Sauerbraten

Talk about slow food: This recipe doesn't really involve that much cooking time, but it does involve a fairly lengthy total elapsed time from start to finish, since you marinate it for three days.

Sauerbraten

Adapted from “The Complete Book of World Cookery” from Crescent. My mother had this 1972 cookbook on her shelf unused for many years and passed it along to me in hopes it would get some mileage. Can’t say as I’ve done right by it either, but it’s an interesting book, organized alphabetically by country. Measurements are imperial; directions are minimal, almost church-cookbook-esque in that regard. They smack of handwritten recipes passed along upon request, from Germany to Ghana.

Ingredients

3 pounds topside (or in our world top round or bottom round)

2 cups red wine (or at least that’s how I liberally interpreted 2 glassfuls, since I figured a bit more liquid for covering the meat seemed called for, and in my experience the contributors to this book did not believe in small glasses)

1 tablespoon wine vinegar

1 onion, sliced

1 carrot, sliced

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 bay leaf

1 spring thyme

4 whole cloves

6 peppercorns

Salt

2 ounces lard (!)

1 ounce flour

1 cup sour cream

½ cup broth if needed (I didn't need it)

Method

Combine wine, vinegar, onion, carrots, mustard, bay leaf, thyme, cloves, peppercorns and some salt in a large container. Add meat, trying to get it below the surface of the liquid as much as possible. Cover, refrigerate and let marinate for 3 days, turning every 12 hours or so.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Drain meat, retaining marinade. Heat lard in an oven proof pan that has a lid. Brown meat lightly on all sides. Pour marinade on top. Cover and bake for 3 hours.

Remove meat to a cutting board to let rest while you make the sauce. Strain the sauce and pour liquid back into pot over medium-low heat. Add flour and stir with a whisk until well blended. Add the sour cream (and some broth if needed to make a sauce) and cook and stir until thickened. Serve slices of the meat with hot buttered noodles or spaetzle and top with the sauce.

Rating: Dave's response: "My satisfaction level is quite high." Dave says this brings back memories of Sunday roasts at his grandmother's house after church, which for him is a good thing. I grew up on all beef, all the time, and I'm still not really nostalgic for that. But I agree that a wet roast is much better than a dry roast when it comes to this cut of meat. The meat is fairly moist and the sauce is essentially a really nice gravy. I'd say the three hours of braising resulted in a superior outcome compared with half that time dry roasting. Was it worth waiting three days for? Not sure. But it was a really nice gravy. And Black Forest sells its spaetzle at Kowalski's, so I balanced a slow food with a fast food.

Apple pastries revisited

 

Sometimes you need a really fast but still vaguely respectable breakfast offering for house guests, say, when they're catching a flight out later that morning. Or just a fast way to get yourself a reasonably tasty Sunday breakfast pastry. 

That's what this recipe is good for, along with being a good way to use up apples. If an apple gets a soft spot but is otherwise perfectly firm and viable, I cut off the offending bit, grate up the rest and freeze it. Once I've got a couple of those apple bits, I use them up in these pastries.

I got this recipe years ago from a Pillsbury baking booklet on the shelves of my sister's apartment in the D.C. area. We were staying there for a week while they were on their honeymoon, an arrangement that suited our then very meager budget quite nicely. We didn't have a car and this was way pre-Uber, so other than food we stocked up on before they left, we mostly limited our food shopping to what we could get from the convenience store when we got off the Metro. Pillsbury roll concoctions filled the bill for a nice breakfast before heading off to play tourist after rush hour. (Awesome vacation, by the way, like Airbnb without the bill.)

I've made these countless times over the years since then, but part of me always feels a little sheepish about resorting to premade crescent roll dough (which I swear used to taste better and have better quality control of the slicing). And another part of me felt like this pleasant filling deserved a better shot at pastry bliss. 

I finally got around to trying this with puff pastry dough instead. If you thaw it overnight in the refrigerator, it only adds a few minutes of very well rewarded effort. And I now feel even more sheepish that I haven't tried this sooner, since my freezer is incomplete without at least a partial box of puff pastry.

Apple pastries

Adapted from one of those little Pillsbury baking booklets you see at checkout counters.

Ingredients

1 large apple, peeled and coarsely grated

2 tablespoons raisins

2 tablespoons chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans work well)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 sheet puff pastry

Beaten egg

Cinnamon sugar for sprinkling

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

If your apple releases a lot of juice, squeeze the moisture out to avoid having mushy pastry. Mix apples, raisins, nuts, cornstarch, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. (If I prep this the night before, I mix the apples, raisins and nuts and store the mixture covered in the refrigerator. Then I add the dry ingredients in the morning.)

