When I saw the photo and recipe in the November, 2008 Gourmet for this beef, pork and cabbage dish, it just sounded a resonating bell in my head. Years ago I used to make stuffed cabbage rolls, but always found it a lot of work, and . . . well, just not worth the effort. Hence I haven’t made them in decades. But I always liked the flavor. This particular recipe is a quick and easy version – most of the ingredients – but without the work of parboiling the cabbage leaves, stuffing, rolling (carefully) then stacking them in a pot, making a sauce to go over, etc. Then baking or simmering them for awhile.

This recipe is just so simple – it was in Gourmet‘s “Everyday Quick Kitchen” – you make the sauce – kind of like a soup or stew mixture (it sort of looks like tomato chili in a way), and then you simmer the cabbage wedges in broth (separately) and combine them briefly before serving them on a rimmed plate (or a wide soup bowl in my case). I thought this dish was just great – not something you’d serve to guests, perhaps, unless you share really casual meals together. It all could be made ahead and reheated. I doubt the cabbage would do all that well frozen, but I’ll probably freeze a portion or two of the meat mixture and just prepare fresh cabbage when I want to have it again. I cooked the sauce longer than indicated (because I had the time and thought the flavor would improve by longer simmering) and I added some fennel, caraway and thyme to the sauce. You could put this dinner together in less than an hour if you hustled the chopping and cooking of the sauce. The cabbage takes about 45 minutes – you could do that in the microwave or a pressure cooker to speed it up. The beef and ground pork sauce has a delicious tang (from the brown sugar and red wine vinegar) and the juices are so good you don’t want to miss a single slurp. So, try it!

What’s GOOD: this is such a great recipe – the umami of the sweet and sour, the dried cranberries, even, and mixed with the cabbage. Like eating a big bite of a juicy cabbage roll – but, without all the work. Make a double batch and have leftovers later.
What’s NOT: only that there is a bit of prep – plus 45 minutes cooking time for the cabbage (use Instant Pot if you have one).

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You can’t see the portabello very well here (mostly in the foreground) or the blue cheese which covered it, but it’s there underneath the fillet. All of it drizzled with a Port wine, Zinfandel and shallot sauce.

One thing you always know about Phillis Carey’s recipes, they’re going to have an expansive title. She doesn’t want you to miss a single thing in the title in order to get your taste buds sizzling. When I go to cooking classes I always hope to learn something (I think in all the classes I’ve ever been to, only one was a complete dud). Phillis’ recipes are usually fairly simple, but very high on the good-taste-scale, which is why I keep going back to watch her demonstrate. And I wrote “fab” on the side of the recipe – my code for a terrific recipe. Yup, indeed. This recipe takes less time than many, and is worthy of an elegant dinner. The wine and port sauce was delicious served alongside the beef, and each bite of beef was accented with a bit of mushroom and blue cheese. A great combination. Just remember to take the steaks out of the refrigerator for 45 minutes or so before starting.
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Eating good-old ground beef isn’t something we do very often anymore. Just because it’s higher in fat, I guess. I grew up eating beef – ground, chopped, roasts, stews, liver – often. My Dad didn’t like chicken, turkey or lamb. So we ate a lot of beef and pork. When we’d go out to dinner my mother and I would frequently order chicken. We also ate almost no fish. Back then (this was in the late 1940’s and 50’s) you couldn’t buy fresh fish in the markets. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Tuna was available in cans, and shrimp, I think. And here, I grew up in San Diego which has a very large Portuguese population – many of them were deep sea fishermen by trade. But they caught tuna – for canning. That was it. Then. How things have changed!

The story of my dad’s chicken aversion is a sad but interesting one. Growing up, my dad was in charge of the farm chickens. It was part of his chores, to clean out the coop, gather the eggs, feed them, water them, etc. And he kind of got attached to the young rooster. His name was Sammy. My dad thought Sammy was very bright, as chickens go. And Sammy would come to my dad whenever he went into the coop. Anyway, my dad was about 10-11 years old at the time, his parents were helping out a man who needed work. If he’d do some chores around the barn, he could eat dinner with the family at the end of the day. The man had finished his chores and came to the house and asked the missus (my dad’s mother, Bessie) if there was anything else he could do. She said yes, go get one of the chickens and kill it, remove the innards, the feathers, etc. and she’d be fixing it for dinner. So, the worker went out to the chicken coop and killed and dressed a chicken. The family sat down to dinner and everybody was marveling at the delicious chicken. The day worker said, “you know, it was the funniest thing, when I went into the coop, this chicken just came right up to me, so I just killed him then and there!” My dad started to gag. Uh, yes, the worker had killed my dad’s pet rooster, Sammy. And from that day on, my dad could barely eat chicken. As a kid, the thought that he’d already swallowed some of Sammy’s flesh was abhorent. Bessie felt terrible about what had happened – she’d forgotten to tell the man not to kill the young rooster! Even telling that story in his 70’s, my dad would get teary. So, from that day forward whenever chicken was served, if it was all there was, my dad might eat a bite, but that was it. It just wouldn’t go down. And my mother never served chicken unless my dad was away on a business trip.

