Beef Rendang

This is the CC's second-favorite beef dish with the honors going to steak tartare.

A true masterpiece of Indonesian cooking but it does take some work to make. It requires a ton of time and it's even better the next day. The CC once started it at five in the evening which turned out to be a terrible idea. The hungry hordes waited and we ate at ten at night.

The CC suggests starting at noon for dinner. The dish literally makes itself. All you need is a timer and towards the end a little bit of stirring every 10 minutes. (This is one of those places where a large non-stick flat pan works great!)

Rendang is actually a preservation technique not significantly different from the French duck confit or the Philippine adobo. It's as much a mechanism of preserving the meat in the absence of refrigeration as it is a cooking technique.

(There's a reason that the meat is tender but almost dry and coated with a fatty sheen and the list of spices includes garlic, shallots, ginger, galangal, and especially turmeric all of which have strong anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties.)

The recipe is adapted from James Oseland. (He skips a few crucial spices but since these are old-hat to people used to Indian cooking, the CC has restored them.)

Traditionally, made with water buffalo, you really want the leanest cut of beef that you can get — boneless chuck, top round, bottom round, or even shoulder. It's going to be braised in coconut milk and a ton of spices so there will be the plenty of time for the dish to turn meltingly tender.

James Oseland does have one of the great lines of all time:

Rendang has its own lethargic cooking rhythm, so that the more you try to rush it, the longer it seems to take.

This is talking truth to lazy cooks. Just let it do it's own thing, stir it occasionally, indulge in a book or a crossword, and it will make itself.  It has its own meditative rhythm which cannot be rushed.

The accompaniment (shown below) is a classic nasi kuning (= turmeric rice) which is nothing more than rice boiled with fresh turmeric and salt — pandanus leaves if you have them.

(Note that traditional nasi kuning would generally be cooked with coconut milk but if you do that for such a rich dish, the two would clash so you should go with the simpler style.)

While the recipe is complexly spiced, it's emphatically not "spicy". It has a layered complexity not pure heat.

You will need a side salad and while the CC went with greens and tomatoes (which is a tad French); you'll be equally well served with the classic — slices of cucumbers, salt, and whole chillies.

 
Ingredients

Flavoring Paste

1 whole nutmeg (cracked)
5 cloves
2 cardamoms
1/4 tsp cumin

5 candlenuts (read notes)

1 largish piece of turmeric (or 2 small ones)
2" ginger
2" galangal
3 stalks lemongrass (sliced diagonally very thin)

5-7 fresh red chilis (more if you like it spicy)

3 cloves garlic

6 shallots (coarsely chopped)

dash of palm sugar (substitute by brown sugar)

Main

2 lbs boneless beef chuck (or bottom round) - cubed in 2" pieces
2 1/2 cups coconut milk

1/2 cup asam keping water
1/2 cup roasted dried coconut

3 thick stalks lemongrass (tied into a knot)
1 piece cinnamon stick
7 whole kaffir lime leaves
5 whole daun salan leaves (read notes)
salt

To Serve

1 tbsp kaffir lime leaves (very finely shredded)

Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle. No, the food processor will not work. Deal with it! The CC knows that people claim it does including Oseland but it gets the textures all wrong. Oddly, the shallots are not soft enough to just dice finely. You need to pound them.

Note 2: Add kosher salt to the mixture while you are pounding soft ingredients. It makes it far easier to control the texture. You won't need to add salt to the final product.

Note 3: Candle nuts are hard to find outside of specialty stores. While most recipes call for macadamia, the CC finds that hazelnuts actually provide the right kind of fat content and taste. You will need 10 hazelnuts since candle nuts are larger.

Note 4: You're bluntly going to have trouble finding asam keping (= "garcinia atroviridis".) Your best choice is to use kudampuli from Southern Indian cooking (= "garcinia cambogia"  or "garcinia gummi-gutta".) If you are totally stuck, use the North Indian kokum (= "garcinia indica") or even in the worst case, plain ol' tamarind. (This makes less difference than you think. It's primary job is the both tenderize the meat and make it less "meaty" while adding a subtle sour flavor.)

