meatball and sauce

In this meatball recipe, i made a sauce similar to those Swedish meatball sauce so glamorously coveted at Ikea restaurant but i simplify the ingredients so as to reduce the cost to prepare it.

Prepare your meatball here.

For the sauce

2 tablespoon of butter

a tablespoon of all-purpose flour/wheat flour

a litre of beef stock

one large onion, diced

a medium carrots, cut into small pieces

salt & freshly ground black pepper

Melt butter in a sauce pan or pot. Cook the meatball until browned all over. Then transfer to a plate and set aside. Using the fat built-up in the same pan, saute the onion until lightly browned. Then stir in the flour, and cook until the flour had absorbed the liquid inside the pan. Immediately deglaze with a quarter of the litre of the beef stock. Then add the remaining beef stock and bring to a simmer. Add the meatball and the carrots and let reduce the liquid over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Once the sauce thickens, check the seasoning with salt and pepper, and optionally add a dash of lemon juice and a stick of butter to finish.

basic beef stew

Stewing beef, or any other meat basically can be broken down into two steps, reducing the stew and then simmering until the end. There are loads of variation on how to prepare beef stew, but what i’m showing here will be the most basic stuff which after you have mastered can be taken into the next level.

Ingredients (Serves 4)

for the beef

a kilo of cubed beef chuck (chuck is used because it is one of the toughest meat on a cow, suitable for long cooking that stewing involved)

all-purpose flour/wheat flour (enough to cover the meat)

white pepper powder (enough to cover the meat)

paprika powder (enough to cover the meat)

for the stew

2 tablespoon of butter

a tablespoon of cornflour/cornstarch

2 litres of beef stock

one large onion, diced

a tablespoon of tomato paste/puree

4 medium carrots, cut into small pieces

3 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into golf ball pieces

4 celery stalks, cut into small pieces

2 bay leaves

a teaspoon of dried rosemary

a teaspoon of dried parsley

salt & freshly ground black pepper

Mix the flour, white pepper and paprika powder in a bowl and coat the beef entirely. Pan fry the beef on a skillet until brown on all side. Transfer to a plate and set aside.

Melt butter in a large deep sauce pan or pot. Cook the onion until lightly browned. Then add the tomato paste and cook while stirring for about a minute. Then stir in the flour, and cook until the flour had absorbed the liquid inside the pan. Immediately deglaze with a litre of the beef stock and bring to a simmer. Add the beef, the bay leaves, rosemary and parsley and let reduce the liquid for about an hour. It the liquid has reduced to much before the hour mark, add a cup or two of water. Once the stew has reduce, add in the remaining beef stock, season with salt and pepper and stir in all the remaining vegetables including the potatoes. Cover the pan and continue simmering for another hour.

About 15 minutes until the final hour mark, finish off with a dash of lemon juice and check the seasoning. Add more salt and pepper to your desire. If you want a thicker broth, leave that final 15 minutes of simmering with the cover off, otherwise return the cover to the pan.

Serve with bread, baguette or own its own. Marvelously delicious!

slow roasted shoulder of lamb

This is the best, most simple, fall off the bone, shoulder of lamb recipe you’ll ever need. Since the technique involved slow roasting, set aside 4 hours of your time in order to have this heavenly dish.

For the marinade

one bulb of garlic

a tablespoon of paprika powder

a few lug extra virgin olive oil

salt & freshly crushed black pepper

Preheat your oven to the max.

To make the marinade, smash everything inside the pestle & mortar except for the salt and pepper until it become a paste. Rub the marinade all over the lamb, then season with salt and pepper. Make sure you trim the lamb of all the fat at the side with a sharp knife.

Once your oven is hot, lay the lamb nicely in a roasting pan side by side. Crush some more garlic clove and put it on top of the lamb, with the skin on. Lay together a few sprigs of rosemary, or a stalk of lemongrass if you want to localize the dish on top of the lamb. Tightly cover the tray with aluminum foil and place in the oven. Turn the oven down immediately to 170 degrees C and cook for 4 hours – it’s done if you can pull the meat apart easily with 2 forks.

baked meatball with tomato sauce

Despite its simple form and style, there are considerably some efforts needed to prepare this. First off, prepare the meatball. Here’s how.

