Tangerine Beef, v. 1.0

For awhile now, I've been working on a stir-fry recipe involving beef and tangerines.  Recently, I finally got around to trying out the preliminary version of the recipe.   The results were encouraging, but I've clearly got a bit more work to do on this recipe.

The basic idea for this recipe is pretty straight-forward:  Marinate thinly-sliced beef in tangerine zest and juice and some other seasonings, stir-fry some vegetables, then the beef, and finally toss everything together along with some tangerine slices for garnish.   Pretty straightforward, really.  With those basics in mind, I tossed around some ideas as to how to take those basic concepts and translate them into a recipe for a memorable and tasty dish.

The results from my trial run with this recipe were not bad, but not excellent, either.  The overall flavor was quite pleasant, but some of the flavors were a bit muted,  The fruity flavor was most notable, but the beef flavor in particular was quite subdued.  This probably has something to do with the fact that most of the thinly-sliced bits of flank stake more or less disintegrated while in the marinade.   The marinate so softened the beef that it fell apart as soon as it was added to the skillet.  This clearly wouldn't do.

I learned several things from this trial run.  The primary lessons are as follows:

1.  Next time, I need to add soy sauce.   I made a conscious decision to leave out the soy sauce, building the dish instead around the more subtle flavors of oyster sauce, sesame oil and just a bit of five-spice powder.   That was definitely a mistake.  The sweetness wasn't balanced by enough of a savory element.  Beyond that, soy sauce is full of glutamates (amino acids that intensify our sense of taste), making it one among the most potent flavor enhancers there is.  Next time I'll use a bit of soy sauce in the marinade.

Tangerine juice:  Potent flavor,
but it dissolved the beef!

2.  The marinade was two acidic.  I used the juice from two tangerines in the marinade, which came to about 1/2 cup.  I also sliced the beef very, very thinly.  The combination of the acid in the juice with the very thin slices of beef resulted in most of the beef slices falling apart.  The result:  rather than featuring pieces of flavorful beef, it tasted like vegetables with some hamburger mixed in.  This muted the beef flavor too much.  Next time I'll need to either reduce the amount of tangerine juice (to probably 1/4 cup) or cut the beef just a bit thicker... or maybe both.  I'll use more tangerine zest to preserve the fruity flavor.

3.  Next time, I should go a little bolder with the seasonings.  I wanted the dish to have a prominent citrus flavor, so I went light with the seasonings, so as to not overwhelm the tangerine.  This resulted in some of the spices - especially the black pepper and five-spice powder - being so faint an accent that they barely registered. 

4.  Skin the tangerine segments, and add them in the serving dish, not the skillet.  At the end of the cooking, I stirred one fruit worth of tangerine fragments.  I had peeled the tangerine before segmenting it, but I didn't peel the individual segments.  As a result, the tangerine pieces tasted a bit bitter, due to the bits of pith left behind by peeling.  Cooking enhanced that bitterness to an unpleasant degree.  Next time, I'll skin the individual pieces of tangerine and use them to top the stir-fry, as a garnish, rather than cooking or stirring them in, which would probably result in most of the fruit pieces falling apart. 

 So, what is printed below should be regarded as a work in progress.  It's still pretty good, but it could be a lot better.  I've started work on version 2.0, and will report back after I've given that version a test-run, but in the meantime, maybe some of our readers would be interested in giving it a try as-is and providing some feedback or suggestions.

Tangerine Beef

yield = 4 servings

3       tangerines
2       teaspoons minced garlic, divided
1       tablespoon oyster sauce
1       teaspoon honey
1       teaspoon Asian (dark) sesame oil
1       teaspoon grated, fresh ginger
1/4    teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1/3    teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/4    teaspoon + 1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 pound beef flank steak, thinly sliced across the grain
2       tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
8       ounces crimini or button mushrooms, thinly sliced
12     ounces snow peas, trimmed
4       green onions, thinly-sliced, white and green parts separated

Use a vegetable peeler or zester to remove the peel from one tangerine in thin strips.  Squeeze the juice from two tangerines.   Put the tangerine zest and juice in a zipper-lock bag.  Add one teaspoon garlic, oyster sauce, honey, sesame oil, ginger, five-spice powder, black pepper, 1/4 teaspoon salt and the sliced beef.  Seal the bag, shake the ingredients to mix thoroughly and let stand 30 minutes.  Peel and segment the remaining tangerine.

In a large skillet, heat one tablespoon oil over medium heat.  Add mushrooms, remaining teaspoon of garlic an 1/8 teaspoon salt.  Cook about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the snow peas and the white parts of the green onion and stir-fry another 3 minutes or so, until the snow peas are tender-crisp.  Transfer to a bowl or plate.

