Beef sirloin in a garlicky tomato sauce

On a Saturday, a while back, I was vacillating on what to make for dinner.  I had a sirloin roast. At first I was thinking of making a huge batch of pasties out of it, but then, I decided I wanted to experiment a little.

I had the idea to braise it in red wine, and then, when it is perfectly medium rare, remove the beef and make a garlicky tomato sauce in the roasting pan. I was pleasantly surprised. Here’s how I did this.

4-1/2 lb. sirloin roast

20 garlic cloves

Adobo seasoning

Cajun seasoning

1 branch of rosemary

1 cup of red wine

1/4 lb. sliced shiitake mushrooms

6 oz. can of tomato paste

Fresh thyme

Asiago cheese to grate

Frozen tortellini, or pasta, cooked and drained

Preparation

My sirloin roast came in a netting. If yours does, remove it and place the roast in one of those football shaped blue enamel roasting pans. Hopefully you have one that closely matches the size of the roast. Peel the garlic cloves and place them in the roasting pan around the roast. Season the roast with adobo and cajun seasoning. 

Pour the wine in the roasting pan and add the rosemary branch. Place the covered roasting pan in a 400º oven for about an hour. Cooking time will depend on the shape of the roast as well as the size, so after about a half hour, take temperature readings with an instant read thermometer. Mine was medium rare in about an hour. When you check it with an instant read thermometer, you want to target 120º as the coldest reading. It will continue to cook a little internally, after you remove it.

When the roast is medium rare, remove it to a platter, cover it with foil and keep warm. Remove the rosemary branch, and use one of those immersion blenders to blend the garlic into the cooking liquid. 

Place the roasting pan on the stove and start it simmering. Add the mushrooms and let those simmer about five minutes until they soften. Start stirring in, a little at a time, the tomato paste. Mine worked perfectly with the paste being just the right amount to thicken the sauce. If necessary, you can adjust the thickness with a little water or broth. Once you have an nice tomato gravy, snip a little thyme over the simmering sauce and stir. 

Serving

Slice the beef very thin and pile the slices on a plate. Place some cheese tortellini or pasta next to the meat. Smother both with lots of the tomato sauce. Add some seared broccoli and cauliflower. Grate some asiago cheese over everything. Now add some homemade bread and butter, a plate of kalamata olives and open a bottle of Italian red. 

Most sane people would have stopped after one huge serving. I wasn’t able to. I filled my plate a second time. After dinner I waddled to the couch to read.

Eggplant lasagna in a meat sauce

As you can probably guess, I am a big fan of pasta. One of my favorite pastas to make is lasagna. Here is a lasagna I made one day when my neighbors came over for dinner. 

This is an eggplant lasagna in a meat sauce. Serving lasagna, smothered in meat sauce is an idea I got from a recent visit to a restaurant. Here’s how I put this together.

Sauce

Olive oil

1 lb. ground beef

1 onion, diced

2 stalks of celery, diced

1 jalapeño, diced

1 tsp. basil

1 tsp. thyme

1 tsp. marjoram

1 tsp. oregano

1 bay leaf

1 cup of red wine

6 cloves of garlic, smashed and minced

1 28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes

1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes

And Then

6 cloves of garlic, smashed and minced

1 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes

Lasagna

4 strips of bacon

Olive oil

1 eggplant, sliced fairly thin

1 lb. of mozzarella cheese

1 lb. of lasagna noodles, uncooked

1/2 cup of red wine

Cajun seasoning

Preparation

Start with the sauce by heating a large dutch oven. Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom and then add the ground beef. Stir and when the beef loses most of its pink color, add the onion, celery and jalapeño. Stir and then add the basil, thyme, marjoram, oregano and bay leaf. Stir to mix and let that sweat down for about ten minutes. 

Add the garlic and stir. After a couple of minutes, add the wine. Bring that to a boil and let it reduce by half. Add the San Marzano tomatoes and break them up with a knife and fork. Add the can of crushed tomatoes and stir. Let that simmer gently for ten minutes. Turn off the heat and keep warm. 

