Alabama Crumpets

In August, after two decades saying she would quit in the following week, my gorgeous wife Julie retired from her career in human resources.  Concern about dealing with the foreseeable problems in the unfolding of Obamacare from a corporate level probably was the final straw, although as it turned out, deferral of the employer mandate for large companies did put off most of the mess for her last employer by a year.  Still, she has never looked back. 

Her retirement led to her taking over many of my household chores, including planning meals.  As you may have noticed, my method of menu preparation usually involved finding something on sale at whatever market I happened to visit on any given day.  Lack of the proper ingredients proved to be the mother of invention.  Julie has continued the quick-clean cuisine impetus on easy clean-up, but she tends to take more of a Santa Claus approach, making a list and checking it twice to prepare exactly what we had on some prior occasion that she enjoyed.

Between that lifestyle change, a great vacation in Scotland/Northern Ireland in September and other life events like my brother-in-law's heart failure that brought us to San Diego for extended trips, I managed to go over four months without posting a new recipe. 

If you've been waiting to know what to cook next, you must be starving.

In a trip to New York City recently, our stay at our daughter Gina's still had someone else preparing most of the meals, but on the last morning, as we were leaving to bid adieu to youngest daughter Amy, who lives a few subways station rides away, Julie suggested we pick up breakfast at Dunkin Donuts to bring to Amy's. 

I certainly appreciate a good donut.  When Julie lived in Seal Beach during our dating days, I would stop for an apple fritter and coffee at an independent Electric Avenue donut shop on my way to work, but at that age, a donut didn't immediately impact my pant size as it does now.

In addition, the previous evening I had purchased Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies for a special last night in New York for our granddaughter Emma, and most of the Family Sized pack had gone uneaten.  Is a donut really a more nutritious breakfast than a cookie?  I'd say no.  And as cheap as I am, I didn't want to buy a donut when I could eat a free cookie.

However, I didn't want to be frowned upon by the Manhattan elite who might be spying on Amy's apartment kitchen with binoculars from one of the nearby historic Harlem Hamilton Heights rooftops, so I asked myself what I could do to make eating a cookie acceptable to such highbrow snoops?

I thought back to our trip to London, where we were unable to find a crumpet, which the Brits dismissed as nothing to get excited about.  Why not call a cookie a crumpet?  After all, it is flour and other ingredients in a circular shape, like a crumpet, I presume, although I have never actually seen a real crumpet.

Earlier in the trip, I bought a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter, somewhat intentionally ignoring the fact that Gina's family prefers the "natural" peanut butter where you stir the oil into the peanut putty and then refrigerate it, hoping it will stay mixed and not harden into a form of adobe brick.  Don't hate me because I love beautiful Skippy, so smooth, so creamy (except when it is Super Chunky), so aromatic, so perfect from the first knife blade skimming the top to the final remnants scraped off the inner wall of the plastic jar with a spoon.  I saw that jar of Skippy next to the Chips Ahoy, and Eureka!

Alabama Crumpets.

George Washington Carver, one of the greatest men in history for convincing farmers in the south to grow peanuts and then coming up with dozens of uses for the product, which had formerly been primarily used for lifestock feed, did not invent the peanut or peanut butter (a widely held misconception), but he did love peanuts, and his groundbreaking research brought international acclaim to the Tuskeegee Institute in Alabama.  Who knows if peanut butter would have caught on without him?

The recipe is simple.  Spread peanut butter on a cookie and put another cookie on top like a Cool-A-Coo with a think layer of peanut butter where the ice cream would go.  Would a Cool-A-Coo for breakfast be the equivalent of a donut and milk?  Doubtful, but I digress.

While I used Chips Ahoy and Skippy, you could use all natural peanut butter and granola bars, oatmeal cookies and Jif, or whatever floats your boat.

I have to say that Chips Ahoy and Skippy tastes terrific.  Clean up?  Wash the plate and knife.

By the way, this is a great "to go" meal, but I'd suggest stacking them inside foil rather than using a Baggie, which ended up getting kind of slimy with peanut butter during our subway ride.

Now you have a quick breakfast alternative to pop tarts on your way to after Christmas sales, but lest we get ahead of ourselves, Merry Christmas!

Redondo Chuck Swiss Steak



Granddaughter Emma on the threshold of a new discovery.

What we lack often goads us to serendipitous delights.



I bought a pound and a half of chuck steak on sale at Ralph's yesterday, but I failed to buy beef broth, which I usually use in any pot roast type of dish.

I did find some boxed beef stock in the cupboard, but the date code indicated it should have been used six months earlier, so I tossed it out.  I found some canned diced tomatoes with green peppers, which triggered fond memories of my Mom's Swiss Steak (though I don't know that she used that ingredient), but I knew Julie disdains any trace of peppers.

I decided to instead use fresh Roma tomatoes and mushrooms, which I had in the vegetable crisper drawer, and with some seasonings, this became a new favorite recipe.

Start by mixing about a half cup of flour with a tablespoon of seasoned salt and a tablespoon of pepper, and spread the mixture out on a large piece of wax paper.

That Can-Do Attitude demonstrated by Amy.

Most likely your chuck steak will come in a Styrofoam tray, which works well as a disposable area for trimming the chuck steak.  Remove as much fat as you can, including the thin ribbons along the edges. This is time consuming but worth it, because chuck steak fat is inedible as far as most people are concerned. There are veins of fat marbling chuck steak, so this will result in several smaller pieces, and it might not even be a bad idea to cut the larger pieces down to smaller ones, based on how Julie and I preferred the smaller pieces.  By the time it is trimmed, you will have a little over a pound of steak left, which is perfect for two carnivores.

Put the trimmed pieces of steak one at a time into the flour mix to coat both sides. 

With the stovetop burner set to medium, heat two table spoons of olive oil in a deep pan or pot.  Mom used to use one of those seasoned cast-iron pans, which she could stick in the oven, but I just use a Teflon-coated pot that had almost exactly the right surface area for a pound of trimmed chuck steak.

Once all the beef is sizzling, sprinkle the top generously with onion flakes.  Most chefs would cook a couple of diced onions instead of dried flakes, and that would be delicious, but living in a small condo, Julie (and most likely our neighbors) wouldn't appreciate the lingering aroma. 

Also lightly sprinkle on cinnamon, which in addition to adding a sweetness and complexity to meat flavors enhances health.


Jay and Wes fishing for a compliment?

After about five minutes, turn the meat over and repeat sprinkling on onion flakes and cinnamon for that side.

While the meat is braising, line a glass baking dish with pan lining paper and preheat the oven to 225 degrees (or if you use a convection oven, 200 degrees). 

Dice three Roma tomatoes (about 2 cups), and slice six to eight mushrooms (about 1 cup).  I don't actually use a measuring cup, and you will find that dicing tomatoes on a cutting board makes a mess.  Instead, just cut the vegetables up in a bowl big enough to hold them all.  This also saves the tomato juice, which you can pour onto the steak, and cleaning the bowl is easy.

