A Holiday Meal

What better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than a nice steaming pan of chicken biryani, washed down with glasses of cool crisp Pino Grigio?

That's right - I am in no way no how Irish, and, despite the last name, neither is my husband. I'm about 75% Polish, and I don't celebrate St. Casimir's day, so why bother with St. Patrick's? Oh, because so many Americans use it as an excuse to drink cheap food-colored beer to excess? Ahhh, always a good reason. But, nope.

Biryani is an easy dish to make at home, and makes effective use of leftovers. I always have a jar of Patak's biryani paste in the fridge. I may have mentioned in previous posts how well it works as a marinade for pork tenderloin and leg of lamb, but it also works well in...biryani! Biryani is a rice dish popular in the Middle East and southern Asia; the version available in most Indian restaurants in the U.S. is probably the best-known.

We had some leftover rotisserie chicken in the fridge, and a melange of fresh and frozen vegetables that needed to be used: a partial bag of frozen green beans; some chopped tomatoes left over from tacos earlier in the week; a handful of baby carrots, julienned; fresh asparagus; frozen peas. I chopped and sauteed a small onion and a handful of sliced mushrooms in a bit of olive oil. When they were softened, I added the carrots, green beans, and tomatoes, plus three tablespoonfuls of biryani paste. Meanwhile, I had some basmati rice in the rice cooker. When the rice was done, I added it to the biryani paste mixture, stirring well to coat each grain with the paste. Then I tossed in the peas, chicken, and asparagus (cut into small pieces) and covered the pan, warming it all on low heat. Delicious! And certainly tastier than corned beef and cabbage.

Happy Mid-March!

Meat Hangover

I've heard about meat hangovers, but never experienced one for myself until this morning. Last night, DH, DB, and I went to Greenfield Churrascaria in Rockville. DB had a gift certificate that he had received for Christmas and wanted to use before he had the opportunity to lose it, and DH and I were happy to assist him.

The restaurant is huge, seating many hundreds of people, I am sure. There is a large salad bar featuring everything from arugula and watercress to marinated mushrooms to pasta salad. There are soups including a nice seafood bisque full of squid tentacles, and a selection of Brazilian favorites like yuca and feijoada. That's all well and good...actually not that good. The salad bar selections are mediocre at best, but hey, the real reason to go there is the MEAT. Lots and lots and lots of meat.

Last night, we indulged in cholesterol-laden goodness. We had sausage, turkey wrapped in bacon, pork, lamb, and several different cuts of beef. My favorite was the short ribs, something we had never seen there before in all our many previous trips. It came around last, after DH had already declared himself "done for" and I was close to bursting (but was considering one last trip to the salad bar for some deep fried bananas, as "dessert") and could well have been the straw that broke the camel's back. But it was damned good, tender and flavorful. As was all the meat. Well, not all was tender - the flank steak was a bit chewy, and the pork was a little tough - but all had tremendous flavor. Everything was a tad on the salty side this trip too, as I couldn't stop drinking water, and had to chugalug a big glass of it when I got home.

Drinking so much definitely had its drawbacks. It's unfortunate that a restaurant so large would provide a mere two toilets in the ladies' room. It is also unfortunate that a large birthday party in our section would have small children running around. On my trip to the bathroom, I found that two little girls from that party were busily stuffing seat protectors into one toilet and emerged from the stall with "don't go in that one - it's flooded." The other stall contained what seemed like a small army of children but proved to be one extremely overweight child and her equally porky mother taking turns stinking up the place. As I waited, several other people, children in tow, entered the bathroom, so I left in a huff to use the bathroom in a nearby McDonald's. (Like I needed more reasons to dislike children....)

Anyway...I awoke in the middle of the night with a raging headache. Three ibuprofins and a couple of aspirin later, I still have it.

Meat hangover. It's not quite as bad as some alcohol-induced hangovers I've experienced in the distant past: I can hold my head up, and light isn't bothering me too much. But it's quite unpleasant and highly not recommended. I'm still trying to decide if it was worth it. Maybe tomorrow my overindulgence will seem a better idea.

