and they carved the Roast Beast...

We loooove our beef at Christmas time. It's a family tradition to make prime rib, and since the all kids on my side of the family are at our house, that's where Christmas dinner is. Do you like our matching Jessie Steele aprons? My DS got them for us. Oh yeah, the prime rib is those large swaths of red on the messy counter in the background to the left. We were so overcome by the overwhelming and consuming desire to consume mass quantities of wonderful, juicy, rare beef that we completely forgot to take a proper picture.

The KEY to making a wonderful prime rib is dry aging. Yes, just like you see in fancy restaurants, dry-aged beef. It's a totally brainless method and will give your meat so much more flavor. Order or pick out your prime rib - each rib will feed about 1.5 to 2 people. (Yes, from what I understand there are some .5 people out there). Ask your butcher to cut the ribs off the hunk o' beef and then tie them back on with butcher's twine. This will make carving so much easier and you don't lose that succulent rib meat. drool drool. Clear out a space in your fridge large enough to hold a pan with the meat in it. The pan should be large enough to provide for air circulation around the meat. Rinse and pat dry the beef with paper towels. Fold up several sheets of clean, dry paper towels and put them in the bottom of the pan. Plop the meat on top of the paper towels and put it in your fridge UNCOVERED for 3 - 5 days. It will not rot or get funky if the temperature is where it should be, just below 38 degrees. Change out the paper towels every day. The beef will get a hard, dry (as in dry-aged), crusty layer all around it. This is GOOD! This is where the flavor comes from.

I always use Alton Brown's recipe for prime rib. I must say that the directions in his book I'm Just Here for the Food (I have the original edition, not 2.0) are a different than what's online, and I have never gone to the trouble of finding a terracotta pot to cook the sucker in. I always leave my pizza stone in the bottom of the oven so that the heat is more evenly distributed and so the darn thing doesn't get broken in a cabinet somewhere.

This will melt in your mouth, it's so amazingly good. I'm sooo craving some now, but the leftovers are long, long gone...

Dry-Aged Standing Rib Roast

Adapted From Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food

1 (4-bone-in) standing rib roast, preferably from the loin end
Canola oil, to coat roast
2 Tablespoons Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to cover entire roast
1 cup water
1 cup red wine

1/4 cup thinly sliced leek

1 - 2 Tablespoons garlic or unsalted butter

To dry-age the roast: Place a refrigerator thermometer at the back of the bottom shelf of your refrigerator. Reduce the temperature to just below 38° F. Cover the bottom of a roast­ing pan with several layers of paper towels. Place the roast, bone side down, on the towels, and store-uncovered-at the back of the bottom shelf of your refrigerator. Allow the meat to age for 3 to 5 days, checking the refrigerator temperature often.

When you're ready to roast, let the meat sit out of the refrigerator for 1 hour until it reaches room temperature.

Preheat the oven at 250° F for 1/2 hour. Rub the roast with just enough canola oil to make it shine, then rub with the salt and pepper. Place the meat in a shallow roasting pan, bone side down (to prevent the meat from sitting in liquid). Insert the probe of your thermometer into the center of the roast and set for 118° F. (We are carnivores and like our meat RARE, so we set ours for 110° F and count on 10 – 12 degrees carryover). Place the roast in the oven and keep at 250° F.

When the meat has reached 110° F (about 2-3 hours, depending on how large of a cut of meat you have - monitor it closely), remove the roast and cover lightly with foil. Raise the oven temperature to 500° F. When the oven reaches 500° F, let it heat for another 15 minutes, then return the roast to the oven until the desired degree of crust is achieved, about 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer the roast to a cutting board and cover with foil. Let it reat for at least 10 -15 minutes before until ready to serve or carving

Place the roasting pan with its accumulated juices on the cook-top over medium heat and deglaze the pan with 1 cup of water. (The drippings will be sallll-ty, so test it out before you add the other ingredients – you may need to dilute it with water or supplement with pre-made gravy.) Allow the liquid to come to a boil, scraping occa­sionally until any bits stuck to the pan are freed. Add the wine and then transfer the liquid to a gravy separator. Allow five minutes for separation of fat from juice and then pour the liquid (but not the fat) back into the pan. Add the leek and return to a simmer. Stir in the garlic butter and serve over lovely, red slabs of goodness.

Yield: 10 servings

Temperature chart for beef:
Rare: 120-127 (cook to 110 and count on 10-12 degrees carryover)
Medium Rare: 128 – 135 (cook to 118)
Medium – why bother? Get yourself another cut of meat.

Salud! The story of our visit with Shirley Corriher

Messy One wants to be a scientist and a chef. He also wants to be an architect / archaeologist / astronaut (architectolonaut) when he grows up. For Christmas, I asked him what he wanted and he came up with "Something with cooking. And books". Okey-dokey. Sure thing kid. That about narrows it down.