Then prepare the tomato sauce. Here’s how.

Finally, pre-cook the meatballs halfway on a pan (by pre-cook I mean half-way or ¾ way since they will be baked inside the oven later). Prepare a square baking dish, pour the tomato sauce into the dish, place the meatballs in, top with some sliced cheddar or grated parmesan or shredded mozzarella and bake until the cheese has melted, about 15 to 20 minutes. Serve with bread.

Perfect for a lazy night of cooking. (provided the meatballs are prepared earlier and making the tomato sauce is no longer considered as troublesome chore)

chicken katsu

Chicken katsu (katsu is Japanese for the literal translation of cutlet), is a variation of the Japanese dish, Tonkatsu, a breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet. The dish can be served as a single dish, or as filling for sandwiches or accompanied by other dishes such as rice or pasta.

The preparation is pretty simple; in fact, I’ll use fewer words for this recipe and any other I have written. Have a boneless chicken breast, cut them into strips (size and length as per own liking), season with salt and pepper, dredged lightly in flour, dipped into beaten egg and then coat with bread crumbs before deep frying them until golden.

If meant to be served as a single dish, best to eat them with thick sauce such as HP or Worcestershire sauce.

Beef Steak

I bet my ass that most of you when visiting a steak-house and ordering your RM50 a plate beefsteak, be it in places like Tony Roma’s to Chili’s, would know jack shit the difference between a sirloin, a T-bone or a New York strip. And when the server asked you the type of doneness you would like on your piece of meat, you would probably blurt out “well done” or “medium-rare” with the conviction of an executive chef of a Michelin-starred restaurant, when in fact, you have not a single idea what the hell does that mean, just so to save face to the server like you know what you want.

And let me tell you, anyone who ordered their beefsteak “well done” is a complete asshole, and does not deserve to savour the tastiness and juiciness of a piece of meat from a well grown cow.

Alas, this piece is not about the lesson of ordering beefsteak at a steak-house, but how to prepare the same RM50 a plate cuisine that is so easy to do at home. But, just for the sake of the discerning public and an extra knowledge about the wonderful world of meat, particularly beef, I would throw in some explanation about what is what and which is which.

Cuts of meat

Believe it or not, the meat that you are about to turn into delicious beefsteak or that you ordered from that smirking waiter comes from a cow. And a cow is such a huge animal that there are many parts of its body where the meat is derived from, and each part contributed to the texture and taste of the meat, as well as the price of it. Each part and their meat that comes of it are known as “Cuts of beef” in the world of cow linguistic.

Cuts of beef are first divided into primal cuts, pieces of meat initially separated from the carcass during butchering. These are basic sections from which steaks and other subdivisions are cut. Do not confuse the term “primal cut” to the term “prime cut” which is completely different. Prime cut is a term used to characterize cuts considered to be of higher quality. So you see, the general rule is, since the animal’s legs and neck muscles do the most work (i.e. eating, walking, kicking you off when to try to milk it), they are the toughest; the meat becomes more tender as distance from hoof and horn increases. Different countries and cuisines have different cuts and names, and sometimes use the same name for a different cut; e.g., the cut described as “brisket” in the US is from a significantly different part of the carcass than British brisket. So, for the purpose of this piece I shall use the US type of cuts as I prefer the Yankees than the snotty Brits in general.

Upon slaughter, the beef are split along the axis of symmetry into “halves”, then across into front and back “quarters” (forequarters and hindquarters).

Forequarter cuts

· Chuck: The steak from this part commonly known as Chuck steak and Ranch steak. The trimmings and some whole boneless chucks are ground for your burger meat.

· Rib: This is where your short ribs, the prime rib and rib eye steak come from.

· Brisket:  Primarily used for barbecue.

· Shank: The toughest cuts, normally used for stews and soups. Never served as a steak.

