Finding Ramsay

Beef and Guinness Pie

The centerpiece of any trip I take to London is a trip to the Newman’s Arms Pub to have one of their savory pies. Today I decided it was time to try and make one.

All the ingredients cost only about $20, minus the upfront cost of a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, and it allowed me to make three pies (ate one immediately and froze the other two).

Cut the beef into finer cubes, and dusted in a flour, pink salt and pepper mixture.

Browning the beef

The stew, made of beef cubes, Guinness, tomato paste, onion, garlic, beef stock, carrots and thyme.

Reduced down for about an one and three quarter hours and put into pie pots to cool and congeal.

Next, after thawing out the puff pastry, I cut it in quarters and stretched it over the tops of the pie tins, adding a bit of egg wash, and put in the freezer for 15 minutes to harden the dough top.

After 20 minutes, magic took its course…

Golden brown and flaky as hell.

This recipe was not only cheap and fairly simple, but the results were incredible, it transported me right back to No. 23 Rathbone street and the taste of pies from one of the best pubs in London. 

Beef and Guinness Pie

Ingredients

• 2 pounds boneless beef chuck, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 3 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 cup beef broth
• 1 cup Guinness or other Irish stout
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons drained brined green peppercorns, coarsely chopped
• 2 fresh thyme sprigs
• Rough puff pastry dough
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon water

Directions

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.

Pat beef dry. Stir together flour, salt, and pepper in a shallow dish. Add beef, turning to coat, then shake off excess and transfer to a plate. Heat oil in a wide 5- to 6-quart ovenproof heavy pot over moderately high heat until just smoking, then brown meat in 3 batches, turning occasionally, about 5 minutes per batch, transferring to a bowl.

Add onion, garlic, and water to pot and cook, scraping up any brown bits from bottom of pot and stirring frequently, until onion is softened, about 5 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Stir in beef with any juices accumulated in bowl, broth, beer, Worcestershire sauce, peppercorns, and thyme and bring to a simmer, then cover and transfer to oven. Braise until beef is very tender and sauce is thickened, about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. Discard thyme and cool stew completely, uncovered, about 30 minutes. (If stew is warm while assembling pies, it will melt uncooked pastry top.)

Put a shallow baking pan on middle rack of oven and increase oven temperature to 425°F.

Divide cooled stew among bowls (they won’t be completely full). Roll out pastry dough on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin into a 13-inch square, about 1/8 inch thick. Trim edges and cut dough into quarters. Stir together egg and water and brush a 1-inch border of egg wash around each square. Invert 1 square over each bowl and drape, pressing sides lightly to help adhere. Brush pastry tops with some of remaining egg wash and freeze 15 minutes to thoroughly chill dough.

Bake pies in preheated shallow baking pan until pastry is puffed and golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 400°F and bake 5 minutes more to fully cook dough.

Source: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Beef-and-Guinness-Pie-230754

21-Day Aged Steak, Red Wine Shallot Reduction, Russian Skillet Fries

I love a well cooked steak, and when a friend of mine who was a chef taught me how to properly cook a steak in a cast iron pan, my world changed forever. As you can no doubt tell by this blog, I’ve finally learned how to make reductions and am using them a lot. This recipe had a very simple wine and shallot reduction made in the pan the steak was cooked in as it rests.

Whole Foods now stocks aged steaks, something I’ve never cooked but have torn apart at steakhouses for years, needless to say I was excited to sear this baby up.

I had recently stumbled upon Gordon Ramsay’s video for how to properly cook a steak, so I used some of his techniques including basting it with a butter wash when it was nearly done and slicing it diagonally and thick. Really keeps the juice in to and gives it a buttery steakhouse feel to boot.

Per an earlier post, I finally broke down and bought a Slap Chop and used it to mince a few shallots. Turns out that so far it works great and is easy to clean. You win this one Vince.

After I seared off the steak, I set it aside to rest while I made the Russian Skillet Fries. I first learned you could make delicious fries in a pan without any real frying from my wonderful fiancee Alexandra, and I called her up to get the skinny on how to make these, it was really simple and the result was terrific.

After cutting the fries into thin cubes (about 3mm square), Alex told me to parboil them for about 2 minutes, and then drop them in a wide pan with a base of oil thick enough to cover the bottom. The pan should be hot enough that the oil is smoking a little bit.

This process requires turning all the fries delicately with a spatula for about eight minutes until they look a little bubbly and brown on the outside. After sprinkling with sea salt they were on par with delicious Belgian fries:

Finally, I used the hot pan that cooked the steak, sizzled some shallots for about 30 seconds and added in some red wine.

After boiling that off a bit I added in some chicken stock (I was out of beef stock) and reduced until it was nearly a syrup and poured over the sliced steak:

The cost of ingredients was almost nothing (other than the cost of the steak which was $17) and the fries only cost one potato and the result was terrific, fresh and dripping with goodness.

