top round, spinach, onion

The top round was on sale, I think. It's a bit tough but when the meat is cut against the grain then there'll be no problem with mastication. The steak was cold out of the refrigerator so I put it in warm water for a about 10 minutes to bring it to room temperature, then dried it off and seasoned it a bit heavily with salt and pepper. Fried for a few minutes in a very hot pan then set aside to rest.

The spinach is packaged frozen. Microwaved for five minutes, seasoned, drizzled with balsamic vinegar aged seven years, and not the goofy aged seven years either, not the type that a portion is aged for  seven years mixed with newer vinegar aged for a single year, no siree, the whole thing is aged for a full seven years and I do believe that makes a huge difference. Have the people at the speciality store help you pick one out if you're interested, and I wish you would try it at least once, it will change your culinary perspective permanently. So, vinegar, sweetened as it is + butter + salt/pepper = dressing, simplicity itself. 

The onion is caramelized  in the same pan used to sear the steak. It picks up some of the fond left there while simultaneously leaving its own flavor in the pan now  sweetened by caramelization. The pan is now nicely begrimed with olive oil mixed with rendered beef fat, the seasoning that sloughed off the steak, fond from the singed meat, and the trace of caramelized onion. It would be a real shame to waste all those layers of flavor, only to mention a crime against the kitchen art.  Therefore, the pan is deglazed with the remainder of the second-rate canned beef broth opened earlier down there ↓. Had I been up to it, or had I been entertaining, the liquid could have been enhanced even further with wine and with something unusual or sweet. I do keep a bag of blueberries on hand frozen for exigencies and for impulse.   A handful of blueberries tossed into the pan, caused to melt and to impart their unique blueberry essence and then quickly processed to oblivion and their presence disguised, or any such thing as apricot jam or honey, all have the potential to elevate even second-rate, last choice broths and bottom tier wines, to a whole new plateau. Surprise yourself sometime by inventing your own sauce. 

But tonight it is late and I cannot be arsed.  Tomorrow is a long day and I will be lucky to get the mess cleaned up that I have left behind. 

sukiyaki

First of all, look at all these mushrooms I got at Pacific Market at Alameda Square, Denver for $2.67. Is that impressive or what?

There's something about beef stock with soy sauce, mirin, and saki that is addictively delicious. Add to that flavors imparted by these vegetables and you're transported to heaven temporarily, if heaven has food which I rather doubt. Hey! It's a metaphor, a'ight?

If you don't have soy sauce then use tamari. If you don't have tamari then use salt. If you don't have mirin then add a little sugar. If you don't have saki, then fine! Just forget it. No wait, you can use sherri or a white wine. The point is to enhance the broth with body and with a little sweetness.

Normally, the ingredients are cooked together in a cast-iron pot with a tight-fitting wooden lid. The only pots I could find were cheap-ass piddly crap that I didn't want around so instead, I gently cooked the items separately in the broth holding them together within a large slotted spoon similar to a spider except not as spidery. It was sort of a pain in the butt doing it that way but my impatience ensured no item was overcooked and others not at all. One by one I cooked each item in the broth nestled in the slotted spoon then placed the separated items into the serving bowl. Finally, poured the enhanced broth over the separated piles. That's one thing I like about sukiyaki is everything is in a separate pile inside the bowl instead of being all mixed up.

Two types of noodles are generally used for sukiyaki: 1) Harusame made from potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice or mung bean starch. Closely related to cellophane noodles which can be substituted. 2) Shirataki made from devil's tongue plant mosty composed of a dietary fiber called glucomannan and contain very few calories and carbohydraes, sometimes even zero. Not much flavor but absorb flavors well. Can also be made from konjac flour. (From the roots of konjac plant, yam-like, grown in Japan and China)

Pacific Market has hundreds of types of Asian noodles, an entire aisle plus more scattered around the store. None of the packages said in English "harusame" or "shirataki." This proved to be a bit of a problem for me so I winged it. The shirataki-like noodles I bought were in the refrigerated section and they're packaged wet. They look like squishy worms. They can be purchased yellow, snow white, or black, which really isn't black at all but gray with black dots. That's the kind I got because they seemed the most interesting. I'm using Chinese cellophane rice noodles for the harusame. All the packages said in English, if they said anything at all is, "rice vermicelli," "rice noodles," "bean noodles," "yam noodles," or some such. This caused me unnecessary distress and confusion. Just get rice noodles of your choice.

The store I went to has mushrooms like there's no tomorrow. Huge bags of dried mushrooms of every grade and sort. Odd things you never heard of. Fresh mushrooms that are considered exotic and expensive in Western markets. They have everything except the ordinary button mushroom or portobello, or baby portobello that I'm used to seeing. I went nuts. I got a whole bunch of stuff except for the tree oysters which I thought I'd just not get around to before they turned to slime. (I already have ordinary mushrooms that I must use before they're wasted)

* fresh bamboo sprouts that you pull out of a tub of water like a salad bar.

* fresh mung been sprouts that are sold in huge bags, like I'm really going to eat all those.

* spring onions

* shredded carrot (cut on a lethal Japanese Benriner slicer)

* tofu marketed as "pressed bean curd" it's much more compacted than extra-firm tofu. It's the same thing except much less water.

