beef

Hayashi raisu (rice): Japanese beef stew

maki — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:59:03 +0100

I have not added a yohshoku (Japanese-adapted Western food) recipe in quite some time. The main reason for this is I haven’t been making any…since most yohshoku dishes tend to be a bit heavy on the butter or cream or rich sauces.

I do sometimes crave this classic yohshoku dish. Hayashi raisu (or hayashi rice) is a Japanese version of a rich beef stew, and in terms of popularity it’s second only to the mighty curry rice, Japanese style curry. Just like curry, you can buy hayashi raisu roux blocks at Japanese grocery stores (look in the curry roux section).

Incidentally, the hayashi part sounds like the Japanese word for a wood (as in a smaller version of a forest), but it’s derived from “hashed”, as in hashed beef. I think the origins are a hashed beef stew. I can see influences from beef bourgignon, stroganoff and various British stews in there.

The beef used is not tough old chewy meat - it’s usually made from cuts that are tender enough to be cooked quickly. The kind sold for ‘minute steaks’ is fine. Sukiyaki beef is great if you can afford it. I’ve seen recipes around that suggest using pork instead of beef, but…that’s just not right to me. Hayashi rice = beef! Beef!

Making hayashi rice from scratch can be easy or tremendously complicated, depending on one thing: whether you make your own demi-glace or not. Demi-glace is reduced, concentrated beef stock that is thick and paste-like. In Japan you can buy demi-glace in cans. You can buy it elsewhere too, though the good kinds can be very expensive. The only other substitute is to make your own strong beef stock from beef bones, meat trimmings and so on and reduce it down and so on. Using stock cubes just won’t do it, I’m afraid, and forget about the usually insipid beef stock in a carton or can.

I’ve given instructions for making hayashi rice from handy roux blocks (which can vary in quality) and using demi-glace.

Hayashi raisu (Hayashi rice)

450g / 1 lb thinly sliced beef
4 medium onions, thinly sliced
About 10-12 mushrooms, sliced
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
Butter or oil
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 cup (240ml) red wine
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce or Bulldog chuunou sauce
1 Tbs. soy sauce
Parsley or green peas for garnish

The sauce ingredients:

1/2 cup demi-glace or 4 cups strong beef stock
1 16-oz or 440g can of canned tomatoes
1 Tbs. tomato paste
2 Tbs. butter
3 Tbs. flour
Water

6 blocks (or more if you like it thick) from a hayashi rice roux packet
Water

Equipment: a large frying pan or sauté pan, a heavy bottomed pot for stewing or a crockpot

Cut the meat up into bite-sized pieces. Heat up a frying pan with butter, oil or combination of both, and sauté the beef until browned. Take out the meat and set aside.

In the same pan, add a bit more butter (no this is not diet food) and add the onions. Sauté over medium-low heat until limp and slightly brown. Add the garlic, mushrooms and carrot. Sauté until the mushrooms are turning limp.

Put all the vegetables in a heavy-bottomed stew pot (a crockpot will do nicely too).

Add the wine. If you’re using the hayashi rice roux blocks, add about 4 cups of water (don’t add the roux at this point yet). If you’re using the other sauce ingredients, add either the demi-glace plus 3 cups of water, the canned tomato and tomato paste, or 4 cups of strong beef stock and the canned tomato and tomato paste. Add the bay leaves and thyme.

Let it all simmer until the liquid has reduced to about half. Add the beef to the pot and contine simmering - the beef should be very tender.

If you’re making your own sauce, make a roux by melting 2 Tbs. of butter in the frying pan and adding the flour. Stir until the flour is grainy and a little bit browned. Add to the stew and stir. Add the Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce.

If using the roux blocks, add them now and stir well to melt.

Add a little water or stock to thin out if it looks too thick. Simmer a few minutes.

Taste and add salt or pepper as needed. Take out the bay leaves.

Serve over rice that’s been mixed with a little salted butter. Garnish with chopped parsley or a few green peas.

This makes 6 to 8 servings.

Hayashi omuraisu

Leftover hayashi makes a very rich sauce for omuraisu (rice omelettte) instead of ketchup. Use plain buttered rice instead of ketchup-chicken rice as the filling.

Japanese beef curry (Curry Rice)

maki — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:43:13 +0100

Japanese curry belongs to the group of typically Japanese foods that have origins in European cuisine, called yohshoku. Curry is tremendously popular in Japan - it's on the menu at just about every 'family' restaurant and department store restaurants, and there are curry-only restaurants as well as ones that specialize in high class yohshoku in general.

Japanese curry, called curry rice (or kareh raisu) since it's always served with rice, is not much like the curries from India, Thai or other places with better known curries around the world. The best way to describe it is probably to say it's like a English style stew with curry. (It's not at all like the curries you get in modern Britain, which are firmly in the Indian or Pakistani curry families.)

