This week, we've had our first cool night on the East Coast, which got me craving something warmer for dinner. Savory beef with a soupy tomato sauce is my favorite Cuban country dish (with the exception of black beans and rice, of course!).
I've always wondered about the name, but realized the shredded beef does indeed resemble a twisted old dress shirt. There are several stories as to how the dish was named, but my favorite is about a very poor man who didn't have money to buy food for his family. He took some "ropa vieja" -- old clothing -- from the closet and cooked it in a pot with a lot of love. Miraculously, it turned into a rich and hearty beef stew.
'Beef' Recipes by John Torode Photos by Jason Lowe The Taunton Press -- 2009 Buy it at Amazon
Not just another meat and potatoes cookbook, this tome dives head first into the world of beef, how to properly cook it and how it's used in other parts of the world -- such as in Japan, where it is often topped with tobiko (fish roe). Torode's passion for the subject is evident, illuminating a clear understanding on how to spread the word to his readers in a non-intimidating way. Classics like Beef Wellington and Meat Ragu are on offer, but so are more adventurous dishes like Spiced Salad of Braised Beef with Roasted Rice and Anchovy, Fontina and Meat Sauce Calzone.
Takeaway tips: The first several pages go into depth about how to buy meat with an explanation of different breeds, beef cuts and terms like aging. For beginner carnivores, this information is vital in producing a successful dish. A handy beef source guide in the back allows readers to shop along with Torode at his top spots for grain and grass-fed beef.
See what we tested and whether it's worth buying after the jump.
Zesty, spicy and sweet in equal parts, Thai beef salad may be the ideal dish for spring. Though it might simply look like beef plunked on top of greens, its almost-invisible ingredients -- lime juice, minced red chiles and fish sauce -- lend it a flavor profile we crave again and again. Packed with protein, it also features enough veggies that one can walk away feeling a bit lighter on her feet than after, say, downing a porterhouse.
We were reminded how much we love this salad when we came upon La Fille de La Ville's photo. Why La Fille de la Ville? It's pretty literal, we discovered when we emailed her: "I'm just a girl of the town!" she exclaimed. Sounds like a typical New Orleans resident smitten with her city. She's a newbie there but sounds pretty darn enthused about NOLA's "epicurean delights." Find her recipe -- and breathless gastronomical reports -- on her site.
"We've had our fair share of flames and failures" ruminate the couple behind culinary blog Love and Olive Oil: "Like any good relationship, cooking has its ups and downs."
Tell us about it! We've mangled many a simple recipe over the course of the years. But so long as our end results look as tempting as this duo's ginger-and-brown-sugar-spiked Mongolian Beef, which was inspired by a P.F. Chang's dish, we'll keep hanging out in the kitchen.
How many people loyally follow a certain cut of beef?
I follow it, to an extent, when I'm eating out. When I was young, I was obsessed with large, juicy pieces of prime rib. These days, especially when I hit Ruth's Chris, I grab the rib eye. But that's a combination of flavor and meat greed. I make it out for a good steak so rarely that when I do, I want something big. The fact that it's also delicious makes the large and juicy rib eye down-right perfect. But outside of beef gluttony at a steak house, I've never favored a particular cut of meat.
If I see a meat counter, my eyes glaze over in love and I just find the best and tastiest-looking cut I can afford, unless I'm hunting for a particular cut to make a particular dish. It never occurred to me that people would be loyal to just one small piece of a rather delectable beast.
Are you? Do you always grab the same cut? And if you do, why?
When a friend of mine recently asked me to help throw her a baby shower, I had many questionable suggestions-- like making it race-car rather than baby themed (accepted) to making a baby-shaped red-velvet cake with gooey red filling, except the diaper part, which would have brown icing filling (rejected).
But one of the things she was most excited about was my suggestion that I make a meatcake. That is, a cake made of meat, an idea I had found (like so many nutty ideas) on the interwebs. I took the concept, but created my own recipes--two, since a non-red-meat eater needed turkey. It may sound peculiar but the result was delicious and even rather spectacular. If you want to try it yourself....
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
This elegant, un-gimmicky bento from Just Bento looks good enough to serve at a dinner party. There's sesame beef, brown rice, sauteed greens with oyster sauce, bean sprouts, and cooked carrots with soy and sesame. There are recipes, and a calorie count (440, if you're interested).
While visiting Paso Robles, California, last week, we took a day to explore the coast, including the gorgeous Hearst Castle--a must-see for anyone who loves art, not to mention 30s-era Hollywood gossip--and the surrounding land, Hearst Ranch. The ranch has been a cow-calf operation since 1865, but recently Hearst Corporation changed the business model so the cows would use the resources of the land (i.e., they reduced the number of cattle to 800, the number the land will support, and let the cows graze for food).
I talk a lot about the concept of terroir in wine--the wine's sense of place from the soil, climate, and region, but Brian Kenny, division manager at Hearst Ranch Beef, says terroir goes beyond wine. "Grass fed beef is the ultimate expression of terroir. The cattle eat grass, and the flavor result in the meat is an expression of the land."
