Oxtails Braised in Red Wine

When I was in college, my friend and I took a trip to Atlantic City for the evening.  We didn't have much of a plan, we just went there and figured we'd do some gambling and drinking, and then head back.  Before we went off to lose our shirts, we looked around for a decent restaurant, and found a Cuban place called Cuba Libre.  It's still there, by the way.  So we sit down to eat, and we each decide to order some kind of oxtail stew they have on special, figuring that it would be interesting.  I hadn't had oxtail before, and thought it might be a great place to check it out, having fondly remembered a number of other Cuban beef stews.  But it wasn't just interesting - it was delicious.  So much so that we cleaned our plates from this massive feast, which included not only a healthy quantity of meat but also rice, plantains, and a variety of other things that have since disappeared into a haze of pan drippings and caramelized vegetables.

We never gambled that night - we stumbled into the casino, half-drunk on meat, and played slots for 5 minutes before we decided to turn back.  On a whim, I put $40 on red at a roulette table which hit and, having recovered the cost of my dinner, realized that we had won that night, big time.

This recipe is the first of two oxtail dishes that I will make - this being the more simple, more American version, cooked down slowly with red wine and root vegetables, and a future recipe being the Cuban oxtail stew, or rabo encendido.  I just found this version on the New York Times recipe page and gave it a shot, replacing a non-latin variant on this recipe I made years back because this had more wine in it, and let's face it, that's going to make it much better.  Turned out to be a winner, although it doesn't hold a candle to our Cuban feast that night.

Every bit as delicious as a chuck roast or short rib stew, if not more so.

Roasted Turkey Breast with Rosemary Roasted Root Vegetables and Homemade Cranberry Sauce

In an attempt to squeeze more value out of my meat slicer, I've been on the lookout for turkey breasts to roast.  I finally picked up a few on sale, and got a chance to cook one following my standard method.  Roasting just the breast is much more foolproof than a whole turkey, because you don't have to worry about the breast drying out before everything else is cooked through.  All you have to worry about is a single temperature - 160 degrees F.

Yes folks, heed my words - 160 degrees F!  Not 170, not 150, and certainly not 180... unless you're just as happy chewing on the sole of your shoe as you would be eating a delicious, moist slice of white meat.  Keep in mind that the temperature of any large solid object (turkeys, bricks, laundry) will increase at its center at least slightly once pulled from the oven, and you will be perfectly safe pulling a turkey breast out at 160, resulting in a final temperature of about 165.  Even the USDA says you can get away with 165 degrees, so why bother overcooking just because you refuse to live life on the edge?

I will add this - a digital probe thermometer is an absolute necessity for any kind of roast beast.  Dial thermometers are slow, inaccurate, and impractical unless you leave them in the bird constantly.  What's more, I am a hardliner about how I measure my temperature, which I accomplish using TWO probe thermometers; first, a corded digital oven thermometer such as this one, and second, a handheld thermometer, specifically this one.  We have the technology - let science work for you.  The oven thermometer stays in the bird and has a base unit that sits on the counter, beeps to let you know when your roast reaches your desired temperature, and allows you to keep the oven closed.  Consider this - Shirley Corriher says in her book Bakewise that opening the oven door for just 30 seconds will cause the oven temperature to drop by 150° or more, requiring several minutes to come back up to temperature.  So a leave-in thermometer will let you cook your bird faster and more uniformly, without heating up the house.  By the way, my second thermometer just confirms that my first thermometer is working right.  But a third thermometer, now that's just right out.

In addition to my roasted turkey breast, I served a few of my favorite (and arguably required) sides - steamed asparagus, roasted root vegetables, cranberry sauce, and a quick pan gravy.  I'll give recipes for these shortly, but first, a few words on root vegetables: eat them!  They are delicious, and I feel like they are a forgotten staple in the American pantry.  There are so many different root vegetables out there to add body and subtle flavors to otherwise bland foods, like adding parsnips to your mashed potatoes or a side of fried yucca with your burgers.

