Warm and sunny: Moroccan Braised Beef

Moroccan Braised Beef, made with golden raisins and an international mix of spices, delivers the warm, sweet/savory flavors of Morocco. Recipe below.

Last week, I sang the praises of oven-braising cheap cuts of beef for flavorful, juicy tenderness. With winter maintaining its icy choke hold on the Midwest, I was inspired to explore this technique further. Nothing like firing up the oven for a couple of hours and enjoying a hearty, meateriffic dinner to take the edge off the cold. Eventually, my virtual explorations led me to Morocco.

“Morocco.” The name alone conjures up exotic visions—Marrakesh, Casablanca [and Bogart and Bergman], souks [Moroccan markets] filled with dates, nuts, fragrant spices… Traditional Moroccan cuisine is as influenced by Europe and the spice trade routes as by being part of the African continent. Indeed, it is a mere eight miles [13 kilometers] from Spain at the narrowest point of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Lamb, chicken and beef all figure heavily in Moroccan cooking, especially in their stewlike tagines [the name for the dishes themselves as well as the special ceramic pots in which they’re cooked].

As do spices. Cumin, ginger, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, turmeric, cayenne, saffron… Various takes on the Moroccan spice blend Ras-El-Hanout use some or all of these and other spices. The emphasis is on bold flavor, not heat. The recipe that became the basis for my braised beef even called for [authentically or otherwise] the Indian spice blend garam masala. Again, given the centuries of the spice trade through the region, it didn’t seem off the mark. And when the spice mix hit the hot pot early in the cooking process, it gave us an instant preview of the exotically delicious meal to come.

Mixing sweet with savory is also a big part of this cuisine. Besides onions, the vegetable that appeared most frequently in the recipes I found was carrots. And raisins showed up in more recipes than not. Once I’d settled on the beef dish, I started looking for a Moroccan side to accompany it. After the fourth or fifth recipe with raisins and pretty much the same spice mix, I served a simple salad on the side. And I opted for spooning the beef over a bed of ditali, instead of the recommended couscous. I felt the scale and texture of the tiny tubes worked better with the chunks of beef.

The beef itself was tender and full of flavor; the raisins [which plumped up to resemble small, golden grapes] and spice blend lent a definite sweet note to the savory meat. The cayenne delivered a bit of heat that sneaks up on you without overpowering the dish. Together, they served up a bit of warmth and sunshine on a cold Chicago night. Continue reading “Warm and sunny: Moroccan Braised Beef” →

Slow good: Oven-braised beef stew

Slow, moist cooking in the oven makes inexpensive chuck roast juicy, flavorful and fork tender for this Oven-braised Beef Stew. Recipe below.

A couple of quick notes before I get started:

First, is green the new color of Valentine’s Day? Carmen and Aimee of the website Ecoscene report that Chicago high-end chocolatier Vosges Haut-Chocolat not only makes exotic treats guaranteed to spice up your Valentine’s Day—they do it green. In fact, they’re soon to be LEEDs certified.

Next, a quick little toot of the Blue Kitchen horn. Sometime last Sunday evening, the odometer clicked over to 100,000 hits. Very cool to see. But enough about me—let’s talk about stew.

I work in advertising. In just about every agency where I’ve worked, you’ll either see the following sign [usually in the print production manager’s office, if the agency’s big enough to have one], or creatives will bring it up when they think the suits aren’t standing up to the clients enough, particularly regarding deadlines:

GOOD
FAST
CHEAP
Pick two.

I know this sign isn’t unique to advertising—I’ve seen it in at least one car repair place, for instance. But wherever you see it, the message is clear. If you want something done good and fast, it’s going to cost you [almost anything can be done fast, if you throw enough money at it]. If you want something fast and cheap, it ain’t gonna be pretty. And if you want something good and cheap, it’s going to take some time.

