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dream big pot roast
If there’s one thing I hope you can take away from any time you’ve spent on this blog, it’s this: buy the Alice Waters’ cookbook the art of simple cooking. It is the seriously the best. Her recipes are so basic and simple and delicious, always delicious. Go write it on your Christmas list right now.
I bought this beef chuck because Whole Foods was having a sale and the meat-monger basically guilted me into it. I bought two pounds when I should have bought three, but oh well. The recipe also calls for cloves, savory, brandy, and bacon, but I oh-welled those too. Because I bought it before I was planning on using it, I heavily salted and peppered the meat, wrapped it in saran wrap and left it in the the fridge for three days. Alice is a big fan of this type of aging (though probably more the 24 hour-type than the three-day-type.)
This was so so so good. Joe and I were aghast at how good it was. As I was nibbling on corners of it, waiting for Joe to get home, I had visions of Sunday dinners and hosting friends with this dish. Anything seemed possible, all of a sudden. I think the clutch element is really browning all sides of the meat at the beginning of the recipe.
I use these concentrated “better than bouillon” stocks for all my chicken stock or beef stock needs. It is easy to keep them in the fridge and you never have to say, “shoot, the only thing I’m missing is chicken stock.” And, ultimately, they make better stock than most cartons. Available at all grocery stores.
I wish I had made mashed potatoes or grainy bread to go with it. I did make biscuits, they were a little on the rich side. I don’t think you could drink red wine with this dish, it’s so savory! Maybe scotch with soda?
Alice Waters Beef Stew-as-Pot Roast Recipe
3 pounds beef chuck, seasoned with coarse salt and fresh ground pepper (a day ahead if possible)
3 slices of bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons oil
2 carrots, chopped into 2-inch chunks
2 medium onions, quartered
2 whole cloves, stuck into a quarter of onion
2 sprigs each of thyme, parsley, and savory (I skipped the savory and used dried thyme)
1 bay leaf
a few peppercorns
3 tablespoons brandy (optional)
1 3/4 cups red wine
3 tomatoes, diced (fresh or canned)
a small head of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 thin strip of orange zest
2 cups beef stockHeat the oil in a heavy skillet and cook bacon until fat is rendered and bacon is lightly browned, but not crisp. Remove bacon.
Brown the beef on all sides in the bacon fat. Put meat into a heavy pot or braising dish. Lower heat and pour off most of the fat from the skillet. Cook the carrots, celery, and onions with the herbs, bay leaf, and peppercorns until lightly browned. Add to the beef in pot/dish.
Raise heat of empty skillet and add the brandy, then the red wine. Scrape up the browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pot and reduce wine by two-thirds. Pour over the beef and vegetables in the pot.
Add the tomatoes, garlic, orange zest, and broth to the pot. The liquid should come up at least 1/2 of the way up to the top of the beef/vegetables; add more broth if needed. It does not need to cover the ingredients entirely.
Cover and cook at a bare simmer on the stovetop, or in a 325-degree oven for 3-4 hours until meat falls apart when tested with a fork. Check the stew occasionally to make sure it’s not boiling and there is enough liquid.
Let stew rest for a few minutes before serving and skim off layer of fat on top. Season to taste and serve, if possible, sprinkled with freshly chopped parsley and garlic.
note: the photo up top is right before I added the beef stock, put the lid on, and slide it into the oven.
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the sip and see
A couple weekends ago we had friends over for a sip ‘n see. A term stolen from the south (I think? maybe old south?), it means people are invited over to eat and drink and see the new baby. A typical party, except all we had to do as hosts was tidy up the apartment because the guests brought all the food and drink. In fact, moments before the 10 a.m. start time, the four of us were sitting in the living room, just peacefully waiting and twiddling our thumbs instead of dashing around getting everything perfect.
they brought:
- Coconut bread and marmalade
- Blueberry galettes (these are pretty easy and incredibly elegant!)
- our favorite Barismo coffee
- mimosa ingredients
- Bacon cheddar scones
- a heaping fruit salad
Babies are at their best in the morning and it’s always nice to have a party at the start of the weekend when everyone has plenty of time to get errands done afterwards (it reminded me of Lux’s first birthday party). We loved having the chance to just sit around our living room and catch up with everyone (most of them from Joe’s graduate school days, thus some of our first friends in Boston). Our new apartment isn’t ideal for hosting dinner parties, but it is a great spot to lounge in the morning sun.
Food is love. If, as studies claim, experiences and memories ultimately render more satisfaction than possessions, my money is on the gift of food as the best gift you can give these days.
