meat

The role of alcohol, onion and ginger in Japanese meat dishes

maki — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:00:50 +0200

Periodically, someone asks a question about subsituting or leaving out sake or mirin from a dish (most recently to the chicken karaage recipe). This reminds me of how certain ways of thinking exist in Japanese and East Asian cooking, that may not necessarily exist in Western cooking. One of those is the perception of the flavor of meat.

Whenever meat is used in traditional Japanese cuisine (including Okinawan cuisine), it is almost always cooked with one or more of the following ingredients: leek or another member of the onion family; ginger; alcohol in the form of sake or mirin; or sugar. All of these ingredients serve a single purpose, besides adding flavor - to counteract the perceived gaminess of meat. This gaminess is quite disliked, so you don’t really see dishes that involve meat that’s just been cooked plain, as you see in Western cuisines. Dipping sauces also often serve the same purpose.

Here are some examples:

For chicken karaage grated ginger and sake both counteract any gamy quality in the chicken.
In this nibuta (poached and marinated pork) recipe, leeks, ginger and umeboshi in the poaching liquid all serve to counteract the pigginess of pork.
This panfried and poached duck breast recipe is not exactly traditional, but follows traditional methods and thinking. Here the alcohol (mirin, wine and brandy) in the marinade counteract the gamy quality of the duck, as does the wasabi the sliced meat is served with.

This principle is also true for many of the regional varieties of Chinese cooking, especially the Cantonese or Hong Kong style which is the most familiar to Japanese palates. In the pork filling for gyoza dumplings, grated ginger, green onions and garlic (or the more usually used garlic chives or nira) all counteract the pork’s pigginess. The vinegar or hot chili oil that’s added to the soy sauce for dipping also cut the gaminess. (Mustard serves the same function in the dipping sauce for shuumai dumplings.)

A very simple method of dealing with ground pork, a much used ingredient, in Cantonese style cooking is to add water which has been flavored by leeks that have been bruised and steeped in it for a few minutes. Sometimes freshly cut ginger is added to this water as well. One of the simplest and best fillings for wonton dumplings is ground pork that has been flavored with leek-water alone.

So, the next time you are looking at a Japanese (or East Asian) recipe with meat in it, and wonder about substituting or leaving out any of these ingredients, keep in mind that that will affect the outcome of the dish quite a lot.

Meat and the environment

maki — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:38:59 +0200

Today is Green Day, and we’re being bombarded with Green Day Sales, reminders as to how Green this company or the other is, and so on. It’s a big topic nowadays.

I feel that the things that we can do as individuals is getting increasingly muddy. For a while it seemed like biofuels were a solution, but now the huge demand for plant-based fuels may be causing serious food shortages. Food miles and locavorism may not be as clear cut a solution either. Michael Pollan says we should start growing our own vegetables, but that’s not possible for a lot of people, for space or time reasons.

Is there something relatively easy we can do? Sort of. Meat has a huge carbon footprint, so eating less of it may do more than pretty much anything else in terms of slowing the process of global warming.

When you see the photo above, what does it make you think of? Until a few years ago, I would have thought “Mmm, meat heaven!”. Nowadays I’m not as enthusiastic. As I have gradually reduced the amount of meat in my diet, I’ve found that I enjoy meat less and less. As a matter of fact, the meat products that I do enjoy are ones that have been cooked or prepared in such a way that the essential meatiness of the meat is changed or masked. I still love things like sausages, ham and dried meats - and bacon, of course. When I cook meat, I prefer to use Asian or Japanese methods that mask the gaminess or meatiness. For example, I have a hard time dealing with roast pork with crisp crackling, the way people love to eat pork in Britain and some parts of Germany (it’s a Franconian speciality). The pigginess of the meat is very assertive, and I can’t enjoy it.

On the other hand if pork is prepared as nibuta, with aromatic vegetables, sake and mirin, I love it. And I eat far less of it at a meal than with a typical Western-oriented meal because it’s so richly flavored.

If you’re a dedicated meat lover, the idea of weaning yourself off it may be very difficult to contemplate. One way to do this fairly painlessly may be to switch to eating more Asian food, including Japanese, where meat is used more as a flavoring than the main star, and vegan protein sources have been incorporated as a matter of course for generations. And there’s nothing wrong with an occasional steak or hamburger - just as long as it is occasional.

Something to think about perhaps.

Menchikatsu

maki — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:35:36 +0100

While I make Japanese style hamburgers all the time, I rarely make menchikatsu, its breaded and deep-fried cousin. I guess it’s the breading and deep frying that deters me - it’s a messy process, and I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. So I made these ones for the blog! Fortunately they were consumed very eagerly.

The name is a combination of menchi or minchi, which comes from mince(d meat), and katsu, which comes from cutlet. So it’s a minced meat cutlet.

The recipe for the meat mixture is the same as for the hamburgers, though you may want to moisten the breadcrumbs a bit more to give it a quite loose texture. You will also want to make each ‘cutlet’ smaller than the hamburgers. I made size little ones out of the same amount of meat that I made 4 hamburgers from. After dipping in flour, beaten egg and then breadcrumbs (panko are preferable here), it helps to let them firm up a bit in the refrigerator before frying.

