Corned beef, cabbage and potatoes

A while back (three weeks to be exact) I started curing my own corned beef at home. I finished it yesterday by rinsing the cure off it and simmering it for 3 hours in a low oven. The kinky thing about this is that I did not use brisket; I used two different hunks of chuck. We'll be eating it for dinner tonight (although I've sampled it - and it's superb). The worst thing about this is waiting for it to be ready. Find a recipe for corned beef via Google. It's easy, peasy to do.

I thought about making a traditional boiled dinner, but I'm not a traditional kind of guy. I sauteed cabbage wedges in a bit of oil with ground caraway seed, butter, and salt and pepper.

I wanted to make a potato timbale, but didn't feel I had quite the time I needed. Another day soon. I went with some simple potatoes, initially cooked in the microwave for a few minutes and then saute lightly with butter, salt and pepper.

Corned beef and dill pickles (at home)

I decided today to get pickled. Making corned beef and dills is not complicated, it just takes a little time to assemble and heat and cool the ingredients, and then 3 days waiting for the pickles and a few weeks waiting for the corned beef. There's no real need for me to post a recipe for these; you can find dozens of them via Google. I think I'll just outline the basic parameters of what's involved and you can decide if getting pickled and corned is for you.

I'll be reporting further on the results of the curing process when it's time to begin consuming the fruits of my waiting.

Corned beef - The one kinky thing about this is that I'm not using brisket. I have two different cuts of chuck I am experimenting with. I can't believe that the only beef that can be corned is brisket. It makes no sense. In any case, for this you make a "cure" which you bring to a boil on the stove, cool completely, and use to submerge the meat in. Then you have to wait. Alton Brown says 10 days. Other sources say 3 to 5 weeks, which corresponds more closely to what a meat market I frequented while living in Denver did in anticipation of St. Patrick's Day. Did you know that the Irish don't eat corned beef? That's what I'm told by an Irish shop owner we befriended in Denver told us.

Dills - I wouldn't have made these (well, I started making them and will get to eat some of them on Wednesday or Thursday of the coming week) except for the fact that I went way out into the burbs to a large Asain market a couple of days ago and found Kirby cukes there. I didn't know they were available at this time of the year. You need to bring water and vinegar and curing spices to a boil and pour it over the cukes. They sit out on your counter (covered and submerged) for 24 hours and then get shoved into the fridge for 3 days. I've made them several times before and they are delightful. My recipe, part of a collection of nearly 700 pages Peter and I photocopied and have kept in 3-ring binders for 25 years (the oldest among them), is the only one I've ever used. Don't mean there aren't a bunch of other ways to do it. Knock yourself out.

The best Reuben sandwiches you will never make

From wikipedia:

One account holds that Reuben Kulakofsky (sometimes spelled Reubin, or the last name shortened to Kay), a Lithuanian-born, Jewish grocer from Omaha, Nebraska, was the inventor, perhaps as part of a group effort by members of Kulakofsky's weekly poker game held in the Blackstone Hotel from around 1920 through 1935. The participants, who nicknamed themselves "the committee," included the hotel's owner, Charles Schimmel. The sandwich first gained local fame when Schimmel put it on the Blackstone's lunch menu, and its fame spread when a former employee of the hotel won a national contest with the recipe.
Other accounts hold that the reuben's creator was Arnold Reuben, the German-Jewish owner of the once-famous, now defunct Reuben's Delicatessen in New York, who, according to an interview with Craig Claiborne, invented the "Reuben special" around 1914.
A version of that story is related by Bernard Sobel in his book Broadway Heartbeat: Memoirs of a Press Agent and claims that the sandwich was an extemporaneous creation for Marjorie Rambeau inaugurated when the famed Broadway actress visited the Delicatessen one night when the cupboards were particularly bare. Some sources name the actress as Annette Seelos, and note that the original "Reuben special" sandwich did not contain corned beef or sauerkraut and was not grilled; still other versions give credit to Alfred Scheuing, Reuben's chef, and say he created the sandwich for Reuben's son, Arnold Jr., in the 1930s.

Recipes, recipes. So little time, so much food. I hadn’t planned to post this, but it was too good not to mention. If I seem a little smug about my homemade stuff, it’s because I am. Get some corned beef, cheese and sauerkraut from your market and these will be (almost) as good. Here in Denver we use a bread made by Udi’s. I don’t know how widely available it is, but a good rye will do just fine. Swiss cheese is as good as gruyere (gruyere being a kind of Swill cheese). Some mustard and/or horseradish instead of thousand island dressing is also a more than suitable substitute.

The best Reuben sandwiches you will never make
4 slices of your favorite bread
6 slices gruyere cheese
homemade thousand island dressing
homemade corned beef
homemade sauerkraut
butter

Slather one side of the bread with dressing. Add some cheese. Add corned beef. Add sauerkraut. Top with a bit more cheese.

