Follow-up: Secrets of an Indifferent Home Chef

Yesterday I actually cooked the beef brisket that I blogged about last week. After a moment of sticker shock at the grocery store, I found a brisket (only 2 pounds, but then, there are only two of us), but no slab bacon. That was okay, the regular bacon I used worked just fine. Prep time took almost twice as long as I thought: I had planned half an hour but it took fifty minutes. I sliced the onions and celery before I started browning the meat, which turned out to be good planning. I sliced the mushrooms, bundled up the thyme and chopped the garlic while the onions and celery were cooking, and measured out the balsamic vinegar and found the bay leaves while the mushrooms and garlic were cooking. That all worked out smoothly.


It tasted great. It did not taste too vinegary, just a pleasant sweet-sour taste with more sour than sweet. With it I served an orzo salad (orzo, chopped red bell pepper, niblets corn, minced shallots, Dijon vinaigrette) because I wanted a contrasting texture but mostly because it was easier than Anne Burrell's potato pancakes. "Contrasting texture" just sounds better.


I notice from the reviews on the Food Network website that several people cooked this recipe in a crockpot with good results. Next time I might try using a chuck roast and cooking it in the crockpot. That sounds like Clue: Ms. Coleslaw, with the chuck roast, in the crockpot. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a crime.

Secrets of an Indifferent Home Chef

One of the cooking shows I love to watch is Chef Anne Burrell's Secrets of a Restaurant Chef.  I love watching it because of Anne Burrell's interesting personality, not because of any cooking tips I intend to pick up from it. My impression is that the secret to cooking like a restaurant chef is to be a restaurant chef, i.e., to have a staff of sous chefs that do prep work for you, to have a supplier that you can order the exact cuts of meat you want from, and to have a kitchen with several ovens and a six burner gas stove. I realize that there are some people who are not restaurant chefs who have double ovens and six burner stoves, but I'm not one of them.


Besides, I don't have recipes so much as procedures. There's the making hash out of anything procedure, the whatever parmesan procedure, the fried food procedure, the steamed veggies procedure, the braising procedure, the soup/stew/ sauce procedure, and the dice it up with onions, potatoes, bell pepper and garlic and cook it in the oven procedure. If I use an actual recipe, I will only use it once unless I can memorize it.


On one of her recent shows, though, Anne (may I call her Anne?) was cooking a beef brisket and it actually looked easier to cook than my standard pot roast recipe. First of all, she started off by salting and peppering the meat and throwing it into a pan to brown. When I make pot roast, I start off by marinating it in olive oil, red wine, lemon juice, shallots and bay leaf. Then I have to wipe it dry, then I put slits in it and insert slivers of garlic, and then it's ready to brown. So if I make Anne's recipe I've already saved 3 or 4 steps. 


Then she removes the roast from the pan and adds chopped slab bacon. That's where we run into that pesky supplier thing. I'm not sure Walmart carries slab bacon, but then, I don't see why regular old bacon wouldn't do; just stack a few slices and slice them crosswise. After that, she throws sliced onions and celery into the bacon fat to cook. I use chopped onions, celery, and carrots - slicing is much easier. Then add finely chopped garlic, not much harder than the slivering I do, especially since you can use the smash and peel method before chopping, which you can't do if you want to put slivers into slits in your beef. So so far, other than the bacon, she hasn't done anything I don't already do, plus she's left out a few steps. Easy.


Then add some sliced mushrooms, then add the liquid and aromatics. My liquid is beef stock, red wine, and coffee (yes, coffee). Hers is chicken stock (huh?) and balsamic vinegar. We both use thyme and bay leaves. Cover and put in the oven. I cook mine on the top of the stove, but my Le Creuset pot, a Christmas present from a bewildered husband ("It costs how much?") is ovenproof up to 500 degrees. 


Shorter version - I can make this. Heck, after one viewing I practically had the recipe memorized.

30 Minute Meals that Only Take 45 Minutes Or So to Cook

I've become a big fan of the Food Channel.  My favorite is the Barefoot Contessa, followed by Giada at Home and Semi-Homemade. Occasionally I watch Rachel Ray and her 30 Minute Meals, which generally involve being able to compress ten minutes of pasta cooking into a two minute commercial break. I'm a girl at heart; I still love fairy tales.  

The other night I planned what should have been a quick fix meal, even bearing in mind that I do not have an army of assistants outside of camera range to do the shopping, organizing and some of the prep work.  The menu was simple:  Salmon with Lemon and Parmesan Crust (I cannot rave enough about this dish), leftover stir fried noodles and vegetables, and a salad of hearts of artichokes, hearts of palm and romaine hearts (a Rachel Ray dish) dressed with a lemon vinaigrette adapted from Ina Gartner's roasted artichoke salad.  So, mix up the salmon crust, mix up the dressing, reheat the vegetables and throw the salad together while the salmon bakes.  How hard could that be, as Ina would say?

One of the ingredients for the salmon is green onions.  I knew we had a bag of green onions in the crisper.  What I did not know is that they were starting to go bad, and that it would take almost ten minutes to peel and cut the not so nice parts from the still good parts to get enough to use.  Then there was the matter of the artichoke hearts for the salad.  Instead of hearts, I accidentally grabbed a can of artichoke bottoms.  I found a container for them and found the artichoke hearts, but that took more time.  Why is it that when Ina, Rachel, and Sandy are looking for canned goods, they are always right at the front of the pantry shelf, not buried behind an aging can of coconut milk? 

Then there was the vinaigrette.  It sounds so easy - throw a bunch of ingredients in a blender. How bad could that be?  Ina would have whipped hers up during the opening credits in between mixing scone batter.  It always takes me ten to fifteen minutes, mostly because I have to chase down the right size measuring spoons, and mince shallots.

It really only took about 45 minutes to whip up dinner.  Still not bad for a quick meal.  I even have a plan for the artichoke bottoms - Eggs Sardou.  Poach some eggs, cream some spinach, make a side dish of cheese grits.  How long could that take?

I figure a week.