If you've ever been to a Japanese grocery store, you've probably seen the blocks or bags of curry base taking up an inordinate amount of shelf space. Competition amongst curry base makers in Japan is fierce. The bases are pretty convenient to use, but these days I use them less and less, since I discovered that making curry properly from scratch is not that much more effort than making curry with a readymade curry base. Commercial curry bases contain things like sugar or corn syrup as ingredients, plus some of them use mystery fats (always check the ingredient lists). I add sweetness just via the vegetables, especially a huge mound of slowly sautéed onions.

Either way, to get the most flavorful curry takes a long time. This is definitely a slow-cook meal.

This recipe for beef curry can be adapted to other kinds of meat, or to vegetarian options too. I've included instructions for using a store bought curry base as well as making your own curry roux base.

Japanese style beef curry

Makes about 6 to 8 servings.

450-500g / about 1 lb stewing beef cubes (chuck works well; it should be a cut with a bit of fat in it and not too sinewy)
6 large onions, or about 6 cups sliced
3 cloves garlic
An adult thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
2 cups of crushed tomatoes (1 small can, or 400g)
1 beef or vegetable stock cube (I prefer Knorr)
1 bay leaf
1 star anise
2-3 Tbs. garam masala (see notes)
3-4 large carrots
1 medium eating-type apple
3-4 medium potatoes
Oil or butter
Optional: 1 cup frozen green peas
Salt and pepper

For the curry roux:

3 Tbs. butter, ghee, clarified butter or oil, or a mixture
4 Tbs. white flour
1 1/2 to 2 Tbs. curry powder, or more to taste (see notes)

To serve with:

Plain white steamed Japanese rice, or plain brown rice
Garnishes: fukijin zuke, rakkyou

Special equipment recommended: a heavy-bottomed enamelled cast iron pot (Le Creuset etc.) (but any decently heavy pot will do. A thin walled pot leads to burned curry. Burned curry ranks near the top of things that are Not Nice.)

If the meat is in one big chunk, cut into cubes about 2 cm / 1 inch square. Pat dry with paper towels, and brown in a little oil on all sides in a frying pan. Set aside.

Slice the onions thinly. Grate the ginger and either grate or finely chop the garlic. (A microplane is great for this task, if you have one.) Peel and cut the carrots into chunks. Don't peel the potatoes yet: this will come later.

Heat your heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat, and heat up some butter, ghee or oil. (Butter or ghee will add some richness but oil is fine - you will barely notice the subtle difference since the curry will overwhelm it.) Add the onions and a pinch of salt, and lower the heat to medium-low. Now comes a period of long, slow cooking of the onions that can take up to an hour or so (the salt helps it along as it extracts the moisture in the onions). At the end you want to end up with a much reduced mass of onion that is a light caramel brown in color, as in the photo.

Once the onions have reached this stage, add the ginger and garlic and cook a few more minutes. Add the canned tomato and 6 cups of water, the browned beef, the stock cube, the bay leaf and the star anise. (If you are particular you can put these in a bit of cheese cloth or a tea ball for easy extraction later.)

Peel and grate the apple and stir in. (This is optional, but adds to the depth of flavor.)

Bring up to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for at least 1 hour, or more if your meat is a bit tough.

About 30 minutes into the cooking process, dry-roast about a tablespoon of garam masala powder in a small frying pan until it starts to get very fragant, and ad to the stew pot. Add the carrots around then too.

In the meantime, make the curry roux. In a small frying pan, melt the butter or ghee or clarified butter (note that ghee is basically clarified butter) and heat until any foaming subsides.

Add the flour, and cook the mixture over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until it becomes a light brown in color. (See these very detailed instructions for roux if you aren't sure.)

Take the pan off the heat, and add the curry powder (the more the hotter.) Stir until the whole kitchen and beyond smells like curry. Set aside.

When the meat is about as tender as you want, peel the potatoes, cut them into chunks and add to the curry. Continue simmering until the potatoes are tender.

Take the pot off the heat and fish out the bay leaf and star anise. Stir in the roux carefully until it's completely melted into the stew and the liquid is thick and very brown. Return to the heat and simmer a few more minutes.

At this stage you can dry roast another tablespoonful or so of garam masala and add it to the curry.

At the last minute, add the optional frozen green peas, and stir - they should cook almost instantaneously. Serve immediately.

There are two ways of serving curry in the "yohshoku restaurant" way. One is to put the curry in a sauce boat, and serve the rice separately. The other is to put the rice on the plate, and cover just one half with curry, You can of course just pour the curry right on the mound of rice.

Usual garnishes are fukijin zuke, a sweet mixture of mystery pickled vegetables, and rakkyou, small pickled shallots. Other garnishes include chutney and grated cheese.

Notes

I don't go to the trouble of grinding my own curry and garam masala, much as I'd like to in theory. I use pre-ground powders bought at a store that caters to Indian and Sri Lankan expats. The most common Japanese brand of curry powder is S & B, but the Indian kind is quite a bit cheaper and just as good quality. Garam masala is not commonly sold in Japanese groceries anyway, but it is of course in Indian groceries.