Heat your griddle. Use a stick of butter to grease it. Lay on the sandwiches. Cover with foil and weight with a teakettle. Cook 4 minutes. Turn, add more butter, flip the ‘wiches and cook 3 more minutes.

St. Pat's Day dinner

Having made my corned beef from a 7-bone chuck steak, it wasn’t very thick. I had to monitor the slow cooking so as not to overdo it. Turns out, unlike a piece of brisket which would have required maybe 3 hours, it needed only 1 1/2 hours to braise.

My homemade sauerkraut (cabbage plus some turnip) is a brand new flavor for me. I’m sure some would consider it too sour. Not I (said the little red hen). That book I keep referring to (“Wild Fermentation”) includes a recipe for sauerreuben, basically sauerkraut made entirely with turnips. Wow!

Potatoes, olive oil, butter, salt and pepper. That's all you need to make this beautiful galette. Melt the butter in a non-stick pan. Take it off the heat and spread the butter around cover the bottom. Use a mandoline and slice a large russett potato as thin as possible. Starting in the middle arrange the slices in an overlapping circle, using all the potato.

Put the pan back on the heat and turn it on to medium. Cook until the bottom is well-browned (maybe 10 minutes - careful not to let it burn). Shake the pan occasionally to keep the "rosette" loose from the bottom. When browned, slide out onto a plate. Melt more butter in the pan. Use a second plate to turn the galette over then slide it back into the pan and cook until the second side looks like the above photo and a knife slides easily into the thickest part. Fabulous and simple dish!

Homemade pastrami sandwich

Corned beef and pastrami are easy to make (if you can find all the ingredients). Dry pickling mixes can be found in most supermarkets, but the pink salt (Prague powder #1) may be a little difficult to acquire. If need be, there are numerous online sources. You don’t need much, so unless you plan a lot of corning, buy just a few ounces.

This pink salt is what keeps the corned beef or pastrami pink when it’s cured. It contains sodium nitrate and sodium chloride, but gets rinsed off after the picking process is finished. I’ve followed a number of different recipes for corned beef and have settled on my own system.

Essentially I made corned beef which I then turned into pastrami (magic!). Get yourself a corning recipe online or maybe in a cook book you own. I think it’s best to use one that calls for the water and pickling mix to be brought to a boil and then cooled completely before the meat goes in.

Most recently I used a portion of some kind of chuck steak. Brisket or flank steak is the norm, but I’ve made corned beef with a number of different cuts. My only criterion is that the “grain” of the meat be discernable and consistent throughout the cut.

Some recipes say steep the beef for 3-5 days, others for several weeks. My last batch went for 2 weeks and was my best effort. After it’s cured, rinse the meat thoroughly – get all the spices bits off it. Put it in cold water and refrigerate for 24 – 36 hours, changing the water once or twice.

Now, here comes the pastrami part. Instead of simmering the corned beef for a few hours with additional pickling spice (though no pink salt), I dried it off and rubbed it with about 2 tablespoons each of cardamom seed and black peppercorns (roughly ground in a spice grinder). Then I put it in a shallow baking pan, on a rack, with water underneath it; covered it with foil and baked it for 3 hours at 250 degrees. Add more water from time to time.

The meat will dry out some, but I steam it to warm it before slicing and making sandwiches. I realize I’m counting on you for taking some initiative with this, but if you are patient you will be rewarded.

Pastrami sandwich
Russian dressing
Swiss cheese
Sauerkraut
Rye bread
Pastrami

I don’t think you need me to tell you how to make a sandwich, just be sure to steam the pastrami before slicing. And, of course, slice it across the grain and very thin. Pile it high!

the best meatloaf

I've been lazy for a while. I have recipes, and even photos taken with my new digital camera. So once again I "borrowed" this picture from another site. Oh well, it looks just like what I made yesterday.

I made my own corned beef, using skirt steak I found on sale at King Soopers. The recipe came from Michael Ruhlman's book "Charcuterie." As for the construction of the final dish, it came straight out of my 5-watt brain.

I love caraway, but the seeds get stuck in your teeth. The same is true of cumin seed. My solution is the cheesecloth bouquet garnie you'll see described below. As I've mentioned before, I almost always have homemade chicken stock on hand as a result of poaching a whole chicken about every 9 days to make food for our dogs. After reducing the stock by about 1/3 to 1/2, I'm left with 4-6 cups of very flavorful stuff. Of course you can use supermarket stock, nothing wrong with that.

