Smoky Tea Roast

This post shall also known as: Lessons from a world-travelling farmhouse-dweller. It shall seek to inform you of not-enough in too-little-words, and finish with a grand pile of shredded beef. 


I'll give you a tiny bullet-list of things that I have learned in the past few months, before getting 
onto the lovely recipe. 

•  Melbourne's weather is as crazy as DFW's
•  New Zealand has a thing against delightful beef jerky
•  Take notes and take pictures
•  ALWAYS zip up your camera bag. Do NOT EVER leave your camera in an unzipped bag OR outside of a bag. EVER. 
•  DON'T TOUCH THE TURTLES
•  Mulch. 
•  I feel better with very little carbohydrate. 
•  Just plant things. Sometimes you can have an entire farm and the best place ends up being your front flower-bed. 
•  Presents are fun
•  People will listen to anything the TV says
•  Don't forget about yourself.

OK, so, philosophy lesson over? Discussion may continue after class. Uh, after post. Post-post. Comment. 

Smoky Tea Roast, a photo by CaptainShen on Flickr.

ONTO THE BEEF: I just got a little bit of grass-fed rump-roast with no clue about what I'd like to do with it. I've been developing tea-based recipes (as I'd like to lead a class in Fairview on this subject!) and decided I'd try one out, measurements and all. Lapsang Souchong is a black tea that is dried over burning pine-needles, giving it a robust, complex, smoky flavor. Typically a cup that I'd drink in the wintertime, the possibilities are endless and evergreen when it comes to recipe incorporation. Braising in it, marinating chicken, creating sauces-- all ideas that I encourage you to experiment with.

Being roast and having hot weather, I figured either the slow-cooker or the pressure-cooker would be my options, and when I got home from work I certainly didn't approve of the 'slow' part of the former. Out came my pressure-cooker, and then transcended the following:

Smoky Tea Roast

(Set One)

10 grams lapsang souchong (?? Approx 1/4 cup) (brewed into 1 - 2 cups)
1 tsp pink salt
2 tsp powdered ginger
2 tsp garlic granules
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 TB coconut shoyu

(Set Two)

1 lb rump roast
Sprinkling of Hawaiian Black Salt/Alaea
dusting of garlic granules
1 thinly sliced onion
2 cloves chopped garlic

Whisk together first set of ingredients.
Sautee onion and garlic until onion is carmelized in the bottom of a pressure cooker, push to the side. Brown roast thoroughly on all sides and add liquid from above. Pressure cook on high pressure for 40 minutes and let naturally cool.

I served this with Mark Sisson's Creamy Basil Pesto Coleslaw, from his Quick and Easy book, but replaced the walnuts with sesame seed and half of the cabbage with shredded mustard-greens. I shredded the meat on top, and the flavor really surprised me with its complexity-- carmelesqe, almost chocolatey in nature, deep and robust. Ah!

Auwe... Ono... BROKE DA MOUT...

Stay tuned for more Tea Recipes, and as always, happy eating.

Tacos: Simplicity

Tacos, a photo by CaptainShen on Flickr.

I maybe, sometimes, often over complicate things. For one of the Mark's Daily Apple contests that I really have my eye on, readers were asked to choose a recipe posted in a previous thread and take a photo of it. I just got back from a long trip out of state, so I had just above nothing in the kitchen. I had put some frozen beef in the fridge to thaw overnight (lucky move) and had a tiny head of cabbage in the fridge, as well as an avocado from the trip. Basically, I chose a recipe that looked extremely simple and required few ingredients. The one I found: Primal Tacos from Hollykelsey.

I used what I had and I whipped the rest up after a short bike ride to the Farmers Market and produce store. I made a few tweaks here and there, but didn't have high hopes for the recipe (no offense, Hollykelsey, read on!). I'm a Texan and I have made some seriously involved taco meat. I have put a lot of effort into past primal tacos, and with great results.

I am also, as it turns out, a naive and arrogant little chef.

These were AMAZING. This was GREAT. One of the best recipes I've ever made from a blog! It was so simple-- yet somehow, with the first bite-- I was left astounded, with a familiar burst of flavor dancing on my tongue. These, my friends, are TACOS!

Thanks MDA and Hollykelsey! You humble me (and fill me up).

Happy eating!

