myPics: Muddy York Cleans Up

Toronto is a lovely town - full of history, fun and ingenuity. I was lucky enough to sneak a quick picture of downtown and Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport on my trip back home via Cleveland earlier this May. (My flight was our of Pearson.) If you squint, you can see the CN Tower in the lower left area of the shot.

myPics: X - Pittsburgh

During my walkabout in Pittsburgh after getting a Primanti Bros. sandwich this weekend, I returned to my hotel via the End East. I walked past the U.S. Steel Tower.

I remember the first time I was here was summer of 1993, two friends and I were returning from Cleveland and ended up parking at Fifth and Liberty to find a place to eat. We ended up going out to Squirrel Hill for dinner, not before I noted the steel and architecture of the the then named USX Tower.

The building looks like a retro-futuristic skyscraper for a Jules Verne novel.  It is out of place, but yet, one of the appropriate iconic buildings for Pittsburgh. 

Oxtail Ragù over Ricotta Gnocchi

Like the Pollo en Escabeche and the Cawl recipes prior, this is another slow cooker meal to start the night before. As with the cawl, you will need to skim the fat off the top prior to serving. I find it easier to refrigerate while I’m at work and then skim and reheat when I get home.

Just about to turn on the slow cooker
but I forgot to take a pic of the seared oxtails :(

Albeit, this is a little more complex than my usual “set it and forget it” meals, but I’m moving and I’m working on eating most of the items in my freeze and pantry. I had a leftover container of ricotta and some homemade stock. The ricotta, which freezes well by the way, was earmarked for my Cranberry Ricotta Tart for Christmas. However, I didn’t get to dine with Aunt Florence at Christmas this year, so I didn’t have to make the tart. Plus, oxtail just happened to be on sale and I do like a good ragù!

Ragù and not the Unilever brand, Ragú, is a rich meat-based sauce. While there is a difference between sauces from the North and the South, a ragù, in short, is substantially composed of meat as the base, versus a meat sauce which is mostly a tomato base. It’s a little confusing.

After the hour on High

This recipe mixes the two styles. The ox-tails are braised for a long time with vegetables (Southern style) and the meat remains in the sauce and is flavored with a discrete amount of tomatoes (Northern style).

Mostly likely, ragùs entered Italian cuisine after Napoléon’s invasion of northern areas of Italy. Sauces influenced by the French ragoût, a type of main-dish stew, became prevalent in Emilia-Romagna soon after. The word, ragù, is related to the French ragoût.

Oxtail Ragù, adapted from Paola's Oxtail Ragù with Creamy Sage and Two Day Braised Oxtail Ragù

Ingredients:
•    2 Tbsp olive oil
•    1 onion, diced
•    3 cloves crushed garlic
•    2 carrots, peeled and diced
•    2 lbs oxtail, dredged in flour
•    2 cp. stock or broth
•    2 cp. wine, white or red
•    12 oz. tomato paste
•    ½ Tbsp oregano
•    ½ Tbsp thyme
•    2 bay leaves

Directions:

See the carrots and chunks of oxtail meat
that just fell off the bone

1. Sauté onion, garlic and carrots in the olive oil over medium-high heat until the onions are translucent, about 8-10 minutes; remove from the pan and put in the slow cooker.
2. Then add the dredged oxtail to the oiled pan and brown the meat all sides, again about 8-10 minutes; remove from the pan and put in the slow cooker. Using some of the wine or stock, deglaze the sauté pan and add to the slow cooker.
3. Add the remaining ingredients to a crockpot, and add water (or more wine), if needed, to ensure the oxtail is completely covered.
4. Cook on high for 1 hour and then turn down to low and cook for another 7 hours; the ragù is done when the meat falls off of the bones.
5. Refrigerate for around 8 hours; skim the fat off the top and discard bones and bay leaves.
6. Warm up the ragù to top the gnocchi.

Ricotta Gnocchi, adapted from allrecipes' Ricotta Gnocchi

Ingredients:
•    16 oz ricotta cheese
•    4 eggs
•    1 cp freshly grated Parmesan cheese
•    2 tsp salt
•    2 tsp pepper
•    2 tsp garlic powder
•    2¼ cps all-purpose flour, or as needed

Directions: 

1. Combine all the ingredients but the flour in a large bowl evenly, then mix in 1 cup of flour, adding additional flour, if needed, to form a soft dough.
2. Divide the dough into 3 or 4 pieces and roll into 1/2-inch-thick ropes on a floured surface; cut each rope into ¾ inch pieces and place on a lightly floured baking sheet.
3. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil over high heat; boil the gnocchi until they float to the surface, 1 to 2 minutes, then drain.
4. Top with the oxtail ragù.

