Yesterday it snowed and there was a general laziness around these parts. There was still lots of cooking and even some knitting.
For lunch we had Dirty Pasta, using up all the barely filled pasta boxes, a half an onion and a jar of anchovies. A salty treat that’s so easy to devour.
For dinner we had a full meal. Citrus Beef, Sauteed Asparagus, and Couscous.
Usually when I cook meat it’s a slow three or four hour experience, slowly in the oven, but I got called into work for a few hours so the meat was rushed, luckily the sauce made up for the toughness of the meat.
Citrus Beef (the slow way)
Ingredients:
1 piece of beef (about an inch thick) the longer you cook it the cheaper the cut can be.
1 Onion minced (medium size)
3 Cloves of Garlic smashed and Minced
1 Shallot Minced
1 Table spoon of fresh ginger (we keep ginger in the freezer)
Juice of 1 lime
salt
Orange Juice
Fat (I use a mix of butter and olive oil)
Tools: We have a mini food processor that gets used everyday.
0) Preheat oven to 300
1) Mince onion, shallot and garlic.
2) Shave ginger (this only works if it’s frozen otherwise mince it as well)
3) Put ginger and onion-y mix in food processor and squeeze in lime juice add some salt a few pinches, mix until a paste.
4) Heat cast iron skillet (or other oven/stove top safe pan) (med/high)
5) Melt enough butter in the pan to film.
6) Saute Onion/lime mix until it starts smelling sweet, remove from pan.
7) Put meat in pan (pat the meat dry before hand)
8) Brown the meat quickly
9) Remove pan from heat
10) Add orange juice until about 3/4 the way up the meat return onion mix to pan
11) Cover and put in oven for a long time, until tender but cooked (I never keep track of time)
notes:
To make the sauce I deglazed the asparagus pan with sake and added the liquid from around the beef and heated until it was a rolling boil for a few minutes.
You can adjust this to make an entire roast which is actually even more tender, this also works well with pork loin, execpt you have to marinade the pork in the onion-y lime + a little ojĀ mix at room temperature for a few hours.