Which brings me to beef stew meat. Stews were made for the cheap cuts. Chuck roast, the cut most commonly used for stew meat, has lots of connective tissue in it, which requires a long cooking time to break down so the meat will be tender. Conversely [and somewhat perversely], more expensive cuts of beef—steaks, for instance—get tougher the longer you cook them. This is why you should never order steak more than medium rare in a restaurant; and according to Anthony Bourdain, if you order a steak well done, you are guaranteed to get the worst steak the chef has at hand, because the steak is going to be ruined and it’s assumed you wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Here’s what the Restaurants & Institution’s Beef U site says about connective tissue:

“Connective tissues are the tendons and ligaments that attach muscles to the bone, and help give muscles their shape and form. The amount of connective tissue determines the meat’s tenderness; the greater the connective tissue, the less tender the meat. Muscles that are used for locomotion and power (i.e., in the legs and shoulders) have more connective tissue and typically yield less tender meat. The muscles of support (i.e., in the back—rib and loin) move less, are not as important for locomotion or power and, as a result, are more tender.”

Chuck comes from the shoulder, one of those locomotion and power sets of muscles. No problem—you just cook it a long time. Well, except the problem with that is the meat can tend to dry out when cooked a long time—especially, it turns out, on the stovetop. It’s nearly impossible to keep the temperature low enough with the pot sitting right there on the flame.

Blake over at The Paupered Chef wrote about cooking short ribs, another notoriously tough cut—wrote about it twice, in fact, once admitting his failure and once telling how he got it right. I remembered reading the second post and storing away in my brain that the difference was cooking them in the oven instead of on the stovetop.

Now, I’ve cooked stew for years. Good stew, not great stew. Oh, it’s always been hearty and satisfying, and I’ve generally gotten a nice mix of flavors going with wine and herbs. But often, the meat has tended toward the tough, dry, stringy side. Even if I cooked it over low heat for a couple of hours, same deal. So when stew weather hit with a vengeance—a spate of snowstorms, frigid temperatures and howling winds—I decided to solve this problem once and for all.

When meat’s the problem, start with meat solutions. I already knew what vegetables I wanted in my stew and how to prepare them, so instead of looking for stew recipes, I focused on the meat—specifically ways to braise beef, a slow, moist method of cooking. Remembering Blake’s tale of two short ribs, I rejected any stovetop recipes I found. Once I settled on a basic oven-braising recipe, I did what I always do—borrowed from other recipes I’d stumbled upon in the process as well as my own cooking experiences to morph it into my own take. And that take was delicious, if I say so myself—the beef flavorful, juicy and fork tender. Continue reading “Slow good: Oven-braised beef stew” →

Two delicious: Pan-grilled fish, soba noodle salad

Fresh, flavorful and quick: Pan-grilled Citrus Yellowtail and Soba Noodle Salad. Recipes below.

Last week, I posted two recipes for cooking fish that ranged from simple to simpler. I kept them simple because I didn’t want anything masking the taste of the Hawaiian yellowtail I’d been asked to try by Kona Blue Water Farms. This week, two more recipes. First, Marion shows just how well this fish plays with other flavors. Then she streamlines a complex side dish into something quick, simple and simply delicious.

Terry and I both love to cook, but our tastes in cookbooks and food authors don’t particularly overlap. He avidly reads Anthony Bourdain; I go for obsessive re-readings of M.F.K. Fisher. His cookbook tastes run to the school of It’s Better If It’s French. My favorite cookbook is an obscure, grubby, out-of-print one about Szechwan food.

So we think it’s pretty interesting that, when Terry received that lovely shipment of Hawaiian yellowtail, we each, independently, turned to the same author. Ming Tsai—chef, restaurateur, star of two televised cooking shows and author of some very nice cookbooks—really has been our guide in understanding this amazing fish. When it was my turn in the kitchen, I found a pair of recipes in Ming’s Blue Ginger: East Meets West Cooking with Ming Tsai that became the foundation for a meal.

By the way, this morning a friend called and asked me what this fish tastes like. It tastes like standing on the edge of a high bluff looking straight out over the open Pacific, with the surface of the water like light beaten silver, and a faint cold morning wind washing over your face, and the wind has come four thousand uninterrupted miles straight to find you. It’s that clean and beautiful and pure.

