Chief Banks' Stroganoff

When my Dad achieved the rank of rear admiral, the Navy immediately sent him to Argentia, Newfoundland to shrink his ego back down to manageable size. Argentia was considered a hardship post but we have rarely had such a happy family situation as we did there.

Yes, the weather sucked big time but our quarters on the naval station were large enough that my sister and I no longer had to share a bedroom, a cause for mutual celebration. 


 The house was furnished; we didn't have to take our furniture along. The living room furniture was truly luxurious, nearly every stick of it covered in slippery damask in a rainbow of pastel colors, so funky it almost seemed like the decorator had a sense of humor. 


Dad had a den upholstered entirely in red - as I recall even the walls were red - we'd gather in there in the evening to watch the news and, once a week, the Huckleberry Hound show was on the snowy, fuzzy single black and white TV station. We never missed it - my usually gregarious family would even refuse social invitations on Huckleberry Hound night or invite others to join us to laugh at the antics of Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo and Huck.


We all learned how to bowl, as it was a sport that could be enjoyed indoors, and we spent many happy family hours at the bowling alley. There was a terrific and active teen club on base where my sister and I learned to dance and flirt.  


Best of all, Dad finally rated a steward.

Stewards, in those days, did everything from keeping Dad's uniforms in great shape to cleaning house and preparing meals. They are the ultimate perq, in my mother's estimation, although she still insisted that her children clean their own rooms and do their own laundry.

Our first-ever steward was a young, gentle, African American man named Benjamin Banks. Just typing his name fills my eyes with fond tears. He was more than heaven-sent household help - in four separate duty stations, he was a member of our family. In some ways, he was as much of a male role model to myself and my younger brother as our Dad was in those days. He dried my adolescent tears when I lost my first love and danced at my wedding when I finally started to live again. He vetted all my boyfriends and let me know which ones he considered to be keepers. He even re-enlisted in the Navy in order to stay with our family until Dad retired, attaining the rank of Chief early in his career.

Chief Banks and his wife Elizabeth had a true love match. 'Way back in Argentia, he showed me the love poem he wrote to her and had printed on a little blue card to carry with him always. I had never heard of anything so romantic in my life - I still haven't. When we were stationed in Japan, he and Elizabeth adopted a little girl from Korea, Kwan, who rapidly wrapped us all around her tiny fingers.

Chief Banks was a wonderful cook. He made me "smashed eggs" most mornings - scrambled eggs with real bacon bits mixed in. He invented a wonderful cold curried rice salad with lobster, pineapple, raisins and celery. He even prepared his signature beef stroganoff for me to serve at an early dinner for my soon-to-be-fiancé and let me pretend I made it; needless to say, it was a successful dinner. Talk about bait and switch!

I still make this dish to his recipe, even though the ingredients are a little rich for modern cooking and quite expensive. But, every now and then, I like to sit down to a plate of Chief Banks' stroganoff and remember all the lovely things he was to me and my family.

Chief Banks' Beef Stroganoff

2 lbs. filet of beef, cut into 1/2" thick bite-size strips
1 cup chopped onion
1 clove minced garlic
2 cups beef bouillon
1-1/2 cups sour cream
1/2 lb. fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp. dill weed (I use more)
2 Tbs. butter
3 Tbs. flour
1/4 cup dry red wine
salt, pepper to taste

Heat 2 Tbs butter in a frying pan, add just enough beef strips at a time to cover the skillet bottom. Don't crowd them or they won't brown properly. Sear quickly on all sides, removing beef as it browns. It should be rare on the inside, brown on the outside. In the remaining hot butter, saute' onions, garlic and mushrooms about 5 minutes (I do the mushrooms separately first, then add the onions and garlic). Remove from heat, add flour, salt and pepper, stirring until smooth. Back on the heat, cook the flour mixture briefly before gradually adding the beef stock, bring to a boil and keep stirring as the sauce thickens. Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes.

Over low heat, add 1/4 cup dry red wine, dill weed, bay leaves and simmer for a few minutes. To this point, it can be made ahead and will wait for the finishing touches, covered. Then, add sour cream and stir until incorporated - don't boil! When you are ready to serve, add the beef and heat just until the sauce and beef are hot. Serve over rice or flat noodles.

Murcans

All of a sudden it's spring and we are Murcans, so the barbecue begged for local, pastured ribeye steak from Paradise Valley Beef - they come to our little farmer's market each Wednesday and, if you call in advance, will even bring the specific cuts you crave.

We bought all the rest of the ingredients at the farmer's market, too. Beautiful big artichokes at a good price. Freshly dug spuds with the dirt still clinging to them. Lemons to flavor the dipping sauce for the artichokes.

We grilled two steaks but they were too much even for our healthy appetites, so one went into the fridge for tomorrow's lunch - green salad topped with strips of lovely, pink beef. Scrubbed those spuds and baked them lightly oiled with evoo. Steamed the 'chokes. Easy, killer dinner with little cleanup.

