What I Ate For Dinner

All soups are basically a lie. The best and the worst, the patrician and the plebian, all originate from a fundamental dishonesty. Soup represents cheap, scrappy, gnarled hunks as (somehow) full-flavored, colorful and balanced bites. Making soup is like laundering dirty food: you know what you put in there and where it came from, but you hope no one asks because you're trying to disguise it. The keys to good soup are choosing chunks and knobs of meat, vegetables and herbs that work well together, (hopefully) having some good stock around, and seasoning it all right. To be a good soup maker, you have to think like a good counterfeiter: the final product is all that matters, but it has to appear to be a carefully considered, cohesive morsel even if its constituents are no more than scraps that have passed their peak. People gotta believe that your soup comes from nothing but the best, and the best soups taste like they do (even when they don't). You can't be indiscriminate in combining your ingredients, though, or you'll get caught. After all, soup isn't a trash heap; it's a crucible. Take the beef and barley variety, for instance. It's a marvelous example of how a few basic staples available fresh year-round can produce a result exponentially better than the sum of its parts. And the ingredient line-up with this one is open to interpretation: corn would be good,for example, and the roasted bell peppers, though excellent, are not the difference between success and failure.

Start by tossing chopped bell pepper and tomato in salt, pepper and olive oil, and then roasting them at 450 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. The pieces on the edges might get a bit burned, but most should only darken and soften. Be careful about this: once a burned flavor shows up in a soup, it never leaves.

While the peppers and tomato are roasting, sauté shallot and carrots in a sauté pan until the shallots are blonde/brown. Then add the roasted bell peppers and tomatoes, barley, and beef cut into (roughly) one-inch cubes (I used tri-tip since that's what I had, and I wouldn't use anything more expensive than that for this soup. Sirloin or chuck would also work). Finish with chopped fresh sage or rosemary, and season with salt and pepper.

Now add your liquids: beef stock (about 1qt per two-three portions), a healthy glug of full-bodied red wine, and some balsamic vinegar. Simmer on low to moderate heat for about a half-hour.

After a half-hour, taste it. Reseason as necessary. Optionally, you can squeeze a few drops of lime juice in at the end to brighten the flavors and bind the soup. Serve it up with a toasted baguette.

One silver lining of the recession is that it offers a veritable open-mic night to less lovely, but altogether edible, foodstuffs. Instead of the old standards fillet and strip, for example, broke beef eaters remember during tough times that cows have more than those two muscles. True story. Other cuts are cheaper and oftentimes as (or even more) flavorful than the primetime playboys. Some of the best known of these "other red meats" are bavette (aka flank), hanger and tri tip, all of which happily occupy a sinewy ghetto on the belly of the beast. Fillet and strip would consider this fibrous neighborhood the wrong side of the bovine's anatomical tracks. If you're low on cash, though, such opinions of the effete bourgeoisie of beef might become a bit less persuasive, especially with these more economical nuggets vying for your attention. So don't get nervous about the raw characteristics of less "prestigious" cuts like tri tip or hanger steak: I'll describe an acidic marinade that can tenderize 'em, and how a slow grill over moderate heat can bring out the best of these "J.V." slivers. Compared to their more expensive neighbors, cheaper cuts like these are more interesting to cook, and therefore more rewarding, too. Keep in mind, though, that you don't want to cook them past medium-rare, or they'll toughen up something awful. (In my opinion, that's true for all cuts of beef, and especially for these.)

Tonight we're doing tri tip, which is the triangular hunk leanin' off the sirloin. Start with a marinade. Mix roughly one part soy sauce, one part vinegar (balsamic or white wine), one part oil (something cheap is good, like peanut oil), and a half part water. Season with fresh cracked black pepper, and whisk it up until the liquids emulsify. Then, place a ziploc bag inside a ceramic vessel (or something else that's leakproof), slip your beautiful tri tip wedge into the bag, and add the marinade. Seal the bag almost all the way, but leave an opening through which to squeeze out as much air from the bag as possible. This is basically home-style vacuum sealing, and it ensures maximum contact between the marinade and all surfaces of the beef but requires only the minimum amount of marinade for the purpose. I've marinated tri tip like this for anywhere between one and thirty six hours. Probably don't want to go less than one hour; no need to go thirty-six, though. Your call.

