Benito vs. the Hotel Room: Osso Buco

First off, a view outside my hotel room at sunset, looking westward towards the Rockies. Now on to the food!

I've always wanted to cook osso buco ("bone with a hole"), the succulent shank cut of beef or veal, typically served in a savory sauce alongside a starch like beans or chickpeas. But I haven't seen it often in Memphis grocery stores, and the one or two times I did it was more expensive than ribeye. This is a tough cut (from the equivalent of the shin or forearm on a cow) that requires long braising time. I'm not paying $15 a pound for it.

However, while here in Denver I got to stop by a Whole Foods for the first time. When you walk in and see everything that's available, you just about want to cry. Four different kinds of beets? A sushi bar where you can either get takeout or sit on a stool and have a meal? A farmer's market with fresh local produce on the front steps on the weekend? A butcher counter where there's not only five different cuts of buffalo but everything is fresh--no steaks slowly graying in plastic packages on a shelf? Amazing. And while some wonks have referred to it as "Whole Paycheck", I found the prices to be quite reasonable, even for some of the seafood that had to be flown in.

My hotel suite has a two-burner stove and some basic cooking supplies. I spied the thick $5/lb beef shanks in the butcher case and determined that it was my best chance to make some osso buco. It's not exactly roughing it, but I don't have access to my enameled cast iron Dutch oven, nor my herbs, nor any actual utensils. My only seasonings are salt and pepper packets swiped from the lobby. In this picture you see everything that I had: an aluminum pot as thin as a Coke can, a vegetable peeler, and some assorted ingredients. Hell, I've had cauliflower soup cooked on the engine manifold of a Ford van. I've cooked breakfast using an old coffee can and a candle. Give me a heat source and a piece of metal, and I can fix dinner.

It's a virtue to be resourceful, and it often makes for good stories. Whether you're talking about fixing a leaky head gasket with a half dozen raw eggs in the radiator or the chick I saw eat a salad with two pencils held like chopsticks, such innvoative thinking drives the human race forward.

I'd like to point out the tomatoes: those are locally grown Cherokee Purples, dark heirloom varieties that were ripe to the point of bursting. I peeled them and had to hand crush them for the dish. The onions are sweet little cipollini since I didn't have a knife to dice bigger ones for a mirepoix. Or aromatici since we're talking Italian.

About four hours of low-heat braising later, here's the finished product with cannellini beans (warmed in the microwave), served alongside a spinach salad with dried cranberries, walnuts, and mandarin oranges from the salad bar. Oh, and a sunflower seed-studded roll for good measure. The beef shank turned out luscious and tender--this is the epitome of "falling off the bone". And the marrow was sinfully delicious. I'm surprised that it hasn't been condensed and offered in tub form at $20 a pop as a gourmet spread for toast.

This is peasant food: it's not supposed to be beautiful. Cooks in Europe struggled for centuries to find the best way to prepare the leftover scraps after the wealthy had helped themselves to the most rare, most tender cuts. Some of these scraps like shanks require a bit of extra time or extra care, but often the flavor is well worth it.

For the wine, I decided to "drink local" and try a Colorado bottle: the 2003 Plum Creek Cabernet Franc from the Grand Valley AVA. About a third of it was used for the osso buco, but the rest was enjoyed along with the meal. Blueberry and cherry aromas, tannic but not bitter. Full fruit profile with a touch of vegetal flavors.

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So if I've got a craving for some beef marrow, why not just go to a restaurant? If you do a lot of traveling, eating out gets old. At least a mini-fridge and microwave will let you enjoy a few meals in the room. And if you enjoy cooking and have the facilities, it's a nice way to relax. I cooked this meal barefooted in shorts and a Guinness Beer T-shirt, while watching mindless stuff on TV and catching up on e-mail with friends. I'm better rested now than if I'd gone out for a meal in a restaurant.

And the best part? The hotel room now smells like home.

Frijoles borrachos

In my travels through the world of dried beans, I grabbed a bag of the humble pintos for 55¢. And while proper, homemade refried beans are a true joy, I was short on freshly rendered lard and wanted something a little more interesting.

I decided upon Rick Bayless' recipe for frijoles borrachos, or "drunken beans", which are flavored at the last minute with a splash of tequila (left over from the margarita recipe, which turned out to be a huge hit on this blog). I basically doubled that recipe, used chicken stock instead of water, chopped pork neck instead of shoulder, and roasted the leftover pork neck pieces in some pico de gallo. That last bit yielded enough meat to make some quick quesadillas to accompany the beans. It's pretty simple, but full of flavor and a good alternative to refried beans.

Some claim that Mexican fare can't be properly matched with wine, but as always when confronting a spicy cuisine of a tropical region, a sparkling wine is generally a good bet. Here I chose the NV Chandon Rosé. It's basically made like a traditional champagne but with the addition of 10% still Pinot Noir for color, flavor, and body. Good yeast and toast aromas, pleasantly tart with notes of currant. Fruity but definitely dry. Beautiful salmon color.

Through an odd linguistic coincidence, I discovered that pintos go well with pinots.

