Winter Break

Hi Readers,

Things are getting hectic with the holidays and my on-call schedule has revved up for these last two weeks of December. See you back here in 2010.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year!

Tony

Tony's Mom's Food 101: Roasted Red Peppers

So according to my tag line, I'm an Italian Boy. This is both by heritage (100%, by the way) and by the old adage "You are what you eat." I grew up eating Italian, because that's what my mom knew how to make, because that's what her mom knew how to make, ad infinitum. I was also fortunate enough to have a grandfather who, in his retirement, kept a huge vegetable garden. Every spring, summer and fall were filled with fresh produce grown only one town over from my home. Locavores, eat your hearts out. Therefore, I am a product of my parents and so is my minor obsession with food, as well as my innate ability to cook American-Italian food (Figure 12.p).

Fresh produce only lasts so long, though. What did we do with bushels of peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and squash? A good deal of it was given away, especially towards the end of each season. The tomatoes were stewed and canned in the traditional style, and then made in to red gravy (what people of non-Italian descent would refer to as red sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, marinara, or pizza sauce). My mom's red gravy is a jealously guarded secret, which of course will never be published on this website. What I will write about is what we used to do with the red peppers: roast them (and subsequently freeze them - more on that later). She has actually shared this recipe publicly a couple of times, once given to me to give to a college friend who was compiling a dorm hall based cook book, and once to my parents' local paper, a picture of my mom holding the finished product included. Needless to say, I won't be "off-ed" or "whacked" or any other stereotypical Italo-American slang term for "assassinated" for sharing this recipe - I'm just sharing it with more people than before.

Figure 12.p - My parents. Me taking a picture of them taking pictures of each other = meta-irony. Not really.

I know what you're thinking, you can just buy roasted red peppers in a jar in the grocery store. I tried that once, and I almost threw the jar out because they tasted like crap compared to the peppers I'm used to. Comparing these home made roasted reds to the grocery store jars is like saying you're going to serve Spam with cloves in it on Christmas. It would work if the people you were serving it to had only ever eaten Spam and had no clue what a real roasted and glazed ham tastes like. Spam and roasted red peppers from the jar are a proverbial slap in the face to people who know what the real thing is like. So, without further hesitation, here is my mom's recipe for home made roasted red peppers.

Roasted Red Peppers

• 8 red bell peppers - preferably grown by your own grandfather like mine are, but that's not mandatory.
• 1/3 cup of water.
• olive oil - you're using it raw here, so haul out the good stuff. Extra-virgin only. Cold-pressed highly suggested, unfiltered preferred.
• one clove of garlic, minced.

Wash your peppers, cut them in half length-wise, remove the green core and every single seed. Place them in a roasting pan or a deeper-sided cookie sheet face down in a single layer, coat the bottom of the pan with the water. Move your oven rack to the second-from-the-top position and set the oven to broil. Broil for about 20 minutes, until the skins are totally black. Remove the peppers from the pan and place them in a large mixing bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a clean dish towel. This will make them steam (since they're still hot) and will cause the burnt, black skin to peel away from the lightly caramelized flesh. Let them do this for one hour. Peel the skins off and throw them away. Cut your newly skinned peppers lengthwise into long strips.

At this point, you have one of two options. Either dress them with olive oil and garlic, place them in the fridge and allow the flavors to marinate for a while, or freeze them and bring containers to your adult son who is too lazy to do this whole process himself as often as you do. They freeze and thaw just fine (Figure 12.q) . Either you or your adult son can use them however you would presumably have used the awful ones from the jar - in antipastos, on pizzas, or tossed with pasta. The best way to eat them is on a sandwich made with crusty Italian bread and a slice of Provolone cheese.

Figure 12.q - Un-dressed roasted peppers in their natural habitat. This specimen is post-thaw.

Until next week!

Meat 101: Braised Short Rib

Thanksgiving break is over, back to the learnin'.