We've done grilling here before. For tri tip, be sure to bank the coals to one side in order to create a range of heat intensity. Lean the thickest end of the tri tip toward the center of the coals (where it's hottest), and let the thinner tail portion stretch into a cooler region. For a two pound slice, the grilling should take about 20-25 minutes.

Mashed potatoes are easy, but the method in Bourdain's cookbook improved my ole standard considerably, so I'll pass it on here. The key: boil the milk and butter first, then whip them in with skinned, fork-tender potatoes you've boiled in advance with a whisk, and season. I think boiling the dairy stuff first yields a more fluffy, creamy product. Be sure not to overwork them though, or you'll lose those assets. And take care not to splatter the boiling butter/milk--that's one of the nastier burns.

Leaner, tougher cuts like tri tip need sauce more than most. Here's an easy one: sauté shallots in butter until blonde, whisk in a judicious handful of flour to form a roux, and kill the heat. Deglaze with a healthy glug of red wine--get a solid half-inch or so pool on the bottom of your pan. Then, throw in some demi (bless you for making demi) or some beef stock (respectable substitute), and reduce by half. I guess the ratio of wine to demi/stock would be about 2:1. Season with salt, and balance with lime juice (if too sweet) or brown sugar (if too sour).

I serve it up with a simple arugula salad, dressed lightly with sesame oil, salt and a bit of lime juice.

Beef short ribs, in their unmolested, natural state, are by most any reasonable measure an unlovely cut. Composed of a hunk of sinewy meat slung by cartilage strap athwart a rather substantial bone, these guys will elicit few catcalls at the club. But, my, what a few hours in a 325 degree oven can do for 'em. And for you. A braised beef rib offers its patron all the joys of lamb shanks, and often for a fraction of the price. That's because beef short ribs, like demi-glace and clams, magnanimously reward the adoring touch of any sensitive cuisinier bold enough to mine their shrouded ore.

The basics here are the same as for braising anything, although I've made a few modifications as per Tony Bourdain's recipe in his Les Halles Cookbook. Start, predictably, with sautéed shallots in a sauté pan or casserole large enough to fit all your ribs. Once they get some color, coat the bottom of the pan with enough white wine to form a half inch or so pool. Add to that a healthy dose of white wine vinegar and reduce until the alcohol cooks off. A moment or two of vigorous simmering should do the job. Next, add a handful of fresh herbs. I think sage, rosemary and thyme together make a handsome ensemble, although any one of them alone would be fine if you can't swing the combo. Also throw in some sliced garlic, and--if you really love unlovely things--some demi-glace. If you don't have any demi, a bit of stock will suffice. Allow these flavors to come together on a medium simmer.

Now on, courageously, to the ribs. First, be sure to chop them up so that a single piece contains but a single rib. And do be sure that you're dealing with the meaty short ribs, which are different than the full slab of ribs that I grilled a while back. Rub the ribs with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then snuggle them into the pan of by-now-adequately-reduced liquid. Kill the stove heat, and pop the whole deal into a 325 degree oven. Don't even need to put a lid on this one. If one side of your ribs is more fatty than another, be sure the fatty side is up. That'll tenderize the final product as the solid fats turn to liquid in the oven and seep throughout the meaty morsels.

After about an hour in the oven, baste and rotate the ribs. Then back in they go for another hour or so. Rotate (that is, rotate them 180 degrees; by which I mean "flip" each rib) the ribs every 20 minutes or so during this hour. I should mention that these times are mere suggestions. Braising requires, I'd say, a minimum of two hours, but more than that can improve the flavor as well.