A few weeks ago I went to a book signing and lecture at the Margaret Mitchell House for Shirley Corriher's highly anticipated new book Bakewise. She and Alton Brown were at the event; Alton was acting as master of ceremonies, asking Shirley questions and keeping her on task. (That woman could EASILY talk about salt for 2 hours, and you would be FASCINATED and want to hear more.) I had a great time (sorry, no photos. DH lent me his camera... without a memory card in it and my phone takes suckky pictures) and I left with a copy of Bakewise and visions of the Tunnel of Fudge cake flitting about in my head. (You should get her book Cookwise too. Amazing!!!)

One of the women I went with tipped me off that Shirley would be giving a demo at Harry's / Whole Foods "Salud!" cooking school. Bing! Lightbulb! I reserved 2 tickets. One for me and one for the Messy One. Of course we were late getting there, but not tooo late. It hadn't started yet, but we were the last ones into the classroom which holds only about 24 people. As expected, Messy One was the youngest one there and we got the hairy eyeball from everyone when we walked in. Some credit here people! I KNOW better than to take No Thank You Boy. That would never have worked. Messy One? No problem. He was an angel: he listened politely, didn't fidget, paid attention and even took some notes! I was so proud, even when he wiped his runny nose on his shirt sleeve. (Completely understandable. We're still working on nasal manners and hygiene around here.)

The demos Shirley did were corn bread, chocolate crinkle cookies, deep dark chocolate cake, rustic pear fruit tart, chocolate ruffles (the woman is simply BRILLIANT!!!! BRILLIANT I tell you!) and a decadent chocolate ganache. Everything was amazingly good and we got to taste it all. Of course Messy One was covered in chocolate from ear to ear, but then again, most of us were and with him, food head to toe is to be expected.

The corn bread was basted with butter on the top AND bottom ("wretched excess", she called it) and served "wedding cake style". This is another BRILLIANT idea when you have to serve a round cake thing to a bunch of people and don't want to get all skimpy on the slices or wedges. How to: Cut an inner circle inside the cake about half waybetween the edge and the middle. Slice the outer ring into wedges and the inner into slices - everybody's happy, they get a nice chunk of cake and your creation isn't carved into crumbs.

We had a great time. Shirley signed our recipe packets and complimented him on his manners and his love for food and science. All in all, a great time.

Merry Christmas, Messy One.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linkage:
Chocolate Crinkle Cookie Recipe
AJC Article about Book Event
AJC Article
Tunnel of Fudge Recipe
Margaret Mitchell House

Class Feast!

My son’s kindergarten class had a Feast on Monday, sort of a warm-up to Thanksgiving if you will. Everyone brought something: I was carb girl. (and then some.)

My instructions were to bring authentic, traditional-like-the-pilgrims-had dishes, but for some reason this kept echoing through my head…..

Lightning McQueen: "Alright, Luigi, give me the best set of blackwalls you've got."
Luigi: "No! No, no, no. You don't know what you want. Luigi know what you want. Blackwall tires. They blend into the pavement. But a this... whitewall tires! They say, 'Look at me! Here I am! Love me.'"
Lightning: "Alright, you're the expert."

from the Disney/Pixar Film "Cars"

My slightly off the white-wall offerings were (and forgive the photos, I barely remembered to take any at all!):

Buttery Rice with Vermicelli

(topped with buttery toasted pine nuts, mmmmmm....)

yes, I did scrub it and then soak it for 3 hours...
Apple Sage Cranberry Dressing
with fresh sage from my herb garden and apples from last weekend

Corn Pudding
(They totally snarfed this one up!)
and 10 Minute (homemade) Applesauce
(again, with fresh apples from the orchards - feel free to omit the brandy like I did here, but I've made it before with, and oooh, it's gooooooooood!)

Better than a Ferrari, eh? ;)

A Dip for Mr Dennis - Country Pork Spareribs

Yes, it’s an AB sort of weekend. I wanted to make these country pork ribs on the grill. Typically I do ribs one of several ways. I either par-boil them and then baste with sauce on the grill (like my daddy showed me) or else I’ll brine them. Today was a brine day. Why brine? Visit here for a complete scientific explanation. Alton Brown, King of the Briners had a great visual example of the brining process using Barbie dolls, but I can’t find it online. Anyway, he has an interesting brine for pork in his James Beard award-winning cookbook “I’m Just Here for the Food”. This is a great cookbook that is also a “how-to” and “why-to” of cooking. Can you say SCIENCE?! Along with the recipe, he shares that “Mr. Dennis” is a euphemism for the family pig.

A Dip for Mr. Dennis
Adapted from Alton Brown’s “I’m Just Here for the Food”

Software:
Target cut of pork
1 tablespoon juniper berries
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
10 whole cloves
1 ½ cups kosher salt (I cut it by half to ¾)
½ cup molasses

Hardware:
Tea ball or paper coffee filter and string
Medium stockpot
2-gallon plastic bucket

Combine spices in tea ball or tie them securely into a paper coffee filter and place in pot with salt and molasses. Add water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Remove tea ball and discard the spices; pour the liquid into the bucket and add the meat. Allow the meat to brine for at least 6 hours or as long as 12 hours. Remove the meat from the pan, pat dry and immediately cook as desired.

