Making the Cut

Recently, I had dinner at an upscale steak house in Scottsdale, Arizona, and their menu had a interesting addition. On the back was a chart showing all the various cuts of beef. Talk about knowing where your food comes from! If I were some kind of über-foodie-bureaucrat, I would require that all steak houses include such a chart on their menus. I would do this for several reasons. First, if you are going to be a serious consumer of steak, you need to know how the flavor and texture profiles of steak are influenced by how it's cut. Second, if you are going to be serious about cooking steak, then you need to know which cuts work best with the cooking technique involved—e.g. braising, roasting, or grilling. 

In order to understand steak, you first need to know the “primal” cuts. This is not a reference to our stone-age ancestors or what you may see in the supermarket labeled as “prime cut.” Rather, primal cuts are the large, portions of meat cut during the initial butchering. In other words, think of “primal cuts” (e.g.,  chuck, flank, or short loin) as states and the steaks that come these primal cuts (e.g., pot roast, skirt steak, or Porterhouse) as cities. 

Not all cuts of beef are the same, and this has a lot to do with biology. Don’t forget that you are consuming something that was once alive—it moved around, or at least it should have. Because an animal's legs and neck muscles do the most work in terms of walking and eating, they are the strongest and, consequently, the toughest. And the farthest one gets from the “horn” and “hoof,” the more tender the meat gets. This is where how one cooks beef starts to make sense.

Less tender cuts of meat—e.g, brisket, chuck pot roast, rump roast, or flank steak—produce the best results when cooked slowly, either braising or roasting. Personally, I think braising is an underrated way to cook meat.

The more tender cuts—e.g., sirloin, filet, rib eye—are better cooked quickly, either on the grill, pan fried or pan roasted. Of these, everyone considers the filet (a/k/a “Filet Mignon”) to be the creme-de-la-creme of steaks because of its tenderness and melt-in-your-mouth quality. But at the end of the day, the filet doesn’t pack a lot of flavor. This is why it should be marinated (more on that later) or served with a sauce, such as Béarnaise. But if you want real “steak” flavor, you can’t go wrong with the New York strip. (It was the steak my Dad got for grilling every Saturday night.) All you need is a hot grill or cast iron skillet, some salt and pepper, maybe some butter if you are using the skillet, and you’re done. The steak’s flavor does the rest. No need for a fancy sauce.

But why is it called “New York Strip”? In 1837, Delmonico's Restaurant, which proclaimed itself “America’s first fine dining restaurant,” had as one of its signature dishes, a cut from the short loin, called—you guessed it—a Delmonico steak. Because the Delmonico steak became associated with the City from whence it came, it has been referred to as a New York strip ever since.

A few paragraphs back, I talked about filets and how they need a marinade or sauce to really make it work. The best marinade for a filet is, in my humble opinion, Dale’s Steak Seasoning. Dale’s was the “house” steak sauce for an old restaurant in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, called Dale’s Cellar Restaurant, so named because it was located in the cellar of a multi-story apartment building. It was also air-conditioned, something prominently advertised, and something that was no small amenity in 1949! This marinade works with any kind of meat, but steak especially. I take a nice fillet, put it in a Ziploc bag with some Dale’s and let it marinade for at least 30 minutes; throw it on a hot grill; and instant nirvana!

Just goes to show you: you don’t need a fancy steakhouse to enjoy a good steak!

Sunday, 11:30AM

One of my favorite meals is brunch. I like it because of its idiosyncratic rituals and traditions.

Brunch is best served on a Sunday with a good, strong Bloody Mary. Why Sunday and why a Bloody Mary? Do you really have to ask? Brunch, done right, is the antidote for the late-night poker game with the guys; the dinner party that lingered a little too long; or the plain ol’ “painting-the-town-red” kind of night.

The Bloody Mary is the perfect drink for brunch. It’s just boozy enough, but not too over the top. After all, you are likely drinking before noon, or at least you should be. (I like to start brunch around 11:30, so I can watch the horrified faces of the after-church crowd walk past my table—me, with the unkempt hair and the guts of the Sunday New York Times insouciantly piled on my table next to my second Bloody Mary—“obviously, I’ve been here a while folks!”)   Also, the Bloody Mary is  not completely unhealthy. After all, tomatoes are full of things called lycopene and antioxidants, which I’ve been told are good for you. And don’t forget about that celery stalk! Some good roughage there!