Then deep fry them in cooking oil (here I used peanut oil) at a medium-high temperature, about 150°C / 300°F, turning several times, until golden brown on the outside. If you put a discreet hold in the center with a skewer or chopstick and the juice that runs out is clear, it’s done.

The best sauce to put on these is plain old Bulldog tonkatsu sauce, sparingly. They’re best freshly made and piping hot, but are also not bad cooled, so they are popular for bentos.

Making these brought back memories of growing up in suburban Tokyo. Menchikatsu and korokke (potato croquettes that are similarly breaded and deep fried) were commonly available at a butchers; I think the menchikatsu were 100 yen each, and the korokke 80 yen each. They were my mother’s fall-back okazu, when she was too busy to make something else. I remember being sent on emergency early-evening runs to the butcher for menchikatsu and korokke for dinner. My mother never liked to resort to them, but us kids loved them. Nowadays local independent butchers are quite scarce in suburban Tokyo, but menchikatsu and korokke are easily available at convenience stores (kombini) and supermarkets, readymade or in pre-fried, frozen form.

Hambaagu or hambaagaa: Japanese hamburgers

maki — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:38:29 +0100

As promised, here is my recipe for making Japanese style hamburgers or hamburger steaks, one of the quintessential yohshoku or Japanese Western-style dishes. They are called hanbaagaa or hanbaagu in Japan, and are very popular for lunch or dinner, and are eaten as a side dish to rice (okazu) in Japanese homes. In fancier restaurants that specialize in yohshoku, they might be eaten with a knife and fork, but at home they’re eaten with chopsticks. Whenever Japanese food magazines have a poll about popular okazu, hamburgers are always in the top three, especially amongst kids.

They don’t have much in common with the American style of hamburger, except for the fact that they both start off with ground meat. A Japanese hamburger has more in common with meatloaf, and a rather similar texture. They are similar to the old TV dinner standby, Salisbury steak, but I think a lot better.

Recipe: Japanese style hamburger (Hambaagu or hambaagaa)

This makes 4 small hamburgers, serving 2 to 4 people depending on what else you are serving.

200g/ about 7 oz. ground beef (from a cut that has a fair amount of fat in it - very lean beef will not work because it will be too dry.)
100g / about 3 1/2 oz. ground pork
1/2 medium onion
3/4 tsp. salt
About 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
About 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 cup soft white breadcrumbs (Make the breadcrumbs from regular white bread slices with the crusts off. The crumb of a baguette is really good for this.)
2-3 Tbs. milk
1 egg
Oil for cooking

For the sauce:

1/2 cup dry red wine
1/3 cup ketchup
1/3 cup Japanese tonkatsu sauce such as Bulldog brand

Chop the onion very finely. Sauté the onion in a little oil until translucent. Let cool.

Moisten the breadcrumbs with the milk. Combine the meat, cooled onions, moistened milk, egg, salt, ground pepper and nutmeg. Your hands are the best tools for this. Combine well until everything is amalgamated.

Divide into 4 portions. Form into patties, slapping each with your palms until the surface is smooth. Indent the middle with your thumb - this makes sure the middle gets cooked evenly. It should look like this:

Notice that the texture is not crumbly.

From the side:

Heat up a large frying pan with some oil over high heat. Place the hamburgers well apart in the hot pan, and fry until browned. Turn over and turn the heat down to low. Put a tight fitting lid on the pan and steam-cook the hamburgers for about 10 minutes until the middle bounces back if you press down on it. Take out and keep warm.

Pour out any excess oil from the pan and turn the heat up to high again. Add the red wine and deglaze the pan with it (scrape off the brown bits and blend). Add the ketchup and the Bulldog sauce and blend. Pour over the hamburgers.

They are best served piping hot, but they are also very popular for bento boxes.

What to serve with hambaagu

As I’ve noted above, hamburgers in Japan are eaten with plain white rice. So it’s fine to serve them just so on their own plate, maybe with a garnish. A popular side to them is glazed carrots (boiled carrots which are glazed with butter and a little bit of sugar). Another popular side is kofukiimo, boiled pototoes that are dried out in a hot pan, and tossed with a little butter, salt and pepper and chopped parsley.

You could also serve some plain boiled broccoli and so on with them too. As part of a typical Japanese meal, you’d serve some soup, salad and/or pickle, and perhaps one more side dish besides the hamburgers. (See Anatomy of a Japanese meal.)

Sauce variations

The sauce I’ve used here is very easy to make and fits perfectly with the hamburgers. Other sauces that are often used include demiglace (most often seen at yohshoku restaurants, though home cooks can buy canned demiglace), teriyaki-style sauce, or just a little soy sauce and grated daikon radish.

Somewhat lower fat variation suitable for bento

See the tofu-meat mix variation for hambaagu that are not as juicy, but still good, and which arguably hold up better taste-wise when cooled (as in bento boxes). But really, once in a while you just have to have a real juicy hambaagu.

Duck breast: pan-fried, poached and marinated in booze (Kamo ro-su)

maki — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:52:30 +0100

[Update: A couple of people emailed me about this, so I thought I would put it here unless others had the same question. Yes, this duck is meant to be served cold, as part of a cold appetizer or a salad. And yes it is that rare (though as I’ve written in the recipe you can poach it a bit longer until it’s well done.) It’s like seared rare beef. And yes duck is ok served rare. (Buy good duck of course.)

Incidentally, if you have a general question about a post or recipe here it is really better if you ask me in the comments rather than email. Everyone can read the comments, so other people who have the same question can benefit. Plus, I always get to comments before email.]

I had to make this beautifully easy duck breast dish three times over within a span of two weeks. The first two attempts disppeared before I could take a photo.

The original recipe is on the Kyou no Ryouri (Japanese link) (Today’s Cooking) website. They call it kamo ro-su, which means roast duck, but it isn’t roasted in the sense that Westerners understand roasting. It’s just pan-seared on both sides, then poached briefly, then allowed to marinate in the poaching liquid.

The original recipe uses red wine, mirin and a mere spoonful of brandy. I used about half a cup of the raisins and currents marinated in liquor that we still have a ton of, since the planned post-Christmas panettone I had planned didn’t get made. The saltiness of the soy sauce, the sweetness from the dried fruit and mirin, and the beautiful booziness of the liquors really enhances the flavor of the dark duck meat. I’ve also adjusted the proportions of the marinade ingredients a bit.

This is one of those recipes that only takes minutes of your kitchen time but still tastes like you did a lot more, because most of the work is done as the duck marinates.

Recipe: Japanese-style poached and marinated duck breast (Kamo ro-su)

I’ve found that making 2 breasts at a time is easier than making just one, because there’s more liquid to keep the breasts immersed. Halve the recipe for 1 breast.

2 boneless plump duck breasts with the skin on (mine weighed in at around 450g / around a pound each)

The marinating liquid:

1 cup dry red wine
1 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin
1/2 cup raisins and currents marinated in liquor with a bit of the liquor, or 2 tablespoons brandy

The garnish etc.

A little grated or reconstituted-powder wasabi or mustard
Green garnish (The original recipe calls for shungiku, which is impossible to get in Switzerland in January, so I used a little flatleaf parsley. Arugula (rucola) should work well too.)

Pierce the duck on the skin side several times with a sharp knife or skewer.

Heat up a frying pan with no oil in it. Put the duck breasts in the pan, skin side down, and fry until the skin is dark brown in color. Turn the breasts over and sear the non-skin side briefly.

Take the breasts out of the pan, and drain off the fat. Wipe the pan out with a paper towel. Pat the duck breasts a bit to get rid of excess surface fat.

Put the pan back on the heat and add the liquids and the raisins. Heat up until the liquid is boiling, then lower the heat until it’s just bubbling slightly.

Add the duck breasts back into the pan. Poach for about 8 to 12 minutes (depending on how big your duck breasts are), turning over once about mid-way through. (Cook for a shorter time if you like it quite rare in the middle, as in the version shown here, and longer if you want it well done. Either way it’s good!)

Take the duck breasts out, draining off the liquid. Put on a plate and cover with Saran wrap or aluminum foil. Leave for about 20 minutes to let the meat rest. It will continue to cook a bit from the residual heat.

In the meantime, put the poaching liquid into a non-reactive container (such as glass or ceramic) that you can close up tightly. I would not use a plastic container, because the marinade will stain and odorize it forever. Let the whole thing cool down, then put in the refrigerator. Leave until it’s cold, for at least a couple of hours.

To serve, drain off a breast and slice as thinly as you can. Slicing it while it’s still cold from the fridge makes this easier.

Drizzle a little of the marinade over it, plus a few of the raisins if you like. Optionally serve with a little wasabi. (Reconstituted wasabi powder is fine, though freshly grated is better of course.) Mustard works too.

Serve on its own, on a salad, or on noodles.

It will keep for several days in the refrigerator, immersed in the marinade. As time goes by the saltiness gets more pronounced and the boozy flavors fade.

If freezing, freeze in enough of the marinade to keep it moist, and defrost in the refrigerator.

This is quite rich, and a little goes a very long way. One breast should serve 2 to 4 people as part of a main course salad, and you can get 6 to 8 appetizer servings out of each breast.

About Kyou no Ryouri, the longest running cooking TV program ever (?)

Today’s Cooking is a long-running cooking show on NHK in Japan. Last year they celebrated their 50th anniversay on air. Has any TV cooking program anywhere been on the air longer than that? I rather doubt it (though if you do know of one, let me know in the comments.)

