Feral Cooks

Good food shouldn't be tame

Basic Pot Roast

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Not necessarily the most photogenic of dishes.

Here’s a basic pot roast recipe. This is the third pot roast post on this blog. That’s gotta tell you something: pot roast is really good, and there are a lot of different ways to make it. This recipe is based on one from Serious Eats.

Not a lot to say about it, other than it tastes fantastic, and it makes for a great meal. Great leftovers, too!

Embrace your inner carnivore and make this! It’s perfect comfort food for a cold day.

Oh, yeah, don’t listen to the anti-vaxxer morons: get vaccinated for Covid-19 as soon as you can. It’s safe and effective.

What you’ll need:

  • 2 or 3T olive oil
  • Salt or kosher salt
  • A 3- to 5-pound chuck roast—try to find one with good marbling 
  • 2 onions
  • 6 – 8 carrots
  • Pepper
  • About 2 cups beef stock (vegetable stock works, too, in a pinch)
  • 3 – 4 fresh rosemary sprigs (I didn’t have on hand)
  • 2 – 3 fresh thyme springs (didn’t have these on hand, either)

What to do:

Heat your oven to 275 F.

Heat a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil and let it get really hot. Yes, it may begin to smoke. Make sure your kitchen exhaust fan is on!

Generously salt the chuck roast on both sides.

Cut the onions in half (from root to tip) and remove the outer skin.

When the pot is very hot, place the onions in the oil and brown on both sides, about a minute per side. Remove the onions to a plate.

Next, thoroughly wash, but don’t peel, the carrots. Cut them roughly into 2-inch slices.

Add the carrots to the same (very hot) pot, and toss them until slightly browned (about a minute). At this point, the carrots and onions are just getting browned, not cooked.

Remove the carrots to the onion plate and allow the pot to get really hot again. Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan.

Now thing’s are really going to smoke and splatter: place the meat in the pot and *sear it, about a minute per side. Remove to a plate.

With the heat remaining on high, deglaze the pot by adding 1 cup of the stock, whisking it constantly.

When most of the bits are loosened from the bottom of the pot, place the meat back into it, along with the carrots and onions. Pour enough stock into the pot to cover the meat halfway.

Add the fresh rosemary and thyme sprigs to the pot (if using, which his highly recommended if you planned ahead and have them).

Cover the pot and roast it for 3 to 5 hours, depending on the size of your roast. Cook a 3-pounder for about 3 to 3.5 hours. Cook a 5-pounder for about 4- to 5 hours. Don’t mess with the roast during the cooking process!

At the end of the cooking time, confirm the roast’s doneness. The meat should be very tender at this point. Remove from the pot and slice against the grain for serving.

*Please note that this does not “seal in” the juices, which is a common misconception. It just doesn’t work that way. What it does do, however, is brown the meat and produce that distinctive and delicious browned-meat flavor through the Maillard reaction. Look it up! It’s cool how it works.

Cardamom Shortbread Cookies with Dulce de Leche Peda Filling

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Here’s a great cookie recipe from Food & Wine. These cookies are rich, with the filling lending a subtle Indian flavor.

The recipe calls for adorning the cookies with gold leaf and dried flowers, but, alas, I didn’t feel like purchasing them just for this occasion.

These are well worth the effort, but note that the recipe makes 3 dozen cookies, which is a lot. We had to give a ton away to keep from eating them all. Halving the recipe would probably work if you don’t want too many of them.

What you’ll need:

  • 4.75 cups (about 20.25 oz.) plus 2T all-purpose flour
  • 2.25t baking powder
  • 1t freshly ground cardamom
  • 0.75t fine sea salt
  • 1.5 cups unsalted butter (12 oz.), softened
  • 1.5 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1t vanilla extract
  • 1 4-oz. white chocolate bar, roughly chopped (about 0.75 cups) or just use high-quality white chocolate chips
  • 1.75 cups nonfat powdered milk (about 4.75 ounces)
  • 1 (13.4-oz.) can dulce de leche
  • 3T ghee
  • 3T whole milk
  • 0.75t fine sea salt
  • 0.25t ground cinnamon

What to do for the cookies:

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, cardamom and salt in a medium bowl; then set aside. 

Combine the butter and sugar in a *stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat it on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, as needed. Now add the egg and vanilla and beat for a couple of minutes until well combined. With the mixer running on low speed, gradually add the flour mixture and continue beating for a couple of minutes until all the dry ingredients are completely incorporated into the dough, which will be lumpy.

*Or just use a large bowl and a hand mixer.

Dump out the dough mixture onto a clean work surface and knead it until it just comes together. Don’t over-knead. Divide dough into two large equal-size disks, tightly wrapping each with plastic wrap. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour or up to 3 days.