On a lightly floured board, roll puff pastry sheet lightly to smooth out creases and form a square of whatever size you like. Cut pastry into 4 squares. Cut each square in half diagonally, which will leave you with 8 triangles. Transfer pastry to baking sheet.

Place filling in largest, L-shaped corner of the triangle, making sure to leave a clear rim of at least ¼ inch. About 2 tablespoons of filling divides the mixture evenly, depending on how large your apple is.

Brush edges of puff pastry with beaten egg. Fold the two points farthest away from the filling to the L-shaped corner, forming a squarish shape. Leave the diagonal opening unsealed, but pinch together edges well or your filling will ooze in a non-pretty manner.

Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 17 minutes or until puffed, golden brown and the area under the filling looks cooked.

Makes 8 pastries that are fairly smallish, so figure a couple per person unless you’re serving a whole lot more food with it.

Rating: We clearly have proof of concept on this one. For the price of a few minutes and two more dishes to wash, you wind up with pastries that are both pleasant and respectable.

Pillsbury roll method

Prep filling ingredients the same way. When forming the pastries, there’s no need to brush the edges with egg because the premade dough is plenty sticky as it is. Use the beaten egg to brush outside of dough instead so it gets golden brown. Bake at 350 degrees for 13 to 17 minutes.

Blueberry buttermilk pancakes

 While these would make an admirable breakfast, I was in the mood for comfort food in the evening, so we opted for breakfast at dinner. (Note to self: Please brainstorm sometime to come up with a less tiresome word than brinner. It's so awfully tinny.) Topped with some of the farmers market blueberries I froze this summer and some sausage links from Hilltop, it worked on a night when I really didn't feel like cooking. And at least today finally is really Thursday.

Buttermilk blueberry pancakes

From seasonsandsuppers.ca, a source of great number of comfort food recipes -- or at least that's what I always pin from there.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter plus some for greasing pan

1 1/3 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 cup buttermilk

¼ teaspoon vanilla

1 cup or more fresh or frozen blueberries

Method

Melt 3 tablespoons butter and let cool.

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine milk, egg and vanilla. Pour butter and milk mixture into a well in the dry ingredients and stir just until combined. Yes, there will be some lumps.

Heat griddle or large skillet over medium to medium-low heat. Swipe with a bit of butter. Scoop a heaving ¼ cup of batter onto griddle, leaving a wide gap between pancakes so they don’t spread into each other. Dot surface with blueberries. 

These make fairly thick pancakes and the dough is pretty tacky to start with, so they'll take a bit longer to cook than some recipes. When top of pancakes start to get dotted with bubbles and bottom is golden brown, flip pancakes and cook on the other side until cooked through.

Repeat with remaining batter. Makes about 7 good-sized, very filling pancakes. Garnish with remaining blueberries.

Rating: Blogger Jennifer from Ontario, Canada, labeled these "My Best Blueberry Pancakes" and they're certainly quite nice. I'm rather fond of my blueberry cornmeal cakes from James McNair, but these are nice too. Comfort has been applied.

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Roasted garlic potato soup

This is a soup I like to make when we reach the Stygian gloom stage of winter. One bowl of comfort, coming up.

Roasted garlic potato soup

Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens, March 1996. Been making this one for longer than I thought.

Ingredients

4 medium potatoes (a mix of red and yellow looks nice)

1 large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped

2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary

1 head garlic

1 tablespoon or so olive oil

Salt and pepper

2 cups chicken broth or more, divided

1 tablespoon flour (optional)

1 cup cream or whole milk

Method

Preheat oven to 400. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment.

Peel 2 of the potatoes. Cut potatoes into chunks about the size you’d like to eat. Place peeled chunks on one end of the baking sheet and unpeeled chunks at the other, leaving a space in the middle. Place onions in the middle of the sheet. Sprinkle rosemary over the onions and potatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. 

Score the top of a head of garlic just down from the top. Drizzle olive oil over potatoes, onions and garlic.

Roast for about 45 to 50 minutes until garlic is soft and potatoes are cooked and golden brown. Let cool slightly.

Place peeled half of potatoes in a food processor. Add half the onions. Squeeze roasted garlic and add to processor bowl along with flour and ¾ cup broth. Puree. You’ll wind up with a fairly thick sludge.

In a large pot, combine pureed mixture, remaining potatoes and onions, cream and remaining 1¼ cup broth. Stir well. Add more broth if needed to achieve desired consistency. Heat through. Serves 4 quite heartily.

Rating: Really tasty, Very thick and satisfying.

Note: To avoid gluten, you can omit the flour. It's slightly less thick, but perhaps that's not a bad thing.