The companion magazine is my favorite food magazine in any language. I have issues going all the way back to the ’70s, when my mother used to subscribe to it. (The new baby sister magazine, Kyou no Ryouri Beginaazu (Today’s Cooking [for] Beginners) is also good.) I don’t get to see the TV program because I can’t justify paying 80 CHF per month for JSTV when the only program I’d probably watch on it would be Today’s Cooking, but the website and the magazine keep me happy enough.

Hayashi raisu (rice): Japanese beef stew

maki — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:59:03 +0100

I have not added a yohshoku (Japanese-adapted Western food) recipe in quite some time. The main reason for this is I haven’t been making any…since most yohshoku dishes tend to be a bit heavy on the butter or cream or rich sauces.

I do sometimes crave this classic yohshoku dish. Hayashi raisu (or hayashi rice) is a Japanese version of a rich beef stew, and in terms of popularity it’s second only to the mighty curry rice, Japanese style curry. Just like curry, you can buy hayashi raisu roux blocks at Japanese grocery stores (look in the curry roux section).

Incidentally, the hayashi part sounds like the Japanese word for a wood (as in a smaller version of a forest), but it’s derived from “hashed”, as in hashed beef. I think the origins are a hashed beef stew. I can see influences from beef bourgignon, stroganoff and various British stews in there.

The beef used is not tough old chewy meat - it’s usually made from cuts that are tender enough to be cooked quickly. The kind sold for ‘minute steaks’ is fine. Sukiyaki beef is great if you can afford it. I’ve seen recipes around that suggest using pork instead of beef, but…that’s just not right to me. Hayashi rice = beef! Beef!

Making hayashi rice from scratch can be easy or tremendously complicated, depending on one thing: whether you make your own demi-glace or not. Demi-glace is reduced, concentrated beef stock that is thick and paste-like. In Japan you can buy demi-glace in cans. You can buy it elsewhere too, though the good kinds can be very expensive. The only other substitute is to make your own strong beef stock from beef bones, meat trimmings and so on and reduce it down and so on. Using stock cubes just won’t do it, I’m afraid, and forget about the usually insipid beef stock in a carton or can.

I’ve given instructions for making hayashi rice from handy roux blocks (which can vary in quality) and using demi-glace.

Hayashi raisu (Hayashi rice)

450g / 1 lb thinly sliced beef
4 medium onions, thinly sliced
About 10-12 mushrooms, sliced
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
Butter or oil
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 cup (240ml) red wine
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce or Bulldog chuunou sauce
1 Tbs. soy sauce
Parsley or green peas for garnish

The sauce ingredients:

1/2 cup demi-glace or 4 cups strong beef stock
1 16-oz or 440g can of canned tomatoes
1 Tbs. tomato paste
2 Tbs. butter
3 Tbs. flour
Water

6 blocks (or more if you like it thick) from a hayashi rice roux packet
Water

Equipment: a large frying pan or sauté pan, a heavy bottomed pot for stewing or a crockpot

Cut the meat up into bite-sized pieces. Heat up a frying pan with butter, oil or combination of both, and sauté the beef until browned. Take out the meat and set aside.

In the same pan, add a bit more butter (no this is not diet food) and add the onions. Sauté over medium-low heat until limp and slightly brown. Add the garlic, mushrooms and carrot. Sauté until the mushrooms are turning limp.

Put all the vegetables in a heavy-bottomed stew pot (a crockpot will do nicely too).

Add the wine. If you’re using the hayashi rice roux blocks, add about 4 cups of water (don’t add the roux at this point yet). If you’re using the other sauce ingredients, add either the demi-glace plus 3 cups of water, the canned tomato and tomato paste, or 4 cups of strong beef stock and the canned tomato and tomato paste. Add the bay leaves and thyme.

Let it all simmer until the liquid has reduced to about half. Add the beef to the pot and contine simmering - the beef should be very tender.

If you’re making your own sauce, make a roux by melting 2 Tbs. of butter in the frying pan and adding the flour. Stir until the flour is grainy and a little bit browned. Add to the stew and stir. Add the Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce.

If using the roux blocks, add them now and stir well to melt.

Add a little water or stock to thin out if it looks too thick. Simmer a few minutes.

Taste and add salt or pepper as needed. Take out the bay leaves.

Serve over rice that’s been mixed with a little salted butter. Garnish with chopped parsley or a few green peas.

This makes 6 to 8 servings.

Hayashi omuraisu

Leftover hayashi makes a very rich sauce for omuraisu (rice omelettte) instead of ketchup. Use plain buttered rice instead of ketchup-chicken rice as the filling.

Buta no kakuni: Japanese Braised Pork Belly

maki — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:42:34 +0100

Today is my mother’s birthday. In her honor, here is one of the few meat dishes that she still allows in her diet: braised pork belly, or buta no kakuni. It’s amazing that she will still eat this, because basically pork belly is bacon without the smoke or salt cure. And in buta no kakuni the bacon, I mean belly, comes in big chunks of layers of meat and unctuous pork fat.