Well, there, another bit of trivia about my family. So, back to ground beef. I think I’ve mentioned it here before that during the 1960’s and 70’s, when I was a young woman, a housewife, ground beef was a real weekly staple. I made ground beef casseroles by the dozens. When I was young, my mother used to make tamale pie every couple of weeks. My dad particularly loved that. And a half a pound of ground beef could feed our family for at least two dinners.

This recipe is one I found in Sunset magazine, back in the 1970’s, based on the age of the lined paper I typed it on. Over the years I’ve changed it just a little bit – some different proportions of things, but the basic recipe hasn’t changed much, so all the credit goes to the magazine. It’s the onions that make this. Unfortunately, you can’t make this dinner in 30 minutes, quite. The onions alone take 20-25 all by themselves.

First you slice up the onions. The recipe calls for one onion apiece, which is about right. You sauté them in some oil and butter and set them aside. You form normal ½-inch thick beef burgers, dip them in some flour, then you sauté the burgers in the same pan – you want them to still be pink in the middle if possible. Once they’re done, you remove them and cook up the sauce (a bit of cream and Worcestershire sauce). You pile the onions on the burger and drizzle some of the sauce on top. My DH just about licked the plate. That’s always a good sign. I hadn’t made this in probably 25 or more years. They’re really quite easy. So if you’re tired of chicken, and enjoy ground beef in many guises, this might be a new version for you.
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There are a whole lot of variations on beef stew out there. Even Asian. And my friend Cherrie’s version made with the addition of currant jelly and cream. I used to make a kind of bland one in the crock pot some years ago too. But my all time favorite is this one, which I hadn’t made in years and years. My DH doesn’t really love stew. Even he doesn’t know why. I had made this for him before, but I hoped that perhaps with a few modifications, he’d like it better. Oh, indeed he did. He wanted seconds, even. I didn’t add potatoes this time – just carrots, mushrooms and the flavoring vegetables.

This recipe has the strange name because it was a version prepared by a dear family friend named Ruth Cormack. After her husband died in the last 1970’s, she developed Alzheimer’s and one day when I phoned her she didn’t know who I was. She was still living alone at that time. It was heartbreaking to me. I didn’t have the phone numbers of any family, plus I lived hundreds of miles away from her, so I don’t know what happened to her. She had rather unpleasant step-daughters who probably neglected her. Sad story. But beef stew will forever be linked with my friend, Ruth. She lived in San Anselmo (a beautiful suburb of Marin County, across the bridge from San Francisco). I hope that where she’s observing me from a heavenly cloud, she’s smiling because I’m sharing her recipe.

What makes this version stand out from the other more mundane recipes are these ingredients: lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, a bit of sugar and some allspice. Not things you’d normally associate with beef stew. And I’m really happy with the changes I made to the good-old tried and true recipe. I added a heap of mushrooms, used a mirepoix to help flavor the broth, also added some chicken broth (you could use beef or chicken), and I thickened it a bit more with some added flour that I tossed around on the raw mushrooms. I made it with my new pressure cooker (see p.c. notes at the end of the recipe). It’s not exactly stew season around here, but we actually had a cool day when I made this. Try it and see what you think.
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I have a question – did your mother or grandmother can pickles? Both my mother and grandmother made a variety of pickles every year. They made regular whole pickles (sweet type, though), piccalilli, bread and butter pickles and sometimes even pickled watermelon rind. I was never very crazy about the latter (too sweet for me). And my mother would make some kinds of pickle relishes. Not the tiny-minced sweet relish that we can buy in the markets now, but bigger chunks of cucumbers, red peppers and onions. With a delicious sweet and sour flavor going on.