- Coconut bread and marmalade
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my kitchen wants…
Ruth Reichl posted about how much she loves her 15″ cast iron skillet, and now I really want one. Ruth drives me a little crazy on Twitter (sample tweet: So still. Clouds stretch across the valley like a soft white ribbon. One red bird flies past. Fragrant black beans. Fierce salsa. Tortilla.) and yet, I still follow her! But her blog is the wisdom and writing that you’d expect from the former Gourmet editor in chief, especially if you’ve read any of her books.
I have the same hesitation she did—too much space and too heavy! But then whenever I have a big steak or want to make lots of pancakes, the thing I really find myself needing is big heavy hot pan. It seems like the kind of thing where once you buy it, it’s your daily staple. Right now I have just one petite cast iron pan. Maybe it’s time to go big or close-up shop altogether.
Photo from West Elm.
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in the weeds
In which our young heroine finds she was given a real baby, a waker-baby. None of this magic sleeper-baby stuff, like always falling asleep while nursing (Lux) or sleeping 5+ hours by one month (Lux) or never ever spitting up (Lux). No, this time it’s a real baby who wakes up every three hours to the dot, and would like to be held all the time extra please, who hasn’t the faintest idea how to fall asleep and gets rather upset about it, who detects a whiff of caffeine in my breastmilk and can not abide it.
It will never be this overwhelming, I said to myself last Monday morning after Joe had left and Lux was begging to go to the playground and Joan was fussing. This is it. The pinnacle of overwhelmingness has been reached. The next time I have a baby, I’ll have a four year old and she will make lunch for all us. Right?
I see normal, I see the glimmer of it, though I think it might still be two months away.
I hate repetitive conversational pleasantries. I’ve probably heard some variation of “zero to one is the toughest” or “one to two is the hardest” one hundred thousand times. THE POINT IS PEOPLE, I would like to interrupt, IT’S A NEWBORN. I remember how I felt with Lux. I remember feeling overwhelmed. THIS is the pinnacle, I imagine I probably said.
There are times in the day I have to say to myself, quit it. She is a newborn. She doesn’t have to shape up. She doesn’t have to get with the program. She can do whatever she wants. I think I perhaps see her worst, through a glass darkly, at 6pm. I’m not seeing her, I’m just seeing all the stuff I haven’t gotten done. The absolute rumpus Lux has piled around me and throughout the entire apartment. The lack of dinner plans. The two emails (just two!) I was hoping to respond to.
But I see her best at 6am. She wakes up to the sunlight. She coos and stretches next to me and I wake up too. It’s quiet and everyone else is still asleep and we’ve made it through the darkness to this very second. I love that moment, a moment when I manage to open my eyes to the present instead of chasing something else in my mind, when I can watch her facial expressions and notice that her eyelashes flit out like a Disney chipmunk’s. When I wonder who she is right now and who she will be.
My mom once told me that she took up sewing when we were young so she could point to something and say “here’s what I accomplished today.” That’s probably why I find myself in the kitchen, baking something that doesn’t need to be baked by hand, dancing a very fine line where Lux is engaged and Joan is briefly asleep but perhaps soon to wake, but will it be after the dough is safely pressed into pans, or before? Last week I found an index card I had scrawled on years and years ago. “Finnish bread” it said at the top, which sounds absurd because it was always “homemade bread” when I was younger. I asked for it weekly from Mrs. B, a Dutch woman who started helping out my mom around the time when there was four of us kids. Before I left for college I finally asked her to walk me through the recipe, and I made scattered notes on this index card. And after I put it in the oven the kitchen smelled exactly as it used to when she made it.
Toast with butter and honey? Who could forget this delicacy? And what about cinnamon sugar toast? My college cafeteria used to keep shakers of cinnamon sugar casually on hand by the salad bar (like, you can have salad, or you can have…cinnamon sugar!). Throughout the semester, on not so good days, I would make a neat stack of white toasted bread with cinnamon sugar and sit down with a cup of coffee for lunch.
When people come visit our apartment, and a rather lot of them have been lately, which is lovely, when they make it up to the 5th floor after the two heavy doors that noisily buzz them access, after the tiny rickety elevator that lifts them four floors, after the small red carpeted flight of stairs from the kitchen they found themselves in after the elevator—they often look around and call it a treehouse. The ceiling is vaulted like an old attic, the windows are mostly enormous, and the tops of trees are visible everywhere. A treehouse that smells like fresh bread.
I think of this as a very easy bread, hard to mess up, leaving you with basic tomato sandwich makings or, of course, steady toast supply. I sometimes abandon the dough for more than two hours, if babies demand. And I particularly like the short baking time–fresh bread so quick!