After about two hours in the oven at 325, kick the heat up to around 400 so that you'll get a good bronze on the outside of the ribs. Be sure the meaty side is up for this portion. Continue at 400 until you achieve this roasty result.

The pan drippings from the braise provide you with the base for a sauce that should not be neglected. While they're bronzin' up, start the sauce by sautéing shallots until translucent. Then stir in a fistful of flour--that's your roux. Deglaze with as many pan drippings as you can scrounge, embellish with a bit of stock and finish (should you choose) with a dash of port. Whisk this all together, and you've got a sauce for the ribs. Should you need a thicker product, mix up a simple roux of equal parts oil and flour, and then whisk that in.

The prefect finish to braised meats is gremolata: combine the zest of lemon and lime with a few shards of raw garlic, some fresh herbs, season with salt and pepper, and use the result as a toothsome garnish atop the ribs. Serve these up with roast vegetables, mashed potatoes, risotto, couscous or whatever.

Tonight I'm bangin' out the brasserie standard steak au poivre with pommes lyonnaises. The throngs of zealous readers who devour this blog weekly will notice that I reproduce some of the basics of last week's preparation of fig confit with pork tournedos. Some might even aver that such a redundancy constitutes a lack of imagination--no more than a tired baron mailin' it in. But I say to you, in the Liverpudlian brogue of Sir Paul McCartney: get back. The point, rather, is that learning the French culinary canon sometimes amounts to stackin' up proficiency in core concepts of flavor conservation and augmentation, and then gettin' funky with different ingredient line-ups. On that score, this preparation is a variation on the ole' sear-roast-deglaze-for-a-sauce progression introduced last week, but one, I would hasten to add, that yields a different profile than we tasted with the fig confit and pork. So strap yourself in for a wild ride through this remix edition, based on Anthony Bourdain's recipe.

Steak au poivre can be made with any beef cut: sirloin is typical, filet mignon shows up, and I'm using strip steak tonight. Start by cracking fresh black pepper on one side of the steaks. A coarse grind will bless your beef with crunch and pop, or what the French call "pizzazz." Sear the beef in a bit of oil with the peppered side down, all the while peppering the naked side staring at you. Be sure not to have the heat up so high that it will burn the encrustations that collect under the steak. Such will lend a burned taste to your sauce, so keep the dial tuned to medium or medium-high. Once you get a good sear on one side, flip it over and do the same for the other. When the searage is done, transfer the beef to a roasting pan and throw it into an oven preheated to between 300-400 degrees. Where you drop the needle in that range depends on a) how quickly you can prep the sauce and potatoes (slower means you want a cooler oven; faster means you can probably manage in the upper reaches) and b) how well-done you like your beef (more well done means higher temperature; better beef, which hangs out on the rare to medium-rare end, is easiest with lower heat). Or you could just ballpark it and set the volume to 350.

Now the glorious sauce. As with the fig confit, start by sautéing chopped shallots in the same pan in which you just seared the steaks. When they get some color, stir in a half-handful of flour and allow your workman's roux to cook on low or medium-low heat for a minute or two. Then deglaze with beef stock and reduce by half, running a wooden spoon around the pan to release as many of the encrustations as possible. When the beef stock has reduced by half, add a happy helping of cognac (as always with hooch: good stuff is better). Bourdain says that you'll need four oz of stock (before reducing) and one oz of cognac for this recipe, so that gives you a sense of the ratio. Reduce the cognac by half, season and taste. If you need to thicken it up more, stir in some roux (equal parts oil and flour).

A note about thickening sauces: when a sauce boils, the roux has done its job and you can assume that the sauce is as thick as it's going to be at that temperature. Like any liquid, however, a sauce will coagulate as it cools. So if your sauce is too thin after reducing the cognac, like mine was, stir in roux with the assumption that the sauce will continue to thicken as it cools. A slightly thin sauce will likely be perfect by the time you're ready to serve it, whereas a perfectly thickened sauce could go goopy in the same interval.