Update: I have written up the Japanese curry powder formula for people who would like to experiment with mixing their own. (Includes a recipe for garam masala too.)

If you want it to be yellower, add some turmeric. If you want it hotter, add some chili pepper powder, or more curry powder.

Instead of, or in addition to, the grated apple, you can add some chutney, a tablespoon or so of honey, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and even a bit of soy sauce or miso.

Using a readymade curry base

If you are using a curry base instead of making your own curry roux, just add it in exactly the same way near the end of the cooking process, making sure to take the pot off the heat first. If you have the block that looks like a chocolate bar type, break it up into smaller chunks and stir in to the stew mix until all is melted. The bagged powder type melts in faster. The curry should not be stewed for a very lengthy time after adding the base or spices or the flavors will dissipate somewhat.

Many Japanese housewives individualize their curries by combining two or more commercial bases.

Using other meats

Pork curry is made in the same way as beef curry, but you may want to try making the curry a bit hotter (by adding more curry powder or chili pepper powder).

Chicken curry is best made with the dark meat parts (thigh works great). I also prefer to take the skin off first - curry-stewed chicken skin is not that nice. The stewing time for chicken curry is shorter since you don't want the chicken to get dried out.

Quick and easy ground beef curry

If this all sounds like too much work, you can still make a quick and easy curry using ground beef or other ground meat, and a commercial curry base. (Commercial curry base blocks are so big because they have a ton of flavor enhancing ingredients in them already.) Adam Kuban has posted a quick and fairly easy method for making a curry this way, though I would recommend sautéeing the onions a bit longer than he does, and adding the potatoes somewhat later in the process.

If you are in a huge curry..I mean hurry, you can buy readymade curry in a pouch. They vary quite a lot in quality so try some until you find a brand you like.

Making it vegetarian

You can omit the meat and use oil instead of butter or ghee, and have a vegetarian curry. If you want some protein, try a can of chickpeas. Cooked soy beans also fit very well. You can go the TVP - quorn route if you like too. Or go for an all-vegetable curry and add more carrots, or some sliced eggplant (aubergine), cubed turnip, etc.

Freezing curry

Curry freezes and reheats very well, as long as you leave out the potatoes. Frozen potato turns into a mealy, watery, inedible mush. Just add some boiled potatoes to the reheated curry. Since it does take a long time to cook it does make sense to make a big batch at a time and freeze extra for quick meals in the future.

Recipe: Beef and vegetable stew with parsley dumplings

maki — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 10:28:57 +0100

In the holiday rush to get so many things done, it's easy to forget to feed ourselves properly, and to rely on takeout and readymade meals. But I think that when we are super busy, it's even more important to slow down a bit, and to eat properly.

Still, there's really not much time to spend in the kitchen. That's where things like quick-assembly, slow-cook meals like stews and soups come in handy. They are so warming and comforting too when the weather is cold. It's finally feeling like winter around here, so when I am running around town, freezing my nose (and other body parts off), it's great to know that there is a pot of simmering stew waiting for me when I get home.

This beef stew is packed with vegetables, assembles in about 10 minutes or so, and can be left cooking in the oven, an electric range, or in a slow cooker indefinitely. The vegetables are basically whacked up in big bits - no need at all to fuss with neatness since they will slowly cook and melt into a delicious, amalgamated elixir. The tender dumplings, and optionally the potatoes, are added in the last 30 minutes. It's very warming and filling yet doesn't sit heavily in your stomach since there sauce is not thickened with roux and such. It's still rich-tasting though, from the goodness of the vegetables and meat and wine. I wouldn't mind eating this every other day during the cold months.

Beef and Vegetable Stew with Parsley Dumplings

Assembly notes: Put everything together in the pot as early as possible since it needs to cook for several hours. You can then either leave it in the oven, or on the stovetop of you have a non-gas range (I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving an unattended gas flame, but if you're hanging around the house wrapping presents etc. it's not a problem obviously). It's an ideal dish for a slow cooker/crockpot. The dumpling dough can be prepared in advance but it's best to prepare it just before the dumplings are put into the stew. The potatoes will disintegrate some if you put them in at the start, so ideally you will put them in about 10 minutes before you put in the dumplings - or just leave them out, since you'll have plenty of carbs from the dumplings.

About 450g-500g / 1 pound beef for stew, cut into large cubes (a cut like chuck that has some fat in it, nothing too lean)
3 large onions
2 cloves garlic
1 large bulb fennel
1-2 celery stalks
4 large carrots
2 medium boiling type potatoes
2 bay leaves
dried or fresh thyme - a couple of sprigs, or about 1 Tbs.
small bunch parsley
2 beef stock cubes
2 cups red wine
1 400g / 8 oz can crushed tomatoes
water, salt, pepper
olive oil

For the dumplings:

3 cups regular all-purpose white flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
a bunch of parsley
2 Tbs. butter
1 cup (or so) low-fat milk, or soymilk

Suggested equipment: a heavy enamelled cast-iron pot such as a Le Creuset with an oven-safe lid, OR a slow cooker/crockpot; a food processor.