Makes Two Loaves of Mrs. B’s Homemade Bread1 package active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 t from a bulk container)2 cups whole milk (or skim)1 cup whole wheat flour4-5 cups white flour2 tablespoons butter1 tablespoon brown sugar2 teaspoons saltDissolve the yeast into 1/4 cup lukewarm water with your finger and let it sit for a bit. Mix together one cup of the white flour and all other dry ingredients. Microwave the milk for 1.5 minutes and then drop in the butter to melt.Mix the bubbly yeast into the dry ingredients. Mix in the melted butter and milk. Add 4 or 5 cups white flour and mix it with a wooden spoon. Dump the dough out on to the counter and knead it for a bit, adding flour if it’s too sticky.Leave the dough to rise for 20 minutes under a damp towel or a bowl.Split the dough into two sections and drop them into bread pans. Let rise for two hours.Bake at 425 for 30 minutes. -
Mint Iced Tea Lemonade
I feel very serendipitous posting this recipe because I never thought I would have it in my possession. A rather simple combination, but I thought it was forever to be remembered as that “delicious iced tea I had that one time at your parents’ friends’ house.”
I had it at friends of Joe’s parents a couple years ago. We ate lunch at a table under a tree on the top of a sloping hill. I had several glasses of this and I remember the husband proudly saying he always knows someone is coming over when he smells mint soaking in the kitchen. Last Christmas, the same family published a cookbook, The Daily Feast, and the recipe was included!
A mix of black tea, mint, and a carton of lemonade. Ends up tasting like lightly sweetened, perfectly lemony iced tea.
I think of iced tea as a very savvy hostess thing. Like, at a certain stage in your life, you always have a pitcher of iced tea ready for guests. With the sheer laziness that has overtaken my life these days, it’s mostly just this and popsicles for guests around here.
Lemon-Mint Iced Tea, from The Daily Feast
4 quarts water, divided
one big handful fresh mint leaves on stems, washed
5 black tea bags (or decaf, if you prefer)
12 oz. can frozen lemonade concentrate
Bring two quarts of water to a bowl. Place the fresh mint and tea bags in a stainless steel pot. Pour the boiling water over the tea bags and mint and allow to steep for 30 minutes. Strain.
Add the frozen lemonade to the tea mixture. Stir in the additional 2 quarts water to make 1 gallon tea. To serve, pour over ice and garnish with fresh mint, if you have it.
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Mother’s Day Requests
For Mother’s Day I asked for breakfast in bed and a New York Times. By the way, who is killing the monk seals? I didn’t find out because the Travel issue was hiding right behind it. I enjoyed this urbane man’s review of the Airbnb experience, Joe liked this essay on traveling alone.
Deborah Needleman is now editing the T Magazine for the New York Times. She was Domino Magazine’s editor and had a brief glorious reign at the Wall Street Journal’s magazine. I predict great things for the T issues of the future (which has in the past been very snobby and not all that stylish).
Buy a man a $2.50 frother at Ikea and it turns out he makes a damn fine cappuccino. I had no idea where this cappuccino came from when he flourished it in front of me, all I knew was it was much better than Starbucks (maybe because it was made with heavy cream! my favvvvorite). We’ve been using whole milk too. Takes about four minutes, done in a pan warming on the stove while your espresso pot wells up.
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Tomatoes in Somerville
Growing up on the second floor of her family’s Somerville triple-decker, Brown remembers picking and eating tomatoes right off the vine from the yard, and salting them with a shaker hanging from a piece of twine. She recalls those tomatoes sun-drying on the roof; eggplant resting under bricks; and pasta drying on laundry racks.
Love this city summer memory from the new Edible Boston issue, a free magazine available all over Boston. Non-sequitur photo from the children’s clothing line Bobo Choses. I can’t get their stuff out of my head.
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Early Pregnancy Champions
1. I probably eat a box of this a day. This bunny-themed version is a cheerful pink and for unspecified reasons has been on sale at grocery stores across the city for the last two weeks. And yes, I’ve legitimately considered buying stock in Annie’s Natural Foods.
2. Local pickles. You can taste the dill and horseradish in these. “Let’s just have pickles for dinner,” I called to Joe. “Yup, you’re pregnant” he called back.
3. One thing Boston does really well is the Sub Shop. If people ask if I have cravings, I say “yes, pizza and sub sandwiches.” Of course we all know that all humans crave pizza and sub sandwiches. Which is why the industry created the word “crave.” Now you can justify it biologically!
4. Local peanut butter, but it’s my favorite brand because it is the best flavor. My position is don’t bother with the flax seed enhanced stuff. That research is suspicious and it taints the flavor.
5. My favorite with everything–the macaroni and cheese, the Market Basket ruffle potato chips that I go through a bag of on a weekly basis, honey, scrambled eggs… There is NO reason to buy any version besides the Total full fat. I wish that 2% junk would stop crowding the shelves.