Add the remaining oil to the skillet and heat on medium-high until shimmering.  Add the beef and marinade.  Cook until the meat is no longer pink (about 4 minutes), then stir in the mushroom mixture and the green parts of the green onion.  Cook about a minute, then stir in the tangerine segments and cook until the green onions are wilted (about 1 more minute).  Serve over rice.

Cooking Tip:  Thin-Slicing Meat and Poultry

For stir-fries, Asian soups and so forth, you often want to cut meat and poultry into very thin slices, or even slivers, in the case of some soups.  This can be difficult, especially with softer cuts.  The best solution I've found:  either cut the meat or poultry while it is still partially frozen, or if you are working with fully-thawed or unfrozen meat or poultry, put it in the freezer for a half-hour or so, then slice it.  Frozen meat is more firm, which makes it a lot easier to thin-slice it.

In this particular recipe, the thinness of the beef slices worked against me, as the overly-acidic marinate completely broke down the thin slices of beef, but in general, this technique works like a charm.

Best Blueberry Muffins

On New Year's Eve, I got up early and tossed together a batch of blueberry muffins for breakfast.  Talk about starting the day right... these were easily the best blueberry muffins either Juli or I'd ever had!

I made these muffins using the recipe for Best Blueberry Muffins from the May/June 2009 issue of Cook's Illustrated.  That recipe was written up by a woman who had once owned her own bakery, and who, after coming to the Test Kitchen, had decided to try to make a recipe for blueberry muffins as good as the ones she made in her bakery with fresh-picked, wild blueberries, but made at home and with store-bought blueberries.  I never tasted her bakery muffins, but I'll take her word that these are every bit as good, because I honestly can't imagine a blueberry muffin being better than the ones I made using her recipe.

These muffins tasted wonderful.... sweet, with rich blueberry flavor in every bite.  They were moist on the outside but almost crisp on the outside, and the lemon-sugar topping literally was crisp and crunchy.

The key to these muffins is that in addition to stirring whole blueberries into the dough, the recipe has you cook a cup of blueberries in a saucepan with a bit of sugar, cooking them down to make a sort of jam.   After pouring the batter into the muffin tins, you then stir a bit of the jam into each batch of dough.  Cooking down the blueberries into jam intensifies their flavor, and stirring the jam into the muffins before baking them results in that flavor permeating virtually the entire muffin.  The extra burst of flavor you get when you bite into one of the whole blueberries baked into the muffin pushes these muffins - and the recipe - over the top and into the realm of awesome culinary achievements.

I really can't say often enough or strongly enough how wonderful these muffins are.  All I can do is note that these have instantly earned a place among my go-to recipes, and encourage you to seek out a copy of the recipe and try them out for yourself.

Note:
As with all Cook's Illustrated recipes, the recipe for Best Blueberry Muffins is available at www.cooksillustrated.com with either a paid membership or a free, temporary membership to the website.

Potato Chowder and Easy Garlic Bread for a Blustery Day

It's gotten suddenly cold and blustery here in our little Iowa town, and that means comfort food is on the menu.  This is a pretty easy soup to put together, and if you have leftover ham from a holiday dinner, you can use some of it here.  Despite the milk, cream, and cheese, the soup heats up reasonably well even from a frozen state.  This is one of my son's favorite soups. 




Ian's Favorite Potato Chowder

1/4 cup butter
1 small onion, diced fine
8 cups diced potatoes
1 49-ounce can chicken broth
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 cups milk
2 cups half-and-half cream
4 cups grated cheddar cheese
2 cups diced ham
1 15-ounce can corn
1 15-ounce can creamed corn

1.  Melt 1/4 cup of butter in a large skillet.  Saute onions until cooked through.

2.  In a Dutch oven, boil potatoes in the chicken broth, adding cooked onions.

3.  When the potatoes are cooked, make a white sauce:  melt 1/2 cup of butter in the large skillet.  Blend in flour, salt, and pepper.  Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth and starting to bubble.  Remove from heat, stir in milk and half-and-half.  Heat to boiling, stirring constantly.  Boil and stir for one minute.  Add the white sauce to the cooked potato mixture in the Dutch oven.

4.  Add the remaining ingredients and cook until cheese melts and all ingredients are heated through.

Cheater's Garlic Bread- this is so easy, it's not really even a recipe!  Buy a loaf of good Italian or French bread at the grocery.  Split in half, and spread generously with softened butter.  Sprinkle with a good quality garlic powder and dried parsley.  Close the two halves back together and wrap with foil.  Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until butter has melted.  Voila!  Garlic bread!  And you don't have to pay twice as much for the already-wrapped-in-foil loaves from the store!

Homemade Fruitcake

I've never been a fan of fruitcake.  Truth told, I've always actively disliked the stuff.  Every version I've ever had - from the mini-loaves Hostess inflicts on the public every Christmas through upscale mail-order versions - has been downright dreadful.  Gummy, flavorless chunks of dried fruit encased in leaden, chewy bread... no thanks.  The stuff seems better utilized as a doorstop or paperweight than a food. 