The pommes lyonnaises can be prepared while the sauce is reducing and the beef is finishing off in the oven. Start by blanching eighth-inch slices of potatoes in boiling water until about halfway cooked. When par-cooked, the potatoes should be supple, almost like a slab of rubber. Be sure to dry them off well after you drain them since they'll be getting fried. Water and hot oil ain't no fun for no one.

Once you have your pommes blanched, heat peanut oil in a sauté pan. Start by sautéing chopped green onions for a minute or two, then add the potatoes. Ideally, each potato would interface flatly with the hot oil on the bottom of your pan. The more potato-y surface area you can put in contact with the hot oil on the bottom of the pan, the sooner your potatoes will crisp up. Allow the potatoes to remain in one position for a minute or two before stirring them up. To get some good browning and crisping, frying should take 5-10 minutes. Time of course depends on how many potatoes you have, how thick you cut 'em and how hot your oil is. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper while they cook, and don't hesitate to add more oil or butter if necessary. A cast iron skillet would be perfect for this sort of a dish.

Serve it up with a simple salad, and you've got 'er dun.

So I wanted to innovate. You know, church up something I've always adored. And I wanted to learn how to make cheap meat taste good. And I wanted to get in on the hanger steak fad. High hopes all around.

I figured I'd do some tacos with hanger steak, using the marinade in David Chang's Momofuku. Makes sense: carne asada is usually made from flank steak, and hanger is flank's anatomical neighbor down there on the belly of the beast. So it should have worked out great. And if only I had a snazzy retrofitted RV in which to cruise about, it would have been the sort of thing I could sell to hipsters for 12.99 at lunch. Thing is, I couldn't find any hanger steak in my postal code. I know it's out there. Lurking. Waiting. Yearning for my touch. Maybe I should make a posting under Craigslist's "Missed Connections" tab.

Basically, this preparation is a carne asada taco made from scratch. On that score, I've failed in my wondrous ambition to do anything original. Perhaps, though, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that this post has a higher calling than "innovation," that almost impossible goal for any epicure. I'll call it a preservationist labor of love. In light of Taco Bell's new "Cantina Tacos" (touted as "based upon authentic-style Mexican street tacos"), I figure it's only a matter of time before this titan of cheap gourmet fades to a distant cultural memory. Think that's a cheap shot, no more than an overprivileged, condescending fooidie's expression of self-importance? Well, consider this: SF Chronicle online readers were recently asked about their favorite bay area french fry. Turns out that more food wonks gave top billing to McDonald's french fries than to any other variety available in this supposedly sophisticated market. So maybe fast food does shape expectations about classic cuisine. I can only hope that this blog post will be displayed in the Smithsonian, next to Julia Child's kitchen, as a small reminder of the once-legible line between noble tacos and whatever the hell "authentic-style" means.

The meat is cheap and easy, but it takes a minute (actually a day). As I say, I'm sure hanger steak would be wondrous, but I'm using flank, a traditional carne asada cut. This is tough meat, so you must marinate it. I admire David Chang's recipe for hanger steak marinade for its simplicity and flavor, so here are the measurements he provides in Momofuku (for those who measure). As usual, ratios, not measurements, are the vital thing here:

2 cups apple juice (read the label and make sure you're buying apple juice with precisely one ingredient)

½ cup soy sauce

½ yellow onion, thinly sliced (I subbed two or three chopped shallots)

5-6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Four 8-oz. hanger or flank steaks (serves 2-4).

Mix up the above, seal in a freezer bag and place in a larger ceramic or plastic container to avoid leakage. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

To finish off the beef, all you need to do is grill it to rare. Flank and hanger steaks toughen up quite a bit if you cook them much past medium-rare. Cutting against the grain of the beef will help tenderize the final product, so identify the direction of the sinewy grains and cut either at a 45 degree angle against them, or go crazy and cut directly against them by moving the knife through the meat perpendicular to the grain.