6. Is it just me or is the grapefruit super good this year? I end up just drinking the juice because Lux likes to eat the whole fruit and I don’t mind splitting that type of stuff.
Note that none of these involve cooking. Coincidence? Um, no.
ps: I found these snack ideas totally eye opening.
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Almond Cake for the Needy
I make this almond cake for women who’ve just had babies. The food you eat after you’ve had a baby tastes like food after you’ve been sick for a long time and eaten dry toast with nubs of butter for a week. I remember being in the hospital with Lux and they would bring me these rather sad McMuffin-style egg sandwiches and I thought they were amazing. After we came home someone brought me marinated steak, arugula salad, and orzo salad with sun dried tomatoes and I almost wept with happiness.
But even though a new mom might have low standards for what you bring her I think if you bring her the good stuff, it will really count. For life. I’ll probably be calling in favors, five years from now, and say, “remember when I brought you that almond cake? Ok, now will you please come pick me up on the side of a highway?”
I know I’m not grandly delusional too, because then I get the Thank You Notes that exclusively gush about the almond cake (“no need for a thank you note!” I proclaim. New moms don’t listen to nobody.).
But of course, you can bring this to anyone who needs a little extra affection, a paper-wrapped golden reminder on their kitchen counter that the world hearts them. It ages really nicely (I think the one photographed here was a week old), but it probably won’t age because it doesn’t take people long to figure out that it tastes good with eggs for breakfast, salad for lunch, or just after dinner. It also ships nicely. I once packed up a box for my brother in Florida and it arrived perfectly intact, only to be devoured within the day.
But perhaps my favorite thing about it is how humble it appears. The center invariably falls in and at first sight it looks like a FAIL cake. It doesn’t have frosting, and the color is rather simple. It could be anything, from the outside. I think of it like a little time bomb. I say bye!, and leave them with this innocuous package, maybe they ignore it for a day, and try it later. AND THEN THEY REALIZE. On the inside it’s deeply deeply almondly and with “good crumb” as the bakers say. And so hefty that all slices come out as wedges which is really how one eats cake when in need.
I originally tried it because my Aunt Anne told me about it. The recipe is from The New York Times cookbook edited by Amanda Hesser and it was contributed by Amanda Hesser. She’s the best. And that cookbook is amazing. It’s a culinary history class with a sexy cover. The best thing to do is think of making it a few hours before and pull the butter, eggs and cup of sour cream from the fridge. The batter is mixed in the food processor (a normal mixer would also work). The most tedious part is pulling apart the tube of Almond Paste, but that really only takes 3 minutes. As far as going to the store just for the almond paste, don’t bother. Just make it a habit to always have a tube at the ready in your cupboard. Most groceries stock the Odense brand in the baking aisle, by the spices.
Ok, here it is. Make it yours.
2 sticks butter, more for buttering pan
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour (measured after sifting)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
7-ounce tube almond paste
4 egg yolks, room temperature
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon baking soda
Powdered sugar, for sifting over cake
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter sides and bottoms of one 8-inch springform pan; line sides and bottom with parchment paper. Butter paper.
2.Sift flour and salt into a small bowl. Set aside. In a food processor, beat butter and granulated sugar at high speed until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add almond paste, a little at a time at medium speed, and beat 8 minutes. Beat in egg yolks, one at a time, and almond extract. Mix sour cream and baking soda and add to butter mixture. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually add flour mixture, just until blended.
3. Pour batter into prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake about 1 1/4 hours, until top is golden and springs back when lightly pressed and the cake shrinks from sides of the pan. Cool in pan on wire rack. Remove sides of pan and remove paper. Store in a covered tin in or out of the fridge. It improves with age and can be made 1 to 2 weeks ahead. When ready to serve, sift powdered sugar on top and slice like pie.
you can read the original at the New York Times, or buy the book!
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Favorite Mugs
Do you have a favorite mug? DesignMom asked this question the other day and one immediately popped into my mind. It was in the cupboards of a cottage we stayed at in Michigan. I loved how lightweight the enamel was, and the kooky cheerful characters all the way around. I also liked the size–just right for how much coffee I drink.
I very much wanted to steal it, but figured that the owners probably liked it as much as I did. Good thing I decided that too, after a google search once home, I learned that these Finel mugs made by Arabia (for children) often sell for more than $80 each! Sheesh. Keep your eyes open at garage sales…
Poketo has some fun faux tin mugs, and here is a great size enamel mug for children. I think I’d like a couple of those for Lux. Real cups are much easier for toddlers to drink from than sippys. And you could pretend you were camping every morning!