* shitaki mushrooms

* enoki mushrooms (enokidake, snow puff, golden, velvet stem)

* napa cabbage (wom bok, baechu, hakusai)

* beef broth -- carton 365 Whole Foods brand, I'm a little bit surprised how weak this broth is. It really needs the help of saki + mirin + soy sauce + juice from pre-cooking beef

* saki -- I really do not care for saki. This took some doing. There is only one type I ever had that I could stand and that was at a restaurant, and it was only good after the first few sips burned through. I called the restaurant. They were closed. Went to Argonauts which is a huge liquor store thankfully nearby. The people there are totally ace. They went online as I had done earlier but found the restaurant's saki list which I failed to find earlier. We called the restaurant from the liquor store (the number was still in my Blackberry). The liquor store cooperated extravagantly to ensure I was satisfied. I was amazed how packed the place was for a Sunday, oi, and how excellent the service.

* mirin -- the sweet kind, not the gross kind, if in doubt, use sugar.

* beef top round sliced as thin as possible -- kind of tough although fabulously flavorful. I couldn't help but eat it while it was frying even though it was a little too tough for sukiyaki. Fried first to brown, then pressure cooked to tenderness. Overdid the pressure cooking and it became too tender. See? It's a fine line there. The thing is, UPS came right when this was going on. A very attractive and engaging bird is substituting over Christmas for the regular sour bloke so naturally I was distracted. I showed her my aquarium all cleaned up, my prototype pop-up cards, we talked about her upcoming road trip etc., anyway, the pressure cooker went longer than intended. So there's that.

beef soup, vegetables and miso

Top round sliced thinly and fried in a pan. Vegetables added stir-fry style according to their density and approximated cook times. Finished by steaming with plain water (1/4 cup water tossed into the pan)

If I had beef stock I would have used it. Instead, I had my own homemade chicken broth so I used that. Chicken stock + beef bits, probably not the best combination, but I don't care. Ha ha ha ha that's just the way I roll. Ya'know, it's probably worth it to pick up a few cans or cartons just to have around. I intend to do a proper sukiyaki the way I like it so I might as well have it on hand. That does it. My mind is made up.

My original intent was to do a pseudo-sukiyaki broth using chicken broth + soy sauce +mirin but along the way I got sidetracked and added miso instead. This soup was delicious and proves once again it's hard to go wrong as long as you stick to principles.

* top round cut thinly, fried in olive oil

* onion sliced

* broccoli cut into thin strips, stem and all

* mushroom, couple of them sliced

* collard green, one leaf stripped of stem and julienned

* 1/4 cup water, to stop the frying and start the steaming, finishing the vegetables to doneness

* chicken broth (beef would be better) 1.5 cups

* miso one tablespoon mixed with water in a cup then added at the end and not boiled.

* tomato, diced, added at the end directly into the bowl, not cooked at all.

Ta daaaaaa.

[Stop me if you heard this already. My dear ol' Dad, bless 'im, would make soup by boiling the life out of a bag of root vegetables marketed for that purpose. He'd end up with gallons of root-vegetable liquid that you couldn't possibly add enough salt to provoke some semblance of flavor. It was hopeless. At length, after suffering with the result of this effort for years, I asked him why he didn't roast the vegetables or use a stock. He asked, "What's stock?"]

Asian tacos

Large top round purchased on sale for half price. I couldn't help myself. Just threw it in the basket with a promise to think about what to do with it later.

Sliced the whole thing thinly into a huge pile. Marinated with Asian flavors, soy sauce, rice vinegar, rasped garlic and ginger. The whole time I was doing that I was thinking, "This is just wrong."

But I don't care. I didn't intend anything specific, I just wanted flavorful beef, and those are the flavors I grew up with, the flavor profile, so to speak, that I go to reflexively. Just to throw a wrench into the works, I added cumin and coriander because I like them. I like both those things, Mexican and Asian flavors.

The sliced meat was left to marinate for hours until I got tired of waiting, then it was pan-fried in batches in my largest pan to give it burnt edges and to develop layers of fond in the pan. The fond was lifted with water and the fond-laden water poured into the bottom of a pressure cooker but not above the trivet. Of course I tasted the meat. The meat was delicious if a little bit tough. Tough meat would not work very well for tacos which was an idea beginning to take shape in my mind. I wanted to use those taco shells that stand up by themselves. I wanted something salady and crunchy. My tacos would be Asian. The whole time I'm still thinking, "This is just wrong." But I don't care.

The pressure cooker made short work of the connective tissue. The meat is now quite tender, almost too tender and fragile. Perfect for tacos. Cooked to well-done, a little bit burnt and with very flavorful liquid.

Marinade:

* soy sauce

* rice vinegar

* water

* rasped fresh garlic and ginger

* S/P

* cumin

* chile flakes

For the Tacos:

* top round cut thinly and marinated, fried and pressure cooked.
* home-grown balcony tomato diced.
* cheddar cheese in nicks.
* green lettuce, sliced into ribbons.
* white onion diced

* Stand 'n Stuff taco shells

* cilantro

The eerie weirdness-of-coincidence thing was, when I sat down to enjoy my completely wrong Asian tacos, and I did enjoy them a lot, they hit the spot, right then Alton Brown came up on the Food Network hosting some kind of competition. I wish they would stop that crap and just have experts show me how to make stuff. Alton took the competing chefs to Los Angeles and assembeled them in front of a taco cart. He said the thing that the Chairman (of Iron Chef) admires most about American cuisine is its propensity for fusion of cuisines of other cultures using American ingredients into a wholly new and dynamic thing. The chefs were a bit astonished to find themselves standing in front of a Korean Taco mobile. That's just wrong! So while I'm munching on tacos of my own perverse fusion through impulses that steer me to totally wrong tacos, I'm vindicated at that very moment by the content on the Food Network, if it is at all possible to be vindicated by anything on the Food Network, a premise that properly trained chefs would eagerly dispute.