Aventura skylight
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Faker Pot Roast
This recipe takes leftovers from a pretty good dinner and transforms them into satisfying comfort food that won’t break the calorie bank.
Dinner 1: Slow-Cooker Chipotle Beef Tacos with Cabbage and Radish Slaw from Real Simple Magazine
This dinner was pretty good. The beef smelled great, but came out somehow lacking in the spice and smoke department. Don’t get me wrong, this beef was good — juicy, perfectly tender and all around a nice main component — it just wasn’t the ballsy spicy richness I half hoped it would be. It tasted more like a pot roast.
Which got me thinking….
Dinner 2: Faker Pot Roast
Mmmm…. pot roast. Pot roast is one of those dishes that picks you up, gives you a nice snuggly blanket, a soft place to sit and a nice book to read. Pot roast tucks you in. I remember as a kid opening the door to the house on cold winter nights and being buffeted by the wall of warm beefy goodness only pot roast that’s cooked all day in the Crock Pot can provide. Good times.
I wasn’t feeling making another haunch o’beast, so I decided to do the next best thing. I winged it with ingredients I had on hand.
Faker Pot Roast
This spin on pot roast transforms humble leftovers into a deeply satisfying super quick to throw together weeknight meal.
Leftover slow cooker chipotle beef, approximately 1 1/2 cup.
1 c beef broth
1/4 c. red wine
1 1/2 c. carrots, sliced into 1/4 inch thick coins
1 leek, halved lengthwise and sliced into 1/4 inch thick moons
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 lb. egg noodles
1/4 c. chopped parsley
1 Tbsp. butter
Warm 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a large high-sided pan over medium heat. Once the oil is up to temperature, add the leeks, onions, carrots, wine and broth. Sautee 5 mins.
Put a large pot of salted water on to boil. Once the water is boiling, add the egg noodles. Cook to al dente according to package directions
Continue cooking veggies 10 minutes, or until the carrots are soft. If at any time things look too dry, add additional wine and/or stock.
About 2 minutes before cooking is finished, add the leftover beef. Stir to combine until the beef is warmed through. Add the noodles and toss to combine. Remove from the heat. Add the butter and parsley and stir to combine until the butter has melted.
Serves 2
October 21, 2011
Lighting @ GiGi in Midtown. We ate there for the first time in a long time this evening, and were pleasantly surprised. The menu seems to have taken a turn for the better with bolder flavors and more interesting dishes.
October 20, 2011
Diced carrot fall on a bed of snowy rice noodles in tonights slow cooker chicken pho.
October 19, 2011
Fiery Korean chili sauce
<a href=https://gastography.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/20111019-190149.jpgimg src=https://gastography.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/20111019-190149.jpg alt=20111019-190149.jpg class=alignnone size-full /
October 18, 2011
We finally got the new couch delivered today, and Om. Fg. This couch is frickin huge.
October 17, 2011
My love is awesome. So awesome he made me Alton Brown-inspired meat loaf with his own BBQ sauce with mascarpone mashed potatoes for dinner. Swoon.
October 16, 2011
Spotted at Yardbird in South Beach: “There are two types of people in the world, those who like fried chicken & communists”
October 15, 2011
All charcuted up and nowhere to go. From left: Italian sausage, brown sugar bacon, duck confit (foreground), and duck prosciutto. We had planned on bringing this home made charcuterie spread to our CSA’s pizza potluck meet & greet, but the Miami weather had different plans. Boo!
Duck Confit–Charcutepalooza Challenge #10
This month’s challenge was to make Duck Confit from Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.
Procurement
This month’s protein was somewhat hard to procure. Apparently, 5 lb. of duck legs just isn’t something Publix, Whole Foods, or even my butcher is really into carrying. Plenty of pre-confited legs were offered, as were the occasional whole duck and/or whole breast.
I hit the Internet in a frantic search. C’mon, people! Day 1 I looked at D’artagnan, and their prices seemed almost reasonable… Lo and behold, though their meat prices seem reasonable, shipping will double the list price and I’m not really into paying $60 for duck legs, especially when I know someone, somewhere has to carry just what I need.
Enter Marky’s Caviar.
Luckily, I happen to have an ace up my sleeve where “fancy” food is concerned. An ace I had almost forgotten about after finding it a few months ago. An ace I thought would be too expensive. Boy, was I happily wrong. Marky’s is awesome. I’ve been driving past it for the past few years, and at first didn’t realize it was open. The building sits behind a heavy metal rolling security fence, and most of the windows are papered or painted over. Then I saw a delivery truck. Yeah right, I thought. That’s got to be some sort of Russian mob front. No way we have a caviar store in Miami. And if we do, caviar is a bigillion dollars an ounce, so never mind there. As luck would have it, I just so happened to be sitting in the cafe across the street one afternoon enjoying my favorite Pan Con Bistec when I saw a happy family leaving with bags in tow. I immediately had to go check it out. boy am I glad I did. Marky’s is a frickin wonderland of all things good, all things tasty, fatty, gourmet, made by or for the cold peoples from Europe, or hard to find. And wonder of all wonders, their prices aren’t bad at all. Definitely on par with my favorite butcher/import market.
After traipsing around for half an hour or so, delighting in all the jams, jellies, charcuterie products, cheeses, fois, fish eggs, teas, spices, vinegars, oils, and other exotic fare, we settled on our duck. We managed to walk out with the perfect amount of duck, extra fat, and a baguette/cheese/salumi/roe dinner for under $100. Go us.
Assembly
Not terribly difficult. The duck slowly worked its confit magic while I worked nearby, drinking in the heady aroma of duck fat. Other than taking time (2 days to thaw, 2 days to marinate and 7 hours to cook), this was a breeze. Marinate, rinse, slap in your brand new shiny enameled pot, cover with fat, and roast on the lowest your oven can go for 6+ hours. Mmmmm.. Patience.
The Debut
My debut recipe for this month’s Charcuetpalooza challenge was duck tacos with a side of duck fat fried chickpeas and poblanos. I couldn’t think of anything that would balance the ducky fattiness better than green apple, and what better way to get both to our mouths at once than a taco? Tacos are awesome! Next time, I’m totally making a hash with duck fat fried potatoes. If you haven’t had duck fat fried potatoes before, they’re one of the top 10 best things on Earth.
A note about removing the duck from the fat: I’m completely sure I did this wrong. I had put the pot of confit in the fridge to set up and it didn’t dawn on me that cold fat is hard. Like, really hard. Bend your fork if you try to ice-chipper-the-duck-out-of-the-pot-with-it hard. So, I ended up gently heating the pot of confit on the stove and fishing the duck out of the warm fat. Be careful if you use this retrieval method. I then got the bright idea to switch the confit to smaller containers so I wouldn’t have to go through the same drama again, and ended up getting fat all over my kitchen. And on the dogs. So, tread carefully and it might not hurt to have a helper and/or funnel for pouring. It turns out, fat strewn about the kitchen isn’t the most pleasant thing in the world. The dogs were excited. Me, not so much.
The Verdict
Yum. Confit duck rocks! And I have lots of leftover fat with which to cook potatoes and all sorts of other yumminess.
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