I ended up getting a bumper crop of red plum tomatoes from my garden this week, so I made this sauce. I prepared the tomatoes by peeling the skins off (dip into boiling water for 30 seconds), then cutting them in half, removing the seedy goo inside, and dousing them with a little balsamic vinegar on sheet pans, and then roasting them in a very hot oven. When they were done, I ran them through the food processor. But you could whiz a couple cans of plum tomatoes if you want. The trick about reducing the wine and adding it as a syrup is probably cheating, but it cuts down on the cooking time by 45 minutes. Overall, expect this sauce to take 2 to 3 hours to make. Freezes well.

1 onion, cut into 8ths
½c baby carrots
2 stalks of celery, cut into 3rds
2 T butter
½ lb ground beef
½ lb ground pork
½ lb ground bison (or ground veal)
2 T tomato paste
1 pint whole milk
2 c red wine
3 cans San Marzano plum tomatoes, whizzed in the food processor, or fresh tomatoes, treated as described above.
2 cups chicken stock

Run the vegetables through a food processor until they’re chopped quite fine. Put into a preheated, thick bottomed pot (over medium heat) with the butter and cook until softened and fragrant. Add the meat and break it up with your spoon. You’re not really trying to brown anything, just get it all into smaller pieces. Mix in tomato paste. Add the milk and bring it to a boil, then simmer until most of the liquid is evaporated, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, in a separate sauce pan, reduce the red wine to a syrup, then add it to the milk and meat mixture.  Add in the tomatoes and then simmer, simmer, simmer. Low and slow, with the lid off. You want it to barely bubble. Stir it often, and cook it until it’s thick.

Caught a random episode of Cooks Country this weekend where they made an unusual barbecued chicken recipe. I tried to replicate it, though I didn’t follow the recipe exactly.

The weird part about the recipe is that the barbecue sauce is mayonnaise based, as opposed to ketchup based, and it was quite tasty. The real recipe has you smoke a chicken cut in half over hickory chips. I used apple wood. The real recipe has you rub the chicken with a mixture of salt, black pepper and cayenne, and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes (or up to 8 hours). I don’t use cayenne because the people I feed don’t like the heat of cayenne, so I made a bit of a mix of salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and adobo seasoning.

The sauce is made up of a quarter cup of mayonnaise,  what was left over from the spice mixture I didn’t rub on the chicken, and a tablespoon of jarred horseradish.

So you cook the chicken (3 to 4 lbs., cut in half with the backbone removed) over an aluminum pie pan, with a chimney full of fully lit charcoal distributed evenly on either side of the pan, and then the soaked wood chips over top of the coals. I cooked it 45 minutes, skin side up, and then 20 minutes with the flesh side down. Then you remove the chicken and brush the sauce over top.

Hot pastrami – one of the best sandwiches in the world. Fragrant, spicy, thin cut hot meat heaped onto rye bread, slathered with mustard, melting in your mouth. That and a kosher half-sour pickle is all you need. In the book Save the Deli (which you are advised not to read on an empty stomach), David Sax details how some of the best delis in the world make their pastrami. A recent New York Times article claims that an artisan approach to deli food can produce the best possible results. So is it possible to make your own pastrami at home?

Yes, but apparently only if you know what you’re doing. Inspired by a small shop in Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh and various blogs, I decided to give pastrami a try. I have been brining my own corned beef for some time now (both literally and figurative). Pastrami is just smoked spiced corned beef, right? So I took my corned beef out of its brine, covered it with pastrami spices, and smoked it in my smoker. The result: smoked corned beef. It wasn’t exactly awful, but it definitely was not pastrami. It tasted like roasted sauerbraten and had the texture of corned beef. My family wouldn’t touch the stuff – especially not after they were expecting the taste of pastrami.

Back to the drawing board. More research. It seems like most pastrami is dry cured and that we have come to associate the taste of nitrates with pastrami. How does a home cook dry cure brisket? With something called Morton’s Tender Cure. Trim all the fat off a brisket (or whatever cut of beef you are trying to turn into pastrami). A few tablespoons of Tender Cure , a few spices and 3 weeks in the fridge yield a beautiful dry cured piece of meat.

What next? Cover the brisket with pastrami spices (paprika, salt, ground black and white pepper, ground yellow mustard seeds, ground coriander seeds, garlic, a little brown sugar) and put it in a smoker over water to cold smoke for 4 hours. Then into a slow oven over boiling water to steam for maybe 2 hours.