Christmas Lima Beans & Pork Chops

In my continuing search for new ingredients, I've been hitting the dried beans recently. The cannelinis were a big success, and so for this week I picked up a bag of Christmas Lima Beans, also known as Chestnut Lima Beans. These are really pretty heirloom beans--I had to set aside a few to photograph, and I don't know whether to save them or plant them.

To prepare them, I decided to go with succotash, a traditional Native American pairing of lima beans with corn. After soaking the beans overnight, I minced a shallot and some garlic and cooked them in some diced salt pork. I tossed in the beans, added chicken broth and some water to cover, a bunch of thawed frozen corn kernels, and let it simmer until tender.

I've mentioned before my quest for the perfect pork chop--I've had a couple in my life that were moist and tender and full of flavor, but have had little luck replicating this at home or finding such a specimen in restaurants. I used Alton Brown's brining recipe, but I didn't stuff or grill the chops. Rather I brined them, cooked them for five minutes on each side in a hot stainless steel skillet, and them finished them in the oven at 400° for about 15 minutes. I deglazed the skillet with some beef broth, added in red wine and Dijon mustard, about a half cup of dried cherries, and finally a little flour to thicken. I let this reduce to a smooth consistency while the meat rested.

Lovely combinations all around. The meat was almost perfect, and the beans were so savory and rich that I completely forgot to dash a little hot sauce on them. The chestnut flavor really does come through, and though the colors aren't spectacular in the above photo, it was a great winter meal.

The wine selected for the evening's meal was the 2002 Colimoro Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, a great little wine that ran about $9. The cherry aromas and flavors matched well with the sauce, and an hour of decanting time made it nice and smooth.

Italian Short Ribs with Cannellini Beans

It's winter here in Memphis, and I've been battling a cold all last week. I'm finally feeling somewhat better, but I still wanted a hearty winter meal for Sunday dinner.

My shopping started a day ahead of time with the purchase of 24 oz. of dried cannellini beans, a popular white kidney bean used in Tuscany and throughout Italy. (The beans were filthy, by the way. It took three rinsings to clean them.) I soaked the beans overnight and then heated up the venerable enameled cast iron Dutch oven. I cooked some diced, salted pork belly until the fat began to render, then I tossed in a diced shallot. Next came the drained beans, followed by a pint of turkey stock I made and froze last Thanksgiving. For color, flavor, and nutrition, I added a bunch of sliced Swiss chard. I would have used rapini, but it's not looking too good right now, and the batch growing in my backyard is nowhere near ready to harvest. Finally, two sprigs of fresh rosemary were added for flavor and aroma. I let it all simmer, covered, for three hours. (Honestly, this could easily be mistaken for a batch of white bean soup with ham and a sprinkling of greens.) Tomorrow, I can just reheat the beans, or add some water and enjoy them as soup, or puree the whole pot and use it as a dip for toast points.

That's one of the nice things about making a big pot of beans at the beginning of the week: lots of options. Or as they said way back when, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old." Last Sunday I made traditional Boston baked beans using northern white beans, molasses, a smoked ham hock, etc. Decent, but definitely benefited from a dose of hot sauce and a little brown sugar on the reheating.

During the same time period, I was braising the beef short ribs. Two pounds, dusted in flour and seared in hot butter and olive oil. I added three cloves of sliced garlic, and began reducing a can of unsalted beef broth. Once I had reduced the volume by half, I added a cup of red wine (more on that later), and let it all simmer down some. Then came a cup of tomato sauce, a reduction in temperature, and then I left it alone for three hours, covered. (Meat on the bone always tastes better, and in this case you get the marrow leaking out to help improve the sauce.) The zest of one lemon was added at the end to perk it up.

In the finished product, you can see the rich sauce created from the ribs. I skimmed off some of the fat, but all of the flavor remained. The beans here worked not as a separate dish but more as a richly flavored starch to accompany the meat. Both dishes, while simple and dead cheap, were delicious and could easily be made in a pair of crock pots.

The wine used for help with the sauce and for pairing with the finished product was the 2005 Quattro Mani Montepulciano d'Abruzzo from the Le Marche region, right on the border with Abruzzi. Quattro Mani means "four hands" and refers to the four winemakers who helped create the wine. Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is the grape/DOC name, and it's one of those unappreciated treasures that can often be found at ridiculously low prices. (If you've ever had the Zaccagnini "twig wine", that's the same grape.) This one cost $10, and was very enjoyable. Black currants on the nose, followed by full dark fruit flavors yet low tannins. A slight bite on the finish just to let you know it's there.

I don't often discuss final food cost unless I got a great deal on something, but the entire cost of what you see in the photo (minus the fruit in the corner) was about $4. On everything (including wine) I probably spent $20, and will get around five plates out of the whole mess. Beef short ribs can be cheaper than ground beef or chuck roast, yet have luscious, savory flavor. Growing your own herbs is perhaps the cheapest and easiest way to make your dishes taste great. Aside from that, don't be afraid of a little hard work and the investment of time.