A braised stew of chuck and bacon. A dutch oven or heavy, oven-proof pot is needed.
4 servings
Preheat oven to 300℉.
Pour the cook ½ cup of wine.
Cut the roast into 2 inch cubes. Put beef in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper.
Peel onions and quarter. Put in medium bowl.
Clean carrots and halve lengthwise. Put in medium bowl.
Peel all garlic. Smash all garlic and roughly chop. Add 7 cloves to carrots. Keep 1 clove aside.
Cut bacon crosswise into 1 inch pieces.
Heat dutch oven over medium heat. Cook bacon, stirring often until crisp. Keep bacon fat in pot, move bacon to a large bowl.
Raise heat to medium-high. Add beef to pot in flat, even layer. Brown beef well on one side. Flip cubes and brown beef well on the other side. Add beef to bacon.
Lower heat to medium. Add onions, cut-side down, to pot. Brown on one side until onions are golden-brown. Flip onions and brown on other side until onions are golden-brown.
Add carrots, garlic, thyme, and miso to pot with onions. Season with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until garlic begins to turn golden-brown.
Sprinkle flour into the pot evenly. Stir the pot until everything inside is evenly coated.
Add the remaining wine to the pot. Scrape the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Simmer until you can no longer smell the spirit of the wine.
Add beef and bacon to pot. If the meat is not covered with wine, add water until the meat is covered. Return the pot to a simmer, then cover. Bake the pot in the oven for 1½ hours.
Return the pot to low-medium heat and cover. Cook until beef is very tender, roughly ½ - 1 hour.
Ladle stew into a bowl. Rub slices of crusty bread with remaining clove of garlic. Serve with bread.
This is a variation on the grilled chicken recipe from a famous Brooklyn eatery: Bernie’s Restaurant
Per dozen-weight of chicken or turkey
Spatchcock a whole chicken.
Mix the dry rub ingredients together in a small bowl.
Dry-brine the bird with the rub for at least 12 hours.
Slice the chiles thinly.
Mix chiles, vinegar, sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and salt for sauce in a medium bowl.
Ready a charcoal grill. Oil the grilling grate lightly. Place your hand 1 foot above the coals, palm down. You should aim to keep your hand in the heat for 8-12 seconds. Keep this temperature throughout the cook; set the grate to this height.
Grill the bird with legs facing the flames, skin up, and cover. Baste the bird with the vinegar sauce every 20 minutes.
Check the temperature of the bird after 1 hour and 20 minutes. Grill until the meat reaches these temperatures: 160℉ in the thickest part of the thigh and 140℉ in the breast.
Baste the bird once more, then flip over and bring close to the heat. Char the skin: grill until skin is crispy, roughly 8 minutes.
Move off grill and rest on cutting board for 20 minutes.
Put remaining sauce into a thick-bottomed sauce pan and heat over medium-high heat. Simmer sauce in pan. Add the 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Stir until the butter is melted and mixed in the sauce. Thicken the sauce.
Portion the bird into parts and slice. Spoon the sauce over the bird before serving.
These are bastardized carnitas. Traditional carnitas are usually tenderized in lard; a big pork confit. Since a large amount of lard can be hard to come by, I make this beer-braised version. Carnitas are commonly served up in tacos, so here I serve mine in homemade flour tortillas with traditional garnish.
I recommend using Ancho over fresh Poblano for their roasted flavor.
8 servings
Boil 2 cups of water.
Preheat oven to 350℉
Stem and seed all chiles.
Halve the onion and then thinly slice.
Chop the garlic roughly.
Put chiles in a medium bowl. Add enough boiling water to cover chiles and set a small plate on bowl to keep chiles under water. Soak chiles until softened, about ½ hour. Drain the bowl, keeping 1 cup of soaking water.
Put the chiles, sugar, lime juice, and ¼ cup of the saved soaking water into a blender. Blend the chile mixture into a smooth paste, adding soaking water as needed.
Season the pork shoulder generously with salt and pepper. Rub the paste over the pork evenly.
Heat oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, bay leaves, oregano, coriander, cumin, and allspice. Cook, stirring often until onion is soft, roughly 8 min. Add beer and bring to a boil. Add pork to pot and cover. Move pot to oven.
Bake pot in oven until pork is very tender, about 2½ hours.
Move pot to heat and uncover. Simmer over medium, and let the excess braise to cook off, about 1½ hours. Add lime juice to pot when the braise is almost cooked off. Cook until the shoulder has browned. Shred the shoulder using 2 forks.
Serve shredded carnitas in a warm tortilla with cilantro, radish slices, diced onion and tomato.
This is a quick hot and sour soup base. I would recommend you add broth vice water.
4 servings
Slice the garlic cloves thinly.
Peel the ginger, then chop or grate finely.
Slice the mushrooms thinly.
Beat the eggs lightly.
Heat olive oil in a medium pot over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger. Cook, stirring often, until softened and very fragrant. Add 3 cups water or broth.
Mix miso and 2 tablespoons of water in a small bowl.
Add miso, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil and pepper to pot. Heat to medium-high and simmer. Keep pot at simmer and cook until flavors come together.
Add mushrooms and peas and cook until crisp-tender. Stir in egg gently and cook until just set, about 30 seconds. Season with salt and turn off heat.
Ladle soup into bowls and sprinkle with more chili if desired.