If you are the first person to post a comment back on this site with the correct identification of all the vegetables in the photo, I will let you choose which dish I will cook next.  You present me with three [reasonable] options, and I will pick one of them and make it to the best of my ability.  I will note that, as of 11/21/2012, this riddle has been solved.

 

Correctly comment with the names of all the vegetables and you select what I make next!

Anyway, I found a recipe online for a rosemary-roasted root vegetable dish, so I decided to abandon the exact ingredients and substitute what I could find.  As long as there's some balance in color and flavor, most root veggies can substitute for each other in this dish.

I will only quickly touch on the gravy process, which did not have many stellar pictures.  The cranberry sauce is an old family favorite though, so I will include that one.

Roasted Turkey Breast with Rosemary Roasted Root Vegetables and Homemade Cranberry Sauce

• One (6-8 pound) turkey breast, thawed
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups chicken or turkey broth / stock, preferably homemade

•  2 tbsp rosemary, thyme, or sage, depending on your tastes.  I recommend sage here.
• 3 pounds assorted root vegetables (turnip, rutabaga, garlic, shallots, sweet potato, red potato)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

• 1 quart cranberries (or more realistically, 1 bag)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Let's start with the cranberry sauce, since it's so easy.  In a 2-3 quart pot, bring all ingredients to a simmer until berries pop.  Remove the berries with a slotted spoon, and continue boiling the remaining syrup until it is reduced by 1/3 to 1/2.  Transfer everything to a bowl, and refrigerate until set.  That's it!

Now, onto the turkey.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  In a small bowl, melt butter.  Rinse turkey and place on a rack over a roasting pan.  Why use a rack?  Because otherwise it will stick to the pan and not cook evenly, and the bottom will come out gross.  If you have time to leave the bird out at room temperature for 30-60 minutes, do so.  This will make for more even cooking, and make sure the bird is dry before going into the oven, ensuring a good crisp skin.  RIGHT before you put it in the oven, season with salt and pepper, both inside and out.  Then pour the melted butter on the turkey, rubbing it onto the skin on all sides.  This makes for a deliciously browned, crispy skin texture that's, well, it's just great.  Finally, pour the broth around the bird in the roasting pan.  You can use this to baste the bird if you like, or it will just hang out and infuse more flavor into the bird, keeping it moist.

Preparing the turkey breast for roasting.  Butter has already been rubbed into the skin.

Insert a probe thermometer into the thickest part of the breast, away from the bone.  Set the temperature alert to go off at 160 F, as mentioned above, and pop your roasting pan in the oven.  You'll notice the temperature shoot up a lot at first, and you may think this rate will continue throughout the cooking.  Well unfortunately, the laws of thermodynamics are a harsh mistress, and you should see the temperature increase slow down as the bird approaches doneness.  I've had it look like we'd eat in 10 minutes, but it took 30 to finish!  Expect it to take about 1.5 - 2 hours total to roast a 6-8 pound bird.

Meanwhile, contemplate your roasted root vegetables.  I have a different recipe where you put them in the pan with the turkey, but this time I'm going for plain turkey that goes on sandwiches afterwards, with no notes of anything vegetative in the turkey.  So peel and chop your veggies into evenly sized bites, roughly 1" cubes or slices if you prefer.  I went for a mix.  Place these on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, or better yet, parchment paper, and toss the vegetables with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Don't add the herbs (sage or whatever) just yet - wait 30 minutes before adding them, or they will burn and become bitter.  The olive oil is essential for conducting heat into the vegetables, which would otherwise just burn on the edges and bottoms, and get dry and weird everywhere else.

Put them in the oven when you think there will be roughly 1 hour left of turkey cooking time (30-45 minutes after you start the bird), and stir them every 20-30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, go ahead and add the chopped herbs.  Sage pairs well with turkey; rosemary and garlic not so much.

