Sloppy Joes

Somebody brought Sloppy Joes to lunch today and reheated them in the office. I’ve been craving them ever since. Then just like the rest of my cooking, things had to become complicated.

I wanted to do homemade Sloppy Joes, not the canned variety. The recipe has a few prepared ingredients, but for the most part it is from scratch. The recipes is super easy. Almost no work.

My complication came in making the cole slaw. No mayonnaise. So I had to make it. Normal people would borrow some from the neighbor. A couple of egg yolks and a cup of oil later and I was in business.

Sloppy Joes with cole slaw on top. Beautiful.

Ingredeints:
1.25 lbs ground beef
1/2 medium onion
1 rib celery
1 banana pepper
1 twelve ounce can diced tomato
1/4 cup kethcup
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp BBQ sauce
1 clove garlic
1/4 tsp powdered mustard
1/2 tsp paprika

Yields 6 sandwiches

Directions:
1. Dice onion, celery and pepper (known in Louisiana as “the Trinity”). Mince garlic.
 
2. Preheat a large pan over medium high heat. Add beef, onions, celery, pepper and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain.
 

3. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to a simmer. Reduce to low heat. Cook for 35 minutes.
 

4. Assemble sandwiches with Sloppy Joes and cole slaw. Enjoy.

Standing Rib Roast

To me, cooking is about sharing time and experiences with friends and family. One of the best compliments that makes my head swell is when someone has the choice of me making dinner or dinner at a top 10 restaurant and they choose dinner at home. 

Pam boosted my ego recently by special requesting my standing rib roast for her birthday dinner. She flew from North Carolina to Chicago to get it.  

This post is for Pam.  This is the one dish that I make that she likes the most. This is a wonderful dish for a special occasion. Pam, now you can make it when you get home.

Hope you had a great birthday.

Ingredients:

Rub
1	Tbsp mixed peppercorns
2	Bay leaves
1	Tbsp Salt
3	Garlic cloves, whole
1	Tsp fresh chopped thyme
1	Tsp  fresh chopped rosemary
1	Tbsp olive oil
3	Tbsp prepared wasabi
Roast
1	7 lb Standing Rib Roast (also called Prime Rib)
8	Garlic cloves cut into slivers
3	Tablespoons olive oil

Directions: 
Prepare the rub
1.      To make the rub, use a mortar and pestle and crush first 3 ingredients to a fine powder.  

2.      Add remaining 4 ingredients and work into a paste.
 

3.      Rub paste all over rib roast.

4.      Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Prepare the roast
1.      Remove the roast from refrigerator and allow it to warm on the counter for 1 hour.  
  

2.      Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

3.      Using a knife cut deep holes into the roast and insert the garlic slivers as deep as you can. Be sure to evenly space the garlic slivers throughout the roast.
 

4.      Place roasting pan over 2 burners and add the three tablespoons of olive oil. Heat the oil over moderate heat until the oil begins to slightly smoke.

5.      Add the roast to the pan, fat side down. Cook on one side until nicely browned, about 5 minutes.
 

6.      Flip the roast such that the ribs are standing strait up and brown the end side.

7.      Finally rotate again such that the fat side is up and brown the final side of the roast.

8.      Insert an oven safe meat thermometer into the deepest part of the meat. Place roast in the middle of the oven and cook until the internal temperature reaches about 125 degrees, about two hours, maybe a bit longer depending on your oven.

9.      Remove the roast from the oven and place on a cutting board to rest for 15 minutes.

Rich Braised Spare Ribs

We’ve been fortunate enough to go to some of the best restaurants in the U.S. One of the weird things I have noticed is how they often they use unusual and cheap ingredients in a very good way. In some ways this is really annoying because you pay a fortune to eat cheap food. However, the cool thing is how they make such awesome meals out of such ordinary ingredients.

Spare ribs, ox tail and pig’s feet are the primary subjects. Our story today centers on spare ribs.

My wife’s family is Chinese. I don’t know if that is why I experiment with Asian ingredients or not, but I’ll blame it any way. The special ingredient in this dish is fish sauce. There are many kinds, I use Vietnamese fish sauce (Noc Mam). In American cooking, the most similar ingredient is Worcestershire sauce.  

Ingredients:
2 – 3 rib racks of beef spare ribs
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp fish sauce (replace with Worcestershire sauce or reduce amount if sensitive)
1 cup red wine
1 sliced red chili
1 medium onion sliced thin
2 tbsp olive oil

Directions:
1. Heat olive oil in pressure cooker until smoking. Brown ribs well on both sides, approximately 2 minutes per side.
 

2. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.