Peel and slice the onions. Chop up the garlic roughly. Take off the tough green part of the fennel and slice roughly. Peel and whack up the carrot and the celery.

Dry off the beef cubes thoroughly with a paper towel.

Heat up your heavy stew pot if you are using that, or a sauté pan/skillet if you are using a slow cooker. Heat up some olive oil, and brown the beef cubes. Take out the beef, add a bit more oil if needed, and put in the onions and fennel. Sauté until limp and a bit browned. You want to scrape off all the brown bits from the meat while you do this. Put in the garlic, and the carrots.

Put the beef back in, and add the wine. Scrape the bottom with a spatula so all the brown bits are melted into the wine. (This step is absolutely crucial to ensure that the stew has maximum flavor.)

If you are cooking this on the stovetop: Add the can of tomatoes and the herbs. Add enough water to come up to about 2 cm / 1 inch or so above all the veggies, and add the stock cubes and the herbs. (You can use canned stock if you like but since there is so much goodness in the veggies and beef and wine and so on anyway you can just use stock cubes.) bring the pot up to a near-boil (that means it's bubbling moderatly, not rolling), then lower the heat until it's just simmering, and continue to cook with the lid on.

If cooking in the oven: Preheat the oven to 150°C / 300°F. Follow the instructions above. Once the stew is hot, put the whole pot with lid on in the oven.

If using a slow cooker: add the liquids and herbs and stock cubes as above, and follow the manufacturer's instructions.

Cook for at least 2 hours, longer if you like up to about 6 hours. (The longer you cook it the more the veggies will melt.) Occasionally check the pot and add a bit of water or wine if it's drying out.

In the meantime, peel and cube the potatoes and put them in a bowl of water.

About an hour or so before the end of cooking (or dinner time), dump in the potatoes.

About 40 minutes before dinnertime, prepare the dumplings. Mix together the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder). If you're going to mix by hand, chop up the parsley; if using a food processor just cut it up very roughly.

Put the dry ingredients in the food processor, and add the butter. Process until the butter is completely integrated (it will look a bit grainy). Put in the parsley, and continue processing until it's all chopped up and green. Add the milk through the feed tube while pulsing. You'll get a lumpy looking dough that's more or less all mixed together - no need to continue until you have a ball of dough.

If mixing by hand, rub the butter into the dry mixture with your hands until it looks grainy, add the chopped parsley, then slowly add the milk while mixing with a fork.

At this point, fish out the thyme twigs and bay leaves from the stew, and season with salt and pepper.

Form small balls of dough with your hands (flouring them if needed) and drop into the stew. Cover the pot and cook for an additional 20 minutes minimum (up to about 40 minutes).

This feeds 4 hungry people as a one-dish meal or more if you add things like bread and a salad.

More notes: You can leave out the dumplings and put more potatoes in if you can't be bothered with the dough etc. Crusty bread dipped into the stew is fine too. I do love dumplings though...so I hope you give these ones a try.

This is also ideal for cooking in a Doufeu pot, my new love. I'll write more about this wondrous pot soon.

Lets GourMets! '80s retro cooking with the New York Mets

maki — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:19:23 +0200

In the corner of the world where I live right now, the Major League Baseball playoffs are not exactly a hot topic. 99% of Swiss people do not know, or care, anything about baseball.

When I moved here several years ago, I tried to follow baseball via the internet and other means, but it wasn't the same. MLB.com started offering streaming video and radio of some games, but the time difference was just too tough. Staying up night after night for games that broadcast in the wee hours of the morning here became too much. So, I lost touch.

Until this past week. Our local cable company suddenly announced that they were switching many channels to digital only. So, reluctantly we switched over from good old analog. Lo and behold, the digital package came with NASN, the European equivalent of ESPN. And it's showing all the baseball playoffs! The games are repeated during the day too, so I don't have to prop my eyelids open with toothpicks.

Yes, I'm a masochistMets fan. I once lived in Flushing, Queens, with windows facing towards Shea Stadium, and the fact that the Mets played there was a big part of why I stayed there for a couple of years. My 18th floor apartment in a typical Queens apartment block was not exactly ideal - I had mice as roommates, and a hellish downstairs neighbor, and the commute to school took me an hour. But oh, the beautiful view when the Mets were playing at home! Shea glowed like a jewel in the darkness. Never mind that more often than not the Mets didn't sparkle on the field. I loved them anyway.

This year of course, they are a good team again. (As I write this, they have just defeated the L.A. Dodgers 3 games to 0 in the divisional playoffs.) I don't really know this team at all, and I suddenly feel old because half the team look like kids to me - except for the ageless Julio Franco, who is way older than me and everyone else in the world. Still, the uniform is right, and the stadium is right, and the fans in the stands with their witty signs look just like the Mets fans I used to know.