Some interesting info about "corning": I've learned that it was (or is) commonly used with game meats, including wild fowl. I have corned several different cuts of beef as well as some chicken legs. It's fun. I was very surprised to learn from our neighborhood cheese and sausage purveyor that corned beef is not eaten in Ireland for St. Patty's day. He's Irish and should know. According to him (Hugh), he never ate corned beef in Ireland at all. Who knew?

Corned beef and cabbage

1 lb corned beef, cooked
4 medium potatoes
½ head green cabbage
2 bay leaves
2 garlic cloves, smashed
½ tsp caraway seeds
½ tsp black peppercorns
½ tsp cumin seeds
3-4 cups chicken stock
salt
horseradish or mustard for dipping

Cut the potatoes into quarters. Cut the cabbage into 4 pieces, keeping them intact by not removing the stem end.

Place the bay, garlic, caraway, peppercorns, and cumin in cheesecloth and tie into a pouch. Use several layers of cheesecloth to keep the seeds safely inside.

Put the potatoes, cabbage, spice bag and stock into a large pot. Bring to a boil, add salt to taste, reduce the heat, and simmer slowly until the potatoes and cabbage are tender, about 30 minutes.

Remove the spice bag and discard. Slice the corned beef and add to the pot. Simmer 15 minutes longer. Serve with the horseradish or mustard on the side.

Reuben sandwich

I managed to resist eating my homemade corned beef before Peter got back from his trip. Yesterday we made Reuben sandwiches. I realized on Tuesday that I needed to get Swiss cheese and sauerkraut, two of the 4 ingredients in a traditional Reuben along with Russian dressing.

Remembering the partial head of napa cabbage in the fridge, I consulted the book “Charcuterie,” a compendium of all things cured. I was dismayed to find that the recipe for sauerkraut called for a 3-week cure. I had 24 hours! So I improvised.

Following the basic plan the book gave me I shredded the cabbage, ending up with only about 2 cups, enough surely for 2 days of Reubens. The cabbage was tossed in a glass bowl with a generous amount of salt and about ½ tsp of caraway seeds. That was it – covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. I stirred it up a couple of times over the next day. When I tasted it it was pleasantly sour and salty. I rinsed it off and dried it as well as possible. It worked very well in the sandwich.

I am not anal retentive enough to want to extend my homemade repertoire into the fields of bread and cheese making. Those items came from the supermarket.

Peter whipped up a very plausible Russian dressing using just mayo and ketchup. The bread was a new Safeway product, packaged panini bread. It wasn’t as good as what the deli counter has sold me a couple of times, but it was fine when grilled.

Reuben sandwiches
2 slices panini bread
4 slices Swiss cheese
generous helping of corned beef
Russian dressing
Homemade sauerkraut
1 tbsp butter

Layer the sandwich thusly so that it will hold together when you flip it. Of course I’m assuming that most folks, like us, don’t have a dedicated panini press – that’s why you gotta turn it.
Russian dressing, half the cheese, corned beef, sauerkraut, the remaining cheese.

Heat a sauté pan over medium heat and rub a stick of butter onto it where the sandwich will go. Place the sandwich in the pan. Cover with a piece of foil and weight it with a teakettle. Cook for 4 minutes. Set the sandwich aside while you rub the pan with more butter. Return it to the pan, turned over, for 3 more minutes weighted. Cut across the sandwich to make 2 portions.

Homemade corned beef - an encore performance

A person might wonder why go to the trouble of making corned beef when you can just go out and buy it. The first two reasons that come to (my) mind are that it’s cheaper and it tastes better. It takes very little effort, although it does take some patience. The first time I made it I left it to “cook” in the flavored brine for 5 days. Remembering that our nearby market, Rocky Mountain Meats and Poultry, soaked theirs for 3 weeks when they made a big batch of it in anticipation of St. Patrick’s day, I let my latest hunk of brisket go for 7 days.

As I write this, it is now simmering on the stove, and will continue to do so for a total of at least 2 hours – maybe 3.

In an earlier posting I gave a URL for an excellent recipe for corned beef. I’ll repeat it here in case you’re ready to give it a try.

www.leitesculinaria.com/recipes/cookbook/homemade_corned_beef.html

I probably mentioned I am also making pickled herring. I sampled it yesterday and found it to be way too salty. It is currently in a water bath. This afternoon I will drain it and replace the water with some sherry wine vinegar and some white wine.

I won’t take any more of your time just now. (As if anyone is actually reading this shit.) We have everything we need for our meals today. Ergo – no cooking til at least tomorrow. Ciao.

Homemade corned beef "spaghetti"

The weekend brought a couple of very pleasant surprises. One was the homemade corned beef I may have mentioned recently. The recipe is very simple, although it does require a couple of special ingredients: pink salt and pickling spice. It is published in the book “Charcuterie” by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. However, you don’t need to buy the book. I found their recipe online at:
www.leitesculinaria.com/recipes/cookbook/homemade_corned_beef.html.