So where did the Bloody Mary come from? Like most great drinks, its provenance is shrouded in mystery and controversy. As the old saying goes, success has many fathers, and so does the Bloody Mary. One version has it invented in the 1930s by a bartender named Henry Zbikiewicz at New York's 21 Club. Another version claims that the comedian George Jessel, who frequented the 21 Club, invented it. A third version, and the one I will go with, is that Fernand Petiot, the bartender at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis in New York, invented it in 1934. I’ve been to the King Cole Bar, and they do a great Bloody Mary, though it will cost you a pretty penny.

Here’s the recipe Mr. Petiot gave to New Yorker magazine in July 1964: 

I cover the bottom of the shaker with four large dashes of salt, two dashes of black pepper, two dashes of cayenne pepper, and a layer of Worcestershire sauce; I then add a dash of lemon juice and some cracked ice, put in two ounces of vodka and two ounces of thick tomato juice, shake, strain, and pour. 

Of course, brunch is more than just booze served before noon. As the name implies, brunch presents a culinary conundrum. Sweet or savory? Eggs or waffles? French toast or grits? This is why, for me, brunch has a golden hour. Too early and all you want is typical breakfast food, but too late and you want more in the way of lunch food. Recently, I had a great brunch that was the perfect combination of the two: chicken and waffles. Now, if you’ve never tried this kind of soul food, then you have seriously missed out. Chicken and waffles is a sublime combination of sweet and savory. Of course, one can never go wrong with the classic Eggs Benedict. And if you are asking yourself where that dish came from, then you guessed it: who knows! This origin of Eggs Benedict, like the Bloody Mary, is surrounded by controversy. Suffice it to say, it apparently originated in New York City.

So, we have our Bloody Mary and our chicken and waffles or Eggs Benedict. What’s left? Companionship! Brunch is equally enjoyable alone, immersed in your newspaper of choice (mine—New York Times); with just one other person (who may have his or her Sunday paper of choice different from yours—New York Post perhaps); or with a large, boisterous group of friends or family. Either way, you can’t go wrong: a belly full of food and booze and the fading embers of the weekend.

Pasta Part 2

Lately, I’ve been training for a marathon to be held in late October. At this point in my training, the weekly long runs are getting longer and longer (today’s was 22 miles). That means a lot of what runners call “carb loading”—storing glycogen to fuel your body. And what’s the most popular—and tasty—method of carb loading? Pasta!

So, I decided to make what I call spaghetti bolognese. Bolognese sauce, which is known in Italian as ragù alla bolognese, is a meat-based sauce from Bologna, Italy. And like many old, traditional dishes, no two recipes are alike. (The first published recipe for ragù wasn't until 1891.)

In Bologna, ragù is served on a bed of tagliatelle pasta. Elsewhere, especially the United States, bolognese contains minced meat and tomatoes dominate much more than the original. (“Traditional” ragù contains no tomatoes, except for some tomato paste. ) Perhaps, in order to avoid all these technicalities, Americans whether of Italian extraction or not, simply call it “spaghetti with meat sauce” and call it a night. 

My recipe is slightly different from the “traditional” ragù and is more of a meld between what we call in the United States “spaghetti sauce” and what a nonna in Bologna would call ragù. I’ll start with the official version first.

On October 17, 1982, the Bolognese chapter of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, "after having carried out long and laborious investigations and conducted studies and research,” decreed the following recipe to be the official one for classic ragù alla bolognese. 

Official Bolognese Sauce

Ingredients

1  5-oz. piece pancetta, finely chopped
2 ribs celery, finely chopped
1 small carrot, finely chopped
1/2 small yellow onion, finely chopped
3/4 lb. ground skirt steak
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tbsp. Homemade Tomato Paste
1 1/2 cups milk
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tbsp. heavy cream
Homemade Tagliatelle (You can cheat and buy the stuff at the local Piggly Wiggly.)

Preparation

1. Put the pancetta into a heavy-bottomed medium pot (preferably terra-cotta) over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until its fat has rendered, about 10 minutes.