Back in the '80s, before the 1986 World Series winning team, when they were very bad, the Mets tried a lot of promotions and gimmicks to try to get the fans into the seats. One of them was a cookbook put together by some of the players' wives, called GourMets.

I bought my copy sometime in the early '90s at a baseball card convention (yep, I was that kind of girl) but when I flip through the pages I do remember many of the players . Several of the pages are signed by the players' wives. My copy has an updated section from 1983 - the original part is from 1982.

In format and content, GourMets is basically a community cookbook in the tradition of the ones that have been put together by church congregations and Junior Leagues all throughout America. Proceeds from sales of the book went to the March of Dimes. It's in a ring binder with a bright orange wipe-clean plastic cover. Each entry has a picture of the player, a short bio (including how he met his wife, if he's married), and the recipe, most of which are submitted by the wife or a mother. In typical '80s fashion, most of the recipes are of the kind with ingredients like cream of mushroom soup and pre-made pie crust. Sandra Lee didn't invent the "semi-homemade" way of cooking, folks - it's been around for a long time. A few are bit more sophisticated, like a salad made with a real vinegarette (from Ralph Kiner of all people), not to mention a very complicated recipe for something called Veal Zingara from Rusty Staub. (Rusty went on to open his own New Orleans style restaurants after retirement.)

It's amazing how much our food tastes have changed since the early '80s. But while I didn't exactly grow up eating such food, they are rather charmingly nostalgic. I have tried out a few of the recipes, and some are surprisingly good, while others...are not.

So, in honor of the 2006 Mets making the playoffs, and for my memories of Mets Ghosts past, here are a few recipes from GourMets. Some of them I've actually tried and can vouch for, others I present here for the sake of curiosity. Besides, the '80s are back, aren't they?

My comments are in [square brackets] below.

Mookie Wilson (wife: Rosa)

Mookie Wilson was not really a great player I guess but boy, was he exciting! Always upbeat, always hustling his butt off, he was a true shining light even when the team around him was dismal. And he is forever remembered for hitting the ground ball that went through Bill Buckner's legs in Game 6. (If that means nothing to you...never mind, it never will. People who do remember Game 6 will do so for eternity.) His son, Preston, plays for the St. Louis Cardinals.

This recipe from the South (Mookie is from South Carolina) is sticky, brown and sweet. The recipe doesn't mention salt but it's much improved with it. It's not exactly low-carb, or low-fat, or low-anything. It is presented as a side dish for pork chops. It's actually quite yummy, if you like sweet side dishes that is.

Mookie's Quick and Easy Candy Yams

6 sweet potatoes, sliced
1 cup sugar
4 Tbs. butter (or 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup of water

Place butter in a 2 quart sauce pan over medium heat. Place sliced potatoes in melted butter, add 1 cup of sugar, pour water over sugar and potatoes. (This will spread sugar through the potatoes). Cover and cook over medium heat for 45 minutes to 1 hour (checking pot occasionally).

Ron Gardenhire (wife: Carol)

Did you know that the manager of the Minnesota Twins used to play for the Mets? I didn't remember either.

I haven't tried this recipe, but it's typical of many of the dessert recipes in GourMets - put together some package mixes and canned or frozen fruit, with a ton of butter or margarine (also called "oleo").

Cobbler (the easy way)

1 can fruit pie filling
1 box dry Jiffy Cake mix (or one layer mix)
1/2 stick margarine
nuts or coconut

Place fruit filling in well greased baking dish. Pour cake mix, or sprinkle, over fruit filling. Melt margarine; pour over cake mix and run a fork through cake mix, punching openings over the top for the margarine to run through. [Mmm, margarine.] Do not stir or mix. To with desired nuts or coconut. Bake for 45 minutes or until brown in a 375°F [190°C]. oven.

Keith Hernandez (wife: Sue)

Ahh, Keith Hernandez. His coming signaled the resurgence of the moribund Mets, and led to their championship year of 1986. My teenage self briefly had a mad crush on him.

This recipe, however, is not quite top-class. I hate Crescent Rolls - to me they have an odd chemical taste. But if you like them it could be good. Pillsbury still makes them after all these years...maybe they've improved the formula since I last tried them sometime in the '90s. This uses one of the favorite ingredients of the Mets' wives, cream cheese.

Beef and Broccoli Pie

1 lb. ground beef
8 oz. cream cheese
10 oz. broccoli [I assume they mean frozen]
2 pkgs. Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, uncooked
1/3 cup milk
2 beaten eggs
sharp cheddar cheese, grated (as much as you want)
1 onion, chopped

Cook the broccoli in a separate pot. While the broccoli is cooking, brown the ground beef and chopped onion in a skillet. After the ground beef mixture is browned, reduce heat to a simmer. Add the milk, cream cheese, one beaten egg and mix until creamy. Add the broccoli (cooked) and mix well. Turn off heat.

