I'm happy to give you this guest post (including recipe!) today by Amy:
Hi.
I’m Amy.
I’m happy to be a guest blogger for Cathy today.
My blog is
Motherhood and Miscellany,
where I write about the things I love: my two girls (ages 2 and 8 months),
being a stay-at-home-mom, reading, cooking, photography, and anything else that
strikes my fancy.
One
thing I’ve been writing about quite a bit lately is cooking.
I might even say I have a little bit of a
cooking obsession lately.
I love to cook
and have recently started trying to make up my own recipes.
My husband and I love the show “Chopped” on
the Food Network and decided to try our own little version of the show at
home.
You can check out how we started
here.
Basically, each week he is giving me a
“mystery ingredient” that I have to use in a recipe that I create myself.
So far he’s given me Ritz crackers and
grits.
The recipes I’ve created have
been good, though not yet great.
It has
been tremendously fun to challenge myself this way in trying to take my cooking
abilities to the next level.
Another
way I have recently tried to improve my cooking is by taking a cooking
class. There is a wonderful chef staff
at our local country club, and my husband and I love to eat there. A few weeks ago they offered a class on
braising with one of the chefs, and I jumped at the chance to attend. It was a fantastic experience! I thought I would share a few of the things I
learned.
Of
course, braising is basically a way to slowly cook meat, first using a dry heat
to brown the meat, and then cooking the meat in liquid until it is tender. This is a great way to take tough but less
expensive cuts of meat, like chuck or shank, and make them tender and delicious. I always want to throw something in the crock
pot without having to brown the meat first (I’ve done it many times), but the
chefs say “No!” Browning adds much to
the flavor they say, so I will try to make myself take this extra step from now
on. I learned that the basic steps to
making a complete braised dish are pretty much the same every time:
- Season your meat, either by
marinating it or rubbing some seasoning on it, or just putting salt and
pepper on.
- Brown your meat. First get
your pan hot, then add your oil or butter or whatever fat you’re
using. Let that get hot and then
put your meat in and brown it on all sides. A new thing I learned at the class is
that you should flour the meat if it is in small pieces to help it get
browned but prevent the meat from cooking all the way through while you
brown it (in the browning step you just want to caramelize the outside of
the meat, not cook it all the way through).
- Once the meat is browned on
all sides, remove it to a separate plate, add a bit more fat to the pan,
and brown your mire poix (chopped onion, celery, and carrots).
- Then deglaze the pan with
some sort of acid, like wine or vinegar.
Pour it in and scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the
pan. This starts to prepare the
sauce for the meat already by getting all that great flavor into the
liquid. Reduce the deglazing sauce
a bit.
- Add your meat back in with
other seasonings and liquid for cooking, usually a stock or broth. You want to put in enough liquid to
cover the meat about half- to two-thirds of the way, not to cover it
completely (another new thing I learned).
- Cover the meat and put it in
the oven to cook. You could also
use a crockpot, or even cook it on the stove. But doing it on the stove requires more
attention to make sure the temperature stays right. During the cooking you may want to turn
the meat halfway through and/or baste it a few times.
- Once the meat is done, take
it out of the liquid and keep it warm.
Skim off any impurities from the top of the liquid. Then you can use the cooking liquid to
make a sauce. You can strain out
the mire poix vegetables and other seasonings and then thicken the liquid
with a cornstarch slurry or roux*.
Or you can puree the whole thing and use the vegetables to help
thicken the sauce. Or you could put
the pan back on the stove and reduce the liquid. Or you could do any combination of these
things. Or maybe the liquid will be
just right when you take it out and you won’t need to do much of anything
to it! You can experiment and taste
it and see what works.
- Slice the meat, top with
sauce, serve!
*I
learned two great tips in the class for making and using a roux (combination of
butter and flour used as a thickening agent).
First, the rule of thumb for making a roux is that you use equal parts
by weight of the flour and butter.
Second, you can make a large amount of roux and then put it in an
airtight container and just scoop out whatever amount you need each time you
make a sauce, instead of having to take the time to make the roux each time you
cook a sauce.
Okay,
so now that I’ve given you all that info, here’s an actual recipe that we made
in the class for Southwest Bar-B-Que Pork Ribs:
Ingredients
5
lbs Country style pork ribs
Southwest
seasoning (enough to season the ribs)
Oil
for cooking
1
large onion, diced
2
ribs of celery, diced
2
carrots, diced
¼
cup garlic, chopped
4
cups Bar-B-Que sauce
2
quarts pork or chicken stock (approximately)
2
Bay leaves
3
dried Ancho chiles
1
cinnamon stick
1/4
cup cilantro, chopped
Salt
and Pepper to taste
- Rehydrate the chiles by
soaking them in warm water until soft.
Drain and remove the stems and seeds, then chop.
- Add about a Tbsp of oil to
your pan over medium heat. Add
vegetables and sauté until tender.
Remove from pan (in this recipe the chef chose to do the vegetables
before the meat so they wouldn’t get browned)
- Lightly season the meat with
the southwest seasoning. Add a bit
more oil to the pan and brown the meat on all sides (this recipe calls for
a lot of meat so be sure not to crowd the pan. We had a huge pan in the commercial
kitchen, but at home you’d probably have to brown the meat in batches).
- Add the reserved mire poix
vegetables, BBQ sauce, bay leaf, chilis, cinnamon, and enough stock to
cover the meat 2/3 of the way.
- Bring to a boil, reduce heat,
and cover. Cook the covered meat in
a 250 degree oven for 2.5 to 3.5 hours, until fork tender.
- Remove meat from pan and keep
warm. Strain the liquid through a
mesh strainer. Return to pan and
reduce by 1/3, skimming often (there will be a bit of oil that comes to
the top).
- Thicken the sauce, if
necessary, with roux or cornstarch & water (when we made this in the
class the sauce was the perfect consistency after being strained).
- Return the meat to the pan
and heat through.
- Add cilantro and adjust
seasoning. This will serve 6-8.
This seems like a lot of work, but most of
the time spent is just waiting for the meat to cook. It really wasn’t that
involved, and the dish was so flavorful and the meat so tender, this is
definitely something I will be trying at home.
I may cut the recipe in half though, since it was really a lot of meat
at the end.
It
has been fun doing this guest post.
Thanks to Cathy for having me (and my cooking obsession) for the day!
by Ronie Kendig
, was reviewed 
, book 1 in the series, I had high hopes for book 2. And it delivered!! Twists and turns kept me interested. Bad things happening to the good people made it believable. And just when you think you know who's behind the attacks, you're thrown for a loop.
. After pouring over that book and getting lots of Facebook answers to lots of Facebook questions, we got some answers.
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