Now for the pico de gallo. Combine chopped tomato (at least one roma-sized tom per person, but if you're like me, probably more than that), chopped shallot, chopped cilantro (lots!), lime juice, and a pinch of salt. Mix, taste, adjust.

Fresh tortillas really make this meal, so I highly recommend doing them if you have the time. Start with sifted flour (a few cups), add a pinch or two of baking powder, some knobs of butter, a little olive or peanut oil (optional) and mix with your hands. You want to have enough fat (oil/butter) in the mix to produce a flaky texture. Many recipes call for shortening, but I think it's gross, so I avoided it and used other fats. Once you have some good flakiness, add water a bit at a time and continue mixing the dough until it is firm and malleable enough to mold into a ball. Cover the ball of dough with plastic wrap and/or a towel and let rest for 20-30 minutes at room temperature.

Then, carve off a golf ball sized sliver and roll it out into a tortilla on a floured workspace. Thin is good. Then fry lightly (or "toast in oil") either on a cast iron skillet (ideal) or a nonstick pan until they get some color.

Assembly should be obvious. One embellishment that falls outside of the usual tacovian ambit is bean sprouts. They add a light crunch and some color, so I think they make the cut. Anyway, put your tacos together, pour a Tecate (one of the most underrated beers out there) and count your blessings.

Béarnaise sauce could be considered a "daughter" to the "mother sauce" Hollandaise. Both feature egg yolks and butter, but béarnaise is considered the derivative daughter sauce because it is adulterated with vinegar, tarragon and shallot, thereby breaking from motherly tradition and becoming a renegade condiment that is actually interesting. Apropos of lexicon, however, I must mention that, for me, béarnaise has a more vixenly quality that seems to fall outside of the placid and inert kinship appellations "mother" and "daughter." I think of it as more of a mistress to the solid but stolid, "well-respected-sauce-about-town" hollandaise. Sure, slather some H-sauce on the 'ole Eggs Benedict, and you've got a $12.99 brunch entrée, but you'll find that béarnaise packs its bags with so much more intrigue, danger and allure that you'll have a hard time maintaining interest in brunch fare. So don't tell your cardiologist, or your brunch buddies (with whom you are, most likely, getting fleeced, if you're the type to go out to brunch); this siren of a sauce likes you all to herself.

Béarnaise usually shows up on grilled beef, so tonight, I'm doing a strip steak on the grill, which I serve with lightly fried potatoes and a salad of fresh greens. Steak grillery is pretty easy. Throw it on, turn it, yank it off. Like a record. I prefer to treat steak almost like sashimi and just carve off small, nearly raw slivers from the mother lode. La méthode de Baron, shall we say?

For the sauce, start by sautéing shallots and tarragon in olive oil in a medium saucepan. As the shallots get some color and turn translucent, season with salt and pepper and add enough white wine vinegar to coat the bottom of the sauce pan. Reduce until there is just enough vinegar in the pan to form a small puddle when the pan is tilted sideways; to put it another way, reduce until there's about a tablespoon or so vinegar left and the shallots have gotten a good soaking. Kill the heat and allow the pan to cool. This is crucial, since you don't want to wind up with scrambled eggs. Again, this ain't brunch.

As the saucepan cools, beat two egg yolks in a bowl with a little bit of water (two or three tablespoons, I'd guess). Beat with a whisk until foamy on top, and then pour the egg into the cool saucepan.

On the lowest possible heat, beat the eggs, shallots etc. on the stove constantly until the eggs thicken. Do not, under any circumstances, stop beating them before they thicken, or they will scramble and you'll be at brunch. Which would suck. On my stove, it took about a minute for the eggs to thicken, although yours may be different. If you have trouble moderating the temperature, or you have an intense (if unstated) fear of failure, hedge your bet and remove the saucepan from the heat from time to time. A few moments on, then a few moments off. All the while whisking, of course. This is a sort of sissy way to do it, but it works.

