A Christmas Roast

Nothing says meat better than a beef rib roast. In our family, there's a tradition of serving one of these beasts for an early dinner on Christmas Day along with Yorkshire pudding and the mandatory mashed potatoes. It doesn't hurt that one of the sisters-in-law works for a meat distributor in Baltimore. Have you checked the price of beef lately?

You don't do much to a rib roast other than seasoning it aggressively with salt and pepper. Getting it to the table is really more about technique than anything else. Do you like your meat rare? Medium? Well done? It is critical that you know in advance what sort of meat you want to be serving. From there, it's all about timing.

Most of the advice you read about doneness in recipe books is all wrong. In fact, as we prepared our roast for the oven, we read in one book or another that to serve our beef rare, we would need to cook it to an internal temperature of 140. It advised 170 for well done. Either would have resulted in something like shoe leather.

One thing many cooks fail to take into account is that a large roast (even a smaller one) continues to cook even after you pull it out of the oven. A very large roast cooked at a high temperature will build up such a head of steam that it will "coast" for quite some distance. Just sitting on the cutting board, the internal temperature will continue to rise 10 degrees or more. We learned this the hard way at past Christmas dinners, wherein we pulled the roast from the oven at what we thought was an ideal temperature for juicy and rare, only to slice into something closer to well done because we had to wait so long for everyone to get to the table.

Consequently, I've learned to undershoot the temperature a little, and since temperature is so important--really, the only way to gauge a tender roast's doneness--it pays to have a highly accurate and reliable thermometer. If you can afford a roast like this, you can certainly afford the cost of a good digital thermometer, the kind with a probe that you can insert into the roast for the entire cooking time. An oven-safe cord connects the probe to a sensor with an alarm that will sound when your desired temperature has been reached. The sensor usually has a magnet on the back so you can hang it on the refrigerator door and walk away while your meat cooks.

Typically we take the meat out of the fridge and leave it on the counter for a few hours to come up to room temperature. That will speed up the cooking time. This year, our digital thermometer--with the probe inserted squarely in the middle--showed the roast to be 56 degrees cool before we put it in the oven. May aim was to bring it up to 115 degrees for a fairly rare result.

After seasoning the meat top and bottom, I preheat the oven to 500 degrees. A half hour at 500 degrees (meat up, bones down) develops some nice browning and crustiness on the roast. I then reduce the heat to 325. I've read that some beef houses like to cook their rib roasts at very low heat for several hours to achieve that perfectly rosy interior. Using my method, a 12-pound roast is done in about 1 1/2 hours.

If you are looking for something closer to medium rare, shoot for an internal temperature of 120. Once it comes out of the oven, let the roast sit on its cutting board for 15 or 20 minutes so the juices can redistribute themselves. Cut the roast too early and all the juices just run out of it. When it's finally ready and people are seating themselves, I like to cut the meat away from the rib bones all in one piece. This makes for much easier carving at table.

You can separate the rack into individual bones and pass these around the table on a platter. Some of your guests will enjoy gnawing on them as a sort of appetizer. I know I do.

Dark Days: Roasting Chicken and More

A roasting chicken arrived in our weekly CSA box which happily answers the question, What are we making for our Dark Days Local Challenge meal this week?

Concidentally, our friend Marty from California, who we haven't seen in a lifetime, came to visit. Isn't it nice to have a friend who exclaims over a simple roasted chicken, turnips and potatoes?

Since we share our CSA box with friends Helen and Jeff, we had half a chicken to split three ways. I used diced carrots and onions and some thyme leaves as a bed for the chicken on a baking sheet and surrounded it with baby turnips, also from the CSA box, and purple potatoes from our garden, tossed with extra-virgin olive oil and salt. Yes, we still have potatoes. Some are still in the ground. These have been languishing in our pantry.

Prior to baking the chicken, I had harvested some chard from the garden. The weather has been fluky: heat waves followed by extreme cold. When it's very cold, the chard falls to the ground. When the air warms, the chard springs back to life. I harvested enough--stems and leaves, roughly chopped--to fill my cast-iron skillet, along with some sauteed red onion. Season with salt and orange juice, then braise on the stove top, covered, until the chard stems are tender.

This made a nice plate with a diversity of flavors--a little bite from the turnips, fruitiness from the chard, the smooth mouthfeel of the potatoes and the aromatic carrots and onions. The pastured chicken is a bit chewier than what you get from a store-bought bird, but that just adds to the excitement.

Accidental Roast Pork

This is how an accidental roast pork happens:

I pulled the roast out of the freezer several days ago. It was one of the bone-in loin roasts we brought back from our farmer friend's matanza earlier in the month. But then we ended up throwing a dinner party for 10 people. The roast wasn't big enough.