Alex’s Skillet Fries

Ingredients

Several Russet Potatoes

Two tablespoons of cooking oil (vegetable or olive will work)

Directions

1. Cut the potatoes into thin McDonalds sized strips.

2. Drop in salted boiling water for two minutes, then scoop out and put on paper towels to dry them before pan frying.

2. Drop in a wide pan with hot oil around the smoking point.

3. Let brown for a few minutes, turn, repeat.

4. When they look good to you, put them in some paper towels to soak up the oil, let sit for a few minutes and dust with some coarse sea salt.

21-Day Aged Steak, Red Wine Shallot Reduction

Ingredients

Steak Preparation

21-Day Aged Steak (12 - 16 ounce steak (3/4 - 1 inch thick)
1 tablespoon dried herbs (Herbs de Provences blend: rosemary, thyme, savory)
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Red Wine Reduction Sauce
2 shallots, minced
1/4 cup fruity red wine
1/2 cup beef stock
Dash sea salt
Dash black pepper
2 drops liquid Stevia or 1 teaspoon agave nectar or sugar

Garnish
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Directions

On a large plate, season the steak well with salt and pepper, let rest at room temperature for several minutes.

Heat a large skillet to medium heat. When it’s hot, lay the steak in the pan (no need to add more oil) and sear 3-4 minutes on each side, depending upon how rare you’d like your steak. Remove the steak to a plate and let sit 5 minutes before slicing.

Add the shallots to the hot pan and cook just 30 seconds. Add the wine, scraping the little bits, called fond, from the bottom of the pan. Simmer the wine for 2-3 minutes, until it has reduced by a third.

Add the stock and cook another 5-7 minutes, until the sauce has reduced by a third to a half. Stir in the salt, pepper and sweetener. Taste, adding more seasonings, if needed, to round out the flavors.

Spoon some sauce over the steak and drizzle with a bit of fresh, raw olive oil. Drop just a touch of balsamic over the top to bring out the flavors of the wine and meat. Serve warm.

Veal Meatballs, Chipotle Marinara

Seeing veal meatballs on a menu is always a ‘must try’ in my life, so I figured it was time to see what making them myself entailed, and found this recipe with a smokey twist which got me excited to try them right away.

Combining the ingredients to form some loose meatballs, around the size of a squash ball.

After about 14 minutes in the oven, they had gotten juicy and browned…

While the meatballs were in the oven, I started making the sauce which after a while of chopping onions and mincing bacon and garlic definitely took the brunt of the work in the recipe. After dumping in the San Marzano tomatoes and chipotles, it immediately came together and smelled great.

Simmering down the sauce for about 10 minutes to thicken it.

Plating and enjoying, I added in a few teaspoons of the Adobo sauce and it gave the dish a bit of a smokey spice which was perfect with the marinara back. Super cheap to make, I think it cost about $10 in ingredients and there were enough meatballs for about 4 people.

Veal Meatballs, Chipotle Marinara

Ingredients

   * 2 slices bacon, minced
   * 2 garlic cloves, minced
   * 2 large eggs
   * 1/2 cup bread crumbs
   * 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
   * 1 1/2 pounds ground pork
   * 2 teaspoons dried oregano or finely chopped fresh mint
   * 1-2 teaspoons chipotle powder (or a couple teaspoons of adobo sauce)

Sauce

   * 2 Tbsp olive oil
   * 1 medium onion, chopped, about 1 cup
   * 3 garlic cloves, minced
   * 1-3 canned chipotles in adobo, minced fine and sauce reserved
   * 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes (preferably fire-roasted)
   * 1 teaspoon dried oregano
   * 1/2 cup beef or chicken broth

Method

1 Preheat oven to 400°F. Mix all the meatball ingredients together in a large bowl and mix well with your clean hands for a minute or two. You want the mixture to be well integrated, but you don’t want to overwork it or the meatballs will be tough.

2 With wet hands or an ice cream scoop, form meat into about 16 plum-size balls and space them out in a 13-by-9-inch baking dish, or, if you have one, a mini-muffin tin. Bake until lightly browned, about 15 minutes.

3 While meatballs bake, heat the olive oil in a sauté pan over medium-high heat and sauté the onions until they just start to brown. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute, then add the minced chipotles, the can of tomatoes, oregano or mint, and beef broth. Mix well and add salt to taste. If you want more chipotle flavor, add the reserved chipotle sauce spoonful by spoonful, mixing and tasting between spoonfuls. Boil the sauce uncovered as the meatballs cook.

4 When meatballs are ready, put them into the sauce and toss to coat. If the sauce is too thin for your taste, continue to boil it down for a few minutes. Otherwise, serve with rice, tortillas or polenta. Garnish with cilantro to serve.