Roll one package of crescent rolls on a floured surface. Lightly pinch the seams together and mold in a pie pan. Add the meat mixture. Sprinkle the grated sharp cheddar cheese over the top. Roll the second package of crescent rolls in the same manner as the first package, forming a top crust now. Brush with the second beaten egg.

Pre-heat oven to 425°F [220deg;C]. Bake at this temperature for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350°F [180°C]. and cover with aluminum foil if it browns quickly. Cook an additional 20 minutes and serve. Enjoy!

José Oquendo (wife: Zeneida)

The third base coach for the St. Louis Cardinals was 20 years old in 1983, and playing second base for the Mets. This classic Puerto Rican recipe is one of the few in GourMets that I have made several times because it's really good. I do however add several ancho or jalapeño peppers. It could be that Mrs. Oquendo omitted them for her audience - elsewhere in the cookbook, a "super spicy beef enchilada" dish has one jar of "enchilada sauce" in the whole thing.

Notice the unusual lack of branded packaged food.

Arroz con Pollo (Chicken with Rice)

2 1/2 to 3 lbs fryer chicken parts
4 Tbs. olive oil
1 8-oz. can of tomato sauce
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 1/2 cups raw long grain rice
2 cups water
1/2 tsp. salt or to taste
1/2 tsp. sazõn (saffron)

Hint: It is preferable to blend onion, green pepper, garlic and cilantro in blender as this will truly enhance the flavor of this dish.

Wash chicken; pat dry.

Heat oil in pan over moderate heat. Add tomato sauce, onion, green pepper, garlic, 1/2 cup water and cilantro; sauté until tomato sauce thickens. Add chicken parts and cook well on all sides (about 20 minutes). Remove chicken from pan. In same pan add rice; sauté for 2 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups water, salt and sazõn. Bring mixture to a boil. Lower heat and cover pan. After rice is cooked, add chicken parts and cook until chicken is heated up again.

Serve with salad and bread. Makes 4 servings.

Craig Swan (wife: Sandy)

Craig Swan was a pitcher for the Mets during the early '80s, one of their Dark Periods. This recipe is presented here as a curiosity and sign of its times. A molded gelatin salad, made with Lemon Jello and ginger ale, marshmallows within...and a topping of thickened pineapple juice, whipped cream and cheddar cheese. Yipes.

I'm been too scared to try this out myself so far. Please let me know if you do.

Frosted Salad

2 pkg. lemon Jello
2 cups boiling water
2 cups 7-Up or ginger ale
No. 2 can crushed pineapple, drained, save 1 cup juice [not sure what a "no. 2 can" is]
1 cup small marshmallows
2 bananas, sliced
1/2 cup nuts [doesn't specify what kind of nuts]

Prepare the Jello as directed on the package using the 7-Up or ginger ale instead of water. Allow it to partially set. Add the pineapple, marshmallows, bananas and nuts and let it set.

Topping

1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbs. butter
2 Tbs. flour
1 cup pineapple juice (from what was saved)
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Combine the egg, sugar, butter, flour and pineapple juice,. Cook until thickened and cool. Then fold in one cup of whipped cream and spread over the Jello mixture (after it has set). Sprinkle with grated cheddar cheese.

Darryl Strawberry (his mom Ruby provided the recipe)

Not many long time Mets fans can think of Darryl Strawberry without mixed emotions. He was the Great Hope...for a while it seemed like he would fulfil his potential, but...he never did.

I think the 7-Up in this recipe is supposed to make it lighter, or something? In terms of ingredient proportions though, this is sort of a pound cake.

7-Up Cake

3 sticks butter [12 oz. / 340g]
2 cups sifted flour or Wondra [an instant-blend flour]
5 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. lemon extract
1 cup 7-Up soft drink

Pre-heat oven to 325°F [160°C]. Mix together softened butter and sugar. Add eggs, stirring in one egg at a time. Mix in flour until mixture is smooth. Add lemon extract. Add 7-Up. Mix well with mixer. Grease and flour tube pan. Bake at 325°F. for approximately 1 1/2 hours. Cool for one hour. Remove from pan.

MasterChef challenge, day 7: Cabbage Rolls and Potato Pancakes

maki — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 07:34:52 +0100

The ingredients for day 7 overall, and day 3 of the 2nd round of preliminaries were:

Ground beef
Savoy cabbage
Potatoes
Portobello mushrooms
Blue cheese
Frozen peas
Bacon

I think I have got what the objective of this ingredient round is in the MasterChef competition. The contestants aren't supposed to try and use all the ingredients presented: they are supposed to come up with the best dish they can from those ingredients, plus a few staples. Invariably. the contestants who try to use too many ingredients end up getting eliminated. In this round for instance, one girl made some kind of "sandwich" by putting some chopped up cabbage, peas, ground beef and something else between two huge grilled Portobello caps. It looked rather unappetizing, and apparently was rather unappetizing.