Since I was only using about 5 large “ribs” I cut the amount of salt way back and marinated for about 2 hours. I rinsed the meat off before cooking as well. Grill over med-high heat until juices run clear. Lip-smackin’ pork goodness.

Daddy Makes Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Sunday is “Daddy Makes Breakfast” day. Daddy makes “real” breakfast: bacon, toast or English muffins slathered with butter, eggs, French toast or like today, pancakes. A few weeks ago when I bought blueberries, it was blueberry pancakes. Today it’s Chocolate Chip Pancakes. (YES! I AM going to use up these chips this century! Now don’t get me wrong, these chips are adorable, but they have almost no chocolate taste whatsoever.)

I have a big mason jar filled with Alton Brown’s “Instant Pancake Mix” or sometimes DH just uses Bisquick. Hey, I say, as long as you’re making breakfast honey, you can do what-eh-va you want, as long as you clean it up. I generally don’t eat starch for breakfast, so the boys and Daddy chow down on his masterpieces.

The secret to add-ins for pancakes like chips and blueberries is to dole out the batter first and then put the extra ingredients on the uncooked “second side”. When you flip the flapjacks, the add-ins will get incorporated beautifully with no running or clumping. For blueberry pancakes, they’ll stay pancake color and not turn that funny blue-gray color.

You can freeze any leftovers by layering them with waxed paper and then keeping them in a zip top bag. For reheating, I just throw ‘em in the toaster. :)

Eggplant

(cranky voice coming from the direction of the kitchen) "Hey. Hey! Remember ME? I'm the eggplant that you HAD to buy even though nobody likes me but you! Well, sistah, get cooking 'cause I ain't getting any prettier sitting here on the counter looking at you looking at me. The boys are gone to a Braves game and it's just you and me and the Little One who's happy as a clam eating Kraft Mac n Cheese with hot dogs cut up in it. A complete No Risk situation. What are you waiting for? Get on with it, girl!"

Sigh. So here I go with the eggplant. I love eggplant. Always have. I loved it even more when I got the full scoop on it on Food Network. Ah, I remember like it was yesterday.... (insert sparkly fade out to black here) ... January 2002: my very first Good Eats episode. DH went out to the store for something one evening and I actually got to sneak in and watch TV, fiendishly changing the channel from some blah blah talking head political blah blah blah station to Food Network. I found Good Eats. Alton was finessing eggplants. I was hooked at first sight. MacGyver meets Julia Child meets Einstein meets Thomas Dolby. le sigh. When my unwitting DH returned, there I am, on the sofa, in his spot, holding the remote and looking completely enthralled but in a semi-crazed way. Excitedly, I blurted out "Did you know that there are Boy eggplants and Girl eggplants and that you can tell the difference between them?" Wordlessly, and never taking his eyes off me, he slowly backed out of the room. I don't think he's ever left the house at night since. That'll teach ya. Anyway, I'll save my AB ramblings for other posts.

No purging the eggplant (with salt) tonight, as I'm short on time so I'm pretty sure I need another tactic in order to salvage this poor pod. I read on RecipeZaar or somewhere (Sorry, I'll post the link when I find it again) about preparing eggplant without salting or frying the heck out of it in greasy oil. I decided to try it since I didn't have anyone to ruin make this for but me. It turned out ok. Yeah, just ok. I used premade sauce since I didn't have any homemade stashed in the freezer. I think that the jarred stuff was too... bright? Too young? Is that a valid description? When I think of eggplant parm, I think deep, rich and simmered with melded flavors and all gooey with cheese. This was, well, not that. It was bright and cheerful. Good qualities in girl scouts, sunflowers and kindergarten teachers, but not eggplant parm. I am not daunted though as I will go back to Square One and make my own sauce or follow AB's recipe for Eggplant Pasta the next time a lone eggplant talks it's way into my cart, as the basic prep technique here was surprisingly successful but the sauce blew it. (Note: next day, The Messy One had a bite and sort of liked it. Of course he did. Like Mikey, he eats almost everything. He is not however, like THAT Mikey - yet.)

(Baked) Eggplant Parmesan

Ingredients
1 c Parmesan cheese, grated
1 lg Eggplant, peeled and cut into 1/2" rounds
1 c Bread crumbs
Mayonnaise for coating
1 1/2 c Tomato sauce, (homemade is best)
8 oz Mozzarella cheese, shredded

Instructions
Preheat oven to 425. Brush both sides of the eggplant rounds with a thin layer of mayonnaise. Combine 3/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese with the breadcrumbs in a shallow pan, and press the eggplant slices into it, both sides, pressing firmly to be sure the crumbs adhere well. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray (or on a silicone mat) and bake for 10 minutes, flip to other side and bake for another 10 minutes or until tops are golden brown. Remove from oven, take slices and lay them in a 9x13 casserole dish lightly sprayed with cooking spray. Overlap them so the whole bottom is covered. Add tomato sauce, top with mozzarella and the remaining Parmesan cheese. Lower heat and bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until cheese melts.