A spicy but delicious squash dish fit for the center of the table. Use real syrup here, but the quality does not have to be high.
8 servings
Put a rack in the middle of a modern convection oven or in the upper third for a normal oven. Preheat oven to 425℉.
Halve the squash lengthwise and scoop out seeds. Skin the squash and any cut away white pith, but do not cut away deep orange flesh.
Rub the squash with oil and season with salt and pepper. Put in a baking dish large enough to hold the two halves side-by-side.
Slice the chili thinly.
Roast squash until squash is softened. When soft, you should be able to easily stab the squash about ¼ inch with a table fork. This should take roughly a quarter hour.
Heat a small saucepan to medium-high heat. Add chile, maple syrup, butter, and vinegar to small saucepan. Cook the glaze, stirring now and then until thick enough to coat a spoon. You can take the chile out when the glaze is spicy to taste at any time, but do not toss the chile. When the sauce glazes a spoon, heat to very low and to keep glaze warm.
Move squash to a cutting board and let cool. Score the squash halves crosswise using a sharp knife. Cut as deep as you can without slicing all the way through the squash. Move squash back to baking dish, scored sides up. Put bay leaves in between some of the slices (at random). Season with salt and pepper.
Roast squash (more). Baste the squash with the glaze every 10 minutes. Lift any glaze in the dish that is browning using a pastry brush. Roast and glaze until the squash is tender and the glaze is rich and brown. This takes about an hour.
Place the glazed squash onto a platter and top with the reserved chiles.
This is my Dad’s Michigan Sauce. Michigans are a North Country, New York thing. My dad says this recipe is from Otis’s, the original sellers in Plattsburgh. It could be as close to the original ‘sauced’ variation of Michigan sauce as you can get.
I assure you, they are a serious cultural matter and I will fight you if you do not steam them or use red hot franks. I prefer Glazier’s of Malone, New York.
Makes enough sauce for a dozen hot dogs
Heat a large skillet to medium-low heat. Add olive oil and heat evenly. Add chopped or minced onions and sauté until clear. Stir often to avoid caramelization. Strain the oil into a small bowl. Put the onions in a medium bowl.
Take the skillet off the heat. Add the ground beef to the skillet and let rest until the sizzling stops. Heat the skillet to low heat. Brown the meat slowly, pulling it apart to ensure even cooking. Season with salt and pepper.
Boil off excess water when meat is evenly browned. Stew meat slowly in its fat until meat is very tender. Add oil from onions if the meat begins to dry.
Add spices to the meat and mix well. Add seasoning to taste.
Stir in mustard and ketchup and tomato paste. Mix well and continue to stew, stirring now and then. Add onions to meat when the vinegar has cooked out of the mustard. Mix sauce well then take off heat.
Boil hot dogs and steam half-stale, top-loading buns. Add hot dog to bun and top with sauce.
Serve diced white onions under the sauce (buried), on top (with), or without. Top with yellow mustard. Ketchup is forbidden.
A korean braised stew.
When I was little, my mother was a waitress at a Japanese and Korean karaoke bar and restaurant. She would often bring me and let the cooks in the back watch me while she worked. This is a traditional and simple stew I came up with as an homage to the yori girls at Suki’s. It features pork and kimchi.
I make my own stock for the stew, and you should too.
You can make your own kimchi, but that won’t be covered here. Make sure you buy authentic kimchi and get a lot. The funkier it is, the better.
One last note, and the most important: I always adjust the seasoning (usually adding more).
Like Uncle Roger says, “just use feeling”.
4 servings
Serve immediately with rice. Jigae is served communally from the pan.
Use heirloom carrots for a beautiful and delicious dish. You must use real maple syrup.
8 servings
Preheat the oven to 450℉.
Grate the garlic cloves finely.
Cut the carrot tops off, trimming to about ½ inch. Scrub and halve the carrots.
Slice the lemon thinly, then seed the slices.
Mix garlic, oil, maple syrup, harissa, and cumin seeds, in a small bowl.
Toss carrots and lemon with maple glaze in a large roasting pan to coat. Season wih salt and pepper. Roast in the oven, turning now and then until carrots and lemons are caramelized. That should take around 35-40 minutes.
Let the carrots cool to room temperature before serving.
This recipe is inspired by a Los Angeles eatery, Jon & Vinny’s.
4 servings
Dice the shallot small.
Grate the garlic clove finely.
Grate the Parmesan finely.
Chop the basil.
Fill a large pot of with water and salt. Boil the water.
Pour the cook 6 tablespoons of vodka. За тебя!
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add shallot and garlic and cook, stirring often, until soft. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring often, until paste is brick red. Add vodka and cook, stirring often (see a pattern?) until the spirit is cooked out. Add cream and pepper flakes and stir until well blended. Remove from heat.
Cook pasta in pot of boiling salted water, stirring often, until al dente. Drain, keeping 1 cup pasta cooking water. Add pasta to skillet with sauce along with butter and ¼ cup pasta cooking liquid. Raise heat to medium-low. Cook stirring until butter has melted and a thick, glossy sauce has formed. Add more water as needed if sauce starts to dry.
Season with salt and pepper and top with most of the Parmesan, tossing to coat. Divide pasta among bowls, then top with basil, more pepper flake, and more Parmesan.