Take a large cast iron skillet and cook the bacon until crisp. Save the bacon. Don’t eat it! Cook the egg plant slices, a few at a time, in the bacon fat until tender. Now very soon the bacon fat will disappear. When that happens, add olive oil. Once all of the eggplant slices are tender, rinse out the cast iron pan because now you will use that to hold the lasagna. 

Place a thin layer of the sauce in the cast iron pan. Place a layer of the uncooked lasagna noodles over the sauce. Break some up to cover the areas that the whole pasta can’t cover. Place the eggplant over the pasta and use it all. Add another layer of sauce over the eggplant and then the bacon and a layer of pasta. Add a layer of sauce and then a layer of cheese. Add a final layer of pasta, a heavy layer of sauce and then a real thick layer of cheese. Pour the half cup of wine over the lasagna and sprinkle it with cajun seasoning. 

Place the cast iron pan of lasagna on a baking sheet to catch anything that bubbles over. Bake the lasagna in a 380º oven for about an hour until the cheese is very brown on top. Let it set up for about fifteen minutes while you doctor up the remaining sauce. 

Heat the leftover sauce to a simmer. Add the garlic and stir. Add the second can of San Marzano tomatoes and break them up with a knife and fork. Let that simmer gently for about ten minutes. 

Serving

Serve large slices of lasagna smothered in the sauce. We also had homemade bread, sausage and peppers, seared broccoli, red wine from Italy and a fruit salad for dessert. Life is good! 

Spicy basil chicken

It was about a year ago, when I drove my son back to school up in Marquette, MI. I was supposed to come home that Sunday, but the weather reports made me reconsider. The forecast was for 10-12 inches of snow, with 25-35 mph winds. Nope, I wasn’t going to make a 7-hour drive in that!

I ended up spending the snowy day in Marquette. That afternoon, my son and I went out to dinner, and I ordered Spicy Basil Duck, and I really enjoyed it. 

When I arrived home the next day, I was thinking about that meal, I found I had most the ingredients. I wanted to see if I could come close to what I had in the restaurant. I didn’t have duck, but I did have some chicken breast. I also didn’t have any fresh basil, so I used dry. Still, it didn’t come out bad. Here’s what I did.

Olive oil

1 cup of chopped chicken breast

Red pepper flakes

1 tsp. dry basil

2 medium onions, cut into wedges

1-1/2 cups sliced mushrooms

1 red bell pepper, cut into strips

4 serrano peppers, sliced

5 cloves of garlic, smashed and minced

1 tbs. fis sauce

2 tbs. stir fry sauce

2 limes, cut into wedges

Preparation

Heat a large wok or cast iron fry pan until very hot. Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom. Add the chicken and sprinkle on the basil and a bunch of red pepper flakes. Stir until the chicken looses its raw color. Add the onions and stir. 

Stir the onions until they soften and add the mushrooms. Stir and let that cook for a couple minutes. Add the bell pepper and the serrano peppers. Stir for a couple of minutes. Add the garlic and sprinkle on the fish sauce. Now stir in the stir fry sauce. Squeeze on the juice from the lime wedges and stir. When it is all sizzling, sprinkle on a little more basil, turn off the heat and serve. 

Serving

To serve this improvised Thai dish, simply pile a bunch of steamed rice on a plate. Place a huge pile of this chicken stir fry next to the rice. Dribble a little soy sauce over the rice. Slice some homemade bread and pour a glass of chilled Riesling wine. 

I still want to try this with lots of fresh basil, and some duck breast, but, all in all, it came out pretty good.

Broiled tomatoes

A few days back, I made some pasties for dinner. I wanted something to have with them, and I noticed that I had a bunch of tomatoes on the counter. Hmm. Why not just keep it simple, I thought, and broil them. Here’s what I did.

5 Roma tomatoes

Extra virgin olive oil

Cajun seasoning

1 clove of garlic

Several sprigs of fresh thyme

Fresh ground white pepper

Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Preparation

Pre-heat the oven to 350º (or bake pasties in the oven before fixing these tomatoes). Slice the tomatoes into thirds lengthwise and place them on a cast iron fry pan. Pour olive oil - the very best you have - over the top of each tomato slice. Be generous. 