2. Add the celery, carrots, and onions and cook, stirring frequently, until soft and lightly browned, about 15 minutes.

3. Add the skirt steak and cook, stirring occasionally, until broken up and lightly browned and beginning to sizzle, about 5 minutes. Add the wine to the pot; cook until evaporated, about 4 minutes. In a small bowl, stir together the tomato paste and 2 tbsp. water; add to the pot and stir well to combine. Reduce the heat to low and simmer the sauce, stirring occasionally and adding some of the milk, little by little, until all the milk is added and the sauce is very thick, about 1 1⁄2 hours.

4. Season the ragù with salt and pepper and stir in the cream. Toss with farfalle, fresh tagliatelle, or the pasta of your choice. Serve with grated parmigiano-reggiano.

The Insouciant Chef’s Bolognese Sauce

Ingredients

2 28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes

1 package of Johnsonville mild Italian sausage (5 links) with the casings removed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup of good olive oil

1 large yellow onion, diced

1 large carrot, finely diced

1 large green bell pepper, diced

1/2 cup red wine

2 garlic cloves minced

Oregano to taste

Salt & pepper to taste

1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes

2  teaspoons ground fennel

3-4 basil leaves finely chopped

Preparation

In a large, heavy pot (preferably a Dutch oven), sauté the onion, green bell pepper, and carrots with salt and pepper on medium high heat until soft; add garlic and sauté for about a minute or until fragrant; reduce the temperature to low, cover, and sweat the vegetables for about 10-15 minutes. 

Add red wine, 1/4 cup olive oil, tomatoes (hand crushed and with liquid) and bring to a good simmer. Incorporate the oregano, red pepper, fennel, and basel.

In a separate sauté pan, brown the sausage and incorporate into the sauce; reduce to a low simmer for about 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Taste periodically and add salt, pepper, etc., to suit your tastes.

Try them both out and see which one you like better, or make your own!

Authentic __________ [Insert Name of Cuisine Here]

The most overused word in the foodie universe these days is “authentic.”  And, to avoid accusations of hypocrisy, I freely admit that I have probably used the word myself. How many times have you heard someone mention—usually with a tone of self-satisfaction—a restaurant where the food was the authentic embodiment of some country or people’s cuisine (usually the more exotic the better)? Really, how would they know? Have they actually been to Kerala region of India? 

So what does it mean for a particular dish to be “authentic?” More importantly, authentic to whom, when and where?

The increased culinary emphasis of authenticity is a blessing and a curse—the product of the increasingly diverse nature of culinary options in America today. Thirty years ago, we couldn’t have talked about an “authentic” Indian or Vietnamese restaurant because we were lucky to have a third-rate Chinese restaurant serving lo mien. Now, we have cafes offering banh mi sandwiches with southern style barbecue sauce. But does that make that banh mi any less authentic than one served from a truck in Hanoi? 

A recent trip to Huntington, West Virginia, provides a perfect example. I was in town on business; it was late; I was hungry. Like many of us, I grabbed my iPhone and pulled up the Urbanspoon app and found a place called Black Sheep Burritos and Brews. It got a pretty good rating and seemed halfway decent, so I decided to give it a try. I thought I’d find the typical burrito there, but to my surprise, they served one with Hawaiian pork-confit with a grilled pineapple glaze, shaved red cabbage and fried plantains; and one called the “Bulgogi,” with ginger and sesame marinated flank steak, kimchi, and cilantro Dijon and smoked  cashews. The one that really caught my eye, however, was a curry burrito. Vindaloo spiced chicken with smoked peach chutney, seasoned rice, all topped with a curry sauce.  Of course, this is not even remotely “authentic” Indian, but then again neither is chicken Tikka masala (the national dish of England).