So there it sat in the refrigerator. I took it out of the fridge earlier in the day and left it on the kitchen counter to come up to room temperature, figuring we'd make a family meal out of it later. But on the way back from our friend Mike Klein's farm in the afternoon, when we stopped for a long-anticipated soft ice cream cone at the corner grocery in Brandywine, MD, the store's computer was down and the wait for a cone was interminable. We left without our cone and my 7-year-old daughter was in tears for hours. Check that: She was in full melt-down for hours, and we figured that the African drum recital she was supposed to perform in later in the day was off. But at 4 pm, just 15 minutes before she was supposed to perform, my daughter stopped crying, looked at me and announced, "Dad, we have to go! Let's hurry."

The drum performance that was supposed to happen at 4:15 didn't take place till 6. I spent most of the time napping in an armchair at the Russian Cultural Affairs Office (it's a long story). When the recital was over, my daughter felt she deserved a soft ice cream cone from McDonald's. So we stopped at Mickie D's for the cone. It was past 6:30 when we got home. And there sat this wonderful farm-raised pork roast staring me in the face. I was not about to stick it back in the fridge. This sucker was going to get roasted one way or the other.

Isn't this how most family meals happen?

My point being that we usually can't stop everything and hover over a pork roast for two hours. It has taken me years to develop a successful technique so that I can actually place a roast in the oven and predict, more or less, what will happen without sitting there and monitoring it every five seconds. There are a few essentials:

First, a quality piece of meat. My first choice would be a bone-in loin roast from the middle of the rack, and preferably from a reputable producer such as Niman Ranch or a local farmer. The average pork roast from the supermarket is raised in a pig factory and bred to have as little fat on it as possible. Roasting this factory-type loin is almost like cooking a meat roll from the deli counter. It is especially hard not to overcook the average supermarket roast to the point that it is as dry as shoe leather, particularly if you are following the recommendations of the USDA, which are to cook that pork to 160 degrees. That, friends, is a joke. But more on that later.

If you must use a supermarket pork loin, try brining it according to any number of different recipes available. This will add flavor and moisture to the roast.

The second thing you need to successfully roast a pork loin is an accurate thermometer. My first choice would be a digital thermometer with a probe that can be left in the roast while it is cooking and an alarm feature that tells you when the interior of the meat has reached the desired temperature. My second choice would an analog instant-read thermometer, the kind most chefs have in their coat pocket.

(Note: you also need to know where the sensor is on your probe thermometer. The probe looks like a thick needle. Somewhere along the length of that needle is an indent. That is where the sensor is located and this part of the probe should be inserted into the middle of the roast when you are taking its temperature. Thrust the probe into the meat on a 45-degree angle.)

Third would be a clean oven whose workings are quite familiar to you. Most ovens do not work the same. Some are much older than others. So many recipes simply will not perform the way they were intended in your particular oven. My preferred method for roasting is not in an oven at all, but over hot coals on our Weber rotisserie.

A couple of years ago I roasted numerous pork loins in preparation for a newspaper article. As a result, I came to prefer a sear-roast technique, meaning, I browned the roast in a skillet on the stove before placing it in the oven. I found this to be particularly significant for supermarket-style roasts because they are so lean and don't want to brown particularly well in the oven.

I also found that a fairly low oven temperature results in a higher success rate for roasting pork loin. The reason is physics: A large piece of meat at a higher oven temperature stores lots of heat. It continues cooking--or "coasting"--after you remove it from the oven. With the oven set high, it is very easy to coast right past your desired finished temperature, even when the meat is just resting on the cutting board waiting to be carved. (Most of the time, the internal temperature of the roast will increase five, 10, or 15 degrees after it's been removed from the oven, depending on the size of the roast and the oven temperature.)

Most cookbook authors neglect to go into all these details. And there is a lot of careless literature out there on how "doneness" translates into temperature readings. I applaud Bruce Aidells for being one of the noteworthy exceptions to this rule. If you really love pork, I recommend Aidells' book "Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork," (even with the unnecessary 's' after the apostrophe) as well as his earlier work, "The Complete Meat Cookbook."

Contrary to what the USDA, common folklore and most meat thermometers would have you believe, the ideal finished temperature for pork is not 160 degrees, but more like 145-155 degrees. Unfortunately, this 160-degree mark has become the common benchmark. It dates to a time when people actually fed their pigs garbage and there was a threat of trichinosis in pork. That is not the case in today's commercial pork industry. Of course, you must let your conscience be your own guide.