Prepped root vegetables, awaiting my further pleasure.

Once your bird is at 160 degrees, remove it from the oven.  I'll bet you think you're done, right?  Wrong.  You have to let the bird sit, to contemplate its existence for a while.  The bird is, understandably, pretty ticked off right now, and is ready to just blow up at you for throwing it into a hot oven after a stay in a perfectly good refrigerator.  If you plan to tent it with tinfoil, do so loosely, or else the steam will make the crispy excellent skin into something more like rubbery onion peels.  During this poultry meditation ritual, the bird will relax, and, being less uptight, will let its juices distribute evenly throughout.  Cut the bird too soon, and juices will run all over your cutting board and onto the floor, and the bird will be dry.  But if you wait 15 minutes, you will get a moist, succulent bird, still very warm, which has retained its beautifully crisped skin.

A roasted turkey breast in somber meditation before carving

As the bird is resting, finish roasting the root vegetables.  If they're not yet browned, give them another stir, crank the oven to 400 F, and keep going.  You want them to be slightly browned, not burned, and not just cooked through.  The browning is what brings out the caramelized sugars, which is really what you want in terms of flavor development.  It also gives the vegetables a pleasant crunchy texture, as opposed to one of baby food.

The finished roasted vegetables

If you want to make a gravy, you have three options:

1. Use the weird bag of gravy that came stuffed into your turkey from the store (not advised)
2. Stir up the pan drippings with white wine or cold broth and make a pan sauce (use when you have only a little liquid in the pan)
3. Collect all the drippings, separate the fat, and make a traditional gravy (use when you have more than 1 cup of liquid in the pan)

I tried for option 3, but it didn't work out as I had hoped.  So I will table the gravy discussion until another article, most likely some time around November.

The end result, however, came out to be a festive pre-Thanksgiving feast.  The turkey was moist, the vegetables crispy and full of flavor, and the cranberry sauce refreshing.  All in all, this wasn't a very exhaustive meal to make until I made the gravy, which I find to always be the extra cooking step that turns a fun evening into an aggravating one.  So if you can live without gravy, this whole process should take less than 15 minutes of prep time and only minor monitoring throughout, with the end result being pretty spectacular.

The finished meal, seconds before I finished it.

Braised Beef Short Ribs

If you haven't had short ribs before, there's no time like the present.  They make a rich and meaty stew like a good chuck roast or oxtails, but are also marbled with fat like a ribeye.  So I guess what I'm saying is, they're not quite the perfect diet food; more like the perfect Weight Gain 4000 food.  But that's not important - we're about cooking good food here, not always healthy food.  Plus if you do it right, you can get most of the fat out through extended cooking and proper sauce treatment.  We'll get there, keep your shirt on.

This recipe comes to you from Emeril's show, back when they used to actually have cooking shows on Food Network.  I made it last about 5 years ago, and it was pretty spectacular.  And I asked my friends for $5 each to cover their share, since I was a starving grad student at the time and not running a charity.  I have since seen the exact same dish on a menu for $40, and it didn't taste any better.

I will present the recipe using three different cooking methods, since everyone has their vessel of choice - standard pot, slow cooker, and pressure cooker.  I used the pressure cooker, and start to finish this dish took me 2.5 hours, including an hour of hands-off time.  If you want to use the other methods go for it, but I vote for faster over slower any day of the week, especially since you can't just throw everything in the slow cooker raw and expect magic to happen (you can't people, stop trying!)

Finally, the recipe calls for Essence, which is a spice mix Emeril uses.  You can find it online, or you can buy it in most stores.  I will present it here in ratio format.  If you can't figure out what the line below means, show it to an engineer and he/she will explain it to you.