Note 5: The remaining fresh spices are easily available at your local Thai store. They're so popular now that the CC found all of them this weekend at his local farmers' market. The dried spices are Indian classics. You should be able to find them in any supermarket or even cheaper in the Indian markets. Use whole ones freshly ground not pre-ground ones!

Note 6: The leaves known as daun salan are actually dried leaves of the cassia tree. Not cinnamon but cassia. They are called tējapattā in Hindi (= तेजपत्ता, literally: "cinnamon leaves") and you find them in Indian stores labeled as "bay leaves" which is complete nonsense since they taste nothing like traditional bay laurel. (If you don't have them, your best bet is a smattering of cinnamon or cassia although the dried leaves are stronger in flavor so amp it up a notch or two.)

Note 7: The two absolute non-negotiables are lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves both of which add very strong citrus notes. In fact, as you read in the recipe below, you need more kaffir lime leaves finely slivered to add to the beef as you serve it (easily seen in the picture above.)

Note 8: Nutmeg is also crucial. Enjoy your happy vivid dreams!

Recipe

To make the asam keping water, just add the dried ingredient to some water and boil it for a few minutes. This is one of the places the microwave works great. (If using tamarind, just cover it with boiling water. When it cools down, squish it with your hands and pass through a sieve. Discard the solids.)

Take all the ingredients for the flavoring paste and pound them using a mortar and pestle. First do all the spices and the hard ingredients then all the soft ingredients. (They are listed in the order that you should do them above.)

Don't worry if your mortar gets full. Just empty it into a bowl and mix afterwards.

This pounding will take the better part of 20-30 minutes so patience is required.

(It's harder to pound soft ingredients rather than hard ones since they just squish and slide around rather than get pounded into a paste. Very counter-intuitive but important to know.)

Combine the paste, all the other ingredients including the beef, coconut milk, leaves and spices into a large pan. Stir gently to mix them all. Bring the mixture to a boil and immediately turn the heat down to medium-low.

Let it bubble away stirring every 20 minutes so that the paste and coconut milk do not stick to the bottom and burn.

James Oseland describes the rest vividly:

The meat, coconut milk, and flavoring paste will now go on a fascinating journey. At first, the broth will be thin and gorgeously bright orange^†. As it cooks, the coconut milk will reduce, its fats (as well as the fat the meat renders) separating from the solids. It will be become progressively thicker and darker eventually turning brown.

Keep stirring until the meat becomes rather glossy with a very thick sauce. This will take the better part of anywhere between 3 to 4 hours^‡. The meat should be tender enough to easily poke with a fork. (You may need to add some water from time to time.)

When all the liquid has evaporated, reduce the heat to low and allow the beef to brown in the fat. Stir every 5 minutes because it has a tendency to stick.

The beef should be coffee-colored and barely moist with a glossy sheen.

(As a general rule, there should not be any fat left in the pan but if there is skim it with a spoon and store for later use. It's great for a classic Indonesian dish made with new potatoes!)

Discard the whole lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, daun salan leaves, and cinnamon.

Allow the beef to rest at least 30 minutes before serving. More if you can swing it. It's best served at room temperature (or slightly warm rather than hot) topped with the finely slivered kaffir lime leaves.

---

† from the turmeric.

‡ This may very well be an underestimate. Five hours is not out of the question if the cut of the meat is extremely lean.

Tarhana aka Trahana

If Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language as George Bernard Shaw so memorably put it, then Greece and Turkey are two countries separated by a common cuisine.

Oh the horrors and the wars! And Cyprus. Let's not even go there.

The difference in most of their common food names is "nationalistic branding". Something that you see in many adjacent "warring" countries which share a common cuisine. The choices are both boring and endless — India and Pakistan; Israel and Palestine; Eritrea and Ethiopia.

It gets depressing after a while.

The CC definitely belongs to the distinct minority of "Make food not war!" but it's a hard, not to mention, impossible sell to fanatics with no education and millennia of hatred.

But we will always have linguistic adjacency to remind us that you can theoretically separate ideas but, in practice, the same ol', same ol' geography dominates as it logically should.

Which brings us to tarhana or trahana. Pick your favorite one. The former being Turkish and the latter being Greek.

Tarhana, Trahana, let's call the whole thing off!

What is it?

