The Fixie cocktail

At my most recent cocktail party, a guest brought a gift of Ransom Old Tom Gin. Old Tom is a lovely old style gin with lots of infused flavor, very different from what you might expect. Malty, spicy, complex. It’s very good over ice with with a big lemon peel, though we failed to make a good cocktail with it that night.

After a little careful thought and meditation, I came up with this:

The Fixie

• 3 parts Ransom Old Tom Gin
• 1 part sweet vermouth
• 1/2 part Lillet Blanc
• Wide lemon peel for garnish

Stir the ingredients over ice for 30 seconds, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the lemon peel.

The vermouth balances out the gin (like any good martini) and the Lillet and lemon brighten the drink a touch so it’s not too sweet.

Smooth, slightly astringent, slightly sweet. Very sip-able.

I bequeath this cocktail to you, Portland, because I love you.

How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com on Vimeo.

It totally, mostly, works. (I had a few cloves left unpeeled. They were the strongest. The deserve to live.)

It also validates my opinion that vodka makes lousy martinis.

Vodka Nation | The Weekly Standard.

Now you’re cooking with comics..

The vegetarian and omnivore dishes look nearly identical, but are made from different ingredients.

Today I had a spontaneous day off drop in my lap. A Friday off is a good day for a decadent lunch, so I decided to try making steak tartare for the first time.

Surprisingly easy

There are basically three steps to making steak tartare (after you’ve brought home some beef from the store).

1. Prepare the beef by rinsing and salting
2. Grinding or cutting the beef into small bits
3. Season the beef

I rinse every cut of meat, poultry, or fish I bring home. I do this if the meat is fresh or the fish comes frozen in an individually sealed plastic pouch. You cannot know what has come into contact with the surface of any meat you buy, so wash it off thoroughly.

Michael Ruhlman’s article above instructs coating the beef in a heavy layer of salt and resting the salted beef in the fridge for about an hour.

Salted for safety and seasoning

This does two things:

• Any bacteria surviving on the surface of the meat are thoroughly destroyed
• The exterior of the beef is seasoned and partially cured

After an hour the salt had pulled a good amount of moisture from the meat. I rinsed and patted the meat dry with fresh paper towels. I could see the texture and color of the beef had changed. I cut the small sirloin steak into thin strips. I could see that about 1/8” of the exterior of the meat had been salt cured after only an hour.

I cut the wide flat strips into thin strips. Then I cut all the strips into tiny cubes.

Cut into strips

I flavored my tartare with some painstakingly browned and reduced onions I prepared earlier (think In-N-Out style onions), a few grinds of black pepper, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. The beef needed no additional seasoning. The salty bits from the exterior of the steak had now been diced up fine and distributed throughout, seasoning everything nicely. This worked because my steak was relatively thin, about an inch, so there was plenty of surface area to be salted. A thicker cut may require a little additional salt.

Adding onion pepper and vinegar

Once I had everything mixed I packed it all into a 1 cup measure and stashed it in the fridge to wait while I prepared a libation, toast, and a poached egg.

Ready to rest in fridge

Aside: Cocktail on the side

At the ready, captain

If there was ever a dish which called out for a martini, steak tatare is it. I favor ‘classic’ martinis with 1 part vermouth to 3 parts gin. It’s OK. They’re big parts. A vodka martini would be acceptable with this dish, mostly because the vodka would be a good palate cleanser. Vodka is built to be colorless, odorless, and tasteless (like people who drink vodka martinis). It’s basically diluted pure grain alcohol. Alcohol works with foods sort of like salt does with foods – it brings out flavors that aren’t directly accessible by your tongue and saliva. Vodka, being tasteless, makes other things taste more like themselves. Imagine cooking with wine without the wine flavor. This is why you have vodka sauces, why vodka cocktails are typically made with bold fruits like tomatoes and lemons, and why vodka is served with caviar. If you like vodka, skip the martini, and just sip a shot straight from the freezer with some rich food.

Serving

I turned the tartare out onto a plate, topped with a poached egg, and added a buttered and toasted english muffin. I piled some cornichons on the side.