Put the braised steak into the lined baking dish.  Cover the steak with diced tomatoes, and then put sliced mushrooms on top of that.  Sprinkle with garlic salt.  Then, put aluminum foil on top as  a lid so that steam is kept in the dish.

Bake for an hour and a half at 225 degrees (80 minutes at 200 degrees for convection oven).

Wes and Gina ready to welcome guests.

Admittedly, when this came out it didn't look much like Swiss Steak, so I probably should call it Redondo Chuck or something, but it did turn out to be delicious.

 

While cleaning the braising pan could be avoided by simply roasting this dish, braising adds so much flavor that it is worth it.  At least you can wash that pan long before the meal is served, so that after throwing away the wax paper on which you floured the steak your kitchen isn't a mess for the afternoon.  By the way, you can braise the meat and assemble the dish a couple of hours before actually cooking it.

 

You can wrap any leftovers in the foil you used to top the dish, but in any case, final clean up is as simple as throwing away the pan liner and washing your plates.

Arriba, Arriba, Andale, Andouille!

Cajun and Mexican cuisine have each earned reputations for spicy deliciousness, so when my sister combined some leftover refried beans and rice from our Mexican dinner with hot sausage, spinach and some secret ingredients, it's not surprising that it turned out to be fantastic, tasting similar to jambalaya or gumbo.  The next day when I scooped some of Darlene's Cajun fusion stew into a tortilla, it was so good that I contemplated opening a chain of "Cajun Eat Dos" fast food restaurants.

Teddy, Darlene and Emma in Montana.

While that bright idea soon faded, when Julie and I arrived home from Montana, we found son Jay had left some Trader Joe's Smoked Andouille Chicken Sausage in the refrigerator.  He had planned to barbecue it on the 4th of July, when he came over to view the Redondo Beach fireworks from our condo, but the absence of a barbecue forced him to abort that idea.

Cooking over open fire has been instinctive behavior for men since Fred Flintstone was a boy, but as I have lamented in the past, we don't have room for an outdoor grill alongside our reclining veranda seats at our condo in Redondo.

Thus faced with the dilemma of how to eat hot sausages without flames to grill them over, I read the  label, and among the choices was to bake them for 14 minutes.

Recognizing my preference for well-done, I decided to cook them in my convection oven at 375 degrees for 18 minutes, which is about the equivalent of a standard oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.  After setting the oven to pre-heat, I lined a small casserole dish with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper, which by now you should've noted is a key for making many recipes into Quick-Clean Cuisine.  I quickly opened the four pack of sausages and put them into the lined dish.

I didn't wait for the oven to finish pre-heating before putting the dish in the oven, so I could immediately go upstairs to work on my computer until I heard the oven chime marking the end of the designated time.  By the way, if you don't use timers for cooking, you are making it unnecessarily difficult.

Soon, I heard the chime and headed down to find the sausages had browned a bit, with a slot opening almost as if they had been grilled.  I ate one with barbecue sauce and one with mustard, and both ways were great, either with or without bread. 

If I had some red beans and rice or leftover Mexican side dishes around, I might have tried to make a variation of Darlene's concoction, but for today, just know that baked sausages taste surprisingly great, if you cook them about a third longer than recommended by the manufacturer.  Clean up is as simple as throwing away the pan liner and quickly rinsing the casserole dish after it has cooled.

Yogurt and Crunchies

Granddaughter Emma came met us for a vacation in Montana, bringing her loving parents Gina and Laszlo in tow.

We enjoyed lots of fun activities, from hiking to Ousel Falls and the Blue Moon Bakery to watching Team Umizoomi, from flying a kite to playing Dominoes, from chasing a Pomeranian she affectionately called Little Teddy to making homemade noodles, dancing on stage or bouncing on a giant frog at the park.  From swimming at the Yellowstone Club to playing croquet out back.

One of my favorite moments was when she asked me to play the guitar so she could dance, but insisting she and her mom first needed to put on a dancing dresses.  Once they were dolled up for a nice meal out (hot dogs at the Bunker), I played Fish and a Whistle on my guitar, and they danced beautifully.  Afterwards, Emma repeated a phrase she said the first time she danced as I played it earlier in the trip: "That's a nice song!"

So much fun had we that I just realized you must be starving, if you've been waiting for a new quick-clean cuisine recipe.

Easy solution?  How about one of Emma's favorite dishes: Yogurt and Crunchies.  For New Yorker Emma, that means scoop some plain, nonfat Greek Yogurt into a bowl and stir in Grape Nuts, because she doesn't like anything too sweet. My son Jay on the other coast in Los Angeles loves Greek yogurt with granola stirred in. Even McDonald's gets into the act with its Fruit and Yogurt Parfait, which is surprisingly tasty, cheap and delicious on the go.

Some might call it ridiculous to have a Q-CC version of this ubiquitous treat, but here is my twist on it.

First, I like low carb foods whenever possible, and I'm very cheap, so I usually get Kroger Carbmaster, which is high in protein and low in carbs without losing flavor. I especially like the Black Forest Cake flavor, but there are all the usual great fruit flavors, too, at a price of around 50 cents each. Then again, you can substitute whichever yogurt you like.

Here's the Quick-Clean tip.  Peel off the foil top and toss it out, then just add some of your favorite crunchies to the small space at the top.  I usually have bran flakes in the house, and they work, but of course Grape Nuts or granola both add a lot more crunch.

After you eat a few spoonfuls, add some more crunchies.  When the little yogurt tub is empty, you can just throw the container away and have only a spoon to wash.

Who says you don't have time for a nutritious breakfast?

Holiday Ham

Two of the world’s great religions prohibit eating pork products as "unclean." The week before the Christian holiday of Easter, however, most big grocery chains put ham on sale.

Easter in Westminster

On a key holiday that differentiates our religion from those of similar theological pedigree, we as Christians not only have a savior who died for our sins, paving the way for us to go to heaven, but we also get to enjoy that sweet meat forbidden by Jewish and Muslim traditions. And at reduced prices.  Vive la différence!

Ham works great for large groups on holidays other than Easter, including the 4th of July, except for those with religious objections and vegetarians. I personally think the religious ban of ham is based on health concerns from long ago, possibly following a pig sushi fad or some similarly misguided pork preparation, or maybe an ancient swine flu outbreak. As for vegetarians, let them eat cake, because most likely tofu won't go over big.

I am not forcing anyone to prepare or eat ham. I’m simply sharing a delicious food.



While spiral cut hams are convenient for serving, it is usually the shank ham with bone-in that is on sale, and it is just as delicious. Some people swear that you have to go through some elaborate preparation of coating it with brown sugar and exotic spices and then tacking on some pineapple rings and Maraschino cherries. If you want to do that, knock yourself out, but hams have so much flavor that to me all that window dressing is overkill.