A nation’s cuisine is not monolithic. It is inaccurate to speak of one kind of “French,” “Italian,” or “Indian” food because what people eat varies so widely within their own borders. Classic haute cuisine in Paris would be foreign to people raised on the rustic stews of Southwest France. The red sauce that Americans associate with Italian food is rarely found in the cuisine of Northern Italy. And what most Americans consider “Indian”—a country of a billion people—comes from just one rather modest-sized region. If anything, authenticity is a concentric circle that expands outward from the home to the larger world. The authenticity of my mom’s fried chicken did not extend past the front door, and North Carolina style barbecue ceases to exist once you drive into South Carolina. Authenticity is also about time, as much as place, because like any human cultural endeavor, cuisines evolve over time. For example, what is “American” cuisine? Is it jelled veal from colonial New Hampshire (yes, this is a real dish) or a turducken? 


With the world getting smaller and the international travel ever more routine, maybe one day there will be something called “world cuisine,” the last concentric circle. Pizza is seen as American more than Italian, with a pie from a NYC pizzeria no less authentic than one from the Piazza Navona in Rome. Heck, you can get chicken Vindaloo burrito in a small restaurant in Huntington, West Virginia!

Where'd You Go Joe?!

© 2014 Chris Terrell

In my last post, I wrote about school cafeteria lunches from my childhood. One obvious dish I failed to mention was the sloppy Joe! I loved sloppy Joes growing up. We got them at least once a week at school (Friday?). And my mom would make them too. She used a can mix called Manwich. I can still recall their ad slogan: “A sandwich is a sandwich, but a Manwich is a meal.” And yes it was, albeit a messy one, and that was part of its charm—the one time a kid was allowed to be messy at dinner.

The sloppy Joe was born in 1930—the height of the Great Depression—in a diner in Sioux City, Iowa. It was named after the cook, a guy named “Joe.” Other than that, his true identity is long-forgotten. 

And then I got to thinking. Does anyone eat sloppy Joes anymore, especially kids? I’m not so sure. Maybe sloppy Joes have an image problem—perceived as being unhealthy and overly processed, anathema to our locally scored, organic food zeitgeist. I suspect that Alice Waters would rather choke on an organic rutabaga than eat a sloppy Joe. 

Of course, this is unfair. A sloppy Joe sandwich is nothing more than ground beef, onion, green pepper, tomatoes, and seasoning. As such, it is really no more “unhealthy” than a hamburger, which, as far as I know, is doing quite well in America. Think of the sloppy Joe as a deconstructed hamburger. 

I asked my kids if they had ever had a sloppy Joe, and they said “yes.” I was surprised because I was pretty sure I had never made them one. They said it was during a trip to the lake and a friend’s mom had made one. I asked, “from a can?” “Yes,” they replied. Feeling somewhat guilty that I had never made them a sloppy Joe sandwich, I decided then and there that for dinner that night, sloppy Joes were on the menu. Except mine would be from scratch.  Here’s the recipe:

Sloppy Joe 

Ingredients

2 tbsp. canola oil

1 small yellow onion, finely chopped

1/2 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and finely chopped

16 oz. ground beef

2 cups canned tomato sauce

4 tsp. Worcestershire

2 tsp. chili powder

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Tabasco, to taste

4-6 hamburger buns, toasted

Preparation

1. Heat oil in 12″ skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and pepper and cook, stirring, until soft, about 6 minutes.

2. Add beef and cook until browned, stirring so that the meat breaks up into small pieces, about 8 minutes.

3. Add tomato sauce, Worcestershire, chili powder, salt, pepper, and Tabasco; cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced and thick, about 10 minutes.

4. Divide between buns and serve.

And like the hamburger, the sloppy Joe can easily shed its work-a-day clothes, throw on some Armani and, voila!, go gourmet. Just think of the possibilities. A tandoori sloppy Joe, a foie gras sloppy Joe (hell, Daniel Boulud has a foie gras burger!), a southwestern-style sloppy Joe with chipotle peppers and ancho chili powder. I think the sloppy Joe’s renewed day in the sun may be quickly approaching. All it needs is a bearded hipster to put it on the menu in a restaurant in Brooklyn. Instant rock star status!

Remember When School Lunch was a Big Deal?

With the start of another school year, I tried to recall my earliest memory of school or, more specifically, my earliest memory of school lunch. Third grade was as far back as I got.  