It's an ancient mechanism of preserving both wheat and milk for the long winters. In an age of refrigeration and air-transported food, this is a fairly quaint notion so we appeal instead to its deliciousness.

The idea is simple. Take wheat flour, mix it with sour yogurt, pass the dough through a fine screen so it breaks up into tiny pieces and let it dry in the abundant Mediterranean sun.

The chemistry is complex. By introducing sour yogurt, you are lowering the pH to acidic levels. By drying it, you are reducing the moisture levels. This makes the environment inhospitable to most pathogens and you still preserving the wheat and milk proteins.

You cook it by just introducing it to some broth. The wheat thickens the broth and acidity introduced gives it a tangy umami flavor.

There is a separate product called "sweet trahana" which is the same idea except with milk rather than yogurt. It lacks the lactic tang and is much harder because of the need to remove moisture even further and so needs to cook a little longer.

The presence of both wheat flour and yogurt means it acts as a thickener typically in soups and stews.

You can pretty much thicken any soup which could use a sour lactic tang. Tomato soup is a classic. Less commonly is a mushroom soup referenced by Diane Kochilas presented below for your delectation.

The CC was informed that this was a "superior" mushroom-barley soup.

"Fair enough, it's the same concept just with superior food technology."

The mushrooms came from a Japanese market with some others brought by a Russian friend from the Russian markets all to make a Greek soup. Not exactly world peace and arguably closer to whirled peas but it's a step.

All raise your hands and shout out, Trahanosoupa me Manitaria!

Ingredients

4 cups mixed wild mushrooms (coarsely chopped)
2 garlic cloves (minced)
2 medium onions (sliced thin)
olive oil

1 cup trahana
6 cups water

salt
black pepper
lemon juice

1/3 cup grated kefalo-graviera cheese (substitute by feta)

Recipe

Heat the olive oil and sautée the garlic for a minute. Make sure it doesn't burn. Add  the onions and cook over medium heat until wilted for about 7 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook leisurely till for at least 10 minutes.

Add the trahana and stir for several minutes. Add the water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve hot with lemon juice and the cheese as topping.

Pepper Jelly

We love audience participation on this blog so the CC presents (a lightly edited) version of reader Marcus' post about preserving an excess of peppers in the South.

Recently, I sent a photo of some peppers to the CC. Upon seeing the cornucopia, he asked me to write a guest post. About what I wasn't sure but since my original email included mention of peppers and jelly, I thought I would write about the Southern tradition that is pepper jelly! 

Here in Arkansas, pepper plants grow from March until the end of October (our first freeze was last night). I start my peppers in January indoors and transplant them in late March or early April depending on the weather. Peppers produce fruit relatively quickly, so you can get a LOT of peppers from a single plant through the year, which makes food preservation a necessity (waste not, want not). The first photo is about 1/3rd of the peppers in my garden on the day these where picked, about a week ago. I measured 6.4 kg total. This is an assortment of cayenne, serrano, jalapeno, anaheim, poblano, bell, and a variety of other sweet peppers. 

Pepper jelly is one of those rare items I have never seen for sale (or maybe just never looked for) in a grocery store but with which I've been acquainted all my life as with eating certain wild game. We were given some wonderful pepper jelly last year — that's where it always comes from, you see, someone gives it to you — and were thus inspired to try our hand at making some. Neither the wife nor I had ever made the sweet concoction, so it was a first for us both. The second photo is a shot of the final product. This photo is actually all the jars from two batches. 

Last night while filling jars from the second batch, I had the forethought to pull some off for later. It can take two weeks for jelly to set but I wanted to try a bite sooner. I put the small portion on my eggs this morning. It's quite a bit hotter than most people would make, but I like the heat. Very delicious! My 1-year old insisted on having some on her eggs as well (she refuses to be left out of anything). She would take a bite, cough, drink some milk, then take another bite! 

(Edit from the wife) Because this recipe is high on the heat factor, the recipe card is now labeled "Hot Pepper Jelly", instead of Pepper Jelly. In future batches, I may deseed the peppers or select fewer of the hot varieties so we have options on the shelf, similar to mild, medium and hot salsa.
 

For the record, the CC has only one thing to add, "Go, go, go, little baby!" (for the heat-loving factor.)

Moroccan Preserved Lemons

As crazy as it sounds, the current depths of winter are the "season" for citrus.