The cooking time varies by the size and type of ham. If it doesn’t tell you how long to cook it on the wrapper, you can find that info online. The big Q-CC tip is to cover your cooking pan with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper before putting the ham in.


While ham can be the main course for a large family meal, it is the leftovers that we enjoy the most. By slicing it up and storing it in Tupperware, you can prepare subsequent meals quickly and easily. Because it is cured, ham has a pretty long refrigerator shelf life, and it tastes so good that you should have no trouble eating it all in that time frame.

4th of July in New York

We threw away the bone including quite a bit of meat still on it, but boiling this in water makes a great base for bean or split pea soup, if you enjoy the smell of those soups cooking.

For breakfast, dice the ham and add it to enhance scrambled eggs instead of having a side of bacon. When I have company, I like to heat the diced ham in the frying pan first to carmelize it a bit, mixing eggs with grated cheese separately to add to the pan to scramble in with the ham, but this morning I just combined everything in the large frying pan, saving the step of cleaning the mixing bowl, and it tasted just as good. I use about a cup of ham with four eggs and a quarter cup of grated cheese, but you can adjust the recipe to suit your taste. Just keep stirring the concoction over medium heat until it looks ideally done to you (probably about three to five minutes), and then plate it. You don’t need to add any salt, because the ham and cheese have plenty in them. It really doesn’t need pepper either, because the ham has so much flavor.

To make a ham and cheese omelet instead of scrambled eggs, just stop scrambling the mixture once it looks uniform. Let it sit until the eggs start firming up. You should be able to lift one side with a spatula without the omelet breaking apart. Once it has that consistency, add as much grated cheese as you like as filling, then fold it over. If the outside of the omelet looks golden or brown already, just plate it. If not, you can cook it a bit more or serve it yellow. The grated cheese will melt quickly once surrounded by that hot folded omelet.

Ham, of course, is also great for lunch. You can use diced ham in a chef’s salad, but to me salads frequently don’t seem filling, and the salad dressing makes chef salads among the most high calorie items on fast food menus, if you ever take the time to read that info.




Typical urbanite dining out.

I prefer ham sandwiches. Sandwiches can go from mediocre to awesome just by taking time to think about what would taste good in them. Any time you have an avocado around, that is a treat in a ham sandwich, but I didn’t have one on hand yesterday. I did have lettuce, tomato and a toaster. I toasted the low carb bread to give it a little more structural integrity, and then put light mayonnaise on one piece. I sliced a Roma tomato directly onto the mayo-coated toast, peppered it, added Romaine lettuce and then piled on sliced ham. I put honey Dijon mustard on the other piece of bread and closed it up with the toast's dry side out (if that isn’t obvious, then perhaps you should not be preparing meals at home with a sharp object).  Fantastic sandwich!

None of this seems particularly groundbreaking, but when you realize that similar food with a soft drink runs $10 or more in a restaurant, you should recognize that learning how to cook a $10 ham and then utilize the leftovers will save you big bucks.

If you’re going to spend big money for a HoneyBaked Ham or some similar expensively processed product, the savings quickly evaporate. Yes, buying a pre-cooked ham or meal in a restaurant saves you the trouble of cleaning up, but you’ll note that the Quick-Clean Cuisine method means minimal clean-up time.

And for my Jewish friends (and other non-pork eating, non-vegetarians), there's always tri-tip.

Barbecued Beef Sandwich

I know, BBQ sauce is high in sugar, but that doesn't stop us from ordering meat dripping in that sweet molasses and spices goodness when we go out, even if there is Atkins-Friendly Grouper on the menu.  At least at home you can control the amount you use, and it makes it easier to opt for the healthier choices when you go out.

Because Smart & Final had trimmed tri-tip on sale for $3.99/pound on Monday when I went to buy something for dinner, and it seemed like the best deal going without walking to another store, Julie and I had tri-tip that evening.

If you buy a 2 to 3 pound tri-tip for two people, you should expect to have leftovers, even if you do painstakingly trim off as much extra fat as you can before cooking it.

We had well over a pound of meat left after dinner.  Rather than just wrapping it up and refrigerating it as is, I like to cut it into bite-sized pieces that can be stir-fried with vegetables or used to make barbecued beef.  After all, I already have the cooking dish and knife out, and using them to cut the remaining meat won't add anything to the clean-up time. 

As I've mentioned before, we don't like to eat the fat, so even though the tri-tip had been trimmed by the butcher and by me before cooking, as I trimmed and discarded any fat from the edge or rippled into the meat as I cut it up.  This is easy after the meat has cooled following dinner, and it means a lot less prep work when it comes time to transform the leftovers with Q-CC magic.

When I pulled the bag out of the refrigerator, I tried to decide if I should use it for two meals or one.  I decided to just cook it all in barbecue sauce rather than saving half to stir-fry.  Based on the amount we ate, this proved to be a good decision.

The recipe is really simple and obvious.  Add enough barbecue sauce to cover about a third of the meat. Add about the same amount of water as sauce, and stir it up.  The more barbecue sauce you use, the higher in calories the dish will be.  I'd say about a third of a cup of BBQ sauce and of water per pound of meat is right, but use your own judgment.  Keep in mind that some of the liquid will evaporate while cooking.

Does it matter exactly which barbecue sauce you use?

Perhaps it does to you, and feel free to use that special bottle you bought at Bar 3 or Hula Grill, but as long as you didn't mistakenly buy some really terrible brand from a bargain bin, whatever you have in your refrigerator or pantry should be okay.  I buy about any name brand (except Kraft, which I tried because it was cheap and didn't like) I happen to see on sale.  I already had a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's open, but it was down to the point where I had it sitting upside down in the fridge so as to allow the rest of its contents to drip down by the time I used it, so there was only enough for about a third of the meat.  I also had an open bottle of Bull's-Eye Texas-Style sauce, but knowing Julie finds that one a little spicy, I added only the same amount of that as the Sweet Baby Ray's so as not to overpower it.  For the final third of barbecue sauce, I added KC Masterpiece Original.  For those of you who consider region more than brand name, that would be 1/3 Chicago, 1/3 Texas and 1/3 Kansas City.  It wasn't necessary to bring one all the way from Memphis.

Put it on medium heat until it is boiling, then cover and reduce it to simmer for a couple of hours or more.  You can taste the meat every twenty minutes or so, and you'll see that what starts as beef dunked in barbecue sauce grows more tender as it is cooked, eventually becoming very tender, barbecue-flavored beef in sauce.

The better the bread you use, the better the sandwich will be.  You can add things like pickles or coleslaw to get some veggies in the meal.  We ate it on Sara Lee Delightful sliced bread, which is low in carbs but definitely not as stable or tasty as a crusty sourdough roll.  Julie toasted hers so it would have enough strength to hold together as a sandwich, but I ate mine open-faced with a fork, which had the added benefits of allowing me to use twice the meat as a regular sandwich would use. 