A couple of months ago, my girlfriend and I went on a short vacation to Burlington, VT. I had spent a month there on an audition rotation for a neurology program, and then we had gone in 2008 for a short weekend away. Needless to say, I'm pretty familiar with Burlington, but prior to this last vacation I had never been to Trattoria Delia, and had never eaten wild boar (Figure 8.a).

Figure 8.a - The noble and apparently delicious wild boar. (http://www.linburnes.org/)

They served it braised, pulled apart and tossed with heavy, hearty roman gnocchi. It was an amazing meal to be had on a freezing Vermont evening. The problem with knowing how to cook is that every time you sit down to a meal, you think "I could do that." Not willing to buy wild boar meat online and have it shipped across the nation (my mom always told me never to pay more than $1.99/lb for meat, a truth I've held to for the majority of my adult life) but wanting to re-create the dish I loved so much from my vacation, I set off to the grocery store. I was armed with a knowledge of cuts of beef, their relative flavors, and the application to use them in (Figure 8.b).

Figure 8.b - I like this chart because it reminds me of the periodic table. (http://fornaturalfood.com/)

Braising is a form of slowwwww cooking, so its ideal piece of meat is one that is as flavorful as possible, tenderness be damned. It's the same reason stores sell super-tough chuck all cut up for stew - by the time you're done simmering it, it will be as tender as... well... use your imagination. That day, I ended up with a package of boneless short rib that they were selling on the cheap. I already had the other essentials for braising at home (Figure 8.c) - a dutch oven, plenty of wine, black pepper and salt. So I set to it, and here we are to reap the fruits of my experimental labor.

Figure 8.c - Braising essentials, in no particular order.

Braised Short Rib

• One or two pounds of boneless beef short rib, or three to four pounds of beef short rib on the bone, depending on how many people you plan on feeding and how long each of you plans on eating left overs. The key here is to at least double up on the pounds if you're buying your meat on the bone. Any meat with bones is arguably more flavorful than without, but do what you want.
• One or two big glugs of olive oil.
• A large onion, cut into half-rings.
• Enough black pepper to slightly surpass your comfort level.
• Half a hand full of sea salt or kosher salt.
• A bottle of red wine that you like - I pictured Pinot Noir because that's the only one I had on hand tonight. For the initial recipe, I used an old vine zinfandel. Feel free to use Cabs, Chiantis, Super-tuscans, et cetera.
• (Optional) A couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary.
• Two big pats of butter -or- two more big glugs of olive oil.
• Half and hand full of all purpose flour.

Preheat your oven to Bake 275. That's right. Not the universal bakers' 350, 75 degrees less than that. Coat the meat with salt and pepper. Place the oil, the onions and your short rib in a dutch oven. I use plain cast iron, the enamel ones work fine too. You can use any pan with a cover that you can put on the stove top and the oven without it melting. Brown the meat on all sides well on medium high heat.

Pour yourself a glass of wine. After the meat is done turning brown and tasty, pour the rest of the bottle of wine into the pot. Add the rosemary, if you're using it. Scrape what ever's stuck to the bottom up with a wooden spoon. Cover the pot/pan/earthen vessel/whatever and place in the oven. Let it simmer (i.e. braise) for two or three hours. Honestly, the longer you let it sit, the more tender the meat will be.

Finally, take the pot out of the oven. Scoop the meat out (leave the onions in), put it on a plate and cover it with tin foil. Return the pot to the stove top, and turn the heat up to high. Let the braising liquid (wine + meat juices = braising liquid) bubble away until it's about half way reduced. In a seperate pan, let your flour heat in a dry pan until it starts to turn gold-brown. Add in your butter or olive oil and whisk aggressively (butter + flour + heat = a roux). Take a scoop of your reduced braising liquid and whisk it into your roux, then return the whole thing back to the original pot. Reduce your heat to medium and stir, it will become drastically thicker. Return your meat to your newly formed gravy and toss it around. You can either serve it just like that, or pull it apart and toss it with pasta Vermont-wild-boar-style.

Hope you enjoyed today's installment, be back next week with more winter season food.