3. Close pressure cooker and bring to pressure. Cook for 1 hour. Release pressure, remove lid.
  

4. Serve.

Meat Loaf

Rule #1: Mess around with people’s childhood favorites at your own risk. No matter how wonderful and elegant you think it is, they’ll just wish it was like Mom used to make.

I rarely follow recipes and I hate using canned or prepackaged ingredients. As a result, it’s hard to easily duplicate certain flavors. The results can be “too sweet” or “too crumbly”, etc.

So, it was with all in the back of my mind (and front and center since Kim was right next too me warning me all the way…) that I decided to take the plunge and risk the abuse one more time. 

We are getting more tomatoes than I can easily use from our farm share. I needed to do something with them before they went bad. This is a great way to use up a few and eliminate can #1, tomato sauce.

The rest is basic, basic ingredients. This is a wonderful, hearty meal. It is the ideal comfort food. And wonder of wonders it went over perfectly. I nailed the flavors spot on. The important thing here was to salt everything as I went. There is a lot of natural sweetness in all of the ingredients, this needed to be balanced out. The last trick was to use a lot of eggs. You really want the loaf to hold together well. The egg is the binder.

This was a hit. Remember mash potatoes make the meal. Don’t serve meatloaf without them.

Ingredients:
6 plum tomatoes (or 2 cups of chopped tomatoes)
1 tsp olive oil
2 cups diced onion
1 cup diced carrot
1 diced Hungarian wax pepper (or other pepper)
1 clove of minced garlic
1/4 chopped parsley
2 tbsp olive oil
1.75 lbs ground beef
1 cup rolled “instant” oats
about 1/4 cup ketchup
salt and pepper to taste

Serves 6-8

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400F. Peel the tomatoes. This time I scorched them over the gas burners. You can also blanch them and dip in ice water. Either works.
 

2. Quarter tomatoes place in a pan with a little olive oil. Heat over medium heat until reduced to a sauce, stirring occasionally (about 15 minutes). Salt to taste. Set aside too cool.
 

3. Cut up vegetables.
 

4. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil over medium heat until smoking. Add onion and carrots. Stir frequently. Cook for about 5 minutes. Add garlic, peppers, and parsley and cook for another 2 minutes. Remove from heat and place in a large bowl to cool.
 

5. Mix tomatoes into onion vegetable mixture. Salt and pepper to taste.

6. Fold meat, oats, eggs, salt and pepper into vegetable sauce until well mixed.
 

7. Place meat mixture onto a cookie sheet lined with foil (to ease cleaning). Form mixture into a loaf about 2 inches thick. Cover generously with ketchup.

8. Place loaf in the oven and roast for about 45 minutes until temperature of the meat reaches about 150F.

9. Turn on the broiler and broil the meat loaf until well browned, about 5 minutes.

10. Allow to cool for about 5 minutes. Slice into thick slices and serve.

Italian Beef Sandwich

Whenever you move to a new part of the country (or world), you need to learn the food culture. Each place is different. Chicago has sports food. Hot dogs and Italian beefs. We tried a place this weekend called Zippy’s. They’ve sold “millions”. Kim liked the “hot cheesy beef”. Hot giardinera laced with melted provolone on top.

The sandwich was good, but we both felt it lacked any real “bang!”. It could have been better, the giardinera (another Chicago thing: peppers, olives and celery in seasoned oil) added all of the flavor.

That inspired a mission for the weekend: make a better Italian beef.

We missed the mark in attempt #1. The meat was too dry (not sure what happened here) and the flavor just wan’t what we were expecting. We decided to try one more thing, we took the leftovers, sliced them and marinated in hot giardinera juice overnight. Reheated the meat in the microwave for 45 seconds. Perfecto, Italian beef beauty.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

Ingredients:
1 eye of round roast (1-2 lbs)
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion sliced thin
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
1 cup mixed fresh herbs (parsley, rosemary, thyme)
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup water
grated cheddar cheese to taste
hot giardinera to taste
soft sandwich rolls

Directions:
1. Set meat out to bring to room temperature and chop vegetables.
 

2. Season meat with salt and pepper. Heat oil in pressure cooker. Brown meat for 2-3 minutes per side.
 

3. Add vegetables, herbs, water, and wine. Bring top boil. Close pressure cooker and bring to pressure. Cook for 1 hour.
 

4. Reduce pressure and remove meat from pressure cooker. Slice thinly.

5. If you can’t wait, assemble sandwich with meat, cheese and giardinera.

6. Save the leftovers. Pour 1/4 cup of giardinera juice/bits in the container to marinate the meat overnight.

7. Reheat the meat and assemble sandwiches. I would recommend mild giardinera as the meat is pretty spicy at this point.