Pantry Raid

I believe in a well-stocked pantry, full of both staples and exotic items. And I consider my refrigerator, freezer, and spice rack to be part of the "pantry" as well. With a wide assortment of ingredients on hand, it's easy to put tasty and interesting meals together.

Some people consider Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to be a staple, along with canned corn and boxes of Lean Cuisine. I suppose that's fine for people who neither like to cook or to eat, but I'm not a fan of either. I do not advocate the lazy, "semi-homemade" style of mealmaking, using canned cream soups, canned chicken meat, artifical whipped topping, and instant rice. It's not difficult or time-consuming to make a proper bechamel, or to make a cream soup using actual cream. However, I am not above utilizing the convenience of rotisserie chickens, canned Thai red curry paste, and refrigerated tortillas rather than taking the far more-involved effort to make them at home.

I have a small galley kitchen with little storage space. When we moved in, there was no pantry to speak of. We bought a pine cabinet, about 6' high, 3' wide, and 15" deep, a perfect fit for the wall in our kitchen between the basement door and a cut-in corner, and use that for our dry goods. The shelves are always bulging with ingredients: boxes of tea; bottles of sauces; dried grains, fruits and nuts; boxes of stock; an assortment of curry pastes, coconut milk, and chutneys; bottles of various oils and vinegars. We fill it through trips to the local supermarket, plus visits to Asian markets and gourmet shops. On any given night, we can whip up some home-made soup, a nice pasta dish, or something more exotic, with what we have on hand.

Here are items I consider some of the most indespensible for my pantry.

Oil
This is pretty much a given, no? We always have a big bottle of extra virgin olive oil for salad dressings and to drizzle over pasta, but there's also a bottle of light olive oil for cooking. For instances when we want something less-flavorful with a higher smoke point, we also keep a small bottle of something neutral, like canola, on hand. Once in a while we buy a flavored oil and particularly like Golden Whisk Star of Siam Thai oil, deeply flavored with chiles and lemongrass. Truffle oil is nice to have around as well, but it goes rancid faster than we can use it.

Tomato Paste
My mom always bought Contadina brand, but I've found most brands to be uniformly good. I just make sure to buy plain tomato paste, not one flavored with garlic or basil or other herbs as the added elements tend to be bitter and somewhat overwhelming. Less versatile as well. Tomato paste can be put to work in sauces, marinades, dressings, and soups, and works as both a flavor agent and thickener.

Vinegar
I like to keep several different types of vinegar on hand. Not only are they good for making salad dressing, they are flavor enhancers for a wide variety of foods.

A splash of Balsamic vinegar can be added to a pasta sauce to brighten the taste. For instance, my friend Kate and I made an eggplant sauce from a cookbook by a certain un-favorite tv personality of mine. It was, of course, quite tasteless, but with a generous splash of balsamic vinegar and a pinch of sugar, the sauce became a Sicilian-style sweet and sour delight. "Yum-O" indeed.

In addition to the balsamic, I also like to have a bottle of rice wine vinegar around; it's an essential ingredient in dipping sauces and Asian noodle dishes and gets used more often than balsamic. There are also funky fancy vinegars in my pantry right now, including Golden Whisk Smoky Lapsang Souchang and Earl Grey tea vinegars, tomato vinegar, Chinese black vinegar, sherry vinegar, honey vinegar, strawberry vinegar, plus good old white and apple cider vinegars.

Peanut Butter
Hey, we like Jif, but it's ok if you would prefer to keep some natural style peanut butter in your pantry. Personally, I don't like having to stir in the oil, the gummy texture, or the fact that it gets rancid after a time. Give me chemicals, sugar, and stabilizers! Jif has good peanut flavor and its smooth texture blends well in sauces. Not only do we enjoy a schmear of it on toast in the morning, we also use it for Asian noodle dishes and for peanut soup. (Yes, I said Peanut Soup.)

Chocolate
Essential for baking (and for chocoholics), chocolate and cocoa products have a prized spot in my pantry. The Ghirardelli Sweet Ground Chocolate and Cocoa pictured makes some mighty fine brownies, and terrific hot cocoa. We also have regular cocoa, unsweetened baking chocolate, and semisweet chips on hand.

Lest you think chocolate and cocoa is only for sweet stuff, I also like to use it to deepen the flavors of a pot of chili, in mole sauce, and the occasional fresh salsa.