A month or so ago my daughter Dana and family came to visit and she brought with her my mother’s recipe box. I’d forgotten she had it. It’s like this really fun bonanza to re-discover some lost and found thing. Just now I went to the section for pickles and condiments, and pulled out a small stack of recipes. I found: Watermelon Pickle, Zucchini Pickles, Zucchini Relish, Chow Chow, my Dad’s Aunt Rosa’s Bread & Butter Pickles, Dill Crisps from my great, great Aunt Nora, my Grandmother Isis’ Bread & Butter Pickles, and Mustard Pickles.

Here’s a photo of the aging 3×5 cards. The top one is in my grandmother’s handwriting, I think. I’m flooded with memories of visiting my mother’s family, at their farmhouse in Ceres, California. This would have been in the late 1940’s, early 50’s. In the middle of the farming belt of central California. The house was located about half a mile from the railroad. Many a summer night do I remember trying to go to sleep in the attic room (you know how hot attics get in the heat of a San Joaquin summer?), trying not to think how hot and sweaty I was, hearing the whoo-hoo of the trains going by all hours of the night. Growing up within a mile of the bay in San Diego, the only sounds I heard at night were fog horns, so train noises would awaken me. I also remember helping my grandmother a little bit in the kitchen – usually baking something like biscuits. Or helping my grandfather kill a chicken for Sunday supper (I watched until it came time to start plucking the feathers). And of poking my nose into the icebox that sat on the inside back porch. And helping my grandmother feed clothes into the wringer of the round free-standing washing machine that sat out on the outdoor back porch. Of riding on the tractor out in the field on my grandfather’s lap, holding on for dear life, diligently trying to steer the darned thing (very difficult). And playing with the multitude of kittens that always seemed to be around whenever we visited. They always had cats to keep the mouse population in check. I also prowled around in the monstrosity of an old barn, listening intently for mice hiding in the stacks of hay, or scurrying into the bowels of an old abandoned tractor that would no longer run, that was covered with stuff. Wonderful fodder for varmints. And food for cats.

Well, back to pickles. Back in the 1970’s I did make refrigerator dill pickles when the canning cucumber variety were plentiful at the markets. I can’t find my Sunset recipe. I’ve hunted for it, but no luck. Dana remembers when I made them several summers in a row. She adored them, dipping her hand into the icy cold jar of brine and grabbing one to chew on outside on the patio, where the juice could run unhindered down her arm.

That’s what was conjured up in my memory a couple of weeks ago when I was contemplating the menu for our 4th of July barbecue. We grilled turkey burgers (Oprah’s recipe), and traditional burgers too, but all of them were the small slider size. I may never go back to regular size again – I like these smaller ones so much better. They’re easier to handle, even forming the raw meat was easier. And we all liked the rolls (King’s Hawaiian bread rolls). It’s a light, soft bread, and it scrunched down just fine to fit into your mouth.

Our grandchildren and at least one of our adult kids wanted pure, unadulterated burgers. No special relish. Nothing but the bun, lettuce, tomato and red onion slices. But I made this really piquant relish/marmalade stuff that I’d make again anytime. It was relatively simple to prepare – I sautéed a bit of sugar and some onions (I should have used red, but yellow ones were what I grabbed) while bell peppers (supposed to be red only; I used one red and one yellow) charred under the broiler. Once they cooled and the skins were peeled, they were tossed into the onion mixture with balsamic vinegar and some spices. It took about 30 minutes to make, and I thought their flavor on the burgers was sensational.

Pickle making is becoming a lost art, I suppose. We’re all too busy. What a huge loss, since refrigerator pickles are so easy to do, requiring no cooking. I found some recipes on the internet and gave them to my daughter, in hopes that she’d make them for her family. She’s interested, but might be too intimidated to try it without mom around to oversee. In the meantime, for me, this delicious relish/marmalade will have to do!
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Over the year+ I’ve been doing this-here blog, I’ve learned a lot. Not only about how to run a website (blog), about software that runs stuff behind the scenes (I know, you’re likely not interested in that part, are you?), but also a lot about food. No, I don’t have a culinary degree (when I went to college I didn’t know I’d be so interested in cooking and the culinary arts as an adult), but over the years my head has filled with a whole lot of varied knowledge about food and cooking. My daughter Dana and two of my friends phone me every now and then to ask questions. Usually it’s about a cooking technique (Can I freeze raw artichokes? Answer no, only cooked ones. Can I freeze heavy cream? Answer yes, but it may separate once it defrosts and doesn’t seem to whip up very well, so basically no. Do you use raw egg yolks – like in Caesar dressing? Answer yes, I do, as long as the eggs have come from a grocery store where I know they’ve kept them refrigerated.) I don’t always know the answer. Thank goodness for the internet. It’s such an huge mass of information. The only problem is you don’t really know what’s true and what isn’t. You need to search several sites to see if you get a consensus. Or refer to some reliable sources. Even Wikipedia, a site I refer to often, isn’t always correct, so I’ve read. It’s only as reliable as the sources from which THEY got the information.