Note: The coconut sour cream is something I pride myself in and whipped up my own way. Coconut milk powder, creamed coconut, lemon juice, salt, and a sprinkling of garlic powder sat out on the counter during my ride to get ingredients and chilled in the fridge while I cooked.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/contest-share-your-wisdom/#more-23277

http://hollykelsey.blogspot.com/2011/08/primal-tacos.html

Using the "Whole Animal," or, Mottainai

Here is a nice story, largely unrelated to the topic at hand. Once upon a time I was chatting with a couple of guests at work. I mused about how giving the coconut palm was, providing vitamins and minerals in the liquid from within the fruit, nutritious and fatty nuts, creamy milk, healthful oil for eating, cleaning and conditioning skin, sennet ('aha') for ropes-- well, I digress, but needless to say I have a great respect for the tree. They told me about the coconut palm in their culture, being from Mangolore, and the Kalpa Vriksha. The Kalpa Vriksha is, as many western cultures might call it, a Tree of Life. They said that they called the coconut palm that because it was all-giving and all-providing.

That got me thinking, later, about the way in which plants and animals provide for the people to live. In a way, I believe that much of what we consume from can be considered all-giving, if we are only all-accepting.

In Japan, the concept of Mottainai is the idea of simply not being wasteful. I learned 'Mottainai' a long, long time ago-- I'm not sure from who or why or how, but I remember the following, about the Mottainai Obake.



 And f you are awesome (or 8), you could also watch this video. Anyhow, I remember vaguely the concept being described to me as "what old men say when you throw away a sandwich." I did a heap of studying about the concept, and old Japanese traditions (such as furoshiki, an all-purpose Japanese bandana) and even did my final project for my Japanese Minor on it.

Eventually I come to this: I believe in using as much of everything as possible. One thing feeds the next thing and everything is a cycle. This cycle is so vital to life and living and being and growing-- an entirely captivating and rhythmic system that seems to be have been choreographed by necessity and currently carried out only as novelty. The entire process of cutting and peeling vegetables, discarding large parts of them, and (oh no!) throwing out the 'less enjoyed' parts of animals just makes me so sad inside. Learn about the different nutrients in the leaves, roots, stems, seeds, and fruits. Learn about how giving the bones and organs of an animal can be.

I try my hardest to wring two or three uses out of things. Yesterdays dressing is today's marinade, last night's leftovers are this morning's omelette, and the drippings from that meat will cook the next batch of veggies. Yogurt drains out whey and you can make fermented vegetables, chock-full of probiotics, from that (as the yogurt enables you to make the next batch of yogurt!). Since I was little, I saved papaya seeds as pepper (not knowing about how rich in enzymes they were!) and planted all (to my parents dismay?) my fruit seeds.

Stock is a good place to start: Vegetable peelings and stubs can get thrown into the freezer and collect in a bag. The stems of your herbs and the heads and shells of your shrimps are almost as valuable as the initial foods were. Buy a whole chicken and roast it, then pick it clean and save the carcass. Make a stock from it. Slow-cook your ribs or roasts and save those bones. Make a stock from them. When its time to boil (er, almost boil) those meaty discards, add your frozen carrot peelings and parsley stems. Add your celery and onion butts! I could make an entire blog about stock making alone, so I'll leave you with those tips and urge you to explore the world of stockmaking from one of the many masters.

You can throw the tops of carrots into salads or anywhere you'd use parsley. Radish tops make a mean pesto and the white tails of green onions can grow you more green onions simply by trimming the roots and placing them in fresh water in a sunny spot. In looking through old cookbooks in my dear grandmother's house, I found a very simple recipe that is perfectly in keeping with this subject. I invite you to try it and I'll try it too. It is so simple, in fact, that I don't even believe it has a name (or that people actually need a recipe for it), but sometimes it is nice to see something in old print and pass it on. It makes it a little bit more real, and a little bit more like it is part of that cycle.

BEET GREENS FIESOLE from Fresh-from-the-Garden Cookbookby Miriam B. Loo
1 lb beet greens, washed and trimmed
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 TB olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Cook beet greens in salted boiling water until just tender, about 7 minutes. Drain well, pressing greens to sides of colander or sieve to remove all moisture. In a medium-size skillet, sauté garlic in olive oil until just brown, about 1 minute. Add beet greens; mix well. Add salt and pepper to taste. Heat greens through. Serve immediately.
Serves 4. 

Thanks for stickin' around. Let me know if you try it!

Happy eating.

Zahlouk and Meatballs

Moroccan food is one of my top favorite cuisines in the whole world. It is almost level with Tunisian food for me-- they are both exotic and mysterious, yet warm, bright, and familiar enough to be comfort food. It is well varied, though almost every single recipe uses Olive Oil, Cumin, Paprika, Cilantro, and Parsley. It is beautiful, bright, and clean. I love it desperately and rarely get to eat it unless I make it myself.