All of which brings me to my method for a great pork roast:

Remove the roast from the regrigerator about two hours before cooking to come up to room temperature. Season the roast aggressively with salt and pepper. I like to pound garlic, salt and sage in a mortar and pestle and stuff this mixture into deep slits in the roast.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Heat a large, heavy skillet over moderately high heat on the stove. Cover the bottom of the skillet with extra-virgin olive oil. Brown the roast on all sides, using a large pair of tongs to hold the roast in position if necessary.

If using an oven-safe, digital probe thermometer, now would be the time to insert it into the meat at a 45-degree angle, aiming to get the sensor into the center of the roast. Place roast in oven fat-side up. The roast may be in a roasting pan, on a rack, or simply laid on a baking sheet. Alternatively, I just put the roast directly on a rack in the middle of the oven and place a baking sheet underneath it to catch the drippings. This exposes the roast to the radiant oven heat from all sides.

Aim to remove your roast from the oven when the internal temperature reaches 135 to 140 degrees. Depending on the size of the roast, the meat will "coast" to somewhere around that magic 145-155 number while it is resting on the cutting board. Your cooking time will probably be between 1 1/2 and 2 hours. Give the roast a 15-20 minute rest on the cutting board. When you cut into it, there should be just a hint of pinkness in the middle. Don't worry if your roast has gone a bit past that state. You just want to avoid a tough, dry, overcooked roast.

And don't beat yourself up if your roast doesn't come out perfectly the first time. If I accomplish anything in this post, it would be to impress on you all the different factors that need to be considered in roasting meat. Getting it right takes a lot of practice.

In our own case, I measured the temperature of the roast several times with an instant-read thermometer. (My digital probe is busted. I have terrible luck with them.) The first reading was 75 degrees. The second was 110 degrees. The third was 125 degrees. At that point I asked my wife to pull the roast in 10 minutes. When I came back downstairs 20 minutes later, the roast was resting on a cutting board and the temperature was climbing past 155 degrees. Yikes! But that's just how fast a roast can go from "not just yet" to "too much!" (Or maybe I just didn't have the thermometer is the right spot?)

It was delicious, though. Just a hint of pinkness. Streaks of fat, dark meat, light meat, like you'd never see in a supermarket loin. Not even Niman Ranch gets this good. It was heavenly.

Bandol Tempier Meet Matanza Pig

The vineyards of Bandol in Southern France have been producing wines since Roman times. Normally I would have guessed a Pinot Noir to accompany our matanza pork roast. But my brother-in-law, Tom, Pinot skeptic and eonophile that he is, had selected a choice bottle of Bandol from the Tempier domaine near Toulon, on the Mediterranean coast of Provence, to accompany our loin roast.

Before I start sounding like Robert Parker, I want to stop right here and note that Tom, a librarian by profession, is a bit of what I would call a wine snob (sorry Tom). Since I have forsworn wine snobbery, and since I rarely spend more than $10 for a bottle of wine, this puts me in the category of someone who knows practically nothing about wine any more. I say any more because back in the day I did know quite a lot about California wines. That was when you could spend a week and stop at just about every vineyard in the state for a free tasting. Those days are just a wisp of memory. And while I have a rudimentary knowledge of French wines (I spent some of my student days there, so I know the pleasures of sitting in the lee of some plane trees with a hunk of pate, a baguette and a bottle of vin ordinaire), and while I have toured many times the caves at Pommery and have even taken part in the champagne grape harvest at risk of pneumonia, and while I have experienced a range of the German, Swiss and Austrian vintages, and while I have watched with some befuddlement the emergence of Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Spain and Italy as centers of wine refinement, I am basically a wine ignoramus.

All of which is simply another way to say that we are completely dependent on Tom for making wine choices to go with our food.

So after all the work I described in my earlier posts killing and butchering pigs at our friend's farm in Southern Maryland, last night was our first opportunity to taste the pork we brought home. I froze about half the haul we received for our help at the weekend matanza, or pig slaughter, two weeks ago. What I had sitting in the refrigerator was a bone-in pork loin roast of about five ribs and a bag of 10 Hungarian sausages. I also had about six pounds of homemade sauerkraut at the peek of ripeness, as well as a couple gallons of cream of cauliflower soup from the food classes I teach. So we invited my sister and her husband Tom, along with our friend Shelly and her husband John, to help us deal with all this food. Then our friend Darren called at the last minute and we invited him over as well. This is the menu I came up with:

Cream of Cauliflower Soup w/ Asiago Bread Croutons & Garlic Chives

Hungarian Sausage & Sauerkraut Braised w/ Onions & Apples

Pork Loin Roasted w/ Sage & Garlic; Parmesan Mashed Potatoes; Caramelized Brussels Sprouts w/ Tennessee Smoked Bacon

Creme Brulee

Tom brought a dry Alsatian Riesling for hors d'oeuvres, while I purchased an Alsatian Pinot Blanc to go with the soup. Tom said he really favors heavier wines these days over the Pinots that never quite measure up to his expectations any more. So we were saving the Bandol for the loin roast. A blend of Mourvedre, Grenache and Cinsault grapes, and with an alcohol content of 14 percent, the Bandol certainly is a powerhouse of a wine.

