, because we’re dudes, we’re gonna use some bacon.

How ya feel about bacon?

Me too.

Ready to cook.

First we crispify the bacon. How much bacon? Some. Measuring’s for chumps. Remove.

Beef in to brown in baconfat. Like God intended.

Beef out.

Baconfat good.

Onions in. Until soft-ish.

A little flour in, to make roux’s first cousin, “a little flour fried in baconfat with onions.” Then bay leaf, thyme, and some beef stock. I don’t have any in the freezer, so I use boxed. (Nobody’s rules but our own!)

Boil, baby.

Once we’re boiling, lid up and drop heat to low. D and I retire to watch some “Science.“

When the iphone beeps a half-hour later, we deposit some carrots and potatoes, re-boil, re-drop, re-lid, and kick back a while longer.

Forty-ish minutes later, veggies are soft and the meat is like buttah. Peas in, bacon in, and wait five minutes for what D calls, the “big boom.”

Dinner up.

Verdict: Quite good. It wasn’t revelatory, but it was definitely solid. The bacon added a nice smoky note to a very earthy, satisfying dish. I think next time I’d like to use half wine, half stock to braise the meat. This is a dish I think I could get better at, should I do it more. Which I intend to.

The Wife Says: Yay! Tupperware!

The Son Says: Sometimes one spoon just isn’t enough.

Up next: Patagonian monkey rugby.

EDIT: This was even better the second day. And still better yet the third. Time is on your side.

Guest cook!

I came home to a surprise.

My wife had pulled a pound o’ ground out of the freezer and thawed it by the time I got home.

Furthermore, she’d whipped up some home-made flour tortillas, and pulled up a batch of her home-made ground beef seasoning for tacos. Dinner was almost ready.

Grass-fed beef tacos on home-made flour tortillas. I’m a very lucky man.

Here’s a quick recap of what happened while I was out.

pre-tortillas

A griddle helps.

Done.

I arrived just as she was starting to brown the beef.

The mise:

aka, "the mess."

So many spices!

I love it when my wife cooks, and she’s very good at it. But we have very different styles.

I’m of the Prior Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance school of kitchen-y arts. I tend to prep everything in advance, clear away anything that’s served it’s purpose, and clean as I go. I hate cleaning, but I like a clean, uncluttered workspace.

My wife cooks in what I call Schrodinger’s Kitchen. She enters, and then the place looks like a food bomb has gone off. Oil on the walls, flour on the ceiling, ingredients akimbo… little dust storms of polenta and confectioner’s sugar kicking up intermittently and throwing around tiny piles of fresh herbs like prairie twisters. I can check in to see how she’s doing, but there is really no way to tell.

When my wife cooks, the meal is simultaneously both ruined and sublime until we take our first bite. Then, the wave function collapses, and we see how everything turned out.

Today, it was lovely.

Yay, Wednesday!

The verdict? A simple, fast weeknight meal. Flour tortillas aren’t hard to make from scratch, and I highly recommend doing so.

Likewise, seasoning the ground yourself is much nicer than the prepackaged taco spices.

The Wife Says: I am Escoffier reborn.

The Husband Says: A quick, healthy, and delicious weeknight meal. Two thumbs up.

Flank – Matambre

What a weekend.

First, the blog. I’m writing this post as I cook, rather than revisiting it afterward and retelling events. Hopefully this’ll cut down on the amount of time it actually takes to write the posts. Verite, baby! Also, I’m nuts.

This weekend was nothing if not productive. Yesterday, we zipped downtown to Ross Cutlery – quite possibly the greatest cutlery shop in the history of sharp, pointy things. I left my chef’s knife for them to reinvigorate, and we wandered around downtown. Angels Flight, all the old movie houses. Grand Central Market. It’s a helluva way to spend a morning.

Also, a helluva way to do lunch. We swung by the fabled Clifton’s Cafeteria for our noontime repast. In a word – wow.

Clifton’s is the kind of place that if it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent. It’s a cafeteria, and it makes no bones about it. But everything there is made from scratch, and the decor is simply beyond belief. Go look at their site. I’ll wait.