Essence - 2.5 paprika : 2 salt : 2 garlic powder : 1 black pepper : 1 onion powder : 1 cayenne pepper : 1 oregano : 1 thyme

Braised Beef Short Ribs and Root Vegetables over Egg Noodles
Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2003

• 2 racks beef short ribs (4 to 5 pounds), cut into individual ribs
• 2 tablespoons Essence
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onions
• 1 stalk celery, trimmed and chopped
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 cup ruby port
• 2 cups dry red wine
• 4 cups veal or beef stock
• 1 pound butternut or acorn squash, peeled, fibers removed, and cubed
• 2 parsnips, peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks
• 2 carrots, peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks
• 1 large sweet potato, peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks
• 12 ounces egg noodles, cooked al dente, accompaniment
• 1/4 cup chopped green onions, garnish
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley, garnish

Season the ribs with the Essence on both sides; don't be stingy with the seasoning.  Let the ribs hang out with the seasoning for at least 15 minutes, preferably an hour.

Season up the short ribs on both sides.

In a Dutch oven or large, heavy covered pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat.  Add the ribs in batches (I go with about 6 at a time) to prevent crowding and sear on all sides.  Actually brown them - don't just 'grey' them.  Get some color on there, like the picture.  You want to caramelize the sugars in the meat and form some deep flavors, including those which stick to the pan that you will be deglazing shortly.

Brown the meat in a heavy skillet, like this cast iron guy.  Really get some color on them - don't just roll them around until they stop being red.  Small batches, don't overcrowd or you'll just steam the meat.

See - they're browned.  Not grey.

Remove the meat with tongs to a plate, or to the pressure cooker/slow cooker if you're using either.  Add the onions, celery and carrots to the fat remaining in the pan, and cook, stirring, until soft and starting to caramelize, about 7 minutes.  Add the garlic, salt, red pepper, and black pepper, and cook for 30 seconds.  Add the tomato paste, bay leaves, rosemary, and thyme, and cook for 2 minutes.  Being careful not to blow yourself up, add the Port and red wine and bring to a boil, stirring to deglaze the pan.  You may even consider turning off the gas when you pour in the fortified wine, unless you really don't like your eyebrows.  Cook until liquid is reduced by half.

Cook the mirepoix of vegetables in the same skillet, stirring to scrape up the browned bits from the pan.

Pot directions: Add the ribs and stock and return to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, cover, and simmer until the meat is tender, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  During cooking, make sure that there is at least 1-inch of liquid in the pot; add more stock or water as necessary to cover.

Pressure cooker directions: Bring the ribs and stock up to temperature while you're cooking the other vegetables in your dutch oven / skillet.  Once they're done, transfer to the pressure cooker and seal.  Cook for 40 minutes.

Slow cooker directions: Similar to the pressure cooker, transfer everything to the slow cooker as it is finished in the above process, and put it on low for 4-6 hours, or high for 2-3 hours.

I went with the pressure cooker on this recipe.  Why?

Because the meat that was falling off the bones in 40 minutes, that's why.

Add the root vegetables and cook until they are tender and the meat easily falls from the bones, another 40 minutes to 1 hour (for a regular pot, 15 minutes for pressure cooker, about an hour for the slow cooker I guess).  Remove from the heat.

Here's a big old bowl of root vegetables, to prove that there is some nutritional value in this dish.  Not the homemade Essence in the top left corner

Transfer the ribs and meat to a large bowl and cover to keep warm.  For the health conscious, pour the liquid into a fat separator and give it a while to settle, then take the non-fat part and boil it down.  At the very least, skim the fat from the surface if possible.  Bring the sauce to a boil and cook until thickened, 10 to 15 minutes.  Remove from the heat and discard the bay leaves.

Short ribs emerging from the mist.  They only come out at night.

To serve, arrange the egg noodles in the middle of a large platter.  Place the ribs on top and spoon the sauce over the meat.  Garnish with green onions and parsley and serve immediately.

The finished product.  Not the best photo because the ribs broke down before they made it to the plate, but it was one of the best meals I've had in a while