The result: delicious! Hot pastrami, better than anything you can get in the grocery store. Hot through and through, fine textured, no collagen, with a peppery bite and a fragrance that’s out of this world. Is homemade better than the pastrami in a great deli like Katz’s? Dunno … we’d have to do a blind taste test. But then again, who cares unless you live in NYC or Squirrel Hill and have ready access to fine hot pastrami. What came out of my oven was better pastrami by far than anything I can buy here in Northern Virginia. David Sax was right (of course).

3 or 4 thick cut natural pork chops, rib cut, on the bone
1 onion
whatever fresh herbs you have on hand (rosemary, thyme, sage)
3 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon sugar
water
2 tablespoons oil
ground black pepper
2 ounces port wine
¼ cup of your favorite bbq sauce

In a zip-top bag, combine the sugar, salt and about a cup of warm water. Mix to dissolve. Cut the onion into quarters or eighths, removing the papery skin. Add the pork chops and the fresh herbs. Zip the bag mostly closed and remove as much air as possible before closing it completely. Toss it around a little, then put in a shallow pan and let sit in the fridge, turning it after 4 hours. After 8 hours, remove the chops from the brine, and refrigerate until ready to cook.

Preheat oven to 350°. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan. Dry the pork chops of excess surface moisture, pepper each side, then fry in the hot pan, 5 minutes per side. Pour off excess fat, and replace with port wine. Put on the lid, and put it in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove lid, and baste with bbq sauce, return to oven for 10 more minutes. Remove from oven, and let rest for 10 more minutes.

My grandpa, Aaron Jelliff, 1906-1971

My grandfather loved to cook, even back in the Eisenhower days, where the men went out to work, and the women stayed home and kept the house. He was a fabulous bread maker and started my mother on her endless cookbook collecting. He is also very much remembered for this recipe. It dates back to the 60′s, so the only kind of parmesan cheese Grandpa knew of came in a green can. The recipe also doesn’t take advantage of many fresh herbs or the new no-boil kind of pasta either, though I’m sure it couldn’t hurt at all to make those replacements. Rinsing pasta is usually frowned upon, but it’s important to do it in this recipe, otherwise the noodles will stick together and become completely impossible to handle.

1 lb. sausage (sweet italian or bulk)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon basil (dried)
1½ teaspoons salt
1 can of chopped tomatoes (16 oz)
2 cans tomato paste (6 oz. each)
10 oz. lasagna noodles
3 cups ricotta cheese (whole milk is best)
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons dried parsley
2 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 lb. mozzarella, sliced thin (or same amount, shredded)

In a large frying pan, brown the meat slowly. Spoon off the excess grease. Add garlic, basil, salt, tomatoes, and tomato paste, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cook the noodles according to the package, drain, and rinse under cold water until you can handle them. Combine the ricotta, parmesan, parsley, eggs, salt and pepper. Put half of the noodles in a 13x9x2 baking dish, spread half of the cheese mixture on top, and a layer of 1/3rd of the mozzarella cheese, and half of the meat sauce. Repeat the layers, finishing off with the rest of the mozzarella. Bake at 375° for about 30 minutes. Let it stand 10 minutes before serving.

So it seems pretty straight-forward, but I never actually tried it until last week. A better way to roast a chicken. I’ve often lamented the fact that the thighs and drumsticks are rarely ever completely cooked to my liking, or if they are, the breast meat is completely overdone. Taking a cue from recipes for roasted turkey, I decided to try twirling the bird.

First, salt and pepper the bird, inside and out. If you want to get fancy, put a couple spoonfuls of compound butter underneath the skin of the breast. Then put the 3 to 3½ pound chicken on a roasting pan that’s preheated in a hot oven (425°), but put it in on its side, and let it cook for 15 minutes. Then turn it on its other side for another 15 minutes. Finally, roast it breast side up for 25 to 35 minutes more, basting the bird every 10 minutes. You should hear the chicken sizzling the whole time while it’s in the oven. (You know it’s done when the joints move easily.) Then let it rest outside of the oven for 15 minutes more, covered with foil.

The result is an very moist and completely cooked chicken. What’s more, as with other roast chicken recipes, it’s just as easy to cook two chickens at the same time, either to feed a crowd or for copious leftovers. And though it’s a little more work, and I can’t wander far from the kitchen, it’s definitely going to be my go-to way to roast a chicken from now on — or, at least until some novel method presents itself.