Indeed the 5-day curing period they call for was perfect. The one unusual thing I did was to use a piece of flatiron steak instead of the traditional brisket. Flatiron is inherently more tender than brisket and produced a delightfully tender bit of corned beef.

So my creativity was present, though relatively minimal.

In “Charcuterie” there is a plethora of things to try. I bought some pickling cucumbers at a farmer’s market on Friday and used the book’s recipe for dills. The previous recipe I had used, something I found on the web, calls for 3 days of curing. However, the book says 3 weeks! Eek, I don’t think I can wait that long. I will give it 1 week and then try a sliver of pickle.

Yesterday, Sunday, was where my creativity kicked in with a vengeance. I bought some yard-long beans at my favorite Chinese supermarket, a head of cabbage, a cilantro-like bundle of herbage, and a package of king mushrooms. More about the latter two items tomorrow.

A while back, on a whim, I googled “corn beef and pasta.” Low and behold I found a recipe for corned beef with spaghetti. Our weather has been pretty hot and somehow pasta just seemed to heavy. My solution? I created “spaghetti” from the long beans.

If you’ve never seen yard-long beans, they seem much like green beans … only longer. They are a pale greenish-yellow. They are not literally a yard long, more like 12” to 18”. They do not have strings. Other than that they taste a lot like green beans, but at the same time a bit different. If this recipe amuses you, feel free to use regular string beans. You will have to string them, however.

Yard-long bean spaghetti with corned beef and cabbage

2/3 lb. corned beef
2 cups cabbage, sliced into ribbons
1 bundle (about 8 oz) yard-long beans, or string beans
beef broth
salt
black pepper
1 tbsp cornstarch

Heat a large pot of water to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt just as you would if you were cooking actual pasta. Trim the ends off the long beans and cut them in half. If you are using regular string beans don’t cut them, just string them and trim the stem ends. Blanch the beans for 10 minutes, then drain and shock them with cold water (your kitchen sink sprayer will do the trick quite well).

Slice the beans in half lengthwise. This is a little tricky. I have a small wooden cutting board with grooves around its edges. The beans lay in the groove in a perfect fit and allowed this task to be both quick and safe.

Slice the corned beef thinly against the grain. Place the beef and cabbage in a large skillet with 1 cup of beef or chicken broth. Heat this mix to a boil. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold water and stir it into the beef and cabbage. If it becomes too thick, add more broth until you get the texture you like.

Add the beans to the pan, toss it all together, heat it through, and season it with just a bit of salt and as much black pepper as you like. I like a lot. Serve in pasta bowls just as if it were spaghetti.

One addition I would have made had we had them on hand would have been a lightly poached egg to top each serving. Alas, we had no eggs.

This was a remarkably tasty dish, one that will become part of my permanent culinary repertoire. And … because it had meat and loads of vegetable matter, it was a one-dish supper.

Stand by tomorrow for my newest creation: king mushrooms stuffed with shrimp and scallops.

One last thought: I haven't solved the dilemma of a table of contents. Wait, I just had an idea. If I create a table of contents, update it each time I add a recipe, and then add it as a new post each time I blog, it will be the first page! Who knew?

Corned beef

Not much to contribute today. I did two small things.

1) I poached a pound of salmon in a court bouillon of my own making. I used homemade chicken stock, white wine, black peppercorns, and a no-salt seasoning that someone gave us recently. All it takes is to bring the stuff to a boil and let it simmer a few minutes. Then you add the salmon and let it simmer slowly. It took 5 minutes for the smaller sides of the salmon filet, and about 10 minutes for the thicker portions.

2) I began an experiment using "curing" mixes I have. I've made homemade ham and homemade "smoked" turkey legs with them. I put the quotes around smoked because the way I got the legs to have a smoky flavor was to add a bit of liquid smoke when they went into the oven after 4 days of soaking in the cure.

Anyhow, I got the idea to make corned beef out of something other than brisket: flatiron steak. I gather that meat processors have only in recent years found a way to mechanically separate the flatiron steak from the part of the cow that is where "chuck" comes from. Of the four common cuts (flank, hangar, flatiron and brisket), the flatiron is the most tender. So...I followed a recipe I found on-line and have the steak curing for the next 5 days. I see no reason why it shouldn't turn out quite well. I'll let you know.

Peter made a salmon and new potato salad which will be lunch today. Tonight we will have a very special thing I recently learned how to make: gravlax (cured salmon). I promised only to share the innovative things I do. My gravlax is made from a recipe in "Joy of Cooking," in case you're interested in trying it. It is extremely easy and extremely worthwhile if you are someone who like lox as much as I do.