The problem is: I have a curious mind. I like to understand the “why” of things. Which is the reason I often refer to Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking. He’s more like a chemist, but he loves cooking and everything related to food. My cousin Gary gave me the book for Christmas one year, and it’s been a great source of food chemistry fact and lore. McGee debunks the lore part and gives you a lot of info (maybe more than some people want to know) about food chemistry. I’m fascinated by it. It is written for the home cook, but it’s almost like a textbook – fairly heavy reading even for someone interested in food from the get-go.

So, today we’re talking about Steak Diane. When I went online to look up about Steak Diane, I found differing information. Elise, a blogger I read regularly, had an entry awhile back about Steak Diane in which she says that the name Diane comes from Diana, the Greek goddess of the hunt. Yet, when I went to the Practically Edible website it says Steak Diane has nothing whatsoever to do with Diana (the goddess) because there are no hunted animals (like venison) involved. I don’t know who’s right, and mostly it doesn’t matter. All we really care about here is whether the sauce on the steak is GOOD. Or not. I hereby proclaim it’s good. And not hard. Your guests will be impressed, I guarantee you. Be sure to serve these steaks with some kind of comfort carb (Monterey Scalloped Potatoes, plain mashed potatoes or buttered rice or noodles) as you’ll want to slick up every morsel of this sauce. I’ve changed the recipe to serve 8, not 4, meaning each person will eat a half of a 1 1/2 inch thick New York steak.
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On those occasions when I bake or rotisserie a roast, often I don’t know what to do with the leftovers. Well, sometimes anyway. With a beef roast, I suppose you could make hash or sandwiches or open faced sandwiches. A roast chicken is another thing altogether – I don’t have any difficulty finding options for that. I’m talking about a lamb roast or pork roast. Often the meat isn’t all that moist anymore, so unless I’ve made some kind of sauce for the meat the first go-around, I’m left with a hunk of meat and big question marks in my head about what to do with it. We’re certainly not going to waste it, but serving just slices of cold roast pork or lamb doesn’t work around my house. Maybe once, but that’s it. My DH doesn’t complain – he’s SO good about eating whatever I put in front of him, generally, but dry, sliced, cold meat isn’t something that ranks high in his book of good meals. Or mine either, for that matter.

So, I have two recipes to share with you today about this leftover meat problem. The first one, the Marchand de Vin, comes from a favorite little book I own that’s eons old. I bought it used, years and years ago for $2.88. It’s called Sumptuous Sauces in the Microwave, by Patricia Tennison. If you click on the link above, you’ll get to a Google search results page with dozens of listings for her book. It’s out of print, but you can buy it used – cheap – if you’re interested. I love this little book which contains recipes for stocks, white sauces, veloutes, brown sauces, hollandaise, butter sauces, wine and beer sauces (that’s the chapter this recipe came from), gravies, pasta sauces even, a few barbecue sauces, even some veggie and salad dressings and condiments. And, last but not least, some dessert sauces (which I’ve made many times). And every single one of them is cooked (in part or full) in the microwave. What I like about them is that they’re quick and easy. When I’m preparing a leftover meal, I’m usually into QUICK things. Knowing I have leftovers makes me lazy – often I don’t start preparing dinner until 15 minutes before I want to eat. So these sauces work for me.

This particular recipe, the Marchand de Vin, in French, means Wine Merchant’s Sauce. It’s simple – shallot, butter, red wine, stock, cognac, lemon juice and thickened with cornstarch. Ideal for any grilled or roasted meat, really. You’ll find lots of different versions of this sauce if you search on the internet – some contain ham, and mushrooms (they are a nice addition to this, actually, if you have them). You can heat up the meat in the microwave, then pour the sauce over it. In and of itself this sauce isn’t something from a gourmet restaurant, but it’s tasty enough – will give meat some moisture. Be careful and don’t add too much lemon juice. If it’s too thick when you’re done, just stir in some hot water until it’s the right consistency for pouring.