That said, I was surprised to find myself intrigued by a fruitcake recipe from a recent (Dec/Jan 2010/2011) issue of Fine Cooking.  The ingredient list actually sounded pretty good.   Real dried fruit, boiled and soaked in rum, sounded a whole lot better than the candied cherries one often encounters in fruitcake, and the batter promised to cook into a moist confection featuring cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and other warm spices, plus two of my favorite flavors:  Ginger and cardamom.  I already had some dark rum that sees frequent use in Caribbean barbecue sauces, so I checked out the selection of dried fruit in my pantry, went shopping for a couple more types of dried fruit and gave the recipe a try.

First thing I should note:  this fruitcake does not come together quickly.  One minces up the fruitcake and boils it, along with some orange zest, in rum, then lets it soak (refrigerated) in the rum for between 24 and 72 hours.  Then one makes up the batter, incorporates the soaked fruit, cooks it on low heat for 1 1/2 hours, brushes it with more rum, then wraps it up in plastic and foil and stows it away for a minimum of 48 hours before serving. 

In my case, the fruit got the full 72-hour soak, give or take a couple hours, and it rested in the wrappings for six full days before we finally gave it a try on New Year's Eve. 

This fruitcake is quite moist, and the fruit pieces are quite pleasant - flavorful and fairly tender for dried fruit, as opposed to the dried-out-gumdrop quality I've encountered in fruitcake before.  It smells really nice, and the bold, warm spices do stand out.  That said, we weren't big fans.  Juli and I found the fruitcake's flavor to be too boozy, by far. 

I don't drink, though Juli does.  I enjoy using alcohol in cooking, though, and I'm particularly fond of rum, but this one has way, way too much of it.  In addition to the rum soaked into the fruit and cooked into the cake, the fruitcake is also basted with rum after it's taken out of the oven.  We both found this amount of rum more cloying than pleasant.  Juli also thought the crystallized ginger was a bit too strong, though that didn't bother me.

Our not liking it doesn't mean some other people might not appreciate, it, though, so I sliced up half of the loaf and took it to work.   Several of my coworkers tried it, though some were dubious, relating the same sorts of experiences I've had with fruitcake in the past.  A few of them didn't like it, with their reactions being more or less in line with mine and Juli's.  One responded with the faintest of praise, "Well, it's edible.  For fruitcake, that's pretty good."   

However, most of those who gave it a try rather liked it, and several praised it.   So, it just goes to show that in food as with just about everything else, things not to some people's taste may be a big hit with some other people.   Clearly the time, effort and quality ingredients I put into the fruitcake paid off for several of my coworkers.

In summary, I don't think this is a bad recipe.  It produces a fruitcake vastly better than any I'd ever tasted.  It's simply not the sort of thing we like.  It's not our thing, but if you're wondering what a moist homemade fruitcake with a strong rum flavor would taste like, this might be perfect for you.

Chicken Piccata + Asparagus with Lemon-Cream Sauce

Flipping through The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook I received as an Xmas present, I quickly found a recipe I wanted to make:  Chicken Piccata.  Browned chicken cutlets covered with a savory lemon sauce... Who could pass that up?  Now I just had to decide what else to serve with it.

Having been pleased with the Asparagus with Garlic Cream Sauce I made recently, I decided to make up something similar to go with the Chicken Piccata.  After considering options, I decided to make lemon the common ingredient between the two dishes, adding both lemon zest and a bit of lemon juice to the cream.

I decided to also cook up some egg noodles, toss them with butter and a bit of chopped, fresh parsley and serve the chicken up atop the noodles.

The Chicken Piccata didn't brown up quite as nicely as I'd have wished, for reasons unclear to me.   This meant I had to cook it a couple extra minutes to get significant browning, and that resulted in the cutlets being less tender than should have been the case.   The flavor was exceptional, though, due to the sauce's mix of butter, lemon, sweet shallots and capers.   If all the recipes in this book are anywhere as good as this one, I'm going to love this cookbook.

The Asparagus with Lemon-Cream Sauce was also quite good, with the sweetness of the cream balancing out the sour of the lemon.  I think I'm going to have to come up with some different sorts of sauce to go with asparagus, because the cream sauces work out so well, I'm at risk of getting in a rut of making endless variants. 

The egg noodles went along very well with the chicken, and rounded out the dinner nicely.

Asparagus with Garlic Cream Sauce

yield = 3 servings

1       tablespoon unsalted butter
1       bunch of asparagus, trimmed
1/2    teaspoon minced garlic
1/2    cup heavy cream
1       tablespoon lemon zest
         salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat.   Add the asparagus in a single layer and fry, turning frequently with tongs, until the asparagus spears are soft and have a few darkened spots.  Transfer asparagus to a serving plate. 