Anyway, when I saw ground beef and cabbage I immediately thought of stuffed cabbage rolls. Believe it or not cabbage rolls are a staple of Japanese home cooking, but in this case I went Germanic and did a classic combination of cabbage rolls with potato pancakes.

To add a bit of a twist to the filling, I added some chopped bacon and a bit of chopped mushroom. (I did get Portobellos, but since you are going to chop it up anyway, you can just use regular button mushrooms or any other mushroom.) This was ok, but I think the filling would have been just as good without the bacon.

In order to minimize the well, cabbagey-ness of boiled cabbage, add a bit of something acidic to the cooking stock, such as a squeeze of lemon, some white wine, or a can of tomatoes. In this case I added lemon juice.

I did serve the potato pancakes with a little quince jelly. You can also use apple sauce, which seems to be the usual accompaniment in German restaurants in the U.S., or just serve them plain.

Unused ingredients were the peas and the blue cheese.

The order to make this meal is:

Separate and wash the cabbage leaves, and blanch them.
Chop up the filling ingredients and mix.
Take out the cabbage leaves and let cool a bit, and throw in the flavoring ingredients.
Fill and roll the cabbage.
Beat the egg whites.
Grate the potatoes.
Make the pancake batter
Cook the pancakes.

Cabbage rolls

Makes eight compact rolls

8 savoy cabbage leaves, washed
1 large onion
1 lemon
1 green onion
1 celery stalk
1 vegetable stock cube
250g / 8 oz ground beef
3-4 slices of bacon
1 Portobello mushroom, or 4-5 regular button mushrooms
2 slices of toast bread
Salt and pepper
Dried thyme

If the stem part of the cabbage leaves is too thick, shave off a little of it to make the overall thickness more even.

Bring some water to a boil. Put in the cabbage leaves and cook for 3-4 minutes until limp. Take out and keep the cooking liquid warm.

Cut the green part of the green onion lengthwise into thin strips.

Take about 1/3rd of the onion and the celery stalk, slice roughly and throw into the pot with the stock cube and about 1 tsp. of dried thyme.

Chop the remaining onion, bacon and mushrooms very finely. Turn the bread slices into crumbs. (Needless to say, this part goes much faster with a food processor.) Mix all together with the ground beef, season lightly with salt and pepper and about 1/2 tsp. of dried thyme.

Divide the mixture into 8. Squish each portion into a rough oval ball and place on a cabbage leaf, near the stem end. Roll up, fold in the sides, and roll closed. (The key is to not overfill the cabbage leaves, so if you have small leaves, just blanch more of them and make smaller rolls.) Secure the roll by tying around a green onion strap.

Add the juice of 1/2 a lemon. Carefully put the cabbage rolls into the liquid. Heat until the liquid is bubbling, then lower to a simmer and cook for at least 20 minutes, preferably longer.

Potato pancakes

3-4 medium potatoes (you want to end up with about 2 cups of grated potato)
1/3 cup flour
2 eggs, separated
1/4 cup milk
Salt
Butter or oil for cooking
Optional: quince jelly

Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form when you pick up the beaters.

Peel and finely grate the potatoes.

Add the flour, egg yolks, milk and salt to the grated potato and mix well. Mix in about 1/2 of the egg white, then carefully fold in the rest so that you end up with a light and foamy looking batter.

Heat up some butter or oil in a large pan, or on a griddle. Put about 1/4 cup portions (I just use a ladle which has an approximately 1/4 cup capacity) onto the hot pan or griddle. Cook until golden brown, and flip; cook on the other side.

To serve, place a pancake or two on a plate, with a teaspoon of quince jelly or other not-too-sweet, slightly bitter jelly. (Marmalade may work even.) Take out a cabbage roll with a slotted spoon.

Note: another less fiddly way of securing the cabbage rolls closed is to use 1 or 2 pieces of spaghetti to skewer them. People often use toothpicks for this but I always forget to take 1-2 out, and it's not nice to end up with a mouthful of splinters. The spaghetti just gets cooked - no splinters!

It's The Season For Shepherd's Pie

maki — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:40:33 +0100

Having spent some of my growing-up years in England, I have a special place in my heart for shepherd's pie, otherwise known as cottage pie. It's definitely winter food though, because nothing is as warming as piping hot shepherd's pie straight out of the oven.

It combines two of my favorite ingredients, well-seasoned ground beef and mashed potatoes. Actually I believe that originally the ground meat was lamb, but in our house lamb was a no-no since my father had a morbid dislike of it. (One famous family story is when he was invited to dinner when we were living in England. He took a mouthful of the roast he was served, and asked his hostess what it was. She said it was lamb, and he promptly and spectacularly threw up.) I don't mind lamb myself but some family traditions are sacred: beef it is for shepherd's pie.

I've made the ground beef part with a lot of variations over the years, but I've settled on this formula as being the most tasty. The key to its tastiness is the slowly sautéed mushroom mixture, which is (when made with butter rather than oil, though it's good even if you use healthier olive oil) a standard in classical French cooking called duxelles. Classic duxelles does not use celery but I like to add a small piece of celery nevertheless.