We ate on the balcony looking at the ocean for a great summer-evening al fresco meal.  Kona Longboard Lager proved to be the perfect accompanying drink pairing.

Is this a groundbreaking recipe?  No.  But it does make a tasty meal with an easy clean-up.

Grapefruit Done Right

Okay, preparing grapefruit isn't a big mystery, although I do know someone who peels and eats grapefruit like an orange, which seems wrong to me.

Wes, Dad and Mom

When I was a little boy, my mom would cut a Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit in half, and then run her knife between the rind and the edible part.  For many people, including chefs at diners and in cruise ship buffet lines, that is the end of the prep work, and most start with an inferior grapefruit variety, so it isn't at all surprising to me that little kids don't generally like grapefruit. 

Kids put their spoons into that fruit and sting their eyes when citrus juice inevitably squirts upwards.  They lean back, turn away and put the spoon in again, squirting juice onto the kitchen table.

Depending on how persistent they are, they can make quite a mess, which m uoms are unlikely to reward as a good efforts.  And what's the payoff if they manage to dislodge a mouthful and taste it?

A sour piece of fruit that's only a half step above eating a lemon.  Yeah, the comedic value of the expression at first taste entertains everyone else, but those kids may never try that healthy fruit again.

There is a better way.

The other day, I walked over to the farmer's market to buy some veggies.  With my asparagus and squash in the bag, I was heading for the exit, when I saw...could it be?...a bin of ripe, Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit.

I had been conditioned for several years to avoid grapefruit, because a sky-high triglycerides count had resulted in me being put on statins by a doctor at one point, and the one specific directive was to never eat grapefruit. I don't think it would have killed me, so I assume grapefruit must interfere with the helpful properties of the drug.

After a couple of years substituting low-carb meals for boxes of oatmeal cookies and Nutty Bars, I was able to stop taking the statins, or at least that's what I told myself, and just recently a new blood test confirmed that, which means I can now eat grapefruit again.

I picked one blushed redder than an Iowan librarian in the Caribbean, and yesterday I finally cut it open (the grapefruit, not the Iowan librarian).

Perhaps I should mention that there's a navel on top through which the grapefruit received nutrients from the tree before being picked.  Consider that navel as its north pole, and cut it in half along its equator.  That is as hard to describe clearly as it is obvious to anyone who has ever eaten a grapefruit (except that guy who eats it like an orange).  Put one half in a soup bowl and cut around the inside of the rind. 

To take it to the next level like my Mom, cut along the white radius lines you'll see in the fruit.  That way, you can easily scoop out a bite-sized triangles with a spoon. 

For some reason, I remember one day when my mom forgot to cut one line, making a double piece, and I chided her for missing it.  When I was little, I must have taken the fact that she did so much for me to mean that she was my personal servant.  That's another apology I owe Mom, and it's a tribute to what a great job she did that missing one cut on a piece of grapefruit was her most egregious error in my childhood.

When I tasted my grapefruit, it was unusually sweet, so I ate the first half, and then quickly followed by preparing and eating the other half. 

Sometimes, however, no matter how carefully you select your grapefruit, it might not be sweet enough.  Mom used to sprinkle sugar on for me, and she usually put a Maraschino Cherry in the middle. 

These days, Splenda is a great choice that won't spike your triglycerides, but now that I think of it, maybe I should keep a jar of Maraschino Cherries around to dress up food and drinks.

Grapefruit is an easy breakfast in every way, although if you're like me you might want to follow it up with some toast or bacon and eggs.  Grabbing a dozen Dunkin Donuts instead on the way to the office will most likely result in being banned from grapefruit eventually, and you don't want that.

Dry-Rubbed Chicken

Amy in Santa Monica last week.

The decision to enjoy chicken and noodles for Amy's farewell dinner delayed implementing Julie's alternative plan to try dry-rubbed chicken by a day.

Most of these Q-CC recipes start based on meals that Julie thinks might be good, because what I might suggest would frequently be too spicy, mustardy, bell peppery or flavorful in some other "exotic" way for Julie's more discriminating palate. 

After spending the first few years of my life eating mostly cereal and bananas, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or hot dogs, and hamburgers or fried chicken for breakfast, lunch and dinner, respectively (or irrespectively), it's actually quite surprising that I evolved into someone who enjoys Indian food, escargot and sauerkraut.

Interesting, too, that my son Jay went through a similar metamorphosis.  When he was a little boy, for example, we would nuke a hot dog in a bun, wrap it in foil and bring it for him to eat when we joined his cousins Kendra and Kelsey and their parents at Taco Bell for high-brow international cuisine.  Now, he'll try anything, and he frequently introduces us to delicious foods, like the Chinese Northern Style Spare Ribs from the Happy Hour Menu at P.F. Chang's China Bistro.



Julie and Jay by our old Manhattan Beach house.

After going to the horse races last Father's Day, we decided to make similar ribs on our barbecue at home. After careful deliberation, we chose Rancher's Reserve Cowboy Blend with Coffee Steak Rub to go on our homemade ribs, and they turned out great, although they didn't taste much like P.F. Chang's dry-rubbed ribs.

Apparently Julie came across that jar of rub in the cupboard, prompting her suggestion to make dry-rubbed chicken.  This steak rub, as the name implies, is not supposed to be for ribs or chicken, but I decided to follow the steak directions, brushing both sides lightly with Pompeian Fresh Harvest Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  Actually, I don't have a cooking brush, so I used a teaspoon.  I'm not saying I could paint the Sistine Chapel with it, but a spoon worked okay for spreading oil on boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which I had already placed in a glass cooking dish lined with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper.  

I used another spoon to sprinkle the dry rub on both sides of the chicken (you don't want to put a spoon that has been in contact with raw meat back into a jar of spices you plan to use later) and then massaged it into the chicken.  The chicken didn't give me a tip, but I never expected an 18% gratuity.



Laszlo, Gina and Emma appear skeptical of Q-CC ease in NYC.

I baked the chicken for 31 minutes in the convection oven set at 375 degrees.  A regular oven would be about 35 minutes at 400 degrees.  Some people might like it less done than that.  There's always a tradeoff between juiciness and safety, but I personally like poultry to be a little drier anyway. 

Pick your favorite vegetable dish to accompany it, and enjoy this tasty, healthy and quick-clean cuisine.  It's about as easy as going to Church's or KFC, and probably faster.

Mom's Divine Noodles

"Would it be weird if I said I wanted noodles again?"

We had cooked homemade noodles on Monday and ate leftovers on Tuesday, so of course Julie and I quickly replied in unison, "Not at all."

Normally we eschew "carbs," and any time we have flour and mixing bowls, quick-clean cuisine doesn't come readily to mind, but we love homemade noodles, even when they don't turn out as good as the ones my mother used to make.

We'd been flouting Dr. Atkins for the week anyway, so what was one more high carb meal?  Well, make that two more, if you count leftovers, and since Amy was flying out Saturday morning, she ate noodles for breakfast the next day.