Honey Mead Braised Short Ribs

Two things converged to make me try this recipe:

1. How amazing the pressure cooker I bought to make the Braised Lamb Shank Rogan Josh turned out and-

2. I bought a bottle of local honey mead in the Somerset region of England last time I was out there and wanted a reason to use it.

This recipe was really straightforward, started off by slicing up my short rib, which didn’t have any bones in it and braised it for about five minutes, turning it a lot to get it nice and browned.

I also finally broke down and watched a youtube video on how to dice and onion (there’s no such thing as a stupid question…right guys?).

After I browned all the chunks of beef. Looked like this:

Everything went into my pressure cooker for 45 minutes.

The result:

After some testing and tasting with a fork, it seemed everything was thoroughly moist and ready to fall apart, swimming in a half inch of thick gooey goodness.

I think next time I may only cook it for about 35 minutes instead (and/or figure out if my pressure cooker is doing something wonky) but it was delicious nonetheless and rather cheap. Between the meat, some veg, and the few other items needed this yielded enough for 2-3 people for $20.

Honey Mead Braised Short Ribs

   * 3 lbs beef chuck beef short ribs
   * 1 tablespoon light olive oil
   * 1 3/4 cups beef broth or 1 3/4 cups stock
   * 1/2 cup Honey Mead (sweet)
   * 1 sweet onion
   * 4 garlic cloves
   * 2 tablespoons honey
   * 2 tablespoons brown sugar
   * 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
   * 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

1. Heat oil in heavy pan then brown short ribs ( cut up ) in the oil.

2. Put short ribs in pressure cooker.

3. Put in pressure cooker red wine, beef broth, onion (sliced thick), Garlic (chopped), honey, brown sugar, salt and pepper.

4. Bring to high pressure.

5. Cook at high pressure for one hour.

6. Turn off and let steam come down naturally — do not open cooker until steam is completely released.

7. Serve.

Pumpkin & Pancetta Risotto

So this was my first time making risotto, and “one arm that’ll never work again” later, I see what all the fuss is about. I picked up the recipe from the book “A Chef for all Seasons” by the eponymous blog title author and master of life, Gordon Ramsay.

I’d like to acknowledge what an idiot I am in that it took me about 5 minutes to dice a shallot and I think I may be the kind of sap that needs to buy a Slap Chop® (relevant). Seriously, I need help.

Cubing up the small pie pumpkin I bought was no easy task either. It was hard to break through and even harder to detatch the meat from the candy hard skin. As the sort of person who throws a pumpkin carving party and buys trophys for the event (seriously) it feels great to start carving a pumpkin as the fall air moves in. However this small pie pumpkin was a different animal altogether and was really difficult to work through. I had to use my heavy duty pumpkin carving saw (yes, I have several sets of pumpkin tools) which finally made me able to get the pumpkin cut apart.

After prepping everything, I sauteed the pumpkin and shallots for a while.

Put the Arborio rice in and started the journey of the stir…

After about 10 minutes

After about 25 minutes and after adding the parmigiana and marscapone

Finally plated and ready to serve. My arm could barely lift my heavy All Clad copper bottom pan to spoon it in.

The texture was wonderful and the pancetta and pumpkin really lifted the dish, while subtly imbuing their own flavors. Definitely understand why risotto would truly test a chef and why its so rare that you see it on menus except for in small portions.

Pumpkin & Pancetta Risotto (from “A Chef for all Seasons” by Gordon Ramsay)
   * 1/3 cup chopped pancetta
   * 2 to 2 1/2 cups light chicken stock
   * 2 large shallots, chopped
   * 1 pound pumpkin flesh, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 4 cups)
   * 3 tablespoons olive oil
   * Scant 1 cup risotto (Carnaroli, Arborio, or Vialone Nano)
   * 1/2 cup dry white wine
   * 2 tablespoons mascarpone
   * 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
   * Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Heat a dry non-stick frying pan and, when hot, fry the pancetta until browned and crisp. Drain and set aside.

2. Heat the stock to a gentle simmer in a saucepan. In a large saucepan, gently saute the shallots and pumpkin in the oil for about 5 minutes.

3. Stir in the rice and cook for a further 2 minutes to toast the grains. Pour in the wine and cook until reduced right down.

4. Now pour in one-fourth of the stock and stir well. Cook gently until the liquid has been absorbed, then stir in another ladleful of stock. Continue cooking and stirring, gradually adding the stock, until the rice grains are just tender and the risotto is creamy. The whole process should take about 15 minutes.

5. About 2 minutes before the end of cooking, stir in the pancetta, mascarpone, and half the Parmesan. Check the seasoning, then serve in warm bowls, sprinkled with the remaining Parmesan.