Zahlouk (to me this is pronounced just like 'Salad,' except with different letters. What?! Um...) is a Moroccan stewed eggplant and tomato dish that really develops its flavor on the stove after almost exactly the 30 minute mark. I'm not sure how 'authentic' my recipe is, but I do something that I've never seen done with it before: I add meat. Sometimes I add it ground up like a middle-eastern ragout, but this time I added it in meatball form. So, I have Cinnamon Lemon Meatballs and Zahlouk.

3 Chinese eggplants*, peeled in stripes, then cubed
1 large grated onion
2 large tomatoes, peeled and diced
2 or 3 cloves minced garlic
1/4 cup of chopped parsley
1/4 cup of chopped cilantro
1/2 TB paprika
1/2 TB cumin
Sea Salt
Course Black Pepper
1/2 TB white vinegar
Olive Oil 

Grass-fed ground beef, 1/2 lb
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
1 tsp cinnamon
Sea Salt

Salt the eggplant and boil it for like half an hour. Drain it and press the water out of the pieces with a spoon, in a colander, until they're mostly wrung out. 

Roll the beef into loose meatballs and get a skillet really hot, with a bit of olive oil. Put the meatballs in and sprinkle them with salt, some cinnamon, and some lemon juice. After turning them a few times so that they're nicely browned (and have made a bit of grease) add the onions and garlic to get them going. After they've sauteed just a bit, add everything else (except vinegar and some lemon juice and salt). Let it cook on medium for another half hour, smashing the eggplant and tomatoes with a spoon but not smashing the meatballs. After that half hour, add the vinegar, the rest of the lemon, and some salt. One thing that I did differently was use one big fat vine tomato and a whole bunch of little grape tomatoes. Those popped and cooked beautifully!

Oh lets see, did I forget anything? I'm not sure. I served this with my standard spinach-- that is, spinach with wakame stirred in it after it cooked.

*Or, one giant American eggplant.
**Also, I'm showing off my new bowl. <3

Buffalo Cauliflower

I hope I didn't misslead you with the name, as I love bison and bison meat too, yet there is none involved. No no, this recipe is more dedicated to my best friend V (or even her husband).

I really dig cauliflower. I think that it is a stellar vegetable in all that it brings us (and allows us to do to it). I don't know what gave me such a grand idea (maybe the fact that butter based sauces on steamed cauliflower naturally lead to good things) but I decided to make a 'Buffalo Cauliflower' (which I swear I just unintentionally spelled Butterfulo) and I think it came out rather dandy.

1 Head Cauliflower
1/8 Cup Butter
3 Cloves Minced Garlic (or more)
1 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/2 Cup Tomato Sauce
1/8 Cup Franks Red Hot Sauce
1/8 Cup Softened Cream Cheese
Smoked Sea Salt, Coarse
Black Pepper, Coarse
1/2 Cup Chopped Celery*
1 Stalk Green Onion, Sliced*

Steam and chop cauliflower. 

Melt butter over low heat. Sautee garlic and mustard seeds until garlic softens. Turn up to medium high heat. Add Cauliflower. Mix together tomato sauce, hot sauce, and cream cheese. Pour over the top. Top with smoked sea salt and pepper (don't skip coarse ground pepper!) and stir in until very well coated. It should all be creamy and orange.  

Add in celery and green onions and serve, topping with more ground pepper. *(not pictured)

I ate this with an SB Longhorn Beef Patty-- a phenomenal beefy flavored beef patty simply topped with pepper, mustard, and ketchup. 

Happy eating! 

BBQ Sauce

Sometimes, you just want to rock some good bbq sauce. This is best served hot and spooned over brisket, but its good for cold brisket, too.

Tomato Sauce (smooth) 6 oz
Beef Stock 6 oz
Blackberry Vinegar 2 TB
Garlic Powder ½ TB
Cocoa Powder 1 TB
Pimenton 1 tsp
Chipotle Powder ½ tsp
Clove Powder ½ tsp
Sea Salt to taste

I use a really smooth, liquidy tomato sauce, like Muir Glen.

This sauce is tangy, and reduced, the sweetness comes out--- to the point where it can get too sweet. The blackberry vinegar that I use is Texas Olive Ranch's Black and White Vinegar, but I'm sure any balsamic would work. Even red-wine might work here, but I'd also add Apple Cider Vinegar.

Combine liquids in saucepan over medium heat.
Whisk in dry ingredients and stir until smooth.
Let simmer for a long time until thickened..