This is the third time I have written about homemade noodles in this blog, so you may rightly ask why write about them again?

The answer is simple.

This time they turned out perfectly.

So perfect, in fact, that I wonder if we had a bit of divine help.

Do I sense you scoffing at the idea?

Let me give you a little background.

If you never met my mother, you should know she was one of the most loving, thoughtful, sweet, kind, generous and helpful people who ever lived.  When she made her transition to pure spirit five years ago, we were all deeply saddened, but we also had no doubt that she would have eternal life with eternal rewards. 

Five months later, Amy and I were driving through our neighborhood in my Ford Escape, when a GM Yukon XL, a true monster of an SUV, blew through a stop sign and broadsided us.  We were immediately spinning through the air.

We landed on the opposite side of the street next to the curb, thrown thirty feet in the direction the Yukon was heading and moving only a car length forward.

The side of the Escape was caved in, and both axels broken, but miraculously, Amy and I walked away from what could have easily been a fatal accident.

Could that have been my mom intervening, or possibly she and my late dad, whose birthday was around that time?

We were rather calm, even when the other driver, who seemed irate with no care that she had nearly killed us, got out demanding to know if we had stopped for our stop sign.  Rather than going off on her, I pointed out that we didn't have a stop sign, which made her burst into tears of remorse. 

Flash forward to Friday, when we took out the mixing bowl and began preparing noodles once more.

After our last effort, Julie said she thought the recipe might be 1 egg to 1 cup of flour, so I poured flour into a measuring cup.  This was the end of the flour in the canister, and before adding a new bag, I thought I might as well put the rest in the noodles, bringing it to two heaping cups of flour, which I poured into the mixing bowl.

Amy whisked two eggs in a measuring cup and added them to the flour, with a pinch of salt.  As she mixed those together with a spoon, I rinsed out the measuring cup and put a tablespoon of butter in it.  I microwaved the butter for 22 seconds and poured that into Amy's mixing bowl.  I added a half cup of low fat milk to the bowl, and Amy continued mixing them by hand until it was a big ball of dough.

I dusted a piece of parchment paper with flour, and Amy put the ball on it.  I pressed it as flat as I could get it by hand, and then Amy rolled it out with the trusty heavy Guinness glass.

We then left the noodles out to dry as we walked over to the Portofino Hotel for a happy hour drink at Balleen, which was something we had on the to-do list while Amy was here.  I don't remember exactly why, but somehow the fact that green peas were among my favorite vegetables as a child found its way into the conversation.  I said that I remembered my mom and grandmother sitting on the back porch of my grandparents' old farmhouse shucking freshly picked peapods on hot summer days in preparation for dinner.

When we returned home, we boiled two boneless, skinless chicken breasts with a tablespoon of minced onions in a Teflon pot over medium heat for 35 minutes, and then took them out to cut into smaller pieces.

I tried to find Cream of Chicken Soup in the cupboard, but there was none left, so we used Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup instead.  We stirred in the mushroom soup and a cup of low fat milk.  This time, we added no salt of any kind.

We chopped up celery, but Julie suggested using peas instead of carrots this time.  Because peas are definitely high in sugar, this was a surprising suggestion by the queen of low carb herself.  I looked in the freezer to see if we had any, and there was only a partial bag of C & W Petite Peas there.  We added them, and lo and behold, it looked to be just the right amount of peas.

It was at this point that it occurred to me that exactly what was on hand resulted in three of the choices: the amounts of both flour and peas as well as the choice of mushroom soup over chicken soup. 

After adding the celery, we mixed it and let it simmer awhile.  I mistakenly left the cover on the pot, which resulted in soup overflowing and making a mess, but we had a team clean up effort that saved the stove from extensive damage and then returned the soup to simmer.

We separately heated the water with a mandatory teaspoon of salt in the pasta pan, adding the noodles when it reached a full boil.  After it returned to a boil, we cooked them for three minutes.  Our sampling confirmed in the minds of all three of us that the noodles had turned out perfect, so Julie carefully added them to the soup to avoid undue mess on the stove or countertop.  We let it all cook together for a few more minutes.

Now that is exactly how to make Homemade German Egg Noodles....well, except the boiling all over the stove part.

Third time is a charm.

By the way, if you clean up as you go rather than just piling stuff in the sink, this really doesn't require that much extra clean up, and it is well worth the effort.

Noodle Redemption

Pensive Amy contemplates West Coast reality

Baby daughter Amy flew in from New York's Manhattan to help me magically combine the necessary elements into egg noodles like my mother used to make.

The entire staff of the Q-CC Institute hummed with excitement.  Actually, I was more, Da da da da da daaa Julie Schellenbaum than hum, but only because I had recently seen a good episode of Hawaii Five-O.

It took Amy two days to acclimate herself to sunny West Coast reality, including a visit to San Diego where my sister demonstrated the proper way to cook a feast after my brother-in-law and nephew took us sailing on Mission Bay so Amy could remember there is a life without subways.

Amy in NYC "sun"

Bright and early on Memorial Day, I arose and made coffee, but Amy was apparently still adjusting to the east to west coast time change, which put her 21 hours behind plus one day ahead.

As the first order of the day, I demonstrated how to prepare Q-CC bacon and eggs with toast and sliced tomatoes, a tried-and-true recipe that has led to international acclaim and not a few Michelin Stars for your humble correspondent.

Amy almost looked up from her Mac Pro screen once or twice as I cooked, and after Amy, Julie and I enjoyed that delicious breakfast, we immediately continued submersion into Southern California culture by surfing..............................the internet and watching Project Runway.

Just as Steven Spielberg watches Lawrence of Arabia before starting a new movie project, Amy apparently finds inspiration in "Project Runway," so we watched a second episode.

We then walked along the waterfront to Hermosa Beach, where a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young cover band was playing in Pier Plaza for the annual Plaza Hermosa celebration, as we tried to find cheap polarized sunglasses for Amy. Unbelievably, none of the two for $10 sunglasses were polarized, but we walked away more than satisfied, with a new hat for Julie.

On the way home, we stopped at Smart & Final to pick up three pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts before returning to the hallowed halls of the impressive Q-CC Institute where we would begin Project Noodle Redemption.

As you may recall, my solo attempt to recreate Mom's German noodles was not a roaring success, but this time we had a plan: make the noodles good, not bad. And to make some chicken tacos at the same time, as long as we were already boiling chicken.

Julie contemplates revealing large mixing bowl.

With our objectives clear, we put all four chicken breasts into the Teflon-coated pot and added enough water to cover them, putting the covered pot on the stove with the burner set on medium and our timer set for 60 minutes.

We immediately began trying to decipher what went wrong the last time. Julie revealed a large white and pink mixing bowl, lost for eons in the Q-CC's dramatic exodus from Manhattan Beach, and we knew we would not be deterred on our quest for good, not bad, noodles.  Could this be the missing piece of the puzzle?

