Day 11: Roast Beef à la Ron Popeil

I am a sucker for infomercials. I suppose I should be embarrassed to admit that but come on, who doesn't love a good story? The overweight, middle-aged man who magically drops 100 lbs all because he found THE magic pill! The family on the verge of bankruptcy discovers THE Internet secret that makes them millions! And how cold-hearted must you be to deny your 2-year old the headstart of reading at a 4th grade level for just three easy payments of $49.95?! Of course these claims are all true because it says so right there on the screen, "These are not paid actors" (right next to the words in much tinier print, "Results not typical").

Anyone who watched TV in the '80s will tell you that Ron Popeil, inventor and founder of Ronco, is THE ORIGINAL KING of infomercials. This is the man who first introduced us to the chop-o-matic (and subsequently the veg-o-matic and dial-o-matic), spray-on hair color for men, a way to scramble an egg while still inside the shell, and kitchen knives that cut through shoe leather. Popeil could sell a car to a blind man and thanks to the Home Shopping Network, he sold me a Showtime Rotisserie. (All together now: "Set it...and forget it!")

Kidding aside, I love my Showtime Rotisserie. You see, when I was about 8 years old, my parents decided to adopt a healthier lifestyle and became vegetarian, which meant we kids also stopped eating meat. They no longer bought, cooked or ate beef, poultry or seafood and so I never learned how to properly cook those things. (Of course being the rebel carnivore that I was, I ate meat every chance I got when my parents weren't around but that is a story for another day.) The rotisserie did everything Ron Popeil promised and for the first time, I was able to roast beef, chicken, even fish to near perfection at home.

I say "near perfection" because I used the weight or size of the meat and suggested cooking times as my guide for figuring out when it was done. Most of the time that worked pretty well but was not reliable for oddly-shaped cuts and whole birds. Then last year The Geek gave me THE must-have gadget for the carnivorous cook - a meat thermometer. Now every beef roast is a perfect 140F and I can rest assured that my rotisserie chickens have reached the required 170F for safe consumption. I've since gone on to purchase an oven timer with probe so that when I roast in the oven, I don't have to repeatedly open the oven door and stab the meat to take a reading. And recently The Geek gave me an audible timer with remote sensor so that I can monitor the temperature of food on the grill from the comfort of my sofa.

That is my long introduction to what is a very simple but elegant meal - Ribeye roast beef with a side of corn and green beans. I seasoned it liberally with kosher salt and then loaded it onto the spit. Two hours later, the kids and I enjoyed a delicious, crisply browned, perfectly medium-rare dinner.

Busy Mom Modifications and Tips

• I never remember to take meat out of the freezer the day or two before we are going to eat it. Usually around 3 p.m. I think "What should we have for dinner tonight?" and then I pull out the first thing I find. I used to microwave frozen food to thaw it but that usually had disastrous consequences. Alton Brown recommends immersing frozen food in water to thaw it quickly. Put the meat in a zip top bag, remove as much air as possible, and then place in a container large enough so that you can fully immerse the meat. Fill the container with cool water then leave the tap on so that it drips very slowly. Thirty minutes to an hour is enough time to sufficiently thaw 2 - 3 lbs of beef or chicken.
• I don't recommend that you do this but will share this tidbit anyway. I forgot to take the turkey out of the freezer early last week and so on Wednesday afternoon I thawed the 12 lb bird using this method in about three hours. Again, I don't recommend you rely on this method but I was desperate and no one has complained of food poisoning yet.
• Roasting time guidelines, such as 15 min/lb for chicken, can be misleading. Those guidelines assume that the meat is starting at a specific temperature (might be room temperature, might be a refrigerator-chilled 40F) and depends on the ambient temperature. If you're like me and have forgotten to take the food out of the freezer far enough in advance, the outside might feel like it is thawed but the inside is still frozen. There have been many times I cut into a chunk of beef that was nearly burned on the outside and bloody on the inside. It is times like this that a meat thermometer is worth its weight in gold.
• If you cook a lot of meat and don't own a meat thermometer, or if you just want to make a perfect roast, you really should get one. The fork style is the most versatile (it can be used in a rotisserie, the oven and the grill). It is also the most inconvenient since you have to stab the meat and wait for the reading every time you want to check the temperature. You lose heat and juices each time as well. When roasting in the oven, I love my Polder Oven Thermometer with probe because it truly is a "set it and forget it" device since it has both a timer as well as a temperature alarm.