I've mentioned before probably a dozen times at least that supermarket pork simply does not measure up in my book. The pork industry years ago decided to cut the fat out its pork and sell the flesh from beasts raised in dismal, putrid confinement lots as "the other white meat." In the process, they completely eliminated the fat and flavor that many of us remember from the pork roasts of our childhood. You can recapture some of that flavor by seeking out Niman Ranch pork, a cooperative of farmers using more flavorful breeds and more hospitable living conditions for the pigs. Or you can look for a local source of pork.

I was incredibly curious how pork raised by our farmer friend Brett on his spread in Lexington Park--the same pork we had killed and butchered ourselves,--would look and taste on our dinner plates. The Hungarian sausages, with paprika and golden raisins, paired exquisitely with the braised sauerkraut. I was concerned that the sausage might prove overpowering, but the flavor was subtle. The loin roast exceeded all expectations. Unlike anything you would find at the grocery, it was streaked with fatty unctuousness and layers of dark and pale meat. I had stuffed the roast in several places with a mix of garlic, salt and sage that I pounded with a mortar and pestle. I had then browned the roast in an iron skillet before placing it in a 350 degree oven. So there were many complimentary flavors happening in that roast along with some very assertive flavors and a bit of gameyness that I had not expected. The sturdy Bandol wine matched it perfectly.

Shelly is a great storyteller. All you have to do to get her started is pour a Bombay Sapphire martini. She had just returned from a business trip to New Orleans, so we were all anxious to hear her impressions. Tom brought a half-bottle of Muscat for dessert. We drank it with my wife's famous creme brulee. That part is a bit or a blur for me. I remember going upstairs to read a bedtime story to our daughter. I remember reading very, very slowly. But then the lights go dim...

We have struggled with the idea of becoming full partners in the annual matanza because it would mean owning a 325-pound pig and storing the pork from that pig somewhere within the confines of our urban dwelling. But after last night's tasting, I'm starting to think that an investment in a large freezer chest might not be such a bad idea.

Curry-Roasted Cauliflower

I know, I just wrote about cauliflower. Or so it seems. But this treatment of cauliflower is so good I could not resist passing it on. I've been focused on cauliflower with my "food appreciation" classes at a private elementary school here in the District of Columbia. We made the cauliflower soup I described earlier. I usually do some baking with the older kids. Voila: curry-roasted cauliflower.

I consider it high praise whenever I get a thumbs up from someone who has not yet experienced puberty. The kids loved the cauliflower soup (well, most of them). And one of the 12-year-olds described the roasted cauliflower as "good as popcorn."

This is not so much a recipe as a treatment for cauliflower. There are only four ingredients, most of which you probably have already in your pantry. All you have to do is toss cauliflower florets with the seasonings and place them in a hot oven on a baking sheet. Within a half-hour or so, you will have the tastiest gold-brown florests you've ever experienced. And they do eat like popcorn. Serve them as a snack, or as a side dish, perhaps with the sweet-and-sour braised chicken I described in yesterday's post.

Serves Four

1 head cauliflower, washed and seperated into individual florets (if some of the florets are very large, cut them in half)

3 TBS extra-virgin olive oil

Curry powder to taste

Salt to taste

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees.

In a large bowl, toss the cauliflower florets with the olive oil. Sprinkle curry powder over the florets, tossing occasionally, until all of the florets are seasoned and fragrant. Season with salt.

Spread cauliflower florets on a baking sheet. Place in over and bake until florets are tender and lightly browned, about 30 minutes. Serve warm.

Braised Chicken: Tale of Two Titties

I swear, there should be a warning label on chicken breasts. First, they don't have any flavor. Secondly, they don't cook the same as the rest of the bird. But nobody wants to talk about it. The truth about chicken breasts constitutes one of the ugly secrets of the culinary world.