Amy kept saying the noodles were a total fail last time so we should start from scratch, and after several minutes reading through my careful record of the prior disaster, I realized my recipe was almost entirely incomprehensible anyway, so she found one online that had similar pictures, and we appropriated its essence, tweaking it for our purposes (and to avoid any litigation and complications similar to General Hospital's relish controversy).



First, Amy poured 2 1/2 cups of flour into the mixing bowl and thoroughly blended it with a pinch of salt. When we eventually ate the noodles, we decided that we probably could have used a bigger pinch or possibly two pinches of salt, but as we don't really know exactly what a pinch is, you may not find this revelation particularly enlightening.

We mixed in two eggs.

To make a tablespoon of butter mix easier, I put it in the measuring cup and nuked it for 24 seconds, then poured it into the bowl. Putting a half cup of low fat milk in the measuring cup added most remnants of flour and butter when we poured it into the bowl.

Amy mixed the dough until it had a consistency similar to Play Doh, and then kneaded it by hand for about five minutes.

I lightly coated a sheet of parchment paper with flour and proceeded to flatten the dough ball until it was about 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick, and then Amy rolled it with a Guinness glass until it was 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick, flipping it over periodically as she rolled it out.

Amy cut the flattened dough into strips and separated them to dry.

On a cutting board, we cut carrots and celery into bite-sized pieces, and the timer had still not reached zero. Actually, I knew an hour was probably overkill, even for twice the usual amount of chicken as usual, and we started shredding chicken in a bowl with about 55 minutes after we started cooking it. Shredding chicken involves cutting the chicken breast in half and then separating the natural stringiness with a knife and fork.

New York Lamb says, "Eat more chicken."

While it probably didn't need to cook that long, the chicken did shred very nicely, and after shredding two, we put them in a separate pan with about 3/4 of a cup of the hot water from the pot. Then, in the small pan we stirred a package of McCormick's Taco Seasoning Mix plus, because it was about 1 1/2 pounds of chicken rather than 1 pound of beef as would be required by the mix recipe, a little extra seasoned salt, garlic salt, onion flakes, black pepper and ground cumin to amp it to the proper level of seasoning.

While that cooked, we proceeded to shred the other chicken breasts in the bowl (actually, it was more separated into bite-sized chunks than shredded for the soup) and then put the chicken back in the pot with the hot water, into which we put Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup and a can of milk.

We also added some onion flakes, pepper and salt, but the salt wasn't really necessary. We stirred in the vegetables and set it to simmer, covered. We started to boil water in a separate spaghetti pot into which we should have added salt, but hunger (it was now about 2:30 PM) motivated us to alter our original plan to save the chicken tacos for the next day and instead eat them immediately, so we turned off the kettle of water and soup to be completed later for dinner.

Chef Amy and Acclaimed Food Critic Stephanie Klugman

Everyone who has been to Taco Bell knows how to assemble a soft taco, but I'll tell you how in case you are asking with a humorous regional accent, "Taco?  What's a taco?" 

 

We heated a flour tortilla on a glass plate, added the seasoned shredded chicken, shredded cheese and some diced tomatoes (lettuce is for suckers!), plus a little Tapatillo or salsa for some. We repeated that process until we all had plenty to eat, including Amy's friend Stephanie who as an unbiased observer, declared them to be the true food of the Mayan gods (or at least she thought that, I'm sure).

But I didn't come to tell you about our delicious chicken tacos. No, this is about completing the quest for the perfect noodle. And to do this, we decided the next order of business was to take a hot tub at the Institute's Spa, after which Amy washed her hair while Julie and I enjoyed sitting in lounge chairs under the California sun before returning to the Institute to check e-mails and conduct other important business.

Gina, Emma and Laszlo in NYC

About two hours later, we started heating the soup pot and brought the water kettle (be sure to add salt) to a boil. We couldn't be sure if we had let the noodles dry too long, but they still appeared pliable, so we decided to push forward. Right at that exact moment, the familiar chimes of an incoming Skype call took me to the kitchen table, where the green computer sat open, and I began chatting with other daughter and Associate Professor Gina, on loan to Columbia University in New York, who was soon joined by granddaughter Emma and son-in-law Laszlo, so I didn't actually see Amy put the noodles into the water, but I will accept on faith (and the fact that we ate noodles a few minutes later) that she did so, after the water was at a full boil.  After the noodles cooked for three minutes, Amy, Julie and I shared a sample noodle, unanily mousdeclaring unanimously declaring them to be done and delicious.

We put both pots side by side on hot pads on the counter to avoid splashing soup all over the hot stove where it would be hard to clean, and Julie expertly transferred the noodles from the kettle to the soup pan.

After cooking for another few minutes, allowing the noodles to soak up the flavors of the soup, we down to try our improved recipe. 

And the noodles were good! 


Mom, Darlene and Brooks in February, 2008

Were the noodles as good as my mother's?  Not quite, but this time they were definitely more than just edible.  By comparison to any mortal noodle, they were quite tasty, but the next time, we will try to tweak the recipe with a pinch of salt in the boiling noodle water and this insight from Julie: "Didn't your mom say the recipe was exactly proportional, with two eggs to two cups of flour?"

Yes, we will try that next time.

By the way, as you can tell from the mixing bowl, measuring cup, cutting board, pot, pan, kettle and utensils, this was not the typical Quick-Clean Cuisine easy clean up, but we did not leave a big mess.

Having multiple hands enabled me to clean the dishes as we went along rather than piling them in the sink where they would dry crusty and require scrubbing. 

Because we enjoyed the tacos so much, we didn't eat as many noodles as normal, so we will be having another noodle feast today, in lieu of the chicken tacos we had planned (although we do have enough leftover seasoned shredded chicken for a couple of tacos).

Tip: Try Tri-Tip

As with most activities in life, the biggest obstacle to cooking lies between your own ears. 

Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or can't---you're right."

That's not to say that anyone will reward you for your efforts.  You may be the greatest in the world at something, but that won't necessarily lead to a Blue Ribbon for Most Icing (an award I am proud to say I snagged a few years ago, though I don't like to brag) or similar adulation.



Jay and Kendra at Kern River in July, 1989

No, the satisfaction of setting a goal and accomplishing it may lead to nothing more than self-congratulations.  With regard to cooking, however, it also leads to tasty meals.

Long ago, on a family camping trip to the Kern River, we made some great discoveries.  One was that sitting in an innertube to take a bouncy ride through rapids can be a lot of fun, even if it did require a long hike up the stream and occasionally resulted in bruised backsides from bumping over rocks going down the river.  Another was that tri-tip roast beef makes a delicious main course.

My ex-brother-in-law Sam and I had gone to the store (both of us having remembered our wallets as usual despite being in swim trunks most of the day) to pick up Budweiser and the makings for dinner.  An old, bald dude in orange robes, skulking in the shadows, observed us pondering the butcher's display and decided to help out.  "Tri-tip marinated in Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce."  We started to reply, but he held a single finger to his lips and whispered , "Nuff said."  He ran down the shopping aisle, never to be seen outside of his Himalayan monastery again.