The Results

Pretty much everything I make in the rotisserie turns out fabulous.

Ratings

• From the moment the kids first smell the roast, they are eager to eat.
• Difficulty: It takes a little know-how, but with the proper tools (a rotisserie and a meat thermometer), it is easy to make a fantastic, elegant entrée.
• Time to prepare: Depends on the size of the roast and the starting temperature. I usually plan 40 minutes per pound and this includes prep, roasting and resting time.
• Prognosis: This is a favorite appliance and meal

My Shopping List

Nothing - I made do with what I had on hand.

The Tally

• The day's tally: $0
• Total this month so far: $143

Day 10: Enjoying Mom's Cooking

I conducted my daily kid-survey to see how hungry they were - a determining factor in the amount of effort I put into making dinner - and it turns out both had snacked and neither were hungry. My plans to make (and blog) about gyro sandwiches will have to wait until tomorrow. When I only have to feed myself, I usually eat from the abundance of Korean food in the bahn chahn and kim chee fridges thanks to my parents. The kids like Korean food but only periodically so when the three of us eat together, it is usually other things.

When my mother cooks, it is no small affair. Korean food, due to its high salt content, will keep for several days so when you cook, you cook A LOT and it is a major production that lasts most of the day. When my parents make their bi-weekly trek to Koreatown (about 30 minutes away), they come home with dozens of bags full of napa cabbage and Korean radishes, giant tins of soy sauce and sesame oil, plastic bins full of chili paste and soybean paste. On kim chee days, my mom makes enough kim chee to stock a small grocery store. Kim chee ji gae (soup made from kim chee) is made by the vat-ful. And dough for bahng rises in giant plastic bowls.

Speaking of bahng... Today my mother taught a friend how to make these Korean steamed rolls that are similar to Chinese dim sum. She, herself, learned how to make these rolls a couple of years ago from a friend and has since become famous (in Korean circles) for them. As I mentioned, when she makes bahng, it is in huge quantities and it takes all day; the house is filled with the tantalizing smell of yeasty, freshly steamed bread for hours. My mom makes so many of these rolls for special occasions that last year she bought a freezer chest to store them, what we now refer to as "the bahng freezer." Lucky for me, today was a bahng day.

Dinner also came from the bahn chahn fridge. Several days ago Mom made bahn chahn to take to an elderly couple (long time family friends who made it possible for our family to emigrate to the United States in 1970) and subsequently stocked our fridge with a dozen or so plastic containers of Korean stir-fried vegetables. These vegetables - usually carrots, zucchini, bean sprouts, spinach, fiddlehead fern, and cucumbers - are specifically meant to be eaten all mixed together with Korean chili paste and a fried egg, a dish called bibim bop (loosely translated means bibim = mixed and bop = rice).

This is one of my all-time favorite dishes. During my high school years I attended a boarding school that was a four hour drive from where we lived and therefore made it home usually only one weekend a month. Whenever I got home, no matter how late it was, there would be bibim bop and homemade kim chee waiting. The ultimate comfort food for a Korean child going to school far away in rural northern Michigan.

Sorry, no recipes today. You can find lots of recipes for bibim bop on the web but personally, I find it to be very labor-intensive and time-consuming and never tastes as good as when a Korean Mom makes it. However, Korean restaurants typically do a very good job, usually for under $10. BTW, if you're vegetarian, be sure to order it without the beef.

My Shopping List

Nothing - I made do with what I had on hand.