When ready for baking, heat your oven to 350°F. If the dough is too cold for rolling, let it warm on the counter until pliable enough. Unwrap 1 disk and roll it between 2 sheets of parchment paper to about a 0.25-inch thickness. Remove the top parchment sheet, and using a 2-inch fluted round cookie cutter, cut 36 circles from the dough. Re-roll and cut the scraps, as needed. Add the dough circles to a parchment-paper-lined cookie sheet about .05-inches apart and freeze them for 10 minutes. You can use multiple cookie sheets for this step, if you have them. Bake in the 350°F oven for about 10-11 minutes until the tops are dry, but the cookies have not started to brown—keep an eye on them. Let the cookies cool on their cookie sheets for a couple of minutes before carefully moving them to a wire rack to cook completely. Repeat until all the dough is used and you have 72 or so cookies.

What to do for the dulce de leche peda filling:

Heat your oven to 300°F. Spread the powdered milk into a thin, even layer on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake the milk until light golden-brown, 12 to 16 minutes. Let it cool and sift the milk through a fine wire-mesh strainer. Throw out the big chunks that don’t make it through the mesh.

Combine the sifted powdered milk and dulce de leche in a large nonstick skillet, and cook for about 3.5 minutes over medium-low, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula until well combined and no dry milk-powder remains. 

This next step will initially look like a mistake because of all the unincorporated ghee. After cooking, though, it all comes together. Add the ghee, milk, salt, and cinnamon, and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is shiny and mostly smooth—about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let it cool for about 5 minutes. While the filling is cooling, prep your work area to pipe the filling onto half the cookies.

Transfer the filling to a piping bag or ziplock plastic bag with a 1/2-inch hole cut off a bottom corner. The filling will be really hot, but it has to be for it to pipe properly. Use a kitchen towel or double-up some nitrile or vinyl gloves if it’s too hot for you. Arrange half of the cookies upside-down on a clean work surface. Pipe about 2t filling onto the center of each cookie. Sandwich with their cookie counterparts and gently press to spread filling to edges. Let cool 15 minutes.

What to do to finish the cookies:

*Place the white chocolate in a small microwavable bowl, and microwave on high until melted and smooth. Stop and stir every 30 seconds—it should take about 1.5 minutes. Transfer the chocolate to a piping bag or a ziplock plastic bag with an 1/8-inch hole snipped in the corner. Drizzle 36 cookies with chocolate. Or, you could dip a spoon or fork in the chocolate and drizzle it over the cookies, which is what I did, to fairly good effect. 

If you so desire, decorate the chocolate drizzle with gold leaf and edible flowers—this would give them a fantastic look. Don’t handle the cookies until the white chocolate has cooled and set.

*The recipe calls for doing this step before making the filling, but it seems much more logical to do this as the last step.


Chang Mai Sausage

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Happy New Year!

Let’s hope 2021 will be a better year for everyone, starting January 20.

Without further delay, here is a quick and easy sausage recipe, strongly based on the one in the True Thai cookbook by Hong Thaimee.

This recipe has lots of uses, and there are many ways to cook it, including grilling, pan searing, and broiling, either in or out of casings.

If you’re up to it, grinding the spices and herbs with a mortar and pestle is supposedly the best way to unlock their flavors. We happen to have one that doesn’t get as much use as it should (lazy) so this was a perfect opportunity for that.

You could serve these as an appetizer with some sweet chili dipping sauce, or cook them in a curry gravy and serve them with rice or Thai noodles. Just use your imagination and use them for whatever works for you. No matter what, they’ll taste fantastic.

Nearly ready for the next step.

What you’ll need:

  • 5 Thai red chilis, seeded (wear gloves for this!)
  • 10 lime leaves, minced
  • 0.25 cups sliced lemongrass
  • 0.25 cups roughly chopped shallots
  • 2t peeled and chopped fresh turmeric (watch out for stains!)
  • 1T black soy sauce
  • 2T fish sauce
  • 1.5t salt (seems pretty optional to me, given the soy sauce and fish sauce)
  • 2 lbs ground pork (my favorite Asian store grinds it coarsely, but finely ground should work well, too)
  • 3 sprigs cilantro, chopped
  • 1 scallion, white and light green parts, chopped
  • 1 pack of 1.5” sausage casing, if making into actual sausages
  • Vegetable oil for frying

What to do:

Using a mortar and pestle, pound/grind the chilies, lime leaves, lemongrass, garlic, shallots and turmeric into a smooth paste. This is easier said than done, and it takes about 15 minutes. It’s hard to get a real pasty grind (see photo), but it worked out OK. Of course, one could just throw everything in a food processor and be done in less than 10 seconds.

Transfer the paste into a large bowl and stir in the soy sauce, fish sauce, and salt, if you’re using.

Add the pork, cilantro and scallions and mix gently until everything is incorporated. Be careful not to over-mix, or the sausages will be tough. For best ultimate results, when done, cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours so the flavors mix.

For cooking, shape them into whatever shape works best for you and cook them like you would any other type of ground meat: grilled, pan fried or broiled. You could also boil them, then sear after they’re cooked.