First, as to flavor: I defy anyone to show me where it is in the breast. Even on a free range bird (well, maybe a little flavor) the breast is not where it's at. The flavor is in what you put on the breast. So the breast really should be described as a flavorless vehicle for sauces. In the catering business, I stared into many a buffet platter looking at bland, flavorless chicken breast, wondering how many hours the chef spent trying to invent new things to put on it. Of course you can't serve anything but the breast at a large function. Someone might be offended by, say, a flavorful thigh. Too gamy, they might say. So, to play it safe, you serve chicken breast, neatly sliced and covered with a caper sauce, or a tomato salsa, or sauteed mushrooms.

Now think about it. In that last sentence, what made your mouth water? The chicken breast, or the caper sauce, the tomato salsa, the sauteed mushrooms?

Me, I am a thigh man. Legs don't appeal to me, primarily because of all that gristle and those tendons you have to chew around. Thighs are rich dark meat, full of juicy succulence. Sure, they have a few more calories than the breast. But if it's a choice between lots of flavor with a few extra calories, or no flavor and fewer calories, guess which way I'm headed?

Still, there are people who will eat nothing but breast meat. I pity them. I have one client for whom I made only thighs when I cooked chicken. Finally, he became so exasperated that he just blurted out one day that he DID NOT LIKE THIGHS! When I pointed out to him that breast meat has no flavor, he insisted, "Yes they do. If you cook them on the bone!"

Sorry. Bones do not add that much flavor to chicken breasts. Chicken breasts can only pray they have flavor in another life.

Now to the other matter of cooking times. I'm curious: If you turn to the duck cooking literature, the first thing out of the author's mouth is likely to be, Do not cook the breast meat and leg/thighs together. These different parts of the duck do not cook at the same rate. Breasts cook faster than dark meat. So, the thinking goes, if you try to cook a whole duck, the breasts will be dried out and inedible by the time the dark meat is cooked. Cook them separately, is the recommendation. Same thing with turkey. Anyone who's cooked more than one turkey knows the lengths you have to go to get the dark meat cooked without destroying the breasts. Some chefs do the same thing with turkeys they do with ducks: cook the breasts and the dark meat separately.

So why is this not the mantra with chickens? Why do we pay such scant attention to the different parts of this bird?

In fact, I have paid some attention. And like I said, I am now a thigh man. And I notice more and more recipes for thighs-only are popping up. One in particular I like is the recipe for thighs roasted with lemon, thyme and honey in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. Another I'm especially fond of is my own interpretation of the "chicken Marbella" recipe that appeared years ago in The Silver Palate Cookbook. (Does anyone remember the Silver Palate series? It was all the rage back in the 80s.)

The original "chicken Marbella" called for four chickens to make 10 or more portions. But I use strictly thighs. Then I beef up the finished chicken by reducing the marinade until it is flavorful as all get out. You'll notice a North African influence in the sweet and sour mix of red wine vinegar and brown sugar (okay, maybe and Anglicized North African influence). The dried fruits and green olives may place this more in the fall/winter season. So quick! Make it before all the snow melts.

This recipe can be expanded to fit an even bigger crowd. In fact, I typically "roast/braise" the chicken on baking sheets for 30 or more people. After roasting in the oven, allow the thighs to cool, then pick the meat off the bones. Note: Start this dish two or three days in advance.

For 10 Servings

5 pounds chicken thighs

1 head garlic, peeled

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup dried oregano

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 cup pitted prunes

1/2 cup dried apricots

1/2 cup pitted green olives (choose Spanish or Moroccan olives)

1/2 cup capers with some juice

6 bay leaves

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white wine

1/4 cup coarsely chopped parsley or cilantro

Place chicken thighs in large mixing bowl. In a blender, mix garlic, vinegar and olive oil until smooth. Pour over chicken thighs. Season with oregano, salt and pepper. Mix in prunes, apricots, olives, capers and bay leaves. Cover with plastic and marinate overnight.

The following day, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread chicken thighs and marinade on baking sheet. Sprinkle with brown sugar. Pour white wine around chicken thighs. Place in oven and bake until chicken is golden and cooked through, about 45 minutes. Set aside to cool.

When chicken is cool enough to handle, remove meat from thighs and discard bones and bay leaves. Set olives, prunes and apricots aside. Meanwhile, separate fat from pan liquids. Either pour liquid into sauce pan and skim fat away using a spoon or turkey baster. If using a grease separator, strain liquid into separator saving solids for later. Discard fat. Place remaining liquid in small sauce pan. Bring to boil and cook until liquid is reduced by about 1/3. Return solids to pan.

To serve, ladle finished sauce along with olives, prunes and apricots over chicken. I like to accompany this dish with a brown basmati rice pilaf tossed with toasted almonds and parsley. Since there are no onions in the chicken, you can dice some red onion and put it in the pilaf.

Now tell me you can do anything with a chicken breast that tastes this good.