The original and very delightful version of this recipe calls for ponzu sauce and snapper, and the fish, once cooked, goes on to become part of a salad with pea sprouts and a Dijon vinaigrette. Here is my foreshortened, non-salad take, abbreviated into a simple grilled dish. This recipe goes quickly once you begin it. Make sure your side dishes are in progress before you start on this. Continue reading “Two delicious: Pan-grilled fish, soba noodle salad” →

Almost sushi: Herb-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail

Coriander-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail fillet, barely sautéed and served with wasabi mashed potatoes and a mixed green salad. Recipes below.

A quick note: The two fish recipes in this post call for a specific type of fish. They can also be made with others—I’ll mention some possible substitutes with the recipes. The wasabi mashed potato recipe doesn’t call for fish at all.

I was recently invited by Kona Blue Water Farms to sample some of their sushi-grade Kona Kampachi. This is their name for their own sustainably farmed Hawaiian yellowtail or Almaco Jack, a crisper textured cousin to the Japanese hamachi popular in sashimi and sushi.

Doing a little research, I discovered these 5- to 6-pounders aren’t just your typical farm-raised fish; as CNNMoney.com’s Business 2.0 puts it, “Hawaii startup Kona Blue is pioneering deepwater aquaculture to farm ocean fish and take the pressure off wild species.” The Seattle Post provides further details, explaining that they do this by growing the fish “in large, space-age cages submerged in 200 feet of ocean and by controlling what the fish eat. The fish are given no antibiotics or medications, just a pellet feed containing fish meal, fish oil and wheat. The fish meal and oil come from sustainable wild fisheries and the wheat comes from an organic source.” Healthwise, Kona Kamachi is rich in Omega-3 fish oils, and independent testing showed “no detectable” levels of PCBs or mercury.

Taking pressure off wild species is a particularly timely topic. Just the other day, The New York Times ran an editorial entitled “Until All the Fish Are Gone” about “the disastrous environmental, economic and human consequences of often illegal industrial fishing.”

Next, I took a look at who’s selling and cooking Kona Kampachi. The answer was restaurants and seafood stores in nearly 30 states across the country. Here in Chicago, respected restaurants Blackbird, Meritage Café & Wine Bar and Rick Bayless’ Topolobampo are among the dozens who serve it. And leading purveyors like Dirk’s Fish & Gourmet Shop and Burhop’s Seafood carry it for home cooks.

All of the above was enough for me. Yes, I wanted to try it. In the interest of full disclosure, Kona Blue generously sent me a, well, generous sample for free. I warned them I wasn’t afraid to bite the hand that fed me—if the fish was less than wonderful, I would say so. They didn’t seem worried. And as it turns out, they had no reason to be.

A big box arrived at my office Friday. When we got home, I immediately tore it open. Inside, I found two fresh fillets, each a little more than 1-1/4 pounds, carefully wrapped and nestled in multiple ice packs. When I say fresh, I’m talking the kind of fresh we don’t take for granted in the Midwest, even in a big city like Chicago. The smell was absolutely clean, with just the wonderful briny hint of the ocean that only the freshest saltwater seafood can deliver.

Also in the interest of full disclosure, the first thing we did was slice the little tapered end off one of the fillets and devour it immediately. This was supposedly sushi-grade fish—that demanded testing, didn’t it? Marion sliced it into thin little pieces, and we had some lazy man’s sashimi. Just the fish and a little soy sauce. And soon we were skipping the soy sauce. It was that fresh, that good, satisfyingly meaty.

Now then, what to do with the rest of the fish? At a party, I had discussed our impending bounty—okay, maybe I bragged a little—with our friend Karen. I said that since it was sushi-grade, one thing I wanted to try was based on a tuna recipe long ago read but never tried, in which the fish was barely cooked on one side only and served cooked side up. Karen had just seen Ming Tsai do something similar with Japanese hamachi on his TV show Simply Ming. Since my half-remembered tuna recipe was long gone, this sounded like a great place to start.