Clifton’s sprang up in the thirties and it fed people straight through the Depression, regardless of their ability to pay. The original owner, Clifford Clinton, wanted to change the world – literally. He made a earnest,  bonafide effort to end hunger by founding a nonprofit called Meals for Millions, distributing Multi-Purpose Food (a concept he invented and researched at Cal-Tech) to the impoverished and malnourished worldwide.

He also grew up near redwood groves in central California, which is why the two of the three stories (three stories!) of his cafeteria are done up as redwood grove meets Splash Mountain meets Coen Brothers. And the food is solid, well-made fare.

Here’s the pitch: Clifton’s bought their building in Downtown LA is 2006, at the height of the real estate boom. People don’t really do cafeterias anymore, so they’re running in the red and trying to sell the building. Their hope is that the next owners will let them continue to operate, but nothing is certain. So their days may be numbered.

Clifton’s is oldschool. Kitschy and earnest. Last of a dying breed. They’ve been in business for a hundred and thirteen years, through five generations. LA landmark. So go to Cliftons! You aren’t even sacrificing anything. The place is solid, and solidly trippy. Read more here.

Also, I took D to the zoo this morning, because my wife wasn’t feeling well. Go do that, too, but only if you’ve already gone to Clifton’s. I’ll tell.

In other news:

I replaced my camera lens!

Hopefully it won’t look like I snapped everything with a pinhole camera anymore. Another couple of weeks of this and I was just gonna build a Camera Obscura and invite everybody over.

Wait, aren’t I supposed to be cooking something? Right.

This is what you get when I sit down to write while my flank steak is marinating.

And marinating it is. I’m making matambre – a rolled and stuffed flank steak, similar to a roulade. The word is a combination of the words “mata” and “hambre”. In English, it translates to “hunger killer.” I can get down.

Bittman has a recipe. First, there’s a fair amount of prep work. I hard boil some eggs, chop some watercress, onion, garlic, carrots. Chop the eggs. Set aside some cilantro and parsley. Good.

Mise:

Alright, I pull the steak from the bath. I made this one up. A marinade is an acidic, salty bath for meat. Soy (for salt), a little vinegar (for acid), a little honey (hydroscopic, to keep it from overcuring, not that it’s really an issue. It also tastes nice…), salt, pepper, and garlic. It’s been going an hour.

Basil approves.

I need to butterfly the flank. Which basically means halve it’s thickness, but don’t cut all the way through. Bingo.

Except that I butterflied it the wrong way. I’m something of an idiot.

My flank was vaguely triangular shaped. Narrow end, to a much wider end.

I misunderstood the instructions, though I now get it, in retrospect.

I butterflied it toward the narrow end. Result: a butterfly-shaped piece of meat. Wide on the left and right, narrow in the center.

Optimally, I would have rotated the piece ninety degrees, and butterflied left to right. Resulting in a more square-shaped piece of meat.

In other words, if you’re trying this at home, make sure the grain is pointing at your own belly when you butterfly it. Then slice from left to right (or vice versa). The grain should be running toward and away from you.

I roll, tie, and heat some oil.

The end result should not look like a cracked-out spring roll.

After I brown it in a Dutch oven, into a 375 degree oven, and I have an hour and a quarter or so to kill and write in my blog.

Time to make some Chimmichurri.

Bittman has a recipe for that, too. It’s essentially parsley, garlic, and red pepper pureed in an olive oil emulsion. I likey the salsa, so I wind up adding more red pepper and more garlic. I whip that up while I’m waiting for my flank to cook. Tick tock.

My wife’s playing piano. How nice.

Why’s my fire alarm going off? Stupid fire alarm.

Wait. Grassfed beef frequently cooks faster than grain fed, remember? I check.

Bittman says cook “1 1/4 hours, until tender to the touch.” What the hell does that mean? It’s flank steak wrapping veggies. It’s already tender to the touch.

I check it, and I think I have a little more time. Back in.

I wait a few… a couple minutes, no more. I’m a little obsessive-compulsive, though. What’s my oven thermometer say?