The rosemary-garlic stuffed pork loin roast leftover slices heating in a skillet. I made this along with our favorite garlic green beans.

The Leftover Sauce (now, isn’t that a glamorous title? – I should give it some high-fallutin’ new name instead) is a tomato juice-based sauce, but has onion and celery in it, and a bit of chili powder and a little plop of vinegar to give it some zing. My only caution – tomato juice (or sauce if you use that instead) often contains lots of salt. Try to choose one with no or little salt in it to begin with, then you can season it however you’d like to. This one is made in a frying pan and once it’s simmered for 25 minutes or so, you add the meat slices to the pan just to heat through. If you have leftover mashed potatoes too, make more sauce so you can spoon it over those as well. This recipe came from a friend of my mother’s, Mary W., from about 1971. Tried and true, that’s what it is.
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It was a few weeks ago I went to yet another cooking class. (Lucky for you, you don’t have to pay for the class, but you get to have the recipes!) The subject was entrees suitable for entertaining, by Phillis Carey. I’ll post most of the recipes (one of them I didn’t like much, so will ignore that one) in the next couple of weeks.

This marinade and glaze for flank steak looks like it’s got a lot of ingredients (it does), but it goes together quite quickly. Don’t eliminate the Tabasco – I loved the little bit of heat in this marinade. And the overall taste was excellent. The meat is tenderized (it needs to marinate for at least 24 hours (even 2-3 days would be fine). Cut on the bias and across the grain for very tender slices.
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Another winner of a Phillis Carey recipe. I get a kick out of the titles she gives her recipes – she doesn’t want you to miss a thing when you hear or read the recipe title. You need to know that it has Cajun spices. You need to know that it’s a filet mignon. And lastly, that it has this delicious, scrumptious Creole sauce – with cream – in it too. She laughs at herself when she talks about the recipe titles – even she gets them mixed up sometimes when she’s demonstrating them in a cooking class. But with the recipe in front of us, the students, we take notes, adding her little quips to the process.

Several weeks ago my friend Cherrie and I went to a cooking class (entrees for entertaining) and this recipe was one of them. Phillis used a filet mignon. When I made this sauce a few nights ago, I only had frozen New York steaks, so I used them instead. So I just made the sauce in a separate pan, and my DH grilled the steaks on the outdoor barbecue. He’s got the drill down-pat. Sear, mark the meat, both sides, put on a rack not over direct heat, stick in the meat thermometer and remove the steak at 122 degrees F. The meat was solidly pinky-red all the way through except for the flat sides, which were appealingly grilled brown.

The sauce, meanwhile, was a snap to mix up. I had everything on hand except green bell peppers (a staple in the Creole diet), but I just used some extra celery instead. No biggie. I even had the fresh herbs in our garden and used more than was called for. My DH just loved the sauce. Wanted to know exactly what was in it and how I made it. Every so often he asks detailed questions about something I’ve made. I used to think – aha, he’s going to surprise me and fix a full meal some night. Uh, no. He thinks sometime he might entertain some of his friends when he spends the night on our boat and whip out this great sauce. But he never remembers what I’ve told him.

At any rate, this steak and the sauce were delicious. And yes, they’d be quite suitable for a company meal. The sauce doesn’t make all that much, actually. If you really like sauce, I’d increase it by 50% so you’ll have more.
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So, there was a blurb by John Willoughby in June’s issue of Gourmet that almost missed my radar. Here’s the blurb quoted from the magazine:

Myth: Searing meat at the beginning of cooking helps seal in the juices.

Facts: Despite its impressive heritage (Escoffier himself espoused the concept), this well-known axiom is completely false. In his book The Curious Cook, food scientist Harold McGee explains how he cooked a series of identical steaks with and without initial searing, then measured the moisture loss from each. The results were clear – the seared steaks actually lost a bit MORE juice during cooking. There is, however, a very good reason to give meat a nice, hard sear when it first goes into the pan. Thanks to a chemical process called the Maillard reaction, it creates literally hundreds of new flavor compounds that give the meat a much deeper and more complex flavor.

 Thank goodness for that last sentence; otherwise we’d be eating gray meat from hereon in. But, they missed one other ascetic – meat just plain LOOKS better when it’s been marked or seared, don’t you think? Photo above is our favorite grilled beef: Ribeye Steaks with Amazing Glaze.

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