2 or 3 lamb shanks
salt
1 onion, chopped fine (or substitute the same quantity of leeks)
3 or 4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces
3 or 4 parsnips, ditto
2 or 3 turnips, ditto
1 can of tomato paste
6 whole cloves of garlic
16 oz. good english or trappist beer (or substitute cider, stock, or water)
misc herbs (thyme, rosemary), chopped, to taste
2 or 3 bay leaves
4 or 5 crushed juniper berries (optional)
ground black pepper and salt to taste
1 cup pearl barley, rinsed
1 teaspoon salt
2½ cups chicken stock (or water)

Preheat the oven to 300°F.

Season the shanks with salt and brown on all sides in a hot cast iron pan — 3-5 minutes per side.

In a good sized dutch oven, brown the onions and vegetables in a little butter or oil until the onions have gone translucent. Add the tomato paste, and stir, cooking the tomato paste for a couple of minutes. Add the herbage, the spices, and the garlic, as well as the shanks. Pour over the beer and bring to a boil, stirring. Cover, and cook in the oven for 2-4 hours, checking occasionally, turning the shanks. Keep cooking until the meat pulls from the bone easily.

45 minutes, before serving, bring the chicken stock and the salt to a boil in a lidded saucepan. Add the barley and resume boil, then simmer, covered for 45 minutes, until liquid is gone, and barley is soft but still chewy.

Remove the shanks from the pot, and take the meat off the bone, cutting it into bitesized chunks and removing the fatty bits and any gristle. Remove the bay leaves and optionally, the juniper berries that you can find. Return the meat as well as the barley to the pot and stir.

You might find, in the Cooking Monster archives, an entry I wrote about my attempt to make a batch of homemade baked beans, and how I lamented that the results really weren’t worth the effort. Well, urged on my my brother, I have since purchased an authentic bean pot in Zanesville, Ohio, and decided to try my hand at it again, having rehydrated a batch of beans and then changing my mind about what I’d do with them. The results were much better this time, though not without some pitfalls. Be sure to boil the beans after you soak them until they are tender. I scrimped on this step, and my beans, though edible, were a little tough. Also, watch the vinegar content in your bbq sauce — too much, and the acid might do nasty things to your beans.

2 cups dried beans (navy, great northern, or flageolet)
12 oz. salt pork
1 onion, finely chopped
3 tablespoons molasses
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
½ cup bbq sauce (or ketchup)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
¼ cup brown sugar

Soak the beans for about 8 hours, or overnight. In the same liquid, simmer the beans until they’re tender — about 2 hours. Drain and reserve the liquid.

Preheat the oven to 325°F (165°C).

Combine the beans with the rest of the ingredients in a bean pot or covered casserole dish, stirring to combine, then add some of the reserved bean liquid (or fresh water) to the top of the bean mixture.

Bake with lid on for 2 hours, then check the beans for moisture, and add more water if necessary. Remove the lid, and stir. Cook for an additional 2 hours — or more, provided you add more water if the beans are getting too dry.

Now that Gourmet Magazine is no more, I’m getting emails from their successor, Bon Appetit. The other day, they sent me an email that described a stew that sounded great, although their recipe was fully vegetarian and relied on mushrooms for the umami. Mushrooms just don’t cut it in my house, since my wife seems to have some sort of allergy to them, so I made the recipe but replaced the mushrooms with small diced pieces of chuck. The results were quite delicious. A fine dinner for a autumn or winter night.

This is a quicker substitute for bolognese sauce, which normally takes a long afternoon of simmering. This only takes about an hour and 20 minutes, total, and has satisfying, rich, deep flavors. I use ground bison, but you could substitute ground veal, or a mixture of veal, beef, and pork.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
6 chopped scallions
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound ground bison (or other chopped meat)
salt & pepper
1 cup rosé or zinfandel
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 28-ounce canned plum tomatoes
1 cup water
2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary

Heat the oil and butter in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. When the butter has melted, add the scallions and cook for a minute or two to soften. Add the garlic, and cook for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add the chopped meat as well as some salt and pepper, and brown, breaking it into small pieces, until no pink remains. Add the wine, bring to a boil and simmer until the wine has reduced to one-third … about 10 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, and cook for 2 minutes. Whiz the canned tomatoes in a food processor until smooth, and add to the pan, rinsing the processor bowl with the water, and adding that and the chopped rosemary as well. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. Sauce will be quite thick. Taste for seasoning. Serve over ziti, penne or rigatoni with lots of grated parmesan.