It says five hundred degrees.

Huh?

I check the dial. It’s set to broil.

I must have brushed it on my way past a few minutes ago. I hate my oven.

I pull the roast. Lid off, let it cool. Hope I didn’t wreck it.

Pace, swear, pace, sigh, pace.

A half-hour flies by. Rest is done, let’s eat.

It’s late now, and my wife’s already had something. This will just be a little nosh. But it’s frequently served as an appetizer in Argentina, so I’ll call that even.

Slice. It still looks like a Vietnamese crab imperial roll gone off the reservation.

Umami?

But it makes a remarkably attractive slice.

Plate, chimmichurri, and serve.

First, I nibble off an unsauced portion.

Okay. Snap. This is some herbaceous steak. It’s floral and fragrant and the marinade plus the herbs I wrapped in it have done some exceptional things to this cut.

It’s a little more done than I would have preferred… More medium well than medium rare. But no more than that. Not a deal-killer.

Sauce next. That seals it. The chimmichurri is crazy good.

It’s essentially flank wrapping veggies, infused with herbs, and accompanied by a pungent, earthy, spicy sauce. Cold beer, and we’re in good shape.

I'll take it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I did not wreck it.

Verdict: Despite some temp-related scares, this turned out well. Sincerely enjoyed, plus matambre is supposed to be as good or better the next day, sliced thin at room temp. I’m game. Looking forward to lunch tomorrow.

The Wife Says: 8.5 out of 10. The chimmichurri really sold it for her. She didn’t really notice/mind my butterfly fiasco. She would have been less forgiving of dry or tough meat, so make sure you don’t overcook, and be sure to slice across the grain. That makes all the difference. Also,  I think the chimmichurri forgves a lot of sins.

She gave bonus points for “out of the ordinary” and “unexpected”. She didn’t see this one coming.

Up next: beats me. Any requests?

Pollan on Food Tv – Discuss!

Michael Pollan had an interesting article in the New York Times magazine recently. It’s well worth the read, but if you don’t have the wherewithal to read all eight pages, NPR recaps it here.

One of his assertions is that the proliferation of cooking shows on television has helped turn cooking into a spectator sport, though it hasn’t actually corresponded with a rise in viewers taking the time and effort to actually cook food in their own kitchens.

To wit:

The Food Network has helped to transform cooking from something you do into something you watch — into yet another confection of spectacle and celebrity that keeps us pinned to the couch. The formula is as circular and self-reinforcing as a TV dinner: a simulacrum of home cooking that is sold on TV and designed to be eaten in front of the TV. True, in the case of the Swanson rendition, at least you get something that will fill you up; by comparison, the Food Network leaves you hungry, a condition its advertisers must love. But in neither case is there much risk that you will get off the couch and actually cook a meal. Both kinds of TV dinner plant us exactly where television always wants us: in front of the set, watching.

I know I have some Food Network junkies in my readership. Do you find that to be the case?

Personally, I find the opposite. Watching Rachael Ray or Sandra Lee makes me want to jam my thumbs into my eyes, granted. So I don’t watch them. However, Alton Brown’s Good Eats has a permanent place on my Tivo rotation, as you can probably tell. He teaches viewers not only how to cook, but why to perform each step and the scientific processes in play. I really appreciate that. So I find that my (albiet selective) time spent with the Food Network actually increases my time in the kitchen. But then again, I may be a biased sample. I’m a weird dude.

So if we aren’t learning to cook, why do we watch? Pollan asserts it’s wired into our reptile brain to enjoy viewing appetizing food. I can understand that. I’ve been known to watch marathons of Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations, which is one third travel, one third eating, one third debauchery, and zero thirds cooking.

But more than a biological imperative, there’s also a cultural component.

Pollan:

For Lévi-Strauss, cooking is a metaphor for the human transformation of nature into culture, but in the years since “The Raw and the Cooked,” other anthropologists have begun to take quite literally the idea that cooking is the key to our humanity. Earlier this year, Richard Wrangham, a Harvard anthropologist, published a fascinating book called “Catching Fire,” in which he argues that it was the discovery of cooking by our early ancestors — not tool-making or language or meat-eating — that made us human. By providing our primate forebears with a more energy-dense and easy-to-digest diet, cooked food altered the course of human evolution, allowing our brains to grow bigger (brains are notorious energy guzzlers) and our guts to shrink. It seems that raw food takes much more time and energy to chew and digest, which is why other primates of our size carry around substantially larger digestive tracts and spend many more of their waking hours chewing: up to six hours a day. (That’s nearly as much time as Guy Fieri devotes to the activity.) Also, since cooking detoxifies many foods, it cracked open a treasure trove of nutritious calories unavailable to other animals. Freed from the need to spend our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture.

Cooking gave us not just the meal but also the occasion: the practice of eating together at an appointed time and place. This was something new under the sun, for the forager of raw food would likely have fed himself on the go and alone, like the animals. (Or, come to think of it, like the industrial eaters we’ve become, grazing at gas stations and skipping meals.) But sitting down to common meals, making eye contact, sharing food, all served to civilize us; “around that fire,” Wrangham says, “we became tamer.”

Not only is “seeing food” a biological trigger for attention, “cooking food” is possibly a cultural trait that, in it’s end result, yields both a functional opportunity for and definition of what it is to be human.

And if that’s the case, what does it mean that we don’t cook anymore?

Bad, bad stuff. He details at length the biological and, to a lesser extent, cultural implications of outsourcing food preparation. He cites a 1992 study that notes poor women who cook for themselves are overwhelmingly more likely to eat a healthful diet than wealthy women who did not. Yet, overwhelmingly, we don’t cook.

Pollan:

So I asked [Harry Balzer, food trend expert] how, in an ideal world, Americans might begin to undo the damage that the modern diet of industrially prepared food has done to our health. “Easy. You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short, and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”

I think this will be my new response to anyone who says, “You have an entire cow? You’ll be dead in a month!”

I’m eating high-quality, conscientiously-raised beef, though I’m not eating it every day. And I’m making everything I can from scratch. I can’t help but think this will be a health-increasing experience, rather than a health-decreasing experience.

Not to mention the environmental benefits of using sustainably-raised beef, and the economic benefits (both to me and the rancher) of purchasing directly from the source. And, frankly, the societal benefit of knowing where your food comes from. I didn’t buy it from Safeway… I bought it from Chris. I trust him to deliver a high quality product, and he trusts his reputation for future business.

My only job now is to make sure I don’t wreck things with my paltry cooking skills.

In this, I am – perhaps foolishly, perhaps rightly – inspired by the current box office. When I began this project, I had no idea Julie and Julia even existed, let alone would dominate in theatres.

I’m not about to compare myself to either Julie Powell or Julia Child, other culinary non-professionals. Thir strengths, goals, and talents are different than mine.

I will, however, confess that I draw inspiration and solace from the fact that neither ever worked in a restaurant, yet both arguably made the gastronomic world a better place.

Julia Child changed the perception of what was possible for the home cook. I respect and admire tremendously what she accomplished.

In closing, I leave you with a Time Magazine interview with Anthony Bourdain, explaining why he picks on Rachael Ray (full interview here. click “10 Questions” and scroll down). It’s curious how much he echos Pollan.

Personally, I think some level of culinary know-how is just part of being a culturally literate, socially savvy person. It’s a skill that’s both practical and fun. There aren’t many of those.

I concur that a lot of food television is a spectator-based (it is television, after all), I’m just not convinced it results in home cooks cooking less. Sure, polls show that most Americans cook less, but what about that subset that watches food television specifically? Do they in fact cook less? Correlation is not causation.

What about you, dear reader? Do you watch a lot of food television? Do you find it makes you cook more? Or do you simply enjoy watching gifted professionals at the top of their game, and take whatever knowledge you gain to a restaurant. Or do you watch no cooking shows at all and cook like a madman? I’m genuinely curious.

Alright. I gotta go. Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee is on.

</sarcasm>