The Ming recipe is simplicity itself. Fish fillets seasoned only with salt and pepper and then coated with a crust of coarsely ground coriander seeds and seared for a mere 30 seconds per side. I’d already rejected various recipes with soy sauce or orange juice or countless other ingredients that sounded delicious but might mask the flavor of the fish itself. But this sounded like it would let the fish shine through, with the citrusy brightness of the coriander as just a flavor note.

Ming serves his version of this dish sliced over a shaved fennel salad. I was just here for the fish. So I served my fillets whole, along with a simple salad and wasabi mashed potatoes. You’ll find the recipe below, along with one for the potatoes. You’ll also find more of a description than a recipe for the even simpler preparation I served the next night. Continue reading “Almost sushi: Herb-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail” →

Lentil Soup: Quick, versatile, healthy and good

Lentils and kale come together quickly in a hearty, healthy soup. Recipe below.

We’re big on beans at Blue Kitchen. Tuscan beans, chili, Cajun red beans and rice, Brazilian rice and beans—beans are versatile, delicious and packed with protein, fiber and a lot more stuff that’s really good for you. And for many recipes, canned beans are just fine, making them quick and convenient.

But when recipes call for dried beans, everything slows waaaay down. They need to soak, often overnight. And they need to cook, often for hours.

That’s where lentils shine. These tiny dried legumes pack the same nutritious punch beans do [according to Magic Foods: Simple Changes You Can Make to Supercharge Your Energy, Lose Weight and Live Longer, eating lentils twice a week can even reduce the risk of breast cancer in women], and they can go from dried to cooked and tender in as little as 20 minutes, without presoaking [at least the brown lentils common in the U.S. do—smaller, firmer French green lentils take a bit longer, 30 to 45 minutes or so].

They can go long too. Cooking a soup that takes 45 minutes? An hour? Longer? Even quicker cooking brown lentils will hold their shape and not cook to mush. [The red and yellow lentils commonly used in Middle Eastern or Indian cooking are skinless and intended to cook into more of a purée.]

They have a great taste, more delicate than beans, and a pleasant mouthfeel. Because they’re packed with fiber—16 grams in a cup of cooked lentils, much of it soluble fiber—they satisfy hunger for a good long time. And because they’re rich in protein [18 grams in that same cooked cup], they’re often used as a meat substitute. It’s little wonder that these little wonders are a staple in the Middle East and India. They’re also popular in parts of Europe and gaining in popularity here in the U.S.

Lentils are wonderfully versatile. They can be used in soups, stews, salads and the fabulously spicy Indian dish, dal. A quick check of epicurious.com turned up 47 results for lentil soups alone. Right here at Blue Kitchen, you’ll find a recipe for Curried Lentil Soup with Chicken.

This lentil soup balances the delicate taste of lentils with the mildly cabbagey bite of kale, another good-for-you powerhouse. A cruciferous vegetable, kale delivers vitamins A and C, folic acid, calcium and iron. It also contains cancer-fighting antioxidants.

And perhaps best of all in this fresh-produce-starved season, kale is actually best during the winter months; it greatly prefers cooler climes for growing.

Oh, and this hearty, delicious soup also contains some smoked sausage for even more stick-to-your-ribs goodness. We’re also big on meat at Blue Kitchen. Continue reading “Lentil Soup: Quick, versatile, healthy and good” →

Meaty secrets and Argentine chimichurri sauce

Salt-tenderized steak with chimichurri sauce and a side of spicy roasted potatoes. Recipe below.

My Brazilian buddy Patricia over at Technicolor Kitchen recently surprised me with a present from the trip she and her husband Joao took to Europe this past fall: a lovely package of coarsely ground flor de sal [“flower of salt” or sea salt] from Portugal.

As much as I love food and ingredients, I hate to admit that my go to for salt is just the plain old salt shaker. It’s there. And it’s iodized—and who wants a goiter, right? We have kosher salt [somewhere] and some finely ground fleur de sel, but I seldom think of them when I’m ready to season a recipe. Patricia’s gracious gift gave me the kick in the pants I needed to think outside the shaker.