Surprised?

Locavore tendencies be damned, most of the citrus fruits come from areas where the produce season is currently peaking, and hence, the markets are just overflowing with citrus fruits.

Time then in the snowiest winter recorded to go a slipping and a sliding, and put the overflowing bounty of Meyer lemons to good use. Sadly to say, it's "use it or lose it" since you can't easily find them here in the rest of the year.

The CC bought six pounds and turned them into preserved lemons.

If you've never eaten a preserved lemon, you have missed out on one of the great joys of life. It's ancient "culinary technology" at its very best — making lemonade out of lemons, metaphorically speaking.

A preserved lemon is more about the rind of the lemon than the juice. The preserving process both intensifies the lemon-ness of the lemon, infuses it with a complex spice mixture, and brings out an intense umami from the pickling process. The final product is silky and sensual, an ethereal counterpoint to the vegetable, chicken, lamb or fish dishes that it generally accompanies.

The important word here is "generally". Good luck waiting to cook the dishes. The CC has seen hordes demolish the product straight out of the bottle like crack-candy! Add the pickling juice to a "bloody mary" and you'll thank the CC for the rest of your life.

Naturally, there's a catch. That's called pickling. It takes about a month to make after which it will pretty much last forever. Experienced picklers don't even empty the jar. They just keep adding more lemons, lemon juice and salt to the jar, and the stuff will just keep on truckin'.

If you've never pickled before, let's start with the basics. Pickling involves storing food for an extended period of time. There are only two broad ways of pickling — pickling in an acidic medium, and pickling in oil (which is a lot harder.)

The simple story is that if the medium is acidic enough, no fungus or bacteria can grow in it (except for the highly beneficial and omnipresent lactobacillus.)

Pickling requires only one real skill. That's called obsessively washing everything in hot water. The actual recipe is a detail to the act of cleaning that goes on before and after. The reason most pickles are acidic is that you don't need to be as careful as when you do it in oil however pickling remains a key testament to actually understanding the science of food. (Yes, your grandmother did it seamlessly but you are not your grandmother so ...)

Preserved lemons are very easy to make. All you need is a mason jar, lots of lemons, some spices and tons of salt. The overwhelming acidity of the medium makes this a particularly easy "preserve" to make for beginners. There is only one important thing to note. No part of the lemons must "stick out" above the water line. You must press them down and/or squeeze them until all components are submerged below the acidic water line.

The other important note is not to skimp on the salt. More is fine (can be washed later, and the recipe adjusted) but less would be disastrous.

Before the CC provides a recipe, he will just note a caveat. This all depends on the size of your jars, etc. so the recipe below is necessarily approximate, and in any case the most important detail has been stated above — submerge the lemons in the lemon juice completely.

Ingredients

24 Meyer lemons
6 tbsp salt
1 stick cinnamon
1 tbsp cloves
2 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tbsp peppercorns
2 bay leaves

Recipe

Reserve about 6-8 lemons for the pickling process. Juice the rest, and strain the juice through a sieve.

Quarter the reserved lemons till about near the bottom but make sure you don't cut all the way through. Squeeze them a little for the juice (they will not float if you do this,) and salt them liberally on the inside. Set aside.

Wash the jar with extremely hot water. Pour boiling water into it until just before starting the pickling process.

Pour out all the hot water.

Layer the salt to about 1/2" at the bottom. Add all the spices, and the reserved lemons. Pour the lemon juice all over mixture. Make sure everything is submerged. If not, press down until it is. (You are really squeezing the lemons to bring their density below that of the lemon juice.)

Store for 30-40 days in a cool dark place.

Oregano Pesto

Oregano is one of those rare herbs that both dries, and freezes well.

At the end of summer, the CC just makes a batch of pesto (oregano, olive oil, salt), and freezes it. Chip off a block and add it to anything you like.

Or you could just freeze it in those mini ice-trays, and then dump into a freezer bag.

Either way it works like a charm.

"He's Not Mad, He's Merely Crazy ..."

"... and he's the Tomato Man!", said the farmer to his buddies at the crack of dawn.

Twenty pounds of tomatoes, half a pound of tomato paste, happiness next February!

(For the visually inclined.)