Hindquarter cuts

· Short Loin: from which the T-bone, Porterhouse and New York Strip steak comes from.

· Sirloin: The very pricey sirloin steak comes from. There are two parts, bottom and top. Flap steak comes from the bottom part.

· Terderloin: The most tender, and ever more expensive that sirloin. This is where your Fillet Mignon, Tournedos, Chateaubriand and Terderloin steaks originated from.

· Flank:  Inside Skirt and Flank steak. The flank is used mostly for grinding.

· Round: The round contains lean, moderately tough, lower fat cuts, which require moist or rare cooking. Some representative of steaks round steak, eye of round, top round, and bottom round steaks and roasts.

Degree of cooking

The doneness of your steak depends on the amount of time a steak is cooked. It is all about personal preference; shorter cooking times retain more juice, whereas longer steak cooking times result in drier, tougher meat but you wouldn’t worry about contracting e-coli, since the burnt meat will also burned all bacteria and viruses that may be hidden in it. Lest you make fun of yourself in front of your waiter/waitress, a vocabulary to describe the degree to which a steak is cooked are as the following:

· Raw:  Totally uncooked. Sounds gross but actually used in dishes like steak tartare, carpaccio, gored gored, tiger meat and kitfo.

· Blue rare or very rare: Cooked very quickly; the outside is seared, but the inside is usually cool and barely cooked. The steak will be red on the inside and barely warmed.

· Rare: The outside is grey-brown, and the middle of the steak is fully red and slightly warm.

· Medium rare: The steak will have a reddish-pink center. This is the default degree of cooking at most steakhouses when you do not state any doneness level upon ordering.

· Medium: The middle of the steak is hot and fully pink surrounding the center. The outside is grey-brown.

· Medium well done: The meat is lightly pink surrounding the center.

· Well done: The meat is grey-brown in the center and slightly charred.

Additionally, a Chicago-style steak is cooked to the desired level and then quickly charred. The diner orders it by asking for the style followed by the doneness (e.g. “Chicago-style rare”).

Grilling

Now that we have learned some basic knowledge about the cuts of meat and the level of cooking for your steak, it is now time to put it on the griller. There are many type of griller out there, but my favourite and most convenient for me is the non-stick grill-pan. It may not be the most authentic grilling experience, but for a simple dinner with your partner at home it is sufficient enough. As always, treat your non-stick pan nice. Clean it with a kitchen wipe gently. If you really need to wash it please don’t scrub it like you would do to a wok. Grilling the perfect steak is an art form; it takes practice and patience to master it, particularly due to the many factors that played-in during the process (eg. temperature, quality of meat). However, with these simple steps you should have no trouble grilling a fantastic steak.

1. Allow your meat to reach room temperature before grilling. This helps grill a steak faster and more evenly.

2. Trim the steak of excess fat. This is the one that lines up the side of the meat, generally white in colour. The reason is, as it cooks, fat shrinks faster than the meat and can cause your steaks to curl.

3. Season. A light brushing of olive oil, some freshly ground black pepper and salt is all you need. Though, the seasoning is entirely up to you. Preheat the grill pan as hot as it will go.

4. Oil the grate of the pan.

5. Grill. Let the steak rest on the pan until it is done before turning the other side. How long that take depends on the thickness of the meat and how done you would like your steak to be (refer chart below). ALWAYS resist the temptation to turn over the steak while grilling to see how done it is because by doing that you would disrupt the momentum of the heat and the timing will run-off and ruin the doneness of the steak.

6. Use pressure test to check the doneness level of the steak. When getting close to having a done steak, press it with your index finger or the flat side of a grilling fork to get a feel for it. A rare steak will be soft. A medium steak will be firm but yielding. A well done steak will be firm.

7. Let the steaks rest for 5 minutes before serving. This will let the juices flow out from the center, redistributing moisture, so the whole steak is nice and juicy.

As a general rule, adhere to the grilling time by meat thickness as mentioned below. Please note that the times are approximate and will vary depending on the type of grill, heat, meat quality and so on. Divide in half the time for each side.

Thickness

1″ : 6-8(Rare), 8-10(Medium),10-14(Well done)

1 1/2″ : 8-10(Rare), 10-12(Medium),12-16(Well done)

2″ : 12-16(Rare), 16-20(Medium), 20-24(Well done)

classic tray-baked chicken

This dish should be in the repertoire of every home cooks who owns an oven at home. Instead of frying them in oil all the time, which most M’sian does, and with the by-product laced with unhealthy fat and cholestrol, why not tray-bake them? It uses a minimal amount of ingredients – chicken, olive oil, salt and pepper (and if you want gravy, chicken stock) and is especially useful on those busy days when you are just too busy to think of other creative dish to do with with chicken parts. Though it may considerably takes longer than frying, the result is mesmerizing and the aroma is irresistable. The entire kitchen will smells good and your taste palate will be rewarded well.

3-4 pounds of chicken parts (2 breasts, 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings)

extra virgin olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

a whole bulb of garlic, crushed

1/2 cup chicken stock, to make gravy (optional)

2 sprigs of thyme and rosemary (optional)

Preheat oven to 230 degree C.  Rinse chicken pieces in water and pat dry with paper towels.  Coat the bottom of a roasting pan with olive oil.  Rub some olive oil over all of the chicken pieces in the roasting pan.  Sprinkle both sides of the chicken pieces with liberal amount of salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Arrange the pieces skin-side up in the roasting pan so the largest pieces are in the center (the breasts) and there is a little room between pieces so they aren’t crowded in the pan. Chuck in the garlic in the pan and if you prefer to have a wonderful aroma, lay a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme in between the chicken pieces. (I also like to add some tomatoes, quartered, into the roasting pan together with the chicken as i always love roasted tomatoes). Another alternative which resulted in a wonderfully spicy chicken is to rub them with paprika apart from the salt & pepper.

Roast in the oven for at least 30 minutes or until the juices run clear (not pink) when poked with a sharp knife. If your chicken pieces aren’t browning to your satisfaction, you can put them under the broiler for the last 5 minutes of cooking, until browned sufficiently.

Once the chicken is cooked, remove them to a serving plate and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes before serving. This will be a great opportunity to make the gravy. To make gravy for the chicken, take the roasting pan with its drippings and place on a medium setting on the stovetop.  Use a metal spatula to scrape up the drippings stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Add a half cup of chicken stock to the pan to help deglaze the drippings from the pan. Strain the stock and dripping mixture into a small saucepan and heat on medium high to reduce to desired thickness. Add a few spoonful of corn starch to thicken the sauce more if you still feel the sauce is too loose.

rustic chicken pie

Whenever i made roasted chicken the night before, i’ve always use the leftover to make this pie. It’s a simple pie, the filling is nothing more than shredded chicken breast (as the breast is my least favourite part), potatoes, and some vegetables. If i have some, i’d also include chicken sausages and they tasted fantastic. Apart from being quick, simple and scrumptuos, the puff pastry gives you a really rusty crispy top, which i can never get enough of.

Serves 4

leftover roastec chicken meat, shredded

2 knobs of butter

1 medium onion, finely sliced

2 sticks of celery, finely sliced

2 Russet potatoes, peeled

a litre of chicken stock

Preheat oven to 220 degree C. Take a medium caserole pot and add a lug of olive oil and butter. Add the chicken, celery, onion and cook for 15 minutes. Bring a pot of salted water to boil. Cut the potatoes into small cubes and boil in the pot for 10 minutes. Drain the potatoes and transfer into the caserole pot. Add the chicken stock and simmer slowly for another 30 minutes.

Prepare your pie dough. Lay the dough on a 9-inch pie pan. Pour the chicken mixture into the pan and drape the top with another layer of the dough. Trim the edges, egg-wash the top and make a few holes by scoring mark on the top to allow steam to escape while baking. Put inside the oven and bake for 40 minutes, or until golden on top.

perfect roasted chicken

There are three finese points to a perfect chicken. Though there are many variables that make one roasted chicken different from another, only three key components are essential to ensure you end up with the perfect roasted chicken: 1) Seasoning, 2) oven temperature and 3) the maintenance of juicy breast and fully cooked thighs. Seasoning in this case is salt. A chicken should be liberally salted. It should have a visible coating of salt. An agressive use of salt ensure the chicken tastes delicious. It also helps dehydrate the skin so that you wind up with a crisp brown skin and not a pale soggy one.

Chicken should be roasted in a very hot oven, at least 220 degree C, where it should accomplish two important jobs: browns the skin and cooks the leg and thigh fast, giving the breast less opportunity to dry out. The most common mistake people made that they ended up with flavorless breast is that they fail to understand what is happening in the cavity of the bird. If the leg is not tied up, or the cavity is left empty, hot air swirls around the cavity of the bird, cooking the breast from the inside out. To prevent this, you should truss the chicken (binding the legs together), which most home cooks don’t bother with. If you don’t, simply stuff the cavity with something, lemon, onion, garlic or herbs, where my preferrence is lemon.

To prevent overcooking your chicken, a 1 hour at temperature of 230 degree C is sufficient enough for a 4-pound/1.8kg bird (50 minutes for a bird under that). But as a rule of thumb, use the cavity juices to judge doneness. After 45 minutes, if you tilt the bird so the juices spill from the cavity into the rendered fat are clear instead of red in color, it is then safe to take the bird out of the oven. Once done, the chicken should be rested for a good 15 minutes before you cut into it. The bird wont get cold i promised you, since they would still be cooking internally once you’ve taken it out of the oven.

(Good enough to) serve 4

One 3 to 4 pound/1.4 to 1.8 kg chicken

1 lemon

a whole bulb of garlic

salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 to 4 pound/1.5 to 2 kg of Russet potatoes, peeled.

About an hour before cooking time, salt the chicken entirely with salt and pepper (salting the bird hours earlier in advance will result in the skin being smooth shiny and golden instead of being crispy) . Cut the potatoes to the size of a golf ball. Bring a pot of water to boil and boil the lemon, potatoes and garlic for about 10 minutes. Drain in a colander, prick the lemon a few times to let off the steam. Stuff the lemon and garlic into the cavity of the bird. Truss the chicken well. Sit the chicken inside a roasting tray just big enough to ensure the bird fit snugly. Add in the potatoes around the chicken and drizzle a good amount of olive oil so it coats the potatoes well. Slide the tray into the oven and cook for about an hour. Check the color of the juice, if it runs red, give it more time in the oven.

Remove the chicken from the oven and let rest for 15 minutes. Carve the chicken and serve with any sauces of your choice.

pan-roasted chicken breast

Pan roasting is a wonderful technique that should have been the repertoire of every home cook. Pan roast is simply the combination of two dry heat technique: saute and roast. The chicken breast is first seared in a pan over the stove top and then is turned and put in the oven to finish the cooking. The result is a browned exterior with a developed flavor while the interior is tender. What so great about the technique is that i always finish the cooking of the meat together with my choice of vegetables to be roasted together, that way, i could develop the flavor of the meat to incorporate the taste of the vegetables.

Serves 4

4 x 180g of boneless chicken breast

a knob of butter

300g cherry tomatoes and 4 large tomatoes

a couple of sprigs of rosemary

1 lemon

dried oregano

salt and freshly ground black pepper

extra virgin olive oil

Preheat your oven at 200 degree C. Season the chicken breast with salt and pepper. Rub some olive oil over the meat and coat with the dried oregano. Leave to rest for at least 10 minutes. Heat a frying pan with a lug of olive oil, melt the butter, and saute the chicken breast for 4 to 5 minutes, or until golden on both sides. Get a nice roasting tray, quarter the lemon and the large tomatoes and chuck into the tray. Add the cherry tomatoes into the tray too. Put the chicken breast inside the tray and lay the rosemary sprigs on top of the breast. Squezed some lemon juice over the breat for flavor, and finally pop the tray into the oven and roast for 15 – 20 minutes, depending on the size of the breast.