Pork belly recipes exist in other cuisines, especially around northern Europe, but I can’t really stand most of them, even if people in Germany and Britain rave about roasted pork belly with crackling. (The crackling part is ok, but the meat part…I don’t know.) I like fat in moderation as much as anyone, but that amount of gelatinous pork fat is rather hard to bear. That is unless it’s been slowly braised in a salty-sweet liquid for hours and hours, until both the fat and the meat melt in your mouth.

Very similar recipes exist in Chinese (from Peking-style especially) cuisine, and a great Okinawa speciality is rafute. This is a bit like rafute but has a bit more spice and things in it, so it’s closer to the Peking style I think. Either way it’s a great treat once in a great while. It’s definitely a cold weather dish.

Buta no kakuni (Japanese braised pork belly)

About 450g / 1 lb pork belly
2 Tbs sugar
1 piece of leek (about 6 inches / 15 cm long or so. You can use the green part too.)
1 large piece of fresh ginger
1 star anise
3 Tbs. soy sauce
2 Tbs. sake
2 cups water

Cut the pork into cubes about 1 inch / 2cm or so square. If the skin is still on, leave it on. Heat up a large pot with a heavy bottom. Sauté the pork belly cubes, without any added fat (you don’t need it…) until browned.

When the meat is browned, scrape it to one side and put the sugar in the fat that’s accumulated on the bottom, and stir around until it’s a bit caramelized. Stir and toss so the meat gets coated by the sugar.

Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a simmer and lower the heat. Put a lid on and let it simmer gently for about 3 hours, turning occasionally.

To serve, dredge the pieces carefully out of the very oily cooking liquid, and peel of the thick layer of fat that’s on the skin side of the meat. Drizzle a little bit of the cooking liquid over the cubes.

We have this with very plain vegetables, like broccoli with wasabi sauce. Pickles (oshinko) are good to have too. Hot, plain rice is essential. To eat, take a small piece and put it on top of your hot rice, and let the sauce and fat sort of melt in. A little goes a long way.

A bit about my mom, Michiko

She’s in her mid 60s now, but one of the youngest and spryest ladies in her 60s that I know. She loves food, but unfortunately since retiring a few years ago she developed a very severe case of IBD (we suspect it’s due to the stress she went through when she was running a busy restaurant in midtown Manhattan), and really has to watch what she eats. Nevertheless she really enjoys life…often I’m not sure who’s the mother, she or I! Here she is bouncing happily with some buskers at the Nurenberg (Germany) Christmas market last year.

One thing that is great about her is that she brings a fresh sense of enthusiasm to everything. Whenever she comes to visit me in Switzerland, I get to see things through her eyes, so that even in the throes of grey, dull winter in Zürich, life seems to be fun again. It’s great to have a mother like that.

There and Back Again: My Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese

maki — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:00:24 +0200

I love pasta in many guises, but when it comes to ultimate Comfort Pasta, there is nothing that compares to a spaghetti bolognese. By spaghetti bolognese, I mean spaghetti topped with a rich, ground-meat and tomato based sauce. No fancy ragu or such. I don’t think it’s that authentically Italian, but I don’t really care. It’s one of my favorite cool-weather dinners.

Once upon a time, I had what I thought was a perfect recipe for spaghetti bolognese. Then, about a year ago I lost my way. After a year of bewilderingly off-target bolognese, I’ve found my way back.

I blame Heston Blumenthal for messing with my head. (Disclaimer: I am otherwise a big fan of Mr. Blumenthal.) Last year, he tackled spaghetti bolognese on his In Search of Perfection television series (and in the book of course), and came up with a “perfect” version. The perfect Blumenthal version of spaghetti bolognese is, naturally, extremely complicated, but compared to the other “perfect” versions of various popular dishes it seemed to be the most doable. So, we (note the plural: it required a team effort) tackled it, piece by piece. It does help in life to have an almost equally food-obsessive partner for such quests.

It took us 3 full days to accomplish, starting from the pre-ordering of the meaty oxtails at the butcher counter (it’s not a commonly used cut here), finding the perfect spaghetti, ripe tomatoes in December (yes, I know) and the final slow cooking of the sauce. And the result?

It was good, yes, but perfect? Neither of us was sure. But yet it had flashes of something great in there; the meatiness of the gelatinous oxtail, the unctuous richness. So, we embarked on a long journey of trying to tweak that recipe. We tried different meat combinations. (Turkey is a definite no.) We experimented with bacon, chorizo, various sausages, salami. We tried less or more of the vegetables, canned tomatoes alone or fresh alone.

All were interesting, but I still felt off kilter. Then, the other day I made bolognese more or the way I had made it for years until the Blumenthal experiments - and, it was just about perfect.

Mind you, it’s probably because my criteria for a perfect bolognese are different from the great chef’s, as I explain below. And some of the ideas gleaned from the Blumenthal version and the ensuing experiments did creep in, making the sauce even better. In any case, I’m now happy that this is my Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese. I can now move on to perfecting other things.

Defining my Perfect Bolognese

I prefer my bolognese to have a rich, deep taste of tomato, wine, and meat. I also like the meat to be ground quite finely so that you get an integrated ‘meat sauce’, rather than ‘bits of meat suspended in a sauce’.