This dish was really fantastic. I’m generally pretty happy with what I make in the kitchen, but this was simply remarkable. Delicious, rich, but somehow not heavy. Simple and good.

(watch the butter. oh my god. the butter.)

Aero press from Alexey Kurbatov on Vimeo.

Kolyan from Alexey Kurbatov on Vimeo.

Gorgeous.

Ingredients

• 3 cups shredded zucchini, about 3-4 small zucchini
• 4oz broccoli rapini , about half a bunch
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes
• 1 shallot, minced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 16oz of dry rigatoni, ziti, or penne pasta (e.g. a box)
• 16 oz milk
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• salt and pepper
• 1 tbsp butter (not margarine, you savage)
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp (approximately) olive oil
• parmesan cheese

Key ingredients

Equipment

• large pot for boiling pasta
• large casserole dish for baking pasta
• large sauce pan
• baking sheet
• cutting board
• Spoon
• Tongs
• aluminum foil

Total cooking time

About 1 hour start to finish, including prep.

Preparation

Trim off the tough ends

Rinse and dry your broccoli rapini then trim off the ends of the stems. Lay the rapini out on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, season with a pinch of salt, toss by hand to coat. Place the rapini in a 350º F oven on a center rack for 15 minutes.

Leave a little of the skin to color the sauce.

Partially peel zucchini, leaving some peel behind for color. Shred zucchini using a box grater. I did this over a flexible cutting board so I could easily transfer the zucchini later. Season with a pinch or two of salt and set aside.

Mince shallot and garlic, set aside but keep separate.

Remove rapini from the oven and allow to cool. Rapini should be bright green and slightly browned in places. Some leaves will be crisply. Once cool enough to touch, roughly chop into small pieces. I prefer to cut the stem-ends smaller and leave the leafy ends long and floppy.

Roasted and chopped rapini

Fill your large pot with heavily salted hot water (hot from the tap is fine) and place over high heat with a lid. The water will reach a boil right about the time the sauce is complete.

Zucchini sauce

Melt 1 tbsp of butter over medium-low heat. Add the minced shallot and cook until translucent. Don’t burn it. Add the minced garlic and stir. Add the dried oregano and stir again. Allow this to cook for approximately one minute to allow the garlic to soften and the oregano to become fragrant. Add the shredded zucchini and stir well to mix with the herbs and shallot. Allow this to cook over medium-low heat, stirring periodically, until the zucchini begins to give up its juices – about 4 minutes.

Sprinkle 2 tbsp of flour over the zucchini in small batches (use your fingers) and stir after each batch to incorporate. The zucchini should appear to bulk up immediately. Cook for another minute then add 16 oz of milk.

Raise the heat and bring the milk up to a simmer, then lower the heat again to medium-low. Alternately, microwave the milk prior to adding so that it is warm, but not hot. Simmer the sauce until it is very thick.

Zucchini sauce

If you like a smoother sauce, you can blend the sauce with a stick/immersion blender until very smooth (or carefully transfer the sauce to a blender and blend with short pulses). I prefer the sauce be a little chunky.

Remove the sauce from the heat and cover with a tight fitting lid. The sauce will continue to thicken as it sits. This is fine. The pasta water should now be boiling, or nearly so.

Assemble the dish

Boil the pasta for 2/3 of the normal cooking time. For example, if the box says to cook the pasta for 12 minutes, cook the pasta for 8 minutes. The pasta must be under-done before going into the oven. Fully cooked pasta, immersed in sauce, and baked will become mush.

Sauced and ready for the oven

From the oven

When the pasta is 2/3 done, drain it well and pour into a large casserole dish. Carefully ladle or pour the zucchini sauce over the pasta and gently toss to coat. Add the chopped, roasted broccoli rapini and mix in gently. Finally add in the cherry tomatoes and gently mix.

Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes at 350º F. After 20 minutes, remove the dish from the oven and remove the foil. Gently toss the pasta to make sure the sauce is evenly distributed. Top with parmesan cheese and return to the oven at 400º F to slightly brown the top and melt the cheese.

Obligatory, cheesy close up