Over the last few months I have posted a number of items that contained one or more open questions, which required further research or a bit of cooking, including the following three items:
Mutton: The Forgotten Red Meat: The finished mutton shanks pervaded my kitchen with a robust, ‘lamby’ aroma, but amazingly amazing there was little of this flavor in the meat itself. They were rich and earthy, almost ‘beefy’ with just a hint of ‘game’ thrown, made even more rich by the fat and dissolved connective tissue and of course the red wine based sauce. The Crimini mushrooms and Cipollini onions added nicely to the flavor, but the onions practically dissolved, so I should not have put them in until the last 45 minutes of cooking. I served the shanks on Skagit Valley Gold potatoes smashed with a touch of olive oil and the sautéed Savoy cabbage and leeks served as a nice complement. The silky 1993 Guigal Côte Rôtie Brune et Blonde was more than up to the robustness of the meal.
Romancing The Stone - Slab Cookery: A few days after this post Don used the same sear, smoke, and slow roast technique on the Holiest oh Holies, a small roast of Prime Rib which he described as “one of the best prime ribs I've ever made.” It was a two-rib roast, so it had a high surface area to meat ratio. He aged it five days on a rack in the fridge, then shaved off the crust that had formed, and patted down with some Montreal steak seasoning. The marble slab was heated on high with about a dozen briquettes under it. After the briquettes were ready, he started to sear while shoving sticks of dried rosemary bush under the slab, and then put the cover down. He went through process about 6 times, turning the meat when a good sear had formed while the rosemary burned underneath, making smoke, under the cover. The total process took about 25 minutes.
The meat was placed on a rack and put in a 250 degree oven with a target doneness at around 140 to 150 degrees. When the roast was done it was pulled and tented it in foil. He turned the oven up to 450 for the potatoes. I added the drippings and fat (not much but some) that had rendered to the bowl where the parboiled potato slices were getting a cream surface from salt and oil. After one half hour the potatoes were done.
“Sliced meat. It was rarer than I intended - I have to get a new thermometer. Great rosemary flavor on the end pieces, but even the slices had some flavor from their rims. Extremely tender meat. Potatoes were great again and the little bit of fat and jus helped. We also had oven blasted broccoli, which keeps on coming in the garden.”
Pizza Renaissance, or Dark Ages: was in response to an influx of new pizza places in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, and my visit in mid-August to the newest addition, Delancy, which had been open just a week or so. I paid another visit to Delancy late last week. After my initial visit I thought that they didn't have their wood-fired, brick oven at a high enough temperature. With my second bite at their Margherita, I now think it is their dough that is suspect. Right out of the oven the bottom of my pizza was crisp, but only to a depth of about 1 to 2 mm, and the crispness was not that of a crust, but of a cracker with the corresponding taste. The remaining 1/5-inch thickness of the bottom was done and chewy but still more dough like than bread like. The pizza’s edge crust looked great - better than my first visit - but it suffered from the same problem and had no real 'crust' flavor or structure! All in all, very unsatisfying.
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