Add the garlic and fry, stirring often, 1 minute.  Add the cream and lemon zest.   Stir frequently, until the sauce has reduced and thickened slightly, then stir in the lemon juice and cook another minute or so.  Pour over asparagus and serve.

Shopping in Des Moines: allspice

Right before Christmas, Juli and I did some shopping in the East Village area of Des Moines.  We go there fairly often, as two of our favorite shops are located in that area.  Kitchen Collage is one of our go-to places when it comes to various sorts of kitchen utensils, small appliances and so forth.  It's where we purchased our knives and cutting boards, among other things.  Gong Fu Tea is, quite simply, the best place to purchase tea in Des Moines.  They feature a wide range of excellent teas and teaware.

This time around, though, we checked out something different:  Des Moines' newest spice store, allspice.

allspice (yes, they spell it in all lower case letters) sells a wide range of herbs, spices, chilis, infused olive oils, balsamic vinegars and more.  The store advertises itself as a "100% local and family owned business."  It opened in September 2010.  We can vouch for the store's claim that their spices, chilis, rubs and so forth are freshly ground/mixed and packed, because we saw two of the employees doing just that during our visit.

One of its more notable features is Iowa's first olive oil and balsamic tasting bar.   A good part of the store is taken up by displays of the numerous oils and vinegars.  Each is in a big, shiny stainles steel cask with a spigot, which one can use to fill a bottle for purchase, or to sample the various wares.  allspice sells a lot of different flavors of high-quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  The citrus-infused olive oils and one which included Asian sesame oil were among the stand-outs, though more standard herb-infused varieties also had excellent flavor and aroma.

We didn't purchase much during our initial visit to allspice, but not for lack of interest.  That late during the Xmas shopping season we were running a bit short on money, so we decided to minimize our purchases on this occasion.  All we picked up this time around were a pair of colored salts (pink and black), which we figured would make for a nice presentation with special dishes, and a jar of black sesame seeds.

We'll be returning to allspice soon, though.  Juli and I have both been thinking about dropping by and picking up a selection of their olive oils.

Allspice is located at 400 East Locust in Des Moines.  The store hours are Mon-Fri 10-6 and Saturday 10-4.  You can check out their website at http://www.allspiceonline.com/.   There isn't a lot at the website yet, but we're looking forward to that changing.  There's lots good at the store already, though, so check it out.

Zucchini with Chili-Orange Glaze

I wanted to make an Asian-flavored vegetable dish to go with my Shrimp Pad Thai.  The grocery had some pretty good zucchini, so I decided I'd use my grill pan to cook up slices of zucchini with a flavorful glaze. 

Coming up with the glaze took me about a minute of thought, if that, since I knew the flavor I wanted and what ingredients would give me that.  The harder part was building up the courage to cook this on my grill pan.   Even though I've seasoned it quite well, the amount of cleaning necessary to rid cast iron of burnt-on sticky-sugary stuff can play havoc on the seasoning layer of a cast-iron pan. 

The zucchini turned out great - firm yet tender, with nice grill marks and great flavor thanks to a tangy-sweet glaze - and it went well with the Shrimp Pad Thai.  And as it turns out, I didn't have to be so worried about my grill pan's seasoning.  Most of the burnt-on stuff flaked off with light pressure from a metal spatula, and the rest cleaned off easily enough by scrubbing it with salt and hot water.  It actually took more work to clean out theTramontina skillet I used to cook up the Pad Thai (though that also cleaned up great). 

Zucchini with Chili-Orange Glaze

yield = 3 servings

3        tablespoons orange marmalade
1        tablespoon tamari
2        teaspoons chili paste
2        small zucchini

Add the orange marmalade, tamari and chili paste to a small bowl.   Stir to combine, then set aside.

Lengthwise, slice away a thin layer of the outer skin on two opposite sides of each zucchini.  Cut each zucchini lengthwise into three long, flat pieces. 
Heat a grill pan over medium high heat. While the pan heats up, season both sides of the zucchini slices with salt and pepper to taste.

Arrange the zucchini slices on the grill pan and cook for about 4 minutes.  Flip the zucchini, cook for about 3 minutes, then brush the zucchini slices with the glaze.  Cook for 2 minutes, then transfer to a serving plate and serve hot.

Notes:
This dish can be made on an outside grill.  Simply place the zucchini slices over direct, medium-high heat and follow the directions as written. 

Tamari is a stronger-tasting, thicker type of soy sauce.  It has more intense soy flavor and does not include wheat, as often do the typical grade of soy sauce.  If you can't find it, you can use regular soy sauce, but tamari's rich flavor makes it well worth any time and effort put into finding it.