The Tally

• The day's tally: $0
• Total this week so far: $143

Day 5: Homemade Udon

The kids have returned home after having spent the weekend with their dad and are now on Thanksgiving break. Normally it is their job to make dinner - the one meal of the day we sit together to eat - on days they are off from school. Today however, I was catching up on some of my favorite food blogs and stumbled across the recipe for Homemade Udon on Andrea Nguyen's Viet World Kitchen blog. When I offered to take over dinner duty, my daughter quickly obliged.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE noodles, a gustatory predilection I am sure I inherited from my father. I grew up eating Korean food three meals a day, 6.66 days a week. (Saturday night dinners were eaten out at the Swedish Smorgasbord, the 1970s version of All-You-Can-Eat in the mid-west, where I grew up.) I remember him serving up giant bowls of steaming noodles floating in all kinds of korean soups and broths for lunch and dinner and frequently for breakfast too. In my memory (which my oldest sister will tell you is rarely accurate), we were just as likely to eat noodles as we were rice. Today I eat a noodle dish for lunch at least two or three times a week.

But of all the noodles in the world, fresh, thick Japanese udon is my favorite, emphasis on the word "FRESH." Once you dry, freeze or deep fry noodles (which is how most noodles for home preparation are packaged now), they lose their chewy, mouth-pleasing texture. I've noticed that even Asian "Noodle Houses," which are popping up all over Southern California these days, rarely serve truly fresh, handmade noodles.

Normally I would be intimidated by the thought of making noodles but Andrea Nguyen is one of my favorite food bloggers and her recipe and video made it look easy. I decided I had to try this at least once and am I ever glad I did! The recipe is hard to get wrong and produces the chewy, satisfying udon noodles I am used to getting only in authentic Japanese restaurants.

The one catch is that it was extremely time-consuming. I halved the recipe (used 8 ounces of flour instead of the full pound) and it still took me 30 minutes just to roll-out, cut and pull the noodles. By the time you add in the resting time (2 hours), boiling then blanching in cold water, and then actually making the broth and garnishes, you are looking at three hours minimum to prepare a meal that you will slurp down in five minutes. According to Nguyen, the quantity I made should have been four generous servings. It was barely two by our standards.

By the time the noodles were ready to eat, it was late and I did not have time to make a proper dashi (Japanese broth) from scratch. Fortunately I keep a bottle of Memmi, a soy sauce noodle soup base, on hand for just such occasions. Mix with hot or cold water according to the proportions listed on the bottle. Add finely sliced green onions and fish cakes (or thinly sliced smoked ribeye, which is what I happened to have) and voila! You have a wonderful noodle dish to rival any Japanese restaurant.


The Results
Both kids slurped down the noodles and broth almost as soon as they sat down at the table, including my daughter who said she was "too full to eat dinner tonight."

Busy Mom Modifications and Tips

• The next weekend I have a block of time, I plan on making a big batch of noodles. This really is not feasible for busy weeknights.
• Nguyen recommends boiling the noodles until they float to the top and are chewy, about three minutes. I found that this was not nearly long enough, especially if you plan on serving the noodles cold. The noodles may seem like the perfect texture just out of the hot water bath but when you dunk them in cold water, they harden a bit. This is not a problem if you are serving them in a hot soup where they will have time to soften up again, but it is too chewy for cold preparations. For cold soups, boil the noodles until they are quite soft (but not falling apart), about five to six minutes, and then blanch in cold water.
• I boiled the noodles in the Memmi broth a little longer than I had planned (I got distracted) but it turned out just fine. The noodles absorbed the broth and resulted in fantastic flavor.
• I am seriously considering buying a pasta maker in the hopes it will speed up the process thereby making this meal more accessible.
• When I am in the kitchen, my father will frequently peer over my shoulder and ask what I am cooking. Today he recognized the dough immediately. When I confirmed that I was making "kalgoogsoo" (the Korean name for udon), he suggested that next time I should add a little fresh soybean flour to the dough. "It will make it taste MUCH better!" He's the expert so I think I will take his advice!

Ratings

• FKP*: "These noodles are just the way I like them! They are REALLY GOOD!"
• Difficulty: Medium. The recipe calls for a food processor and kneading very stiff dough for five minutes. Otherwise it would be easy.
• Time to prepare: 3 hours from start to eating.
• Prognosis:  This is definitely a keeper, something I will make on on weekends and special occasions.