The experiments with cured meats convinced me that I don’t like cured-meat flavor or smoke flavor in the sauce, but a little bacon is added for richness.

I like the sauce to be rich, but not swimming in fat (a pronounced feature of the Blumenthal version).

It’s key to let the sauce cook for a very long time - minimum 3 hours after the preparatory stage - in a thick-walled pan, ideally a Le Creuset or similar.

The only pasta to use is a robust, dried spaghetti. The kind we use all the time now is substantial and rough textured, as you can see from the picture. That rough surface absorbs sauce in a very satisfying way. It costs almost twice as much as Barilla spaghetti, but is worth it. (If you are using Barilla or other mass-produced line though, I’d go for the spaghettoni rather than spaghetti.)

(For readers in Switzerland, this is the Spaghetti alla chitarra from the Migros Selection line.)

Things I liked and didn’t like about the Blumenthal version

The Heston Blumenthal bolognese is described in great detail in his first book, but also appears on this page. There’s another one on The Times web site, which is quite different.

Mixing fresh and canned tomato is a great idea, as is adding some cream - though I used butter instead, for that dairy unctuousness.

Long cooking, of course, is a good thing, though his version takes 9 hours.

The oxtail meat idea was interesting, but obtaining and then cutting the meat off the fiddly bones is way, way too much work - and ultimately, I felt, not quite worth it. It’s also quite expensive here in Switzerland. For the gelatinous quality I use some veal in the meat mixture instead.

His version was too sweet for me for some reason. I also didn’t like the star anise addition at all - this may have added to that sweet flavor somehow. I do like adding star anise to many meat dishes, especially pork, just not this one.

There was also too much added fat overall, which cause a very substantial oil slick to appear on the surface of the sauce.

I’ve always used red wine in bolognese, and he used an ‘oaky Chardonnay’. I prefer the robust red wine.

Recipe: My Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese

For the sauce:

The meats:

450-500g / 1 lb top loin or chuck
225-250g / 8 oz veal breast
225-250g / 8 oz. pork shoulder
100g / 3 oz non-smoked bacon or pancetta or speck, chopped fine

(Note that the beef and pork should be rather marbled, not very lean, if you need to use other cuts.)

Have all of the meats (except the bacon, which you’ll chop yourself) twice ground by the butcher, or grind it yourself (use a grinder or a food processor) until fairly fine but not a paste. If using a food processor, it helps to cube the meat and then half-freeze the cubes first. You can buy already ground meat if you prefer, but it should be not too lean as well.

The vegetables:

2 cups finely chopped onion
2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 cup finely chopped carrot

Other stuff:

About 1/4 cup light olive oil
1 cup (250ml) red wine such as a Barbera or a Côte du Rhone (but I usually use whatever is handy, as long as it’s robust it’s fine)
1 large can (800g) canned tomatoes, the tomatoes smashed up (do this with your hands or in the food processor)
2 Tbs. tomato paste
4 cups peeled and chopped fresh tomatoes, seeds and all (If in the dead of winter, use another can of canned tomatoes instead)
2 bay leaves
Crushed dried or (preferably) fresh chopped rosemary leaves
Dried thyme
Dried oregano
Grated nutmeg
About 2 Tbs. butter, more or less to taste
Stock (veal or beef preferred) or water
Salt and pepper

And…the pasta etc.:

Spaghetti or spaghettoni, cooked al dente
Butter to toss with the spaghetti
Freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano (freshly grated Grana Padano is acceptable)

Equipment needed:

a heavy pan - I use an enamelled cast iron pot
large frying pan or sauté pan
Recommended to have: a food processor.

Heat up the olive oil in the heavy pot over medium heat. Toss in all the chopped up vegetables, then lower the heat to about midway between low and medium. Sauté the vegetables over the low heat, stirring occasionally, until it’s limp and very lightly tan.

In a large frying pan, sauté the ground meats until browned, and add it all into the pot. Deglaze (add a bit of the stock or water to the hot pan, scrape off the bits ) the frying pan and add that to the pot too.

Add all the other ingredients except the butter, water and salt and pepper. (The amount of herbs you add really depends on your taste. I like to add quite a bit of chopped fresh rosemary, about 2 tablespoons, because I have childhood memories of happily chewing on bits of rosemary leaves in my mother’s spaghetti bolognese. Add about a teaspoonful of the herbs and several grindings of the nutmeg, then taste after a few hours to see if you want more.)

Bring up the temperature until it’s bubbling, then lower the heat to ‘low’ and simmer, stirring up from the bottom of the pot occasionally, for at least 3 hours, preferably 4 or longer. Add a little stock or water whenever it starts to dry out too much. (You may also do this in the oven, but I prefer to do it on the rangetop and have just a tiny hint of burnt flavor in there.)

At the end of the cooking process, take out the bay leaves, stir in the butter, and add salt and pepper to taste.