Next I needed a recipe to do it justice. Well, one found me. Poking around on various food blogs and search links [okay, I was scoping out links that had brought people to Blue Kitchen—happy?], I happened on a wonderful post from last August by Jaden over at Steamy Kitchen that involved coating steaks in a heavy layer of coarse salt for 15 minutes to an hour before cooking them, then rinsing and drying them before throwing them onto the grill or into a hot pan or broiler. I gasped just like you did just then—isn’t salting ahead of time supposed to dry out steaks?

Turns out it does at first, a little. But then reverse osmosis takes over, drawing salt deep into the meat, seasoning it throughout and making it amazingly tender. Or as Jaden puts it, turning cheap “choice” steaks into Gucci “prime” steaks. In her post, she thoroughly and wittily explains the science behind it and gives lots of helpful tips. So check it out later. Below, I’ll give you a highly simplified version of what may well become my go to method for preparing steaks. In fact, check out the Kitchen Notes below to see how else I’ve made use of this cool tenderizing technique.

Parsley? On steaks? Well, parsley is a key ingredient of chimichurri sauce. But here, it gets together with dried crushed red pepper, garlic and lemon juice to become something altogether different, lively and big. I first discovered chimichurri sauce at Tango Sur, a lovely little meat-centric Argentinean restaurant here in Chicago. Argentineans know thing or two about beef. I mean, we’re talking the land of gauchos and the pampas. So when the steaks arrived at the table, I ignored the side dish of sauce for a few bites and just savored the meaty goodness of a rare steak treated right. Almost out of idle curiosity, I dipped the next bite into the sauce. Oh. My. God. This was steak to the power of ten. I didn’t even remember the name of the sauce from the menu, but suddenly I was obsessed with it. The garlic hits first, but it is closely followed by the fresh, subtly peppery taste of parsley and the heat of the crushed red pepper; the lemon juice is a bright foil to the olive oil that holds it all together.

Noise, a crush of incoming diners and the late hour drove us from the tiny restaurant before I could get another look at the menu. A little creative digging on the Internet told me chimichurri sauce originated in Argentina, but spread throughout much of Latin America [indeed, my Ecuadorian friend and former colleague Cristobal fondly remembered his mother adding it to soups when I described it]. Further digging not only turned up a recipe, but showed me it was wonderfully easy to make—suspiciously so, in fact. Five simple ingredients and time to let flavors swap around. The first time I made it, I was skeptical that something so easy could deliver the transcendent flavor I’d found that night at Tango Sur. But deliver it did.

I’ve since discovered other versions of this amazing, big-flavored sauce, many using vinegar in place of the lemon juice and even crumbled bay leaves, but I keep coming back to the original. Once you try it, I think you will too. Continue reading “Meaty secrets and Argentine chimichurri sauce” →

Roasted Chicken, with or without hangover

Versatile, delicious and brainlessly easy roasted chicken thighs—here with herbes de Provence. Recipe of sorts below.

We didn’t overindulge this New Year’s Eve. We really didn’t. But we did undersleep. We actually got home a little before one in the morning, sober as judges [or at any rate as sober as they’re reputed to be], because Nick’s, the no-cover Wicker Park bar that reliably delivers a decent mix of live blues and R&B most weekends had gone all unannounced private party on us. The door guy was apologetic, but someone apparently threw enough money at Nick to keep the riffraff out for one night.

So instead, we ended up taking a nice long walk in the snow in this bar-packed neighborhood, entertaining ourselves with a running commentary on our overserved, underdressed [talking hypothermia risk here, not style] fellow pedestrians. There were some spectacular examples out and about, hailing cabs in sparkly tank tops, shivering jacketless in doorways on cell phones, slushing through snow in perfect little pointy heels that probably cost the earth and are now in ruins… I wanted to yell, “This is Chicago, people. It’s winter!” But apparently it’s hipper to walk around hunched up and teeth chattering than to—oh, I don’t know—put on a jacket?