At that time in my life, I was living in Suffolk, Virginia, and attending Andrew J. Brown Elementary School. Unlike the food-product served in school cafeterias today, the offerings at A.J. Brown were pretty good There was homemade fried chicken, collards, mac-‘n-cheese, green beans, meat loaf, and homemade cakes and pies. Another interesting feature of lunch at A. J. Brown was that you couldn’t take your tray away until the teacher monitoring the lunch room that day had inspected it and made sure you had eaten enough. Can you imagine that today?!

School lunch was a big deal because you got to socialize with your friends, free of the prying eyes of the teacher. You talked about the reigning king of kickball, the upcoming math quiz, or what you were going to be for Halloween. It all seemed so important at the time, and maybe it was. Certainly more so than mortgage payments, your 401K, or the next business trip to Des Moines.  However, there was also a certain element of surprise or dread. “Oh, I hope they have chicken pot pie today! I hope there’s no meat loaf today!” (Though I actually loved the meatloaf.) 

Unfortunately, things only went downhill after that. By the time I reached high school (at this point, we were living in the D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia), I was stuck with tater tots, pizza in the shape of a rectangle, and hamburgers made of mystery meat. We did get taco salad on Tuesday. By junior year, however, I was making my own lunch. 

And let’s talk about that high school pizza. To this day, I have no idea what the hell that thing was. What I do know is that it was not pizza, as most members of the human race would recognize it. (Yes, I was a pizza snob even at the young, precocious age of fourteen.) On the first day of high school as a freshman, I ordered one of these things—about half the size of an asphalt roof shingle, with about as much flavor, and promptly suffered a gag reflex. I never ate one again during my remaining four years of high school.  Forget water boarding, the CIA should simply serve one of these things to the leader of Al-Qaeda and end the War on Terror in about six months. 

My kids go to a small private school without a cafeteria.  I should  add that the school is also a tad bit crunchy. This puts Dad in a bit of a bind. I have to balance convenience at 9:00pm on a work night with the diktats of the gluten-free, GMO-free, organic, locavore movements. Of course, I fail miserably. My lunches, though packed with Teutonic efficiency in about five minutes flat, will usually contain Doritos and PB&Js, which surely put me on the latest hit list of the Food Police. I do, however, pack some fresh fruit and granola bars. That counts for something! Maybe I should channel my inner A. J. Brown Elementary, and send them to school with meatloaf.

A Poor Thing, Poorly Treated

Recently, I traveled to Ireland for the first time. We stayed in Dublin, but ventured out into the countryside for day trips. I had never been to Ireland, though I was well acquainted with its reputed beauty and the warmth of its people, both of which proved to be true.

Like many Americans, I had preconceived notions about Irish food—lots of cabbage and potatoes—but I was pleasantly surprised. Dublin in particular has a vibrant, modern, and creative restaurant scene, far removed from Irish stew, bangers and mash, and fish and chips. Of course, these traditional dishes can still be found in Dublin’s pubs, which can be found on nearly every street corner. And don’t get me wrong, I like a good basket of fish and chips as much as the next guy. Simply put, the humble potato is not going away any time soon.

No other food is as tied to a nation’s history and identity as the potato is with Ireland. But this wasn’t always the case. Prior to English colonization in the 17th century, the traditional Irish diet consisted of livestock, dairy, and grains. When the English arrived, many Irish were stripped of their rich farmland and forced to rely on less productive land. Consequently, the Irish resorted to the growing of potatoes, which fortunately thrived in the wet Irish soil and yielded more vitamins and protein than corn, wheat, or oats. Served with a bit of herring, potatoes could provide a farmer or laborer with three square meals a day.

But reliance on a single crop led to disaster: The Famine. On the eve of the Famine, three million out of a population of eight million depended solely on potatoes for sustenance. Eventually, one million died and another million left for North America, Britain, and Australia. The Famine is not forgotten even today in Ireland. There is a memorial to it in Dublin. It depicts gaunt and exhausted peasants, some of whom carry their dead or dying children on their shoulders. It is no wonder the potato is perhaps the most political of vegetables.

But despite this history, the potato remains as an important and valued part of the Irish culinary repertoire.  Potatoes have endured for the simple reason that they make wonderful dishes, though rarely as the main star. They are more like that veteran character actor without whom the leading actor wouldn’t be nearly as effective. But as M.F.K. Fisher pointed out: “to be complimentary is in itself, a compliment.” 