Braised Lamb Shank ‘Rogan Josh’

As a huge fan of lamb shanks, I came across this recipe that combines my favorite preparation of lamb, with my favorite English style curry: the Rogan Josh.

Rogan Josh is something of a cross between a Vindaloo and a Masala, spicy and ruddy, but creamy and complex.

In my pursuit of the ability to cook lamb shanks, I knew I had to have a pressure cooker as I’m far too impatient for 3 hour stewing times. I grabbed a Denmark 6L pressure cooker from Bed, Bath and Beyond for $19 and hit whole foods for a whole new rack of spices I didn’t yet own (cumin, tumeric and the elusive cardamom).

Browning the shanks first

The mix of tumeric (I bought a spicy one), coriander and curry powder.

Bay leaves, cinnamon and cardamom.

This is what the shanks looked like after the initial browning which took about 5 minutes each with a lot of turning. I could have gotten them darker but I didn’t want to risk cooking the shanks too much.

The pressure cooker set up and three steps into the recipe, I snapped down the cover, turned up the heat and it began to shoot hot steam out of its blow hole.

I was worried that after watching the pressure cooker do its thing for a while, and having had no prior experience before, that something was wrong or that I needed to be fiddling with the heat the whole time. Everything I read online and in the manual indicated that the loose steam valve at the top would rock back and forth once the right temperature was achieved, but it never budged. It almost seemed too heavy to be moved by the steam alone. Meanwhile, the ‘safety hole’ that was meant to close and lock in the pressure blew out steam the whole time.

I decided that I needed to let it do its thing and see what happened. After about 45 minutes, the whole time the cooker over high heat, I cut the heat, released the steam and nervously removed the top for fear it would fire like a cannon, to reveal what I’d been working for…

Three gorgeous lamb shanks, wonderfully cooked and aromatic, in about an inch of an intoxicating curry base.

After removing the lamb shanks, I simmered the curry for a few minutes and then folded in a tub of Fage Total strained yogurt, bringing the curry to life and giving it the tart backing it needed to turn the volume down on the spice and allow all of the flavors to equalize and layer.

Finally, I heated up some store bought Naan bread (which always feel a bit lacking, next time I’ll get some fresh naan from the local indian restaurant), and plated each shank on top, pouring the curry over the top. Having the naan on the bottom was great in that as the fork went through the tender meat, you pick up a bite of curry soaked naan at the bottom, for a well balanced bite. I wish I had some cilantro to put on top to make it look a bit classier, but I forgot to get it at the store :(

So overall, had a great meal that fed three people, total cost to make it again now that I have the equipment and spices would probably only be about $10 a portion and it took about 1.5 hours total to make it. See below for the recipe!

Braised Lamb Shank ‘Rogan Josh’

• a big sized pressure cooker (or a dutch oven if you prefer to slow cook it)
• 2  two inch cubes ginger, peeled, coarsely chopped
• 8 cloves garlic
• water or stock – lamb stock preferably (enough to come halfway up the shanks – 2 or 3 cups)
• veggie or olive oil
• 2 lbs worth of lamb shanks (about 2-4)
• 10 pods of cardamom
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 cloves
• 10 peppercorns
• 1 inch piece of cinnamon
• 2 onions, peeled and sliced or chopped (we sliced ours to give the sauce a bit of body, but chopping them will help them melt into the sauce)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 4 teaspoons paprika mixed with 1 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 1 hot pepper, chopped (optional)
• salt to taste
• 6 tablespoons yogurt (or more depending on how creamy you want it)

What to do:

1. In a blender or food processor add garlic, ginger and some water together to create a paste.  Set aside.
2. In the pressure cooker, brown the meat on all sides.  Remove from pan and add cardamom, bay, cloves, peppercorns and cinnamon and stir for a few minutes until fragrant.  Add onions (and optional hot pepper) and cook for 30 seconds to get a bit of color on them.
3. Add garlic/ginger paste and stir – cook for 20 seconds or so.
4. Add coriander, cumin and paprika – stir a bit.  Add a ladle of stock to the pressure cooker and scrape up the browned bits on the bottom.
5. Now add the browned shanks back to the pressure cooker, nestling them in as much as possible. Add stock to come up about halfway up the shanks.  They do not need to be covered with liquid but there should be about 2 cups in there.
6. Cover pressure cooker and cook for 40 minutes (0r if you cook in dutch oven, give it about 1 1/2 to 2 hours in a 400 degree oven).
7. Open the pressure cooker when appropriate and remove the shanks – allow to sit on another plate.  Check the liquid level in the pot.  If it looks a bit too thin, with too much liquid and not enough body, allow it to simmer/boil down so it thickens.   When it is thick enough, kill the heat and add the yogurt.  Stir. Add some salt to taste.