This makes a lot of very rich sauce. About 1/2 cup is enough I think for a plate of dinner-portion spaghetti (allowing about 100g or 3 1/2 ounces dry weight per person). Portion and freeze the rest - it freezes beautifully.

To enhance the flavor, toss the freshly cooked spaghetti with a knob of butter prior to ladling on the sauce. Optionally top with freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano, or Grana Padano.

The only thing to serve with this is a green salad with a sharp vinegarette.

Notes

While the oil slick on this sauce is not as pronounced as the one that appears on the Blumenthal version, it is impressively deep. You can scoop some of this off if it scares you. (I would scoop off the excess oil prior to adding the butter…which may seem illogical, but you’ll be taking out ‘other’ oils and adding in butter flavor.)

You can also ‘stretch’ the sauce by taking a cupful and adding 1 small can (400g - about 8 oz) of crushed canned tomatoes. Adjust the salt and pepper. Sometimes I prefer this less-rich version.

Or, you can add one cupful to 1 cup of cream…for a very rich creamy sauce indeed.

Adding some sauteed mushrooms enhances it too.

The sauce as-is is perfect for layering in lasagna, stuffing cannellini and such, paired with a perfect Bechamel.

Don’t ruin it by covering it with pre-powdered cardboard ‘parmesan’. If there’s one thing I’ve learned while living in Switerland it’s that mystery cheese products taste really, really bad compared to the real thing.

Finally, in case you are wondering, spaghetti bolognese (also known as ‘spaghetti meat sauce’) is very popular in Japan. It has to be one of the most universally loved dishes in the world, no?

(Somewhat different and lighter pasta.)

Poached and marinated pork (Nibuta)

maki — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:34:52 +0200

With summer just around the corner, I like to think of food that can be made well ahead and tastes great served cold, or at least cool, to keep me out of a hot kitchen. The vegetable part of this is usually taken care of with seasonal vegetable salads and the like. If the protein part means meat, I like to have pre-cooked pieces tucked away in the freezer.

One of my favorite cold meats is poached and marinated pork, or nibuta. (Ni means to cook in liquid, and buta is pig.) It’s very easy to make, stores beautifully in the refrigerator for about a week or much longer in the freezer, and of course, tastes great - savory, slightly sweet, and very juicy. It can be sliced very thinly or julienned for one-dish meal salads or in sandwiches, or chopped up and added to stir-fries, wraps, and so on. It’s a great addition to a bento box. It can be cubed or coarsely ground and used instead of char siu (roast pork) in steamed buns or bao. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

There’s one unusual ‘secret ingredient’ in the poaching liquid, umeboshi or pickled plum. You can omit this if you like, but adding just one umeboshi seems to de-fat the meat a bit more than just poaching, plus making it taste a bit cleaner and fresher in an interesting way.

Poached and marinated pork (Nibuta)

One 1 kg (2.2 lb) or so lump of pork roast that is not too lean

It’s best to make this with a cut of meat that isn’t totally lean, so don’t use an expensive cut like tenderloin or filet. It should have a little marbling, just like ham. Quite a lot of the fat will end up in the poaching liquid, which you can just throw out or skim off.

Kitchen twine to tie up the meat (optional)

For the poaching liquid:

1 bunch of green leek tops
1 big piece fresh ginger, sliced
1 umeboshi (pickled plum) (somewhat optional)

For the marinating liquid:

2 cups regular dark soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar (or sugar substitute)
1/4 cup mirin
1/4 cup sake
1 tiny bit (not a whole piece) of star anise

If you want your pork to be nicely shaped, tie it up with the kitchen twine neatly. You don’t have to do this if you can’t be bothered.

In the meantime, put the green leek tops, ginger slices, and umeboshi in a pot with enough water to cover the pork. Bring to a boil, then put the meat in. Lower the heat until it’s barely simmering, put on a lid, and poach for 90 minutes. Let cool a bit in the liquid.

In the meantime, combine the marinade ingredients in a smaller pan and bring to the boil. Let cool.

Put the marinade and the still warm, drained pork into a plastic bag. Close tightly, and place in a bowl to catch any leaks. Let marinate, turning every so often, for about an hour or more. Store in the refrigerator until cold.

It can be kept like this in the marinade in a tightly closed container in the refrigerator for up to a week. Or, take out of the marinade and store in the freezer (optionally cut into smaller pieces for easy use and defrosting). Best served cold and thinly sliced.

Notes

The marinade itself can be defatted (put it into the refrigerator until the fat has congealed, then strain) and used as a sauce, either on the meat or for other dishes. It keeps for about 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

You could try to use the poaching liquid as a soup base, but I don’t find the flavor that good somehow (the ginger and leek combo make it too strong) so I just throw it out.

[Edited to add:] Ideally defrost nibuta in the fridge overnight, rather than in the microwave which can dry it out.

The umeboshi idea is one I originally read in one of Katsuyo Kobayashi’ many cookbooks.

Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, Part 4: Traditional butchery in Spain, and chickens

maki — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 08:34:01 +0100

In the fourth and final episode of Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, they reviewed and summarized the previous 3 episodes, visited a small poultry ‘processing’ plant, and showed how a pig is butchered in the traditional way - no stun guns - in Spain.

(Warning: potentially disturbing details follow)

Chickens

The conventional-method poultry farm they showed was fairly small, but the chickens were still grown in what I thought were very crowded conditions. The chickens had a little room to move around, but not much. They said that it wasn’t nearly as crowded as at larger farms…which a disturbing thought. The farmer said that he preferred this enclosed method of rearing chickens to free range since he was afraid of the birds picking up unknown viruses if allowed outside.

Since the ‘red meat’ abattoir where the big animals were slaughtered doesn’t do poultry, the members of the public who participated in the show took a field trip to a small poultry processing plant. The killing process is similar to the bigger animals, but the whole process shown was more mechanized. The chickens are hung upside down on a conveyor-belt type contraption, then, according the the government expert vet/commentator, basically killed when their heads pass through an electrified water tank. Then the most disturbing part to view: the chickens are bled by slitting their throats. The birds are then passed through some hot water that loosens their feathers, passed through a contraption that sort of massages off most of those feathers, then the cleaning is finished by hand.

Personally I’m rather traumatized by chicken heads and feet, ever since an incident when I was about 12. My mother was buying vegetables and things directly from a farm cooperative, and once time they delivered some chickens to our house. She told me to cut them up since she was delayed at work. Little did I know (and she didn’t know either) that the birds would come with the heads and feet still intact. It still gives me shivers just thinking about those beady eyes looking at me.

Yet…I love to eat chicken, and we have it on average at least twice a week. I still can’t handle chicken feet at a dim sum though. (Max loves then however.)

In any case, I was glad they showed the chicken slaughtering process as well. But I can see why chicken is the cheapest kind of meat we can buy, since even at a small plant the ‘processing’ is quite automated. A lot of things can go wrong I think when they are processing so many chickens that you can barely tell one bird from another. (This page from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Structural change in U.S. Chicken and Turkey Slaughter, states as of the year 2000 that poultry plants are growing bigger and bigger. I’m sure that hasn’t changed much in 2007.)

(Sidetracking a bit - the standard size to which chickens are grown in Britain is 2.2 kilo, or about 5 pounds. I think they are even bigger in the U.S. though I can’t find any document online that specifies standard sizes. In Switzerland, the whole chickens we can buy at the supermarket usually around 1 kilo in size, at the most 1.5 kilo. Farm-grown chickens from the open markets are around that size too.)

Traditional butchery

In another segment, they showed how a family-reared pig in Spain is butchered. In rural parts of the country, many people still rear their own pigs. To cut to the chase, the pig is not stunned before the throat is slit - it’s bled alive while being held down by several people, and takes about 3 minutes to die. It’s not pretty to watch…but that’s the way it’s been done for hundreds of years. It’s possible that coming EU regulations will put a stop to such methods. I’m not sure if this is a shame, or a good thing. (Chef Antonio Carlucci, who was in the audience, mentioned that maybe 40-50% of the pork sold in Italy is still butchered in the traditional way. Something to think about when buying proscuitto or pancetta.)

The blood that is bled from the pig is turned into blood sausage, using the intestines from the same pig as the casing. Later on, the family was shown tucking into it with gusto. The kids cheerfully said that the killing of the pig didn’t bother them at all since they’ve seen it being done all their lives.

Summing up

I am really glad that this program was made, and I’m glad I watched it all too. It may have turned quite a few people towards vegetarianism. The one way it’s affected me, is to make me resolve to only buy meat and poultry from reputable sources, with the full realization that it’s going to cost more. No more stocking up on frozen chicken pieces from the Budget section for me. If we choose to continue to eat meat, and I think for now we will, we’ll do that and buy less quantity to compensate for the more expensive prices.

meat

The role of alcohol, onion and ginger in Japanese meat dishes

See also

Meat and the environment

Menchikatsu

Hambaagu or hambaagaa: Japanese hamburgers

Recipe: Japanese style hamburger (Hambaagu or hambaagaa)

What to serve with hambaagu

Sauce variations

Somewhat lower fat variation suitable for bento

Duck breast: pan-fried, poached and marinated in booze (Kamo ro-su)

Recipe: Japanese-style poached and marinated duck breast (Kamo ro-su)

About Kyou no Ryouri, the longest running cooking TV program ever (?)

Hayashi raisu (rice): Japanese beef stew

Hayashi raisu (Hayashi rice)

Hayashi omuraisu

Buta no kakuni: Japanese Braised Pork Belly

Buta no kakuni (Japanese braised pork belly)

A bit about my mom, Michiko

There and Back Again: My Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese

Defining my Perfect Bolognese

Things I liked and didn’t like about the Blumenthal version

Recipe: My Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese

Notes

Poached and marinated pork (Nibuta)

Poached and marinated pork (Nibuta)

Notes

Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, Part 4: Traditional butchery in Spain, and chickens

Chickens

Traditional butchery

Summing up