Isn't it great to be a Murcan?

Beef Booty

All this rain got me thinking about Wellies, which reminded me of the Duke of Wellington, which brought me to Beef Wellington.

My mind just rolls that way.

Anyway, I realized that I have never eaten, much less made, Beef Wellington. Neither had My Beloved, as it turned out. Gotta try it, right?

My online and cookbook research showed several variations of sublime beef baked in puff pastry until it is perfectly pink on the inside, with various goodies enclosed to flavor the meat. The suggested goodies included, but were not limited to, duxelles, paté, proscuitto, English mustard and thyme. This being my first attempt and Julia Child being my ultimate heroine, I decided to go with duxelles and paté.

The recipes called for either phyllo dough or puff pastry as the container for all that crazy deliciousness, but what I had in the freezer was Star dough, so I thought I'd try that. That's why you see my beef busting out of the pastry in the photo above - take it from me, it's puff pastry that you want. Puff pastry is by nature elastic; pie dough is not supposed to be. We live and learn.

I made the duxelles the day before, then trimmed, browned and cooled the meat and assembled the Wellington the next morning, layering the pastry first, then the paté, the duxelles and, lastly, the two filets mignons, wrapping it all tightly in the pastry and letting it chill all day in the fridge. Brushed it with a little egg wash and baked it in a 425 degree oven for just 25 suspenseful minutes.

While it baked, My Beloved enjoyed his dainty appetizer of the carefully trimmed and minced raw beef left over from cleaning up the filets for the Wellington. He's got a little bit of the cannibal in him; he loved it.

The Wellington came out of the oven sadly broken but beautifully browned of crust. The paté almost melted into the duxelles, making for a shroomy sort of lightly liverish paste that was amazing all by itself. Then, the carefully trimmed beef took over and wowed us with its refined and delicate pinkness. Swoon City!

Would I make it again? In a heartbeat! I will save it for a company meal or a very special occasion as the ingredients are 'way spendy, but having frozen in little packets most of the duxelles I made for this meal, I have the most time-consuming part already covered.

I can already envision my guests' pleasure when I bring out the golden brown pastry on an elegant platter, surrounded by bright vegetables. I think I will go with my fanciest china and crystal but maybe use my stainless steel everyday flatware, suitable for a Duke dining in muddy rubber boots.

Beefy

This is the third and last installment of the potential disaster my neighbor Theresa averted by giving away her defrosted hoard of freezer meats. The beef ribs were browned and went into my crock pot along with some chunked onions and carrots and a cup or so of both beef broth and red wine with which I deglazed the browning pan.

They simmered and bubbled together for several hours, until the bones gave up their essence and fell out. This was a fairly fatty cut of meat so I refrigerated it while we ate the other two dishes, removed the congealed fat that had risen to the top and, a few days later, set it back into the base to cook for another couple of hours, adding chunks of red potato to the final cooking.

Spooned onto the plate next to some bright green broccolette, the stew was as simple as a wedge and deeply, richly beefy. The goozle I didn't use on the plate went into a container in the freezer - it will make the base for a wonderful soup later in the fall. Theresa's generosity has fed us five or six times in the past week - maybe I'll make her a coming-home gift of something to eat as delicious as the food she lost.

Recreating Memories

I'd better slip this one in before I forget how I made it. I find my memory is not what it used to be - and it was never all that hot to begin with. Ah, well, senior moments can be fun, too.

Like many seniors, I find I can sometimes remember things from my childhood with greater clarity than where in the damn house I put the book I am currently reading. One of my childhood memories is coming home from school to find the house suffused with the scent of my mother's oven barbecued spareribs.

Oddly, I also associate this scent with migraine headaches. As a child and young adult, I suffered greatly from "sick headaches" that would begin in the afternoon, rise rapidly to a pounding crescendo and ebb quickly once I had tossed my cookies. For some reason, the spareribs often showed up on a headache day - one of those little injustices of life. But, when I was healthy, they were my very favorite dinner.

I set out to re-create them recently and failed almost entirely. However, what I did make was tasty, even though it was not what I remembered. For one thing, I realized when I took the first bite of these country spareribs that my mother used pork, not beef ribs. Although the ingredients I used were roughly the same as her ribs, they were in a very different proportion. Hers used more catsup and less of the rest of the ingredients. I'll have to keep tweaking the recipe but here's what I made this week. My Beloved, never having had my mother's version, said they were pretty darn good.

Oven Barbecued Beef Spareribs

3 large country beef ribs with bones sliced (by the butcher) roughly every 3"
1 cup tomato catsup
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup orange juice + juice of one fresh orange
juice of one fresh lemon
2-3 Tbs. soy sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped
1-2 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. Penzey's Northwoods Fire seasoning (it's mainly chipotle peppers, black pepper and paprika with a little rosemary, thyme and cayenne).