My Shopping List

Nothing - I made do with what I had on hand.

The Tally

• The day's tally: $0
• Total this week so far: $7.77

*FKP: Finicky Kid Pronouncement, which would be utterances from my teenage son.

Day 2: Pizza and The Geek

The kids are with their dad this weekend and so I am having dinner with one of my BFFs tonight, a person I affectionately refer to as "The Geek" due to his expertise in computer programming and internet security. It's a gastronomic symbiosis - I love to cook and he loves to eat. One of our favorite meals is pizza with anchovies and since I exceeded my daily shopping limit yesterday by $2.77, I decided this was a good meal for today since I had all the ingredients in my pantry.

I recently bought the cookbook, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day and I think the recipes result in some of the best bread I have ever tasted. A little flour, warm water, salt and yeast is all it takes. I always keep some dough in my refrigerator so that I can have homemade pizza (or calzone) in 20 minutes whenever the urge strikes me. The dough is super easy (no kneading required!) and keeps up to two weeks in the fridge, although it never lasts that long in my house. If you want to try it without buying the cookbook, check out the authors' youtube page or blog for videos with complete recipes and instructions.

Two tools that are absolutely essential for making pizza at home are a peel and a baking stone. The peel is the easiest way to transfer the dough into and out of the oven and the stone provides a hot, evenly heated surface to ensure a crispy crust. To learn more about these tools, go to youtube.com and search on "Good Eats" and "Flat is Beautiful." There are lots of clips with tips and demonstrations.

The Geek LOVES anchovies and so I brushed the dough with the oil that the anchovies were packed in. WOW! Talk about INTENSE flavor. (I do not advise this for the faint of heart.)

To finish, I layered sauce, toppings (thinly sliced onions and anchovies) and cheese and baked in a pre-heated 450F oven for 20 minutes (until the cheese was bubbly and the crust had browned).

Busy Mom Modifications

• The "5 Minute" crust does not brown very well on its own. I brush olive oil on the outer part of the crust (the part not covered by sauce and toppings) before baking so that it will brown.
• For the sauce, I use spaghetti sauce (HORROR OF HORRORS) because I always have a bottle on hand.
• The cheese is whatever I have in the freezer at the moment, which for the kids is usually a combination of shredded mozzarella, monterey jack, and cheddar. But I have made pizza with brie, havarti, even goat cheese. All are yummy.
• And then toppings: thinly sliced or julienned fruit or vegetables, sliced deli meat, canned chicken, etc. all work.
• When it comes to layering toppings, I like to put dry ingredients directly on the sauce (under the cheese) so they will moisten as the sauce heats up. Wetter ingredients such as pineapple or tomato are better on top of the cheese so the dough does not get too wet and the vegetables dry out in the heat.
• You may be tempted to assemble your pizza on the peel in order to save time or to keep from flouring a second surface. Resist the urge. The "5 Minute" dough is very wet and the longer it sits, the more it absorbs the surface flour. It only takes a few seconds before the dough will start sticking to the peel and then you'll have a huge mess when you try to transfer it to the oven. Assemble the pizza on a well-floured surface then transfer to the well-floured peel and transfer immediately to the hot oven. The dough should slide right off the peel with quick jerking movements.

The Results

My favorite part of this pizza is the crust. It is chewy and crusty with fantastic flavor. The Geek loved the way the intense fish flavor was infused throughout the pizza, thanks to the anchovy oil.

Ratings

• The Geek says: This is the best pizza I've ever had!
• Easy to make
• Time to prepare: 30 min. if the "5 Minute" dough has already been prepared
• Prognosis: This one's a keeper!

My Shopping List

Nothing - I used ingredients I already had in my pantry

The day's tally: $0
Total spending this week so far: $7.77

P.S.
The Geek, who jokes that he is not licensed for indoor cooking, supplied dessert: Grown-up Ice Cream Sodas. This cold and sweet treat was the perfect chaser for the salty, fishy pizza.