Mayonnaise
You can't make a good curried chicken salad without mayonnaise, nor a proper BLT. It's also important for dips and creamy salad dressings. Most people swear by Hellman's or Best Foods brand (although I've read that they're reformulating), but my favorite is Kewpie mayo from Japan. It's got a slightly thinner texture than jarred mayonnaise, but has a richer flavor closer to homemade than the usual commercial stuff.

Pasta
My husband is a pastaholic, so it's imperative that we have several varieties of this dried starch on hand. His specialty is spaghetti and meatballs, but sometimes he'll whip up something he calls Pasta Verde, a broccoli-based sauce recipe found printed on a pasta box some years back. Of course we make our macaroni-and-cheese from scratch, and once in a while, I like to make an as-yet-unnamed dish of pasta tossed with Mexican chorizo, sundried tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, onions, and chicken.

Of course, there's plenty more in the pantry than the above items. And lets not forget the variety of meats in the freezer (as of today: a leg of lamb; pork tenderloins; boneless and skinless chicken thighs; salmon, sole, and halibut filets; and a bag of raw shrimp) and the selection of condiments in the fridge (Sriracha, Dijon mustard, pickle relish, Chinese bbq sauce, black bean sauce, mango chutney, brinjal pickle).

So what's for dinner tonight? I know we have a big slab of leftover flank steak, so my DH is going to make a homemade red sauce with canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and lots of fresh garlic, toss in the meat, and serve it over pasta. A green salad with a bit of vinaigrette (I put a half teaspoon of Dijon mustard into a custard cup with a squeeze of clover honey, a pinch of salt, a glug or two of Earl Grey tea vinegar, and a splash of olive oil--contrary to popular belief, a dressing doesn't need to have a larger proportion of oil to vinegar to taste good--and some freshly ground pepper, and mix vigorously with a fork) will make a nice accompaniment.

What's in your pantry?

Steak Continental

This was my mother's most-used cookbook. As a young wife and mother, she consulted this venerable tome for all of her American-style cooking needs - meatloaf, pot roast, fried chicken. (The authority for Polish cooking was my grandmother, of course, who lived downstairs.) Over time, she added recipes that she found elsewhere, like this one for "Steak Continental." (See it typed out on the pages pictured?) It was one of my favorite meals, and I would often beg Mom to make "flank steak." God, it was good.

2 lb flank steak or 3/4" thick round steak
1 clove garlic, quartered
1 tablespoons salt
2 to 3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon oregano leaves

Score flank steak or trim all fat from round steak. Mash garlic with salt; add soy sauce, tomato paste, oil, pepper, and oregano. Mix well and rub into steak. Wrap in waxed paper and let stand in refrigerator 6 hours or overnight. Broil 5 to 8 minutes each side. 4 to 6 servings.

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I found the recipe printed in various places on the Internet, no credit given, often with ketchup replacing tomato paste, but otherwise verbatim. Where did this recipe come from originally? Who deserves credit for this simple and delicious method of meat preparation?

I made this last night, without the oil and oregano (it's not enough oregano to make a difference, and who needs the extra oil?) and using 3 cloves of garlic. (Yeah, you wusses probably will want to stick to the recommended 1 clove, but 3 or 4 makes for a far superior flavor.) Despite Tony Bourdain's aversion to the gadget, I love my Pampered Chef garlic squoosher, so omitted the whole garlic/salt mashing mess (it's not so great for a knitter's hands to smell garlicky). And six hours really isn't enough time to allow the marinade to penetrate the meat - I recommend a good 24-hour period (take flank steak out of the freezer on Friday, marinate on Saturday, cook and serve on Sunday).

The meat is garlicky, with a nice char on the edges, and tender within (if cooked to medium-rare). It's a versatile dish, that if made for two, gives up lots of tasty leftovers. The flavor profile is one that goes equally well with a mound of mashed potatoes or a pile of Asian-style sesame noodles. Sliced cold, it's tasty on a salad. And it works just as well on the grill as in the broiler, so it's perfect for summertime entertaining.

Take it from me, it's great. Go make some.
Parenthetically Yours,
Kathy