I mixed all these together, poured a bit in the bottom of a roasting pan, added the ribs, then poured the rest over the top, making sure it got into all the crevices in the meat. Roasted it under foil for about an hour, then turned the ribs in the sauce and removed the foil for the second hour.

People Stew

My intention was to use the stew beef that My Beloved bought for Cora to make her a fancypants dinner to help her forget her sore ear. Heaven knows, an invalid's appetite needs tempting with some unusual treats and she has been milking us for sympathy ever since she got home from the vet.

But, oops!, when I told the vet my idea, he frowned. Not a good idea to feed dogs, especially recuperating dogs, people food. Nixed it. Phooey. Shoulda kept my mouth shut.

So, I made People Stew instead, a version of Beef Bourguignon substituting shallots for the pearl onions, adding lots of red wine, and simmering it in the crock pot after browning. It was okay, not great, although the goozle at the bottom of the crock pot was once again stellar. I didn't cook it long enough and I forgot the bay leaf. Onions would have been better than shallots in this case. But, it was edible and we edided it.

Cora had no complaints when I slipped her one little cube of meat - she wolfed it right down. Shhh, don't tell the vet!

Teri Light

In the aftermath of the attack, My Beloved brought home sympathy presents for Cora and me. Cora got a package of stew meat that I will make into stew for her as soon as the vet okays it. He gave me a bouquet of mixed bright flowers, a small box of chocolates, a dozen tangerines and a tri-tip roast. You'd think it was I who got her ear bitten.

Mild weather always makes me think of barbecuing and we were having gloriously sunny, warm weather so I thought about a marinade for the tri-tip. I was in the mood for teriyaki but didn't want the sweet, heavy flavors, so I experimented with what I'm calling Teri Light.

Orange peel, light soy sauce, chopped green garlic, sugar, ginger, rice vinegar, orange juice, pepper, tri-tip. I can't really tell you how much of each I used, just sort of splashed them into a baggie, tasting and changing until it tasted sweet-tart-salt-lightly spicy, then popped the meat in and left it out on the counter for about an hour while I prepped the Weber, started the fire and made a lemony dipping sauce for the accompanying artichokes. Oh, and I turned the baggie a few times during that hour to marinate all sides of the roast.

I grilled it for about 7-10 minutes per side over a medium-hot fire. The result was killer, exactly what I had hoped, with all the teriyaki flavors laid very lightly over the beefy goodness. We had trouble restraining ourselves. I quickly popped the leftovers into the fridge to get them out of sight. Cora was looking hopeful and pathetic (did I mention that she graduated summa cum laude from the Sarah Bernhardt School of Acting?), so after dinner I cut up the last slice on my plate into small bits, which she took ever so gently from my fingers.

Meaty Lunch

When I make this lunch for My Beloved, I always get a growl of appreciation - he loves raw beef!

It couldn't be easier. All you do is cube a fresh and tasty but tough cut of grass-raised beef, such as bottom round, and whack it up in the food processor in one-second bursts until it becomes chopped steak.

He could live without the multicolored cherry tomatoes and the lettuce leaf but I insist on the niceties of civilization, even when he eats beef that still has a blood pressure.

Piece de Resistance

What can I say? Filet of beef is always a wonderful choice but at FarrahOlivia it is offered with such intriguing sides and sauces that it reaches a whole other level of heaven. The big brown tadpole on the plate was raisin emulsion, sweet but also savory, possibly with onion; the square dish held black corn truffles, a fungus that grows on corn - my brother and I agreed that it was fancypants succotash; the little dab of dark powder next to the filet was a mixture of espresso and chili powders, like a rub but not burned by cooking.

The piece de resistance for me was the cauliflower flan, so delicate in texture and flavor that it deserved its very own plate, possibly its very own pedestal on which to place the plate. It was like an offering to an exacting god.

Weather Report From Heaven

Two blissfully warm days in a row - it must truly be spring, Time to start barbecuing again. Oh, we've sneaked in the occasional charcoal-grilled meal during the slightly cooler months that Californians call winter but now it's serious, so we hauled out the Weber grill that My Beloved's generous mother gave us years ago. It lights the charcoal using a bottled gas boost - easy as pie.

I had a pasture-raised tri-trip roast from Marin Sun Farms and half a pot of leftover coffee so, taking a leaf from Cookblog's book, I made a sort of bastard teriyaki sauce with soy sauce, ginger, brown sugar, garlic, wine vinegar and coffee and marinated the beef in that for several hours before throwing it onto the grill. Served with My Beloved's contribution of artichokes and some of the leftover gooey rice, we basked in the flavors and the warmth of the late-setting sun.

Sometimes, life is so good that no words will suffice.