We followed this sage advice, and cooked a great dinner over the campfire that night.  The leftovers became the makings of a legendary breakfast, and the rest is history.

A couple of years later, my Carmel Mountain neighbor Roy introduced me to barbecuing the pre-marinated Bill Bailey's Tri-Tip, and over the years, I grilled quite a few of those in assorted flavors. Had the prices not continued to spiral higher and higher, I might still be cooking those exclusively.

Return to Kern River in 1990

I might have reverted to the Kern River recipe, but worcetershire sauce seems to tenderize my gums to the point that they hurt. This may be something that only I experience, but I'll put it out there nonetheless Because of that, when I found trimmed tri-tip on sale at Ralph's for $3.99 per pound and bought the best looking two-pounder (approximate weight) on display, I took it home and marinated it in Lawry's Mesquite Marinade instead. 

Does this sound familiar?  Well, if you think it is quite similar to my preparation for London Broil, you would be completely wrong. You'll detect no British accent here (except for incidental accents of Leo Sayer, Roy (not actually British but close) and the Moody Blues), so this is a totally different dish.  And to prove it, note this meat has a lot more fat on it, even if it has been pre-trimmed.  We don't like fat, so I trim even more off, but that really isn't necessary (or possibly even advisable, depending on how you view the tastiness of fat and its juices).  For us, however, the marbling of the meat is sufficient without much fat on the sides.

Pour marinade on the roast, then spread the sauce around, poking the roast with a knife or fork to maximize absorption of the marinade.  Sprinkle liberally with pepper and either garlic salt or seasoned salt.  Flip the meat over and repeat the marinade and seasoning process.  I put garlic salt on one side and seasoned salt on the other, and I couldn't tell which was which when I ate it, so do whatever works best for you.

Cover it and let it marinade in the refrigerator for at least two or three hours.  Because I always get a plastic bag at the butcher's counter to isolate meat purchases, I just put the styrofoam tray back in the bag and tied it off with a rubber band, saving an extra dish to clean.

About two hours before dinner, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees, or if you have a convection oven, make that 375. 

Line a glass baking dish in Reynnolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper, with the parchment side up.  Carefully transfer the tri-tip to the dish to avoid splattering.

Put it in the oven and cook for 55 minutes in a conventional oven or 48 minutes in a convection oven.

At the end of the time, remove the dish from the oven and cover it in aluminum foil for about a half hour.  This takes it from pretty rare to medium.  If you want it medium rare, reduce the time under foil to five or ten minutes.  The more often you cook any meal, the better you'll get the hang of what is best for your tastes.

For a side dish last night, we had one of the simplest vegetable dishes of all: uncooked carrots with ranch dressing on the side. 

Jay and Julie on Mother's Day, 2013

However, when my son Jay came over for Mother's Day a couple of days earlier, I made sauteed mushrooms as a side dish for meatloaf, and that was great.

To sautee mushrooms, heat a tablespooon of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Olive Oil Light Spread (boy, that product name rolls off the tongue easily) in a frying pan. 

Rinse and slice six large, fresh mushrooms on a cutting board.  When the ICBINBOOLS is hot, add the mushrooms, then sprinkle liberally with garlic salt.  Stir the mushrooms around to coat them as much as possible, and then add another tablespoon of ICBINBOOLS as you continue mixing it all up.  It only takes two or three minutes to cook mushrooms, and that makes a delicious side dish that really adds a special touch. 

By the way, you can also slice up a yellow squash or zucchini and cook it with the mushrooms in the same manner for an alternative side dish.  Of course you can cook....anything!

And you don't need to make a mess in the process.

Barbecued Pot Roast

Our family has always loved to barbecue, grilling burgers and hot dogs at least once a week while the kids were growing up, so you might find it odd that when Julie and I downsized to a condo in Redondo, we dedicated the small balcony to being a comfortable sitting space for two rather than carving out space for a barbecue grill.

It was one of the compromises we made to get an ocean view home at a price we were prepared to pay.

Besides, according to Amy, grilling meat is theoretically more carcinogenic than other forms of cooking. 

We now eat burgers only when we go out, whether stopping at McDonald's on the road or getting a Lighthouse Burger while listening to live jazz in Hermosa Beach.

As such, that opened up a large slot in our dinner rotation for beef to take the place of hamburgers.

Chuck roast is a rather inexpensive cut of beef generously marbled with fat, so it is best cooked a long time over low heat.  In fact, I mentioned briefly in the previous article that you can basically make something very similar to Beef Bourguignon using chuck roast.

That's what I set out to do last night, but as often happens with me, something went a bit wrong so I adapted the recipe and came up with something better.

To start out, heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a Teflon-coated pot with the heat to medium.  Season a 2 pound chuck roast with seasoned salt and pepper on one side, and when the oil is hot, put that side down in the pot.

Season the other side with garlic salt, pepper, onion flakes and Jamaican All Spice. 

After 7 minutes, turn the roast over with a fork, and you will see that it is braised dark brown (almost blackened).  Braise the other side for 7 minutes.  This seals the juices in.

After both sides are braised, add one can of beef stock and two cups of water.  Bring that to a boil, and then reduce the heat to about halfway between simmer and medium.  Cover and let it cook for two or three hours, turning the meat every twenty minutes or so.  When you turn the meat over, be sure that you haven't cooked away all the liquid.  The longer it cooks, the more tender the meat gets.

Yesterday, at about three hours, most of the liquid was gone, and it was about to start burning on the bottom of the pan.  I didn't have any more beef broth to add, and I didn't want to water it down too much, so instead I diced a large Roma tomato and added that, along with a half cup of water.  I actually thought about using a can of diced tomatoes with peppers that I had on hand to make chili, but Julie despises peppers.  That would definitely work for most people, though.

I chopped up two cups of carrots and added them, but it still didn't look like there was enough liquid in there.  I didn't want to use one of my better bottles of red wine (read wine that cost $5 to $8 a bottle), and I saw about a cup of Sutter Home Sweet Red (our favorite) was still left in the bottle on the counter, so I added that.

I don't know why, because the wine is quite tasty to drink, but the smell that kicked off that particular wine was not good when it hit the pot. I needed to do something to change that aroma, because I don't like it when the first thing Julie says when she comes home is, "What stinks?"  So, I looked at my spices...and as you may guess from the previous articles, that really isn't a huge selection.

In a flash of genius, I thought "Jack Daniels Barbecue Sauce."  I poured a few dollops of that into the liquid surrounding the roast.  Plop plop plop. Plop plop plop plop.  I don't know exactly how much it was, but it sounded like that.  Maybe it was a half cup. 

I stirred around the outside of the meat and then turned the meat over, allowing liquid to go under it.  Immediately, the aroma became tempting rather than repelling.

