Stir-Fried Thai-Style Beef with Chiles and Shallots (MBR)

BEEF AND MARINADE

• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon light brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 2 pounds blade steaks, trimmed

STIR-FRY

• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon Asian chili-garlic paste
• 3 medium garlic cloves, minces or pressed through a garlic press (about 1 tablespoon)
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 3 serrano or jalapeno chiles, halved, seeds and ribs removed, chiles cut crosswise 1/8 inch thick
• 3 medium shallots, quartered lengthwise, and layers separated
• 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, large leave torn into bite-sized pieces
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves [Bought parsley by mistake and used some Thai basil instead.]
• 1/3 cup roughly chopped roasted unsalted peanuts
• Line wedges, for serving

Mise en place.  Steak is marinating.  Sauce ingredients stir together until sugar dissolves.

Browning the beef in batches over high heat.  I got away for a pretty long time without setting the fire alarm, but alas, eventually I lost the war.

Used home-grown and fairly mild Hungarian wax pepper here.  Sauteed with shallots until beginning to soften.

Push everything aside and stir garlic mixed with 1 teaspoon oil in center until fragrant.

Cook everything together until sauce is thickened.

The recipe suggests that half the herbs be stirred in and half used as garnish, but as I was only going to eat this one bowl at a time, I just stirred it all in.
Pretty decent stir-fry.

Charcoal-Grilled Thai-Style Chicken with Spicy Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce (CI)

This is completely unrelated to the recipe I'm featuring in this blog entry, but I didn't exactly want to do a full travel blog entry about the food I ate while on vacation in NYC a couple weeks ago.  Especially now since I have a smartphone and can post pictures and updates right to Facebook these days.
However, for the people I'm not Facebook friends with, this was hands-down the most amazing meal I had in the city that week and also representative of my NEW FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Mission Chinese Food at 154 Orchard St in the Lower East Side.

Picture here is the Beef Heart & Hokkaido Scallop Sashimi (sublime), the ridiculously popular Thrice-Cooked Bacon (ooh, spicy!), and some rye-based cocktail with a name riffing on Twin Peaks.  I assume that's what I had to drink.  They don't list their cocktail menu on the internet.

In other food related ventures over the course of the handful of days I spent in NYC, I ate at Acme, Fatty Crab, M Wells, Hide-Chan Ramen, Tacos Matamoros, and Crif Dogs.  I sipped a few cocktails at PDT and a soju slushie and Momofuku Noodle Bar.  Also drinks at less notable bars.
Anyway, the entry on a recipe from Cook's Illustrated Summer Grilling 2010 issue.

Chicken and Brine

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup table salt [I don't really believe in plain-Jane iodized salt.  I know that kosher salt is not at all a one-to-one swap with table salt, but I use it anyway in brines.]
• 4 split bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, about 12 ounces each
• Disposable aluminum roasting pan   

Dipping Sauce

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1/4 cup juice from 2 limes
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 3 small garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (1 1/2 teaspoons)
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Rub

• 2/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
• 1/4 cup juice from 2 to 3 limes
• 12 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (about 1/4 cup)
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons ground coriander
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for cooking grate.

Brand new grill, brand new chimney starter, and natural hardwood charcoal briquettes.

Sorry, folks, starter fluid and gas grills are for sissies.

The dipping sauce resembles the condiment my parents perpetually make and have on hand in the fridge.  Except instead of red pepper flakes, they use fresh Thai chiles.

I had my parents take home a piece of each part of the resulting food I made, but I figured they didn't have to take any of this sauce home with them.

The rub involved a stupid amount of prep.  I'm really not sure how long exactly it took me to microplane all that garlic, but it was a long-ass time on top of everything else.  Plus I was grill-roasting sweet potatoes in the meantime which meant I dash up and down two flights of stairs every 15 minutes.  Christ, what a pain in the ass.

Brine the breasts for at least 30 minutes but no more than 1 hour.  I've read about the science of brining several times by now, but all I can tell without looking shit up is that there's some sort of hocus-pocus that's provides additional protection against dry poultry or pork.  However, proteins should only be brined for an appropriate amount of time.

A modified two-level fire means that the coals are banked to one half of the grill.  The chicken's first browned on the hot side and ideally left to finish cooking on the cooler side.
The retarded amount of prep and the fact that I had pretty much completely cooked the sweet potatoes by the time I was ready to grill the chicken and also that I have a baby rather than full-size Weber means I was eventually tempted to cook shit on the "hot" side (the coals being pretty spent).  Even taking this short cut, it took much longer than stated in the recipe to get the breasts to register 160 degrees.

It was about 9:30 PM on Saturday night when I was finally ready to eat my first goddamn meal of the day.  I'm sure anything would've tasted terrific after running around all afternoon on empty, but this was really insanely good.  The chicken was so moist and flavorful.
I ate this and subsequent leftovers using only my hands.  So primal.

The Never-Ending-Chicago-Winter Beef Stew

from Stephanie Izard's Girl in the Kitchen

• 3 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
• 3 pounds beef, cubed
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 pineapple, finely diced
• 1 apple, peeled and diced
• 1 pear, peeled anddiced
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 1 quart chicken broth
• One 16-ounce can diced tomatoes
• 3/4 cup fich sauce
• 3/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard [Oops, mine expired]
• 1 tablespoon sambal paste
  

Cutting a pineapple for the first time. Hardly a perfect spiral but a good first attempt.


Mise.


Browning the beef.


It would've been painstaking to brown the beef well (and the recipe didn't call for it anyway). I knew the recipe would have a 4 hour braise.


Sweat the onion and garlic.


Stir in the fruit and wine and decrease the liquid by half.


Add back the beef and everything else.


The flavors were definitely a nice blend of serious Southeast Asian flavors and more European ones, but I wouldn't quite call it a beef stew.
I'm thinking that maybe the family will get a kick out of it for Thanksgiving though Ropa Vieja would be a sure hit.