Mince the garlic clove as finely as you can and sprinkle the garlic over the tomato slices. Season the tomatoes with a sprinkle of cajun seasoning and then snip the thyme with scissors all over the tomatoes. Grind some white pepper over the top of everything. 

When the oven is at 350º (or when the pasties are hot and ready to eat) turn the oven off and turn the broiler on high. Place the tomatoes under the broiler and close the oven door. You want them to bake and broil at the same time. Let them broil until the tops of the tomatoes are starting to char and they are sizzling in the pan. Sprinkle on some freshly grated parmesan cheese and serve immediately. 

Serving

You can serve these tomatoes alongside just about any meal. I piled mine up next to a large pasty (saving some for my second pasty). Along with that, I opened a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington state. A crisp salad and fresh, warm sliced bread and butter complete the scene. For dessert, I had a little homemade blueberry sorbet. 

Holiday mashed potato and celery root

I remember last Christmas, I was shopping for all the supplies needed for Christmas dinner. When I was checking out, the young lady at the register, about 22, said she was just learning to cook with different ingredients. While she was ringing up my groceries, she kept asking questions like, “What’s this?” and “How do you cook that?” But her biggest curiosity was when she picked up the celery root. “Oh my gosh,” she said, “What is that thing?” 

Well, I admit if you have never seen a celery root, they are strange looking. I told her that I was going to make a special version of mashed potatoes for Christmas dinner. She looked like she had her doubts, as she placed the celery root in the grocery bag. Here’s what I did with it.

1 big nasty looking celery root

5 medium potatoes

1 medium onion

10 cloves of garlic

Water

Sea salt

Olive oil

Butter

Smoked paprika

Preparation

Now, if you never looked at a celery root before, it looks like something out of a science fiction/horror film. It is a big gnarly ball, with some tentacle looking things, all twisted up on the bottom, with lots of dirt and gunk between the appendages. You need to peel it, and have a paring knife to cut any dirty nooks off of it. Once you do, cut it into chunks and put it in a pot. 

Peel the potatoes and add them to the pot. Peel the onion and quarter it. Add that to the pot as well. Peel the garlic cloves and add them to the pot. Now add enough water to cover the vegetables. Add a palmful of salt to the water and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cover the pot. Let it simmer until the celery root is tender when pierced with a fork, about a half hour. 

Drain the vegetables and return them to the pot. Add a splash of your best olive oil and use a potato masher to mash all the vegetables together. Then use the masher with rapid circular motions to beat the vegetables into a smooth, uniform texture. Place them in a serving bowl or leave them it the pot. Add about three pats of butter and sprinkle on some smoked paprika. 

Serving

Serve a big mound of this winter mash on a plate next to pieces of roast duck - a breast and leg quarter. Add lots of gravy to the duck and a little butter to the mash. Now add a big pile of mixed vegetables (you know, the frozen mix - think Green Giant). Slice some fresh homemade bread and open a bottle of Zinfandel and dinner should be set. 

Broiled lamb chops with mushrooms

As many readers already know, I’m an old grouch who lives alone with my two dogs, Squeeky and Camper. My neighbor down the block has a key to my house, and he takes care of things whenever I’m traveling. Sometimes he ‘drops off’ as well. 

My neighbor has developed a habit of stocking my house with beer when I’m out. I’ll come home and find a case of beer there, which wasn’t there when I left in the morning. He likes to keep a good supply of beer at my house, so he can escape, and have a couple, away from the watchful eye of his wife.

I remember about a year ago, I was away for the weekend. I drove up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. With Christmas approaching, I offered to drive my son home from college. That Sunday, after I dropped my son off at his mom’s house, I arrived home. I discovered that, not only did my supply of beer increase, but there was a package of large meaty lamb chops in my refrigerator. My neighbor knows I have a real weakness for lamb, and he picked them up for me at the butcher shop. After I called and thanked him, this is how I prepared the lamb chops that night. 