I commenced chopping up the other vegetables I happened to have in the crisper of my refrigerator: one banana squash and two stalks of celery.

I checked the carrots with a fork, and they were still pretty stiff, but I tasted one, and it was surprisingly flavorful, which was a good sign.

After letting that cook for another five minutes, I added the other vegetables. 

I picked up the beef and allowed the vegetables and liquid to fill the gap in the middle of the pot, and then put the roast on top of them. After another ten minutes, it was done.

The tender meat and vegetables all had a delicious barbecue tang.  Success!

Fatty beef makes for tougher cleanup, but filling the pot with hot water and dish soap along with swiping occasionally with a paper towel does the trick eventually.  '

Stovetop Boeuf Bourguignon A Deux

I can't think of a meal that I remember preparing for the first time except Beef Bourguignon.  Amy and I had decided to spend some time cooking together in preparation for her leaving home to attend UConn, and we had decided to take on the signature recipe of Julia Child, Beef Bourguignon, most likely because it would allow us to use goofy impersonations of her voice while preparing the meal.

It took several weeks before we put our plan into action.  While grocery shopping at Ralph's, I came upon some lean, bright red stew beef on sale, and I called Amy to ask for the ingredients for Julia Child's recipe as I walked toward the produce area. 



Amy before graduating from high school in '09

When I was Amy's age, mobile phones were corded devices inside chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces owned exclusively by millionaires, and even then, having only seen them in movies, I doubted their real existence.  By 2009, iPhones had been around for two years, so I actually could have looked a recipe up on line myself if I had one, but I had an "old fashioned" cell phone that I only used in the most primitive way...to make phone calls...so I phoned Amy instead.
As she read the ingredients like onions, garlic, mushrooms, carrots and tomato paste, I put them in my shopping cart.  For some reason, Amy decided that a different recipe would be better for us to than Julia's, but the ingredients were essentially the same.

When I returned home, we started the projected three hour task that expanded to four hours of making Beef Bourguignon.  When Julie arrived home, she wondered what stank up the house, but we knew we had created a masterpiece.  From braising the beef to cooking down the chopped onions in olive oil into liquid form to peeling and cutting the carrots into rustic chunks to sampling Merlot from a goblet before pouring most of the bottle into the pot to crushing the garlic clove with the side of a carving knife to sauteeing the mushrooms in butter, it was a labor of love and joyful mess-making. 

When we tasted it, we confirmed we had truly created a masterpiece, though I don't believe anyone else actually confirmed that, despite the fact that we had prepared enough for Jay to sample the leftovers the next day when he stopped in for a visit.

With Amy and without her, I have made that dish several times since then, making various substitutions, including replacing the stew meet with chuck roast that I'd found on sale at Target on more than one occasion (making it more of an American pot roast dish than French gourmet fare).

I didn't plan to make Beef Bourguignon last week, but when drivers on Sepulveda wouldn't let me change lanes to get to the Hermosa Beach Ralph's where I planned to buy sale priced T-bone steaks I'd seen in their ad, I changed plans and turned left into Von's, where neither boneless, skinless chicken breasts nor steaks seemed to be good choices that day. There among the expensive or graying beef was lean, bright red stew meat very much like that which I bought a few summers ago. 

Even on our first effort at fine French cuisine, Amy and I had not put the Dutch oven into the stove to bake the Beef Bourguignon but rather cooked it all on the stovetop.  When Julie and I moved to Redondo Beach as empty nesters, the heavy, burnt-orange Dutch oven which had received heavy use and abuse for over 30 years was a casualty of downsizing, so the option of sticking my Teflon pot with insulated handles that may or may not be suitable for baking was no longer an option, if I wanted it to be.  Truth be told, I like fixing it all on the stovetop where I can see what's happening.

The evolved Boeuf Bourguignon A Deux recipe tastes better than the original to both Julie and me, and it certainly is much easier to perpare, though for best results it could probably simmer an extra hour beyond the two hours I used recently.

Coat the bottom of a pot in olive oil and heat on the stovetop set to medium, being sure to turn the vent fan on from the outset.

While it is still in the styrofoam tray, sprinkle the stew meat liberally with garlic salt, pepper and onion flakes, and then carfully pour the beef into the hot oil so that the seasoned side is down.  Yeah, that probably made some oil splatter on the stove, so wipe it up quickly with a paper towel.  You're going to need to clean the stove with spray cleaner when you finish cooking, but not yet.

Season the other side of the beef the same way and then use a cooking spoon to distribute the beef around the bottom of the pot.

Braise the beef for about six minutes on each side, then add a can (about 14 1/2 ounces) of beef broth.

Bring it to a boil, and then cover and reduce heat to simmer for an hour or two.

On a cutting board, cut baby carrots into smaller pieces, although you could actually just add baby carots whole instead.  If you want to have that extra aerobic workout and get a warm feeling from peeling carrots, which really doesn't take much time and is easy to clean up, you can peel one or two regular carrots and chop them into rustic sized chunks, but Julie prefers cut baby carrots, so that is how I make them these days.  After an hour or two, when the liquid should be considerably cooked down, you can add the carrots along with a third of a bottle of red wine, which in this case was cheap Pinot Noir, which I of course tasted from a goblet with a toast to French chefs everywhere.

Now you've already noticed that we eliminated cooking down the onions, and I also don't add small onions as recommended by Julia, so instead I cut a zucchini squash into half disks and add those for texture.  Do this after the carrots have cooked in for about ten minutes.



Cousin Bonnie, Wes, Mom and Uncle Bob in Santa Ana.

The mention of the zucchini makes me recall a stupid mistake I made as a teenager that upset Mom.  I had gone to John's Market to pick up fruit and vegetables, as I often did on Saturdays on my way home from going to the Orange Swap Meet with my Uncle Bob, who had recommended that store originally.  Mom had specifically asked me to buy zucchini that day, but I saw that cucumbers looked almost exactly like zucchini and were on sale for about a third the price, so I substituted cucumbers.  A quick phone call could have avoided this error, but these were primitive times before pocket cell phones when I would have had to find a pay phone, plus it would have cost me a dime at least.

Of course, Mom's Weight Watchers recipe did not call for cucumbers, and cucumbers can't substitute for zucchini in cooking, which is something that is obvious to me now.  At the time, I defended my decision as perfectly rational, which for some reason upset Mom.  It reminds me of discussions I now have with my own son (and yes, he is the one who would be saying cucumbers should be just as good as zucchinni because of blah blah blah).  It's one of those guilty pains I still carry around.

Then again, substituting does work in recipes, if you do it in a less idiotic way.  Rather than using a partial can of tomato paste, I just cut up a fresh Roma tomato into small pieces and cook that in with the zucchini. 

After another ten minutes or so, wash four large mushrooms and slice them on the cutting board.  Add those to the pot and simmer for another fifteen minutes or so.

Voilà!  Stovetop Boeuf Bourgignon A Deux!  French cuisine combined with American efficiency. I'm stayin'!