Antoine Augustin Parmentier

Next to Ireland, no other country has embraced the potato more than the French. After all, the French gave the world the eponymous French fry! The French owe their love of the potato to Antoine Augustin Parmentier, an 18th century military pharmacist and French agronomist who promoted the potato most of his adult life. (He discovered it while he was a prisoner of war in Westphalia during he Seven Years War.) Until Parmentier came along, the French considered the potato unwholesome, fit only as food for cattle or the destitute. 

When the potato was used (which was rare indeed), it was used in the form of a flour, mixed with wheat and rye to make bread. To prove that the potato was more than a mere culinary bit player, Parmentier once served dinner to Benjamin Franklin made up entirely of potatoes. Ironically, Parmentier won a prize for the potato from the Academy of Besançon, which held a contest for the discovery of plants likely to be of use during a famine.  And, on a more pedestrian note, in 1904 the Paris Metro opened a new station named for Parmentier, adorned with references to him and his beloved potato.

Enough history! This is supposed to be a food blog after all!.  What are my favorite potato dishes? Well, French fries would be the first, and most obvious, choice, but then there’s potato salad, potato-leek soup,  and mashed potatoes. The most decadent but simple potato dish is Gratin Dauphinois. It is divine on a cold winter evening with a big juicy steak and a glass of red wine.  So here they are—my favorite potato dishes. Enjoy and remember that along with a tasty dish you may be getting a little bit of history too.

The Insouciant Chef’s Potato Salad

Take about 6-8 red potatoes and peel and dice them into 1/2 inch cubes. Boil the potatoes until tender and then cool and stop them from continuing to cook by rinsing with cold water. In a large bowl, mix with diced celery (one cup), red onion (1 cup), mayonnaise (3/4 cup), dijon mustard (1/4 cup), 1/4 cup sweet pickle relish, and salt and black pepper to taste. Of course of all these ingredients can be adjusted to suit your taste—I rarely make my potato salad the same way twice. I like to take a potato masher and mash some of the potatoes to give the salad a bit of a creamy texture. You also don’t have to use as much mayo this way.

The Insouciant Chef’s Mashed Potatoes

Start with about 4-6 russet potatoes. Peel and chop into 1/2-1 inch cubes.  Drain and rinse. Put the potatoes through a ricer into a large mixing bowl. Add to the potatoes, cream (1/2 cup), butter (1-2 sticks), sour cream (1/2 cup) and salt, and white pepper to taste. Use a hand mixer and mix until super smooth.

Potato Leek Soup (Served Cold it is Vichyssoise) 

Ingredients

3-4 cups or 1 lb., peeled potatoes (Yukon Gold), diced
3 cups or 1 lb. thinly sliced leeks, including the pale green parts
2 quarts water
1 tablespoon salt
4-6 tablespoons heavy cream
2-3 tablespoons butter
2-3 tablespoons minced parsley

Preparation

Simmer the potatoes and leeks in a 3-4 quart saucepan with the water and salt partially covered until tender—about 40-50 minutes. Purée with an immersion blender. (If you have one, and you want a super silky soup, use a Vitamix!).  Remove from heat, and just before serving, add the butter and cream. Garnish with parsley. 

N.B. The great thing about this soup is its variation. You can add ham, bacon, or mushrooms. 

Gratin Dauphinois

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Ingredients

2 pounds starchy potatoes
1/2 clove unpeeled garlic
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 cup (4 ounces) grated Swiss cheese
1 cup boiling milk or cream

Preparation

Peel the potatoes and slice them 1/8 inch thick. Place in cold water. Drain when ready to use.

Rub the baking dish with cut garlic. Smear the dish with 1 tablespoon of the butter.

Drain the potatoes and dry them in a towel. Spread half of them in the bottom of the dish. Divide over them half the salt, pepper, cheese, and butter.

Arrange the remaining potatoes over the first layer and season. Spread on the rest of the cheese and divide the butter over it. Pour on the boiling milk.

Set the baking dish in upper third of preheated oven. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the potatoes are tender, the milk is absorbed, and the top is a golden brown.