6 giant meaty lamb chops,

Cajun seasoning

Olive oil

Fresh ground white pepper

1/2 lb. sliced shiitake mushrooms

1 cup of white wine

Preparation

Heat a large cast iron fry pan and add enough olive oil to coat the bottom. Season the chops with cajun seasoning on both sides. Place the chops in the cast iron and place them under a hot broiler. 

When the lamb starts to char on top, remove the pan. Turn the chops over and add the mushrooms around the chops. Return to the broiler. When there is a nice char on the chops, turn them over again and stir the mushrooms as you do. Return the chops to the broiler for a final minute or so until everything is sizzling. 

Set the chops on a serving platter and add the wine to the pan. Bring that to a boil, an stir, scraping up anything that has stuck to the pan. Let the wine simmer for a couple minutes, to reduce, and you are ready to serve.

Serving

Serve these sizzling chops on a plate and smother them with mushrooms. Add a big piled of steamed wild rice and then a huge pile of broccoli seared with onions. Drizzle some of the leftover wine in the pan, over the wild rice, and then sprinkle a touch of soy sauce over the rice. 

I’d start the meal off with a crisp salad. I also recommend setting out a bowl of mixed Italian olives. Finally, I’d open a good bottle of Italian red wine and sit down to your feast! 

A quick pasta to go with sausage and peppers

I was going trough my recipes the other day, and I found my notes for sausage and peppers. After reading it I was in the mood for some all day. I eventually caved in, and went to the local little Italian grocery to pick up some sausage and peppers. Their homemade sausage is still as good as ever. 

Mid afternoon, I couldn’t wait any longer, and I started cooking the sausage, peppers and garlic. Then I heated up more garlic and oil for the pasta. When I sat down, I thought I’d eat about half of it. I was wrong. My eyes were smaller than my stomach. I ate the whole mess. Here’s how I put it together. 

Olive oil, use the good stuff

1 lb. Italian sausage

2 large bell peppers

Lots of garlic

Red pepper flakes

1 lb. Italian egg pasta, one of those funny shaped rolled pastas

Salted water to cook pasta

1 cup of fresh grated parmesan cheese, plus a little extra

3/4 cup of reserved pasta water

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350º. Heat a large cast iron fry pan over medium heat. Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom and then add the sausage. If it is in one ‘rope’, uncoil it a little so it is evenly spread out in the pan. Let that sear while you cut up the bell peppers (into bite-sized pieces). When the first pepper is cut up, turn the sausage over. 

After both sides of the sausage are seared, take a knife and fork and cut the sausage into roughly one inch lengths. Stir and add the peppers. While that’s on the stove, peel, smash and mince four cloves of garlic. Put the salted pasta water on to boil. When the peppers are starting to soften, add the garlic. Stir well and put the pan in the oven, on the top shelf. 

Take a small sauce pan and add about an inch of your best olive oil (roughly about three quarters of a cup). Heat that over medium heat. Smash and mince about four garlic cloves and add those to the oil with some red pepper flakes. If you’re like me, add a lot of red pepper flakes. If you are a little wimpy, add less. Once the garlic is sizzling, turn the heat off and swirl the oil until the sizzling stops. Set that aside. 

When the pasta water is boiling, add the pasta, and a dribble of olive oil, to the water. Cook the pasta until it is just cooked through, so it still has a little chewiness to it. Save 3⁄4 of a cup of the pasta water. Drain the pasta and place it in a bowl. Add the oil and garlic to the pasta and stir. Now stir in one cup of grated parmesan cheese and add the reserved pasta water. Stir well. Remove the sausage and peppers from the oven and add a bunch of parmesan to that as well. 

Serving

Take a large mound of the pasta and place it on a plate. Now scoop on lots of the sausage and peppers. Make sure you get lots of garlic too. Sprinkle on lots of grated parmesan and maybe a little fresh ground white pepper. Now, set out a bowl of carrot sticks, a bowl of kalamata olives, and slice some fresh baked homemade bread. Pour a bottle of your favorite Italian red wine and your set to feast. For goodness sakes, go back for seconds. It’s good for you!