You can make the beef part in advance, and even freeze it, which makes it a nice easy-assembly dinner; but whatever you do please use freshly made mashed potatoes. Below I reveal how I make my mash.

Shepherd's Pie

500g, or about 1 lb, not-too-lean ground beef
250g, or about 1/2 pound or 1 packet, mushrooms
1 medium onion
1 piece celery stalk
1-2 garlic cloves
4-6 (depending on size) creamy potatoes. Here I prefer Bintje potatoes, in the U.S. I would use Yukon Gold
Whole Milk
Worcestershire Sauce
About 1 cup vegetable or beef stock (water + stock cube is fine)
Salt, pepper and dried thyme

Preheat the oven to about 400°C / 200°F.

Chop the onion, celery, garlic and mushrooms finely. Saute the onion, celery and garlic until tender. Add the mushrooms and saute until the water that comes out of the mushrooms has more or less evaporated. Add about 1/2 tsp. of dried thyme. Add the ground beef and cook through. Add a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce. Season a bit on the strong side with salt and pepper. Finally, add about 1 cup of water or stock to make it a bit sauce-like; cook down a bit to concentrate the flavors.

In the meantime, boil the potatoes in salted water in their skins, until tender and you can stick a skewer through one easily. If you have a potato ricer you can rice the potatoes with their skins on; otherwise, peel them (holding them with a kitchen towel) then mash with a potato masher. Stir the mashed potatoes around in a dry pan over fairly low heat until it's dried out. Turn up the heat to about medium, and make a well in the middle of the potato mash. Pour in some milk (about 3/4 - 1 cup or so for this amount) into the well, and drop as big a piece of butter as you dare into it. Now, leave it be (don't stir) until the milk is bubbling and the butter has almost completely melted. Then, whip the potatoes vigorously with a wooden spoon. Season with salt and pepper to taste - keep it on the slightly bland side.

Spread the beef mixture on the bottom of oven dishes that are attractive enough to take straight to the table. (I use round enameled cast-iron ones.) Spread the mashed potatoes on top of this - the potato should completely cover the beef, to a depth of at least 1.5cm / 1/2 inch or so. Score the top of the potato with a fork, and then sprinkle a bit of Worcestershire sauce on top. Dot with as many bits of butter as you dare.

Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes until the top is browned. Eat straight out of the oven (have a glass of cold water handy for when a very hot piece burns a bit too much).

Serves 4 normal people or 2 very hungry people.

Nikujaga: Japanese stewed meat and potatoes

maki — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 23:25:29 +0100

There is a category of cooking in almost every cuisine, "mother's cooking". It means something that's simple, homely, filling, and invokes strong feelings of nostaliga. In Japanese this is called ofukuro no aji (mother's flavor). Nikujaga, or stewed potatoes with meat, is one of the mainstays of Japanese-style mother's cooking.

Japanese stewed dishes are called nimono. Usually the liquid part is reduced slowly to almost nothing, contrary to western style stews where the liquid or soupy part is abundant. In order to maintain the shape of the vegetables being stewed, a pan lid that is smaller than the diameter of the pan is placed directly on top of the stew. Some Japanese pans actually come with a second lid for this purpose. Usually this is made of wood, but you can use a regular metal pot lid just as well.

This meat and potato dish only contains a small amount of meat, which is basically there for flavor rather than substance. This is quite typical of Japanese cooking. Traditionally, this is eaten with plain rice, but if the idea of potatoes and rice is sort of overwhelming to you, reduce the amount of soy sauce in the stewing liquid to make it less salty.

Nikujaga, Japanese stewed meat and potatoes

900 g / 2 lbs of potatoes. Use boiling potatoes for a firmer texture, and baking potatoes if you want it rather crumbly and mushy. (Either way it's good, though the former makes for a prettier dish.)
200g / 6 oz thinly slice beef or pork. "Minute steak" is fine, or just cut up a thin cutlet.
1 medium onion
A small piece of fresh ginger
about 4-5 cups of dashi soup stock (You can use the granulated instant dashi, but be careful not to add too much or it will be salty)
6 Tbs sugar
3 Tbs sake, or sweet sherry
3 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs mirin (or just add another Tbs. of sake and a bit more sugar)
vegetable oil
1 tsp dark sesame oil
Some chopped green onions for garnish

Peel and cut up the potatoes. Roughly chop up the meat. Slice the onion. Chop the ginger finely.

Sauté the onion and ginger in some oil. Add the meat and sauté till browned.

Add the potatoes and sauté briefly. Add enough dashi stock to cover. Add the sugar, sake, mirin and soy sauce. Add the sesame oil. Bring to a boil, then put a pot lid that's smaller than the pot you're using directly on top of the potatoes, Simmer over medium-low heat, until the liquid is much reduced and the potatoes are tender, and infused with a sort of golden color.

Sprinkle with the green onions and toss around in the pan. Serve immedately.