Once the eggs come together and thicken, taste the sauce. I usually add more tarragon at this point, and re-season with salt and pepper. If you want more sharp acidity than the vinegar has already given you, then you can squeeze some citrus juice into the sauce now, too. All seasoned up? Now throw in a few hunks of butter. If the butter is at room temp to begin with, then it'll melt in easier. At any rate, set the heat to the lowest setting and stir the butter in until it's melted. Taste. If you want more body, go for more butter. Serve immediately.

As for the potatoes: traditionally, a steak like this cries out for steak frites. Well, turns out they're kind of a hassle. I want to do them for the blog sometime, but for tonight, we have a low-oil, low-stink alternative. Cube up some potato and blanch them in ice water. Then slice the cubes thinly so you have little tiles of potato. Then fry those up, being careful not to crowd them, in about an inch of oil. Yank 'em when golden brown, salt 'em, and y'er ready to rock.

Ask ten people how to cook ribs and you'll probably get fifteen different answers. You can do 'em in the oven, you can rub 'em down and grill 'em up, you can marinate 'em, start 'em in the oven and finish 'em on the grill, braise 'em, or figure 'em out all sorts of other ways. As for types of ribs, though, I'd argue there are but two choices: pork spare ribs or beef ribs. Baby back ribs, though popular, are overpriced, lack meaty worth and therefore miss the cut.

Tonight, I'm barbecuing beef ribs, although a similar method would also work for spare ribs. Lots of folks go for rubs, and if you do to, I'll leave that up to you. Mixtures that combine cinnamon, salt, pepper, brown sugar, cumin and such seem to be the usual suspects. For me, though, sauce is where it's at, so I'll focus on that after navigating the nuances of the grill.

I go for a slow "roast" on the grill to tenderize the meat and also to provide it with a subtle smoky mistress. Start with a bank of coals. Since this is a slow roast operation, you won't need too many. All you need is half a chimney full, which is about two or three handfuls. Let them glaze over with white ash, and then pour them out into an embankment along one side of the grill. The bank allows for far superior control over the heat than stacking them in the middle of the grill. You're ready to throw the ribs on when the coals cool to the point that you can hold your hand over them for several seconds without being uncomfortable.

Then roll out the ribs after seasoning, either with a rub or just salt and pepper. I usually arrange them as far from the heat source as possible, which means, practically speaking, around the circumference of the grill. See the photo below for an example. You'll of course want to rotate the ribs so that the ones that start closest to the coal bank get moved out, and the others get moved in.

Add soaked woodchips to the bank a few at a time. You need not smoke the joint out, but you want to get a good waft workin' through the top vent. Continue to add chips a few at a time throughout the cooking process. Also, add charcoal briquettes three or four at a time to keep the fire going once the newest round of coals has ashed over.

You want moist and tender ribs, so be sure to keep the fire small and to rotate the ribs about. Tonight, I left them on for just under two hours, but longer would probably be better. With a hotter fire, they'll of course take less time.

Now for the sauce, which I paste onto the ribs while they cook. Start with well-caramelized shallots, and add white wine and a tomato puree. Then season with salt, pepper, brown sugar and, if you want some heat, either wasabi or Serrano chilies. Also add some sort of vinegar--white wine, apple cider, balsamic--and some red wine. Allow to reduce and taste as it does so. Lime juice will help bring the flavors together. Adjust seasoning and adjunct mixture until the sauce is deep crimson and well-balanced: there should be acidity from the tomatoes and vinegar, as well as sweetness and a hint of heat.

Needless to say, this is but a road map: molasses, hot sauce, cinnamon, and all sorts of other additions would also be welcome.

Mashed potatoes go wonderfully with grilled meats, as do a few lightly fried shallots.