The New and Unusual

I made some new and unusual foods over the weekend, and thought i would share

First, venison steak with mixed vinegar peppers. This is a take on a very traditional Italian dish, normally made with pork chops and those canned, vinegar hot peppers that Italians seem to love so much. I personally hate them. The vinegar hot peppers, not Italians. I usually like Italians.

First, I marinated some venison cull steak (which means old and chewy) in red wine, tarragon vineger, and an Italian season salt mixture for about 4 hours. Then I slowly braised the steak on the stove top. Then I threw in slices from one red pepper, one orange pepper, one ivory pepper, and one hot bannana pepper as well as two shallots and three cloves of garlic. I cooked it slow until everything was done. The only thing that happened was that the steak never really softened much, as it was cull steak, which is closely related to shoe leather. But doing something like this with a piece of chuck steak would probably work really well. The key is to just cook it long and slow.

Second, I made one of my new favorites - roasted radishes. Just take some nice clean radishes, chop them in half if they are big, toss with some olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes. The radishes go all soft and sweet and that sharp raw radish taste goes bye bye..... I used some weird japanese radishes I got in my garden box. They are green on the outside and fuschia on the inside. Makes for an interesting visual side dish.

Offal Cooking

My friend Jenn is going to hate this post, but it is my homage to thriftiness.

See, I am a big fan of most forms of offal.... gizzards, liver, heart, tails... all those parts that no one except the very poor used to use. I love them because they are a challenge. They are hard to cook and make them tender and tasty. I am particularly fond of ox tails, which are actually quite hard to find nowadays and, even at the ethnic market, are often more than $3 a pound. But, if you work with them right, they are incredible!

This is what I do:

Get about 1.5 pounds of ox tails. If you can, get the ones that are larger. They get more tender and have more meat and less bone. Sprinkle about 1 Tablespoon of shallot salt (go Penzeys!) over the tails and then brown in a Dutch oven. Add in 2 teaspoons dried Rosemary, 1 Tablespoon of fresh thyme, pepper, and 2 Bay leaves. Stir. Then add 2 cups of crushed tomatoes, 1/2 cup dried chopped leeks, and 1 quart of beef stock. Put in a 325 degree oven and cook until the meat is soft and tender (braising!). I find that 3 hours is usually just fine. I serve my ox tails with baked potatoes and green beans. They are messy to eat, but yummy!

Back in the Mood

Well, I have started cooking again. Not every day. For example, tonight was a popcorn night again. But after my recent post about how I am a meat idiot, I remembered something.

It's called braising.

Getting towards the end of my sad, dry, greasy roast, I decided I had to use it up somehow. So I chunked it up and then threw in some prik king sauce, which is a spicy Thai condiment. I use the version that comes in the bag of prik king green beans (frozen food aisle at Trader Joe's). I let the meat and the sauce simmer together - which is braising - the meat cooks slowly in a sauce that allows it to become tender and the flavor of the sauce to penetrate. I then threw in the green beans, and served the whole mess over brown rice.

My god, it was delicious. The meat tasted good and was moist and tender.

I can't believe I forgot about braising. I must be a bit down. I mean, duh, it is a bassic of poor person's cooking. You get the cheapest cut of meat you can find and you work with it until it is not only edible but delicious.

Anyway, the braising got my juices going again and since then I have been cooking up a storm. I currently have a whole chicken in a pot with celery, onion, carrot, salt and a bay leaf (Greek, from Greece, sent to the state by my friend Ruth's mom who is very cool and I want to go visit her. In Greece) making a rich stock that I will use tomorrow to make Heather's extra magical chicken noodle soup of get wellness (I have the sniffles. I keep saying it is allergies but a soup remedy is never a bad thing).

A couple of days ago, I made the following recipe, which I have been eating for a couple of days - spinach in tomato sauce with mozarella.

Take a 1 pound bag of frozen spinach. Throw it in a sauce pan with about .25 cup of water and start cooking. Then throw in about .5 cup of green onions and 2 cups of tomato sauce. Cook until bubbly delicious. Then turn off the heat and throw in about .5 cup of mozarella cheese. I had some mozarella pearls, but if you just have a block, go ahead and chop it into pieces about the size of the tip of your pinkie. Serve with a nice crusty whole wheat bread to soak up the juice.

Anyway, a side note. Some folks, noting that only one of the original seven wonders of the world still exist, have decided to have a contest to pick a new seven wonders of the world. Sadly, all of the candiates are human-made, but still if you get a chance to go to the website and vote, please do. Here is the website and the list of candidates. it is going to be hard for me to choose. I personally think it would be cool if they would include natural wonders and then we could pick one from each continent. My current choices? Angkor Wat temple, Easter Island statues, the Great Wall, Petra, the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, and one that isn't listed Serpent Mound in Ohio.

Votes can be made online, at www.new7wonders.com.

The 21 finalists for the New Seven Wonders of the World, alphabetically:
1 Acropolis, Athens, Greece
2 Alhambra, Granada, Spain
3 Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia
4 Chichen Itza Aztec site, Yucatan, Mexico
5 Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
6 Colosseum, Rome
7 Easter Island Statues, Chile
8 Eiffel Tower, Paris
9 Great Wall, China
10 Hagia Sophia church, Istanbul, Turkey
11 Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan
12 Kremlin/St.Basil's, Moscow
13 Machu Picchu, Peru
14 Neuschwanstein Castle, Fussen, Germany
15 Petra ancient city, Jordan
16 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
17 Statue of Liberty, New York
18 Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom
19 Sydney Opera House, Australia
20 Taj Mahal, Agra, India
21 Timbuktu city, Mali