I owe the blog a picture of the finished gnocchi! 

myPics: Old and New in Toronto

While I was in Toronto for work, I knew that I wanted to see the ROM and the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal.  Relatively early on Sunday morning, I rushed over Bloor and Queen's Park from the Delta Chelsea to get a good 90 minutes in the museum before I had to get ready for our event. I spent most of my time exploring the galleries of the crystal. This is one of my favorite galleries - the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

I took this picture as an example of so many opposites coming together in this exhibit: the juxtaposition of the very ancient with the incredibly new, the organic with the inorganic, the play of light versus dark, the sharp stiff lines and angles with the curving bones and the list goes on.

myPics: Foggy Philly

This week, I took an impromptu staycation overnight.  Our water heater broke and it was going to be about 72 hours before we would have hot water.  So I pricelined a hotel, which happened to be at 11th and Arch, for $55 and stopped home for a change of clothes.  After enjoying a great Malaysian dinner at the Banana Leaf, I returned to my room for some TV in a king-sized bed.  Before calling it a night, I snapped this photo of my view.

 

By the way, I had Beef Rendang for dinner and don't be too surprised if I adapt it for an Around the Word in a Pot soon.

Đuveč

The đuveč from the Wikipedia
article on Serbia

Welcome to my non sequitur life. As you may know, my folks are planning to go to Scotland and Wales this year, and due to the success of our trip to Ireland, I’m invited to go.  This explains why I was looking up cawl a few weeks back. In doing my research on our future trip, I spent Saturday afternoon googling the Celtic Nations, because I only remembered 4 of the 6 of them off the top of my head. (Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. I forgot Brittany and the Isle of Man.) Then too, I only knew 4 of their 6 patron saints (Patrick, Andrew, David and Piran. St Anne is Brittany’s and St. Maughold – I never hear of him either – is Mann’s.)  While I was trying to learn about his story – he was an Irish thief converted to the priesthood by St. Patrick’s nephew and found refuge on Mann – I saw that Irish writers called the Manx island Eubonia. I had thought I saw that word before the night prior when I was reading Wikipedia articles on the Vampire Chronicles.  So I double checked, but it was the name, Eudoxia. I looked up that name in Wikipedia and surfed from Eudoxia to Eudoxia of Heliopolis to Baba Dochia to Baba Marta to Serbia. The Wikipedia article on Serbia was quite long and I got down to the cuisine section of the page. This was at dinner time and I thought that the picture of đuveč [ɟuˈvɛtʃ] (or djuveč or djuvech) looked delicious, all the while I was planning to finish off last week’s bredie.

Layering the ingredients

Đuveč is a Balkan oven-baked meat and vegetable stew similar to ratatouille. This dish is one of the national dishes of many former Yugoslav countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia) as well as of Bulgaria.  The name of the dish comes from the dish in which this delicacy is traditionally prepared.  The Slavic word comes from the Turkish güveç for earthernware pot. With the temperature of this April and May, I think this sounds like a great treat for this week for dinner.

Seared pork

Đuveč, adapted from a djuvec recipe by Vesna, a freelance writer living in Madison, WI, which she in turn adapted from a recipe found in Yugoslav Cookbook (1963, Izdavacki Zavod Jugoslavija).

Ingredients:
1 – 1½ lbs. onions, roughly chopped
1 large eggplant, cubed
1 bell pepper, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
¼ - ½ cp. of parsley, chopped
1 Tbsp. salt
1 Tbsp. paprika
½ Tbsp. black pepper
½ cp. + 2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 lbs. country-style pork ribs, cut in 1" cubes
28 oz. crushed tomatoes
½ cup uncooked white rice
1 lbs. fresh tomatoes, sliced

Looks like my bredie

Directions:
1.    In a mixing bowl, toss together well onions, eggplant, bell pepper, celery, parsley, salt, paprika, black pepper and ¾ cp. of olive oil; set aside.
2.    In a heavy skillet on high, heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil to sear the pork in batches, until browned; set aside.
3.    In the slow cooker, layer the ingredients in this order:

       ½ can crushed tomatoes
       ½ of the vegetable mixture
       Rice
       Browned pork
       Remaining vegetable mixture
       Remaining crushed tomatoes
       Sliced tomatoes

4.    Set the slow cooker on Low and cook for 6-8 hours.

The final product

One thing to note is that I don't think that I salted the đuveč enough when I made it.  I thought that I compensated for the slow cooking time (and I have also edited and up the amounts of seasoning since making.)  Yet, a grinding or two of my pink Himalayan salt was just the trick to make the flavors pop. It has a heavy mouth feel – thick with tomatoes and delicate eggplant – and the herbal notes of celery and the floral notes of tender onion rang through.  The pork just melted in my mouth.  Now, I'm waiting on a co-worker to confirm the relative authenticity of the taste. Before eating, she did let me know that since I used pork as the meat that it was probably more Serbian, which would make the đuveč, ђувеч, since the Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet.