Blue Monday: Steak Sandwich and Chips

Depending upon who you talk to (or believe) today is Blue Monday.  It could also have been last Monday, or the Monday before that.  Maybe every Monday in January is Blue Monday.  By that standard, maybe every Monday of the year is a Blue Monday.

How do we know it's Blue Monday?  Because someone quantified it.

Look!  It has a greater than symbol!  Look!  There are uppercase and lowercase letters above *AND* below a line!  Look! There are even brackets and letters to the power of other letters!

Squeeeeee!

It looks mathy and sciencey so it must be true!

Of course just as someone quantified depression to a single day, someone else has published their own study indicating comfort food is a myth.

Why don't these justification-through-quantification types use their (ahem) immense smartitude for good, as opposed playing to sunlight-deprivation and emotional stunting?  Maybe they read 1984 and thought Ingsoc was the key to Utopia.  Maybe they watched Another Brick in the Wall's conveyor belt scene and thought we should all be faceless (and docile) automatons.

It all seems to be about more Sheldon and less Penny.

Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

For those of us who have bad days and whose blue days aren't triggered by a convergence of nonsensical numbers gussied up in the name of science, the occasional wallow in happy memory triggers can make things seem better. For some people it's solitude and an aptly-chosen record, for others it's a night with a best friend and a movie with a favourite actor, and for others, it's food.

The lovely thing about comfort food is how individual it is to the person.  While many think of tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich as comforting, not everyone thinks of the same soup recipe (or tin), and the sandwich may be on different breads, different types of cheese, and there may be other things tucked in with the cheese--onions, bacon, avocado.

For me, often the effects of a bad day (not a horrendous day, but one bad enough for me to come home in a funk) can often be numbed by beef and potatoes.

It's on days like these, I want something that doesn't make me think, something that's relatively quick, and something that's easily adaptable to what I have on hand.  Sometimes it's a burger and fries. Other times it's beef fajitas.  Other times it's a steak sandwich.

I feel rather odd about offering a recipe for this as it's something I just pull together, based on what I have, or what I can find.  Here's what I did for the sandwich photographed:


Steak Sandwich and Chips

For the sandwich
Sprinkle Schwartz's Montreal Steak Spice on the steak (for about $5, my butcher had a lovely sirloin medallion).  Let sit in the fridge until you're ready to eat.

Sauté  mushrooms and onions with salt, pepper, thyme and a splash of balsamic.

Pat the steak dry with a kitchen paper and fry in a hot pan until it's done to whatever point makes you happy.  Remove from pan and set on a minced garlic clove.  Tent the steak with tin foil and let sit for about 10 minutes.

Cut the mini-baguette in half and set the cut sides in the steak pan, to sop up the fats and juices.  Slather one half with English mustard.

After the steak has rested, slice the steak and arrange on the bottom half of the baguette.  Top with mushroom mixture, and the top half of the bun.

For the Chips
By chips, I mean chunky fries.  Jamie Oliver has a technique that's pretty close to mine, but instead of sprinkling with rosemary after they've cooked, I toss the chips in an oil and steak spice before roasting.

The Sheldons of the world will need precise measurements--weights and volumes, temperatures and times, and will whiteboard an arcane argument pointing out why what I've posted is just wrong.  The Pennys of the world will make (or get) a sandwich (like or unlike this one) and eat it, with or without chips, while listening to New Order.

Bazinga.


 cheers!
 jasmine
 I'm a quill for hire!

My Darling One: Three years

Three years ago today, my Dearest one died.



I'll always miss him, some days more intensely than others. There are always things that bring my mind to him: Jaws, the Spamalot soundtrack, pennies found on the ground.

It's never easy...but it gets easier...sort of.

Michael and I were very different people in many respects--most of the music I listened to was noise to him, he could easily sleep until noon or 1pm and I feel weird if I'm in bed later than 9...am, and he relaxed by way of LOUD shooty computer games, I prefered quiet, comfy couches and a book, DVD or CD.

One of our wider gulfs was food. He was very specific about what he ate: beef, chicken, pork, cheese, sometimes eggs; potatoes, rice, noodles, bread; peas, carrots, corn, mushrooms, onions; ice cream, grapes, chocolate, cake, pie; most herbs and spices.

Seriously. I think that was it.

In quantity.

My list is several orders of magnitude larger than that...but not necessarily in the same quanitities.

When I thought about today's post, my month's theme of Canadian food, and Michael...one thing came to mind. Banquet burgers.

I'm almost positive every roadhouse, regardless of country, has a burger like this.

It has everything and thensome. It's more than a two-hander--I say half is a two-hander...yup, it's a knife and fork jobby.

Like any burger, there are no hard and fast rules as to how to dress a banquet burger. Pretty much anything goes--any sort of cheese, any sort of bacon, tomatoes, onions, grilled onions, fried mushrooms, any sort of sauce, guacamole, peppers, hot peppers, pickles, olives.

And the burger pictured? Lettuce, cheddar, bacon, fried mushrooms, onions, barbecue sauce and a pickle on the side.

Michael would approve...except for the lettuce.

jasmine


I'm a quill for hire!

The Contraption: Pulled Pork Sandwiches - Redux

Last month's slow cooker cooking adventure was less than spectacular. It was also too good to be true.

A minimal amount of prep time, combined with soft drinks and a bit of this and that amounted to a sickly sweet and totally underwhelming mound of sandwiches.

My call for alternative recipes were heard. Between emails, conversations and comments, I had a number of options from which to seek vindication. Can the slow cooker redeem itself or will paperweight-dustcatcher take an early lead in search of optimal uses?

After some study I opted for Deb's recommendation of Epicurious' Barbecue Pork Shoulder. In as much as I'd have liked to try a fellow foodblogger's recipe, pantry staples, time and my inability to get organised won out the day.

I tweaked the recipe in minor ways (prepared mustard for dijon, totally left out the Tabasco, increased the cider vinegar) as well as strained out the sauce and reduced it down, adding a couple of good glugs of barbecue sauce. The result was so much more palatable than before.

Why?

Simple: Much more complex flavours brough about by actual (gasp!) cooking.

Even though I prepared this in a slow cooker, I don't see why this couldn't have been set in a slow oven for a few hours, encased by a Dutch Oven. Perhaps I'll try it that way next time and see what the difference is...


Slow Cooked Pulled Pork Sandwiches
adapted from Epicurious' Barbecued Pork Shoulder
Slow Cooked Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Yield approx 10 sandwiches.

20g (2 Tbsp) brown sugar
2 Tbsp tomato paste
2 Tbsp prepared mustard
3 Tbsp cider vinegar
2dspn (4tsp) powdered chilli pepper
1 tsp salt
olive oil for frying
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, chopped (with seeds)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1.5kg (approx 3lbs) pork shoulder, cut into 2-inch cubes
90g (approx 3oz) streaky bacon (3 rashers), chopped
4 plum tomatoes, chopped (approx 500ml/2c)
1 bay leaf
60ml (0.25c) barbecue sauce

Whisk together sugar, tomato paste, mustard, vinegar, chilli pepper and salt. Pour over cubed pork and set aside.

Sautée onions, chopped bell pepper, garlic and jalepeno until veggies are tender.

Tip onion mixture, pork, marinade, tomatoes and bay leaf into slow cooker.

Set cooker to low and cook for seven hours.

When done, remove pork cubes and shred with two forks. Strain out the veggies and bacon from the liquid and reduce to about 1/3 volume. Stir in barbecue sauce. Reserve about 0.25c.

Return the meat and the balance of the sauce to the slow cooker, and cook on low for about an hour.

Serve with reserved sauce.

cheers!

jasmine







I'm a quill for hire!

The Contraption: Slow Cooker Pork Sandwiches

Hmmm...

I'm not sure what I can say about this one. Last month's successful ribs experiment made me hopeful that my slow cooker wasn't an unfortunate acquisition.

Now, I'm back to doubting things.

After hearing a number of people tell me how delicious their slow cooker pulled pork sandwiches are, I thought that would be an excellent next adventure with the contraption.

Well...not so much. My friend lent me her copy of Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes as she swears by its pulled pork recipe. Rootbeer, onions garlic and chili sauce (not chili as in the spicy hot chilli sauce you find in Vietnamese or Thai restaurants, but the uber sweet "daring" ketchup). The result?

Meh.

No doubt the meat was juicy. In and of itself it was an incredibly tender roast...but as far as a pulled pork sandwich goes, it was...meh.

(And yes, I concede that I photographed sliced meat versions, not pulled meat versions).

I found the sauce in combination with the root beer braised meat far too sweet and uninspired. And that's me being kind.

So...where to go with this?

Given that pulled pork sandwiches are one of the few things with which the cafeteria can tempt me, I want to try this again, but with a tastier sauce.

So if you have a slow cooked pulled pork recipe you are willing to send me, please do. Assuming I get more than one, I'll select one and prepare it for another contraption post. Simply share it in comments or email me at cardamomaddict at gmail dot com.

Thanks in advance.


Pulled Pork BBQ Sandwiches
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes

serves 8-10

1.5kg (3lb) pork roast, trimmed of excess fat
salt
pepper
oil, for frying
2 onions, slivered
1L (4c) root beer (not diet), divided
6 cloves minced garlic
250ml (1c) chili sauce (as mentioned in the post)
1-2 Tbsp chilli-garlic sauce

Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper and sear on all sides.

Transfer the meat to the slow cooker. Add the onions, garlic and 250ml (1c) root beer. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hrs or high for 4-5 hrs.

Meanwhile, make the sauce by reducing 750ml (3c) rootbeer, chilli sauce and the hot sauce, by reducing the volume by half, so you get about 2 cups of sauce.

When the meat is done, shred the meat with two forks and toss in the sauce. Serve on buns with the onions that the pork was cooked in.

cheers!
jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Too hot to cook...but not too hot to eat: Turkey sandwiches

I know. Who blogs about making a turkey sandwich?

Summer appeared right on the dot on the 21st. The skies dried up and the sun arrived with temperatures warm enough to see people sitting on their front porches chatting with passers by. Not truly high temps, but high enough that the neighbours turned on their a/c and I'm watering my teeny little front garden every night as the patch of dirt is looking more like a patch of dust.

Not really in the mood to cook, but I'm hungry. No salad (regardless of how hearty it is) will do. A sandwich will do (with a side of crisps) nicely.

But just because I'm in a low-effort mood doesn't mean that I'm in a no-effort mood. Very simple and uses up the heels from the loaf, I decided to do a Frenched turkey sandwich: Simply layer sliced turkey and top with a good dollop or two of my lascivious peach chutney. Sandwich it up and soak both slices in beaten egg, and fry in butter.

Yes, I know not much of a post today as I'm putting the final pictures together for this month's Daring Bakers' post. Hint: I'm hosting...

cheers!
jasmine

What I'm reading: The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

I'm a quill for hire!

Jasmine gets a garden; Sarah gets lunch

I've never claimed to have a green thumb.

My parents are fabulous gardeners. Give them something vaguely leafy, sometimes thorny and often petally, and they will turn it into something verdant and sweet smelling. "Obsessed" isn't the right word, but nearly every square inch of the backyard was taken up by veggies, half the side and nearly the whole the front yards are inhabited by bushes, flowers and flowering bushes.

No wonder I believed they loved their plants more than they loved me...why else would they name me Jasmine?

Needless to say, I didn't take an active part in the care of my surrogate siblings. Sure: I'd eat what came out of the veggie patch--if only to lessen the enemy's numbers--but other than that, I found gardening so distasteful that I couldn't even be bothered to learn flower names. Yes, I can usually identify easy things like bleeding hearts, daffodils, irises, roses and tulips...but the rest are prone to my own naming conventions. Flowers are either fluffy or pointy. To distinguish them I'll add the colour. For example this is a yellow fluffy flower and this is a purple pointy flower. And for the reord, I prefer fluffy to pointy...all those angles....glah. I've never really needed to know more than that.

That's not to say I'm totally inept at caring for plants (or eating them, for that matter). According to friends with thumbs of green, my instincts are pretty bang on. I just look at the blessed things, decide what their problems are and then go about my business in fixing things as I see fit. They almost always become happier. At worst, they stay the way they are. Yes...I suppose gardening could be in the genes.


One of my friends told me because I really don't care what happens to plants, that's why it's easier for me to make "hard decisions"... apparently pruning is a hard decision. What's so hard? Just get out a snippy thing and snippety snip...

I fully admit when it came time to tend to my little patch of dirt, I needed some handholding. It's one thing to play around in the back where no one can see the mess you're making, but the front entry is a little different.

Sara has green thumbs, toes, elbows and earlobes, all of which contribute to her horticultural reputation. In return for her not making my front garden an embarassment, I offered her lunch.

Of course, me being me, I decided that there were plants I wanted to incorporate--I'd seen them in other people's flower beds or in sales flyers and just kept note of things. Apparently I came up with a pretty good mix of plants--all easy peasy lemon squeezy. Pretty darned close to idiot-proof. She was impressed.

She inspected my soil (I have worms!--in what other context would that phrase be joyous in this blog?), looked at the light and pondered my pie-shaped plot. Off her notepad came a simple but lovely little garden plan. Off we went to the nursery to buy my patch's new inhabitants.

While she yanked out the vegetal interlopers I busied in the kitchen, pulling together a lunch of salad and lemon-rosemary grilled chicken sandwiches with feta on ciabbata. Mediterranean flavours zhuzh what could be a rather ordinary sandwich, but what I think made the sandwich extra tasty was the feta spread.

To make the sandiwich, pound a boneless chicken breast flat and marinate in a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, minced garlic and rosemary for 15 minutes at room temperature. Then grill.

Line the bottom slice with greenery of your choice (I chose a mesculin salad mix), roasted bell peppers and cooked chicken. Spread the top slice with the feta spread and close up the sandwich. If you've time, tighly wrap in cling and squoosh it with something heavy so as to have a pressed sandiwich. Serve with salad or soup.


Feta spread

Mix together the following ingredients into a smooth paste:

100g cream cheese, softened
50g feta cheese
1 tsp basil pesto
salt
pepper
1 garlic clove, finely minced

cheers!
jasmine

What I'm reading: Great Canadian Plant Guide

I'm a quill for hire!

Elvis, you'll always be the King

I grew up watching Elvis Presley movies on TV. Everytime one of his films aired, my parents made a mini event of it and we'd sit on the couch and watch...sometimes sing.

I loved (and still do) films of that era and genre. It was a sort of candy-coated, sparkly world where everyone broke into song at a moment's notice. I never quite figured out why life wasn't quite like that. Oh sure, I treat pretty much everything as a song cue and will warble a few lines of this or that to prove a point...but for some reason people rarely join in...even rarer still, do they do that lovely spontaneous, en masse choreography.

I found out sometime mid-day that today marks his 74th birthday. Which surprised me. Not the number itself, but the fact that I found out mid-day...and quite by accident. It used to be on his birthday the radio station (regardless of the one I listened to) would mention something...even play a song or two...but not today.

Harrumph...

Is that any way to treat The King?

Harrumph...

His culinary predilictions are known...along with his appetite...Hamburgers, mashed potatoes, pound cake...What I always found a little sad was how so many people seemed to turn their nose up at a particularly yummy one: fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Really all it is is a pb and banana sammy on toasted bread, browned in butter on the grill. Gosh, make an eggy coating and it would be a divine cross between French toast and pb&b...

What I like about this sandwich, is how both the banana and peanut butter just sort of melt into one other...all warm and gooey between pieces of fried bread...There are no quantities needed--you may want more pb than b or you may want more b than pb...it's all up to you.

You know what I'll be munching on, as I watch Bruce Campbell as that hunkahunka burning love in Bubba Hotep (if you've seen the movie, you know why I'm laughing as I type) tonight, wishing The King, a happy, happy...

Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches

Lightly toasted bread
Mashed banana
Peanut butter
Butter

Spread peanut butter on one slice of toast, then slather it with banana and top with a second slice.

Melt butter in a pan. When it starts to sing place the sanwich in and let it fry for a couple of minutes. Add more butter (if necessary) and flip the sandwich and fry for another minute or two.
Serve immediately.

cheers!
jasmine