Kenny remembers the time he gave Alice Waters some rib-eye to sample (Chez Panisse is a customer). She asked, "What do I taste? It's amazing." Kenny replied, "You taste the Central Coast."
And that, ultimately, is his goal. "When people come to visit the coast, we want them to go away with a sense of flavor," he says. I tried some Hearst Ranch Braised Brisket in Oaxacan Chile Gravy at Villa Creek in Paso and brought some jerky home with me. As to describing its taste, I can't do better than another of Kenny's customers: "It tastes like beef used to taste."
Click on the gallery to see photos of the beautiful castle and ranch.
When I tell you this is not just another steak recipe, you have to believe me. One sunny morning during the summer I was watching the Food Network and Tyler Florence was making his version of the ultimate steak. I was hooked the minute he covered the steaks with an egg white paste. A new and odd technique to me, I can't believe it took me months to actually try it. Not only was the entire piece perfectly medium rare, they were the most flavorful, juicy steaks I had ever tasted in my home. An absolute add-on must to your recipe collection.
Gourmet's Barry Estabrook investigates the possibility of the presence of cloned beef's existence in the nation's meat supply. The following is an excerpt of his findings published on Gourmet.com.
I just found out that I may have dined on meat from the progeny of a cloned cow. You may have, too.
In January, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decreed that meat and milk from cloned livestock was safe to eat. Last week, the agency went a step further and said that it was "theoretically possible" that the meat from the offspring of cloned cattle was already in the food supply.
These days, we do what we can to rely on local products, but what about bringing the farm right to your back yard? UK's Sunday Times has published an article on the wonders of mini-cows. That's right -- moo machines that don't need a big farm to thrive. The size of a cuddly German Shepherd, these cows will give you 16 pints of milk a day, chew up that pesky, ever-growing grass, and then become tender, omega3 fats-rich meat at the age of two. It's certainly a way to save costs and get an ever-present supply of milk. Those who have dipped into mini-cow delights will artificially inseminate to produce a new calf per year and get the most for their money.
Now, this sounds great, but I don't think selling people on the temperament of the mini-things is a way to get cows for milk and meals -- "Bessie is not only a 2-year animal friend, but a tasty piece of meat!" Then again, I'm tainted by a childhood experience where I befriended my family's cow before it got slaughtered for meat, and I not only lost a friend, but we couldn't eat her -- the cow had a disease that tainted the meat.
But back to the mini-cows -- is this something you'd add to your backyard?
I remember once, while I was around 7 years old and playing at a friend's house, my mom stopped by with lunch for me (they were doing her a favor by watching me and she didn't want to impose on them to feed me as well). It consisted of a napkin-wrapped hot dog that she pulled out of her purse. I remember looking at with distaste, as the hot dog was wrinkled and grey, and the bun was also a sad affair. It was edible, but certainly not exciting. That experience colored my perception of hot dogs and it was years before I ate them with gusto.
Fast forward to the present day and I am singing a very different hot dog song. This conversion is in large part due to gourmet meat producer D'Artagnan's new line of exotic (and very tasty) hot dogs. They come in four varities - pork, beef, buffalo and duck and they are made from meat that was never treated with antibiotics or growth hormones. They are uncured, which means that they are nitrate-free. For all the fancy varieties of meat, they do still taste much like your classic hot dog. Larger than the traditional frank, they are filling, which means that while the pack only comes with four dogs, you'll only need to eat one to be satisfied, so there's plenty to go around.
I recommend eating them with potato salad and some good, whole grain mustard. Very tasty!
E. coli be darned, I still order my burgers done "as rare as you possibly can." A girl's allowed a vice or two, right?
While plenty of places are still willing to bend the rules, legally speaking, ground beef must be cooked to 160 degrees to kill the creepy crawlies. But you can be safe while still enjoying thick, pink-centered, dripping cheeseburgers. Grind your own beef. Commercially ground beef, for reasons I won't go into here (but if you're curious, read Fast Food Nation), carries a much higher risk of contamination than meat freshly ground in a home grinder.
I buy fatty chuck - 20 percent fat, at least - and put it through the 'coarse' plate of my KitchenAid meat grinder attachment. You can get free-standing grinders pretty cheap at kitchenware stores. Then I mix it, by hand, with a healthy squeeze of ketchup, tons of salt and pepper, Worcestershire sauce and chopped garlic, maybe some cayenne. Don't mix too much, or you'll compress the beef and end up with a too-hard burger. Then onto the grill. A friend just taught me a nifty test for doneness - when pressing on the burger, if it feels firm like the skin between your thumb and index finger when you're fingers are outstretched, it's well-done. If it feels slightly loose, like the same bit of skin when your hand's relaxed, it's medium-rare.
Zesty, spicy and sweet in equal parts, Thai beef salad may be the ideal 
When a friend of mine recently asked me to help throw her a baby shower, I had many 
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