Eventually, even in our sensible layers, we got cold. So we headed for the El. Every New Year’s Eve, the Chicago Transit Authority does this great thing, making rides on all subways, Els and buses one penny—free, if you have a transit card. We made our way home too sober to be ushering in a new year and with our downstairs neighbors’ party going full tilt, with the volume set “at 11.” They are really, really nice, really, really quiet neighbors at all times, so we figured this party was a gimme.

We settled in with some champagne, slices of Marion’s wonderful pear cake and The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night DVD on the telly, cranked loud enough to sort of be heard over the interesting music mix from downstairs—Kanye West, Johnny Cash, David Bowie and [ten points if you know this group’s single hit] Ram Jam, to give you an idea. By the time their party wound down and we’d achieved the proper champagne dosage, it was around 3:30 in the morning.

Oh, yeah. This was supposed to be about roasted chicken. Well, originally, it wasn’t. I had another dish planned for my first post of the year, something that’s nice and easy to make, but requires a little planning ahead. I was so not ready for that. By the time I dug the car out [as I said, “This is Chicago, people. It’s winter!”] and made my way to the grocery store, I was totally operating at half speed and looking for something auto-pilot simple, but still real food. Hence, herb-roasted chicken thighs.

A whole roasted chicken can be a festive thing of beauty for company dinners, a wonderful centerpiece for the table. But many home cooks stress out [and not totally without reason] over the breast cooking faster than the legs and thighs, achieving crispy skin without the bird drying out, timing it to the rest of the meal and any number of other culinary landmines. We seem to have overcome many of these issues with the addition of a Staub La Cocotte oval roasting pan to our kitchen that, as Marion says, creates a mini-environment in the oven, roasting the chicken evenly and beautifully.

But for speed, ease and sheer versatility, give me some chicken thighs to roast. They cook quickly—about 45 minutes once they’re in the oven—and they readily pick up the flavors of any spices, herbs or other flavorings you use. [Stuff the cavity of a whole chicken with anything you like and you’ll be lucky if the legs and thighs even hint at the flavors.] And maybe best of all, they make great leftovers. Heat and eat them as is or cut them up and add to a pasta sauce, some mac & cheese, some stir-fried vegetables… They also can be turned into this delicious, spicy chicken salad.

What follows is not so much a recipe as it is some guidelines and variations—and just a reminder that they’re really easy to make [and hard to screw up] and delicious to eat. Continue reading “Roasted Chicken, with or without hangover” →

The bayou meets Brazil: Cajun shrimp and rice

Brazilian rice teams up with spicy Cajun shrimp for a satisfying dinner on a cold night. Recipes below.

Wintry weather can put me into a stew-soup-chili-hearty-heavy-food rut. And while I do love all these foods [and jones for them in warm weather], when I saw a lively sautéed shrimp first course in the January issue of Food & Wine, it sounded like just the break I needed—something I could morph into a satisfying main course. Light, but big-flavored with a lively kick of lemon. And when I turned up the heat a bit with cayenne pepper, it got even more interesting.

Because it was intended as a first course, the recipe didn’t say what to serve with it. My first thought was pasta. After all, with the garlic, lemon juice and parsley, this Cajun-inspired dish that was meant to transport you to the Louisiana bayou was coming dangerously close to Italian for me. But then I remembered the wonderful Brazilian rice that was part of the Brazilian rice and beans Patricia over at Technicolor Kitchen had posted here at Blue Kitchen a while back. That sounded perfect.

And it is. The rice is a nice, deceptively simple balance for the spicy shrimp. With the sautéed onion, it brings much more to the party than rice alone, and its snowy whiteness is the perfect visual foil for the colorful shrimp dish.

Best of all, this whole meal comes together fairly quickly and easily. Add a salad and you’ve got a dinner that blends cultures beautifully and delivers more flavor and appeal than something this simple should be able to get away with. Continue reading “The bayou meets Brazil: Cajun shrimp and rice” →