Rendang (BRW)

• 2 hot dried red chiles [I got a big ass bag of chile de arbol. Plus I used 5 of them.  If Bittman says he's being conservative, I thought I might as well double that plus one.  I could've used more.]
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 3 shallots, peeled
• One 1-inch piece fresh ginger or galangal, peeled and roughly chopped [I'm not fancy enough to have galangal lying around]
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric [I did see fresh turmeric at Market Basket last weekend and I'm intrigued especially since Modernist Cuisine at Home give a good metric to sub for the powdered stuff.  Alas, not this time around.]
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 2 tablespoons tamarind paste, or the juice and zest of 2 limes [I'm also sadly not fancy enough for tamarind paste either]
• 2 tablespoons corn, grapeseed, or other neutral oil
• 1 pound boneless beef, preferably chuck, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1 cup coconut milk, homemade [right...] or canned
• Salt to taste

Process the first 8 ingredients until everything is minced.  I guess if you were adding tamarind paste, you'd hold off until everything else was processed.

Mise en place.

Heat oil over medium-high heat.  Add spice paste and cook until fragrant.

Add beef and cook until browned and covered with the sauce.  However,  I'll own up to probably not getting much browning action going on.

Pour in coconut milk, cover, and simmer until the sauce dries out, about 1 hour.

The sauce really wasn't all the dry by the time I stopped.  I don't know if I stopped because I was hungry or merely because I was running out of time.
I've heard people rave about rendang on Top Chef, but I didn't find this dish to be all that distinctive from any old curry.  Obviously, I will have to find a way more complex, bitching recipe for this someday.

Stefan's Goulash

from Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 pound veal shoulder, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 potato, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 carrot, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1 parsnip, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1/4 small head cabbage, cored and chopped
• 2 strips bacon, chopped
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup dry white wine
• Leaves from 2 sprigs thyme
• Leaves from 1 sprig rosemart
• 1 bay leaf
• Salt and pepper
• Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley for garnishing [Nope]

 
Mise en place.  I doubled all the ingredients except for the olive oil where I used 3 tablespoons of instead of 4 to sautee the veal.
I've cooked this "goulash" (I've never really seen another recipe for it like this one before.  It typically only really contains beef and paprika.) 5 or 6 times but this is the first time I've done so while writing this blog.  I love the flavors and cooking the dish as is doesn't quite seem worth the time.

 
Brown the veal.

 

Dump in the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 1 hour until the veal is tender,

Voila.  One pot meal I return to on a fairly regular basis.
Started cooking this in my early days and it's the one dish I've cooked regularly from this cookbook.  Simple.  Good

Confessions of "The Accidental Brainwashed Foodie"

3. this is the rotation of dinners I "cook" in specific order: chicken curry a la trader joe's (I think I'll pass on this from now on since the work and time involved doesn't exactly make things taste as satisfactorily than even punjabi dhabi or gourmet india), pork chops or chicken my mom has marinated and frozen with a microwavable "steam" packet of frozen vegetables, hot dogs and fries or fish sticks and fries in whatever order seems convenient at the time, mac and cheese with hot dogs and frozen mixed veggies combined, frozen spaghetti sauce a la mom again and trader joe's dried ravioli or tortellini. tres healthy, right?
--self, 1/31/09, when I caved in to the "Twenty five 'random' things about me." meme that was being passed around facebook at the time

How the hell did I get from there to here in terms of my culinary evolution in a such relatively short period of time? Surely I had some inklings of refined palate even then. I'm sure my first ex-boyfriend John G. exposed me to raw oysters and gradually broke down my aversion to beer (Nowadays, I'm quite the snob about the latter. Miller High Life is my favorite cheap beer; I don't quite understand the allure of PBR). On a trip we took to San Francisco, I tried Ethiopian food for the first time, and to this day, that particular cuisine doesn't sit right with me.
At the time I wrote this, even while eating all this junk, I was toying with trying different types of blue cheese. I made a point of buying something I hadn't tried before and leaned toward more pungent varieties that didn't verge on utter chalkiness.
Growing up, my parents (largely my mother) would rarely ever diverge from Chinese or Vietnamese cuisine. Exceptions include Ragu beefed up with fresh vegetables or some unfortunate version of chicken pot pie that involved cans of Campbell Cream of Something or the Other. The Asian food, however, was always from scratch and quite decent, but obviously such food appears rather pedestrian to a child only occasionally exposed mainstream American food nevermind anything ever so slightly more exotic. (Don't worry, I relish bowls of Pho these days) We were encouraged to learn how to cook but declined the offers.

Fast forward to late 2009. I'm not exactly sure why I started watching full seasons of Top Chef, but I watched voraciously until I had worked myself all the way to the first season. (No Padma?! Chefs of a somewhat lesser caliber?!) "Where was there to go from here?" I wondered after running out of episodes. I found my answer when I found myself eying a box of Israeli couscous at Trader Joe's and thought perhaps I wouldn't fare too poorly following the recipe on its side. Soon after that I ordered my first Top Chef cookbook (I've cooked Stefan's Goulash about five times by now. It is probably the only recipe for goulash I've ever seen that didn't involve copious amounts of paprika.) and started reading ATK's Cooks Illustrated. Cooks Illustrated is an amazing magazine about the process and science of creating the ultimate recipe for a particular dish. Some of the impetus behind creating this blog is to demonstrate my (hopefully) excellent writing skills and the fact that I have at least 2 years cooking experience. Both are requirements if I want to apply to be an Assistant Test Cook at the ATK headquarters in Brookline Village and perhaps eventually advance to Test Cook, which would otherwise involve the attainment of a culinary degree and actual restaurant experience.
Besides, what the hell, I've done such a poor job practicing the art of writing since I stopped writing emotionally exhibitionist personal blog entries several years ago. No other hobby of mine entices me to documentation in the same way. Anyone who follows my Facebook status updates will already know that I will drive myself up a wall in search of an elusive ingredient or tool. There will certainly be loads of that in forthcoming entries, but also I will finally have an outlet to dissect recipe choices, prep, failures (lessons learned if I can figure them out), and most exciting of all... PHOTOS!!!

But, sadly, not in this entry.

Somehow I've neglected to say exactly how I've been brainwashed by the cult of serious foodie home-cooking, but this is probably best dealt with as each point comes up.