Half a cow

We got our cow!

Every so often we buy a side of beef from a friend who regularly raises cattle to keep the grass in his pastures down. The first time we did this, the cow in question was a rather energetic and troublesome character, one of a duo named Mary-Kate and Ashley (I’m not sure which one we got). The last two have not had names, as far as I know. The meat gets processed at a local butcher shop, packaged, labeled and hard frozen, so we can pick it up, toss it in the trunk and take it home to our chest freezer. It’s a great feeling to have a freezer-full of local, pasture-raised beef - we just have to think ahead a bit to make sure it’s defrosted in time for dinner.

 Hamburger, anyone?

Meatballs with arrabbiata sauce

One of our tried-and-true, easy to make, yummy weeknight dinners. Both the meatballs and the sauce are inspired by recipes out of Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, and are basically just vehicles for garlic. And an excuse to drink red wine.

J almost always makes the meatballs in this house - here’s how he did these. He started with two pounds of ground beef, almost the last of our local half-a-cow that we bought last year. The beef was mixed with 1/2 cup each of bread crumbs and milk, two eggs, salt and pepper, and a head (yes, a head!) of chopped garlic. The original Bittman recipe called for onion, but the first time J made it we were out. He substituted garlic (which we grow ourselves), and we liked it so much it stuck. The meatballs get baked for about 20 minutes in a 375° oven. We generally use parchment paper, it helps tremendously for cleanup.

Steak & potatoes

Sometimes Friday night is pizza night, or crêpe night, or going-out-to-eat night - something festive. Often it’s steak night. Last Friday we went for the super traditional steak-and-potatoes meal, with a nice big T-bone, some oven roasted Yukon Golds, and a pile of steamed broccoli. Nothing too complicated here:

The steak was salted and peppered, allowed to come up to room temperature, and pan seared until just done. J made a pan sauce with chicken stock and some chianti from the freezer.

The potatoes were cut into chunks about an inch across, rubbed with olive oil, salt and pepper and put in a 400° oven for half an hour or so. I turned them a couple times so they’d get crusty all around.

The broccoli was chopped up and steamed. We poured the pan sauce over everything.

We opened a bottle of Sandhill Cabernet that we bought at the winery in Benton City last September. It was awesome.

Sometimes it doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

Short ribs braised in porter

Saturday was chilly, and after a brisk walk by the bay we felt the need of something substantial and warming for dinner. I glanced at my still-pristine copy of All About Braising by Molly Stevens, and found a recipe for Short Ribs Braised in Porter Ale with Maple-Rosemary Glaze. We love short ribs and have made them before with either a red wine braising liquid or a good dollop of Patak’s curry paste, so porter sounded like a good variation. The maple glaze sounded unnecessary and sweet, so I left it off, but I otherwise followed the recipe pretty closely.

Our grocery store sometimes sells both English-style and Flanken-style short ribs - this weekend they only had Flanken-style. For beer we picked out a large bottle of Scuttlebutt Porter from Everett - it’s smooth and rich without any bitterness, and cooked down with no off flavors.

Pot roast enchiladas

This past weekend we helped out at my father’s twice-yearly gallery show. Our main contributions at these events tend to be opening bottles of wine and cooking dinner for anyone who happens to be around. For this one we had already decided to make a pan of enchiladas, since it feeds lots of people and is flexible for staggered servings (there are generally lots of people coming and going). The original intention was to buy some pork, roast or boil it and shred it for the filling, and cover it with a green mole sauce. However, when we arrived the night before the art show, my father had cooked up a large pot roast (with chanterelles and pasta), and we thought - we have shredded meat! And lots of it! So here’s what we did:

My mother hand shredded the leftover beef (a seven-bone roast simmered for four hours with carrots and onions) into a bowl. J cut up an assortment of mildly hot peppers that came from the local farmer’s market, and sauteed them with some small home-grown onions, then dumped it all into the meat and mixed it up a bit.