Welcome Friends welcome back to the
kitchen today I'm going to do a recipe
that I've I've never made before
um but I've eaten it so many times this
is something that
oh out of milk but I've almost got
enough
I need two cups of milk
and I've got
a cup and 7 8
and I don't have another bag of milk
I've got a little bit of whipping cream
there we go enough liquid enough liquid
that's how I roll so
um this is something that my mom made
all the time when I was a little kid but
we would only eat it
at the end of summer and only at the
cottage and let me explain that we were
a family that
um
in the fall usually around the time that
school started in the fall we would buy
a side of beef and put it in the freezer
and then eat that beef over the course
of the year
much less much
more reasonable way to buy it if you buy
half the cow you get a discount that's
the way it works so we would do that
and by the middle of August we'd be down
to the last little bit of beef in the
freezer we'd be at the cottage
it would be the tough cuts it would be
the cuts that were you know more than a
little freezer burnt and my mom made
this because you could put any tough cut
of beef in the pot and you'd get
something really flavorful and beautiful
out the other side
um
and this is a tough one for me because
about a month ago I decided I was going
to make it and I'd do it on the show
and I started doing research to try to
figure out where this recipe came from
where did my mother get this recipe and
I realized that elements of this are
Italian but elements of it are French or
very French and I can only assume that
my mother picked it up from a family
that lived really close to us at the
cottage they were Italian so we're going
to be doing like a Roman
um
Roman Durham semolina gnocchi which is
what's going on in this pot I've got
milk and I took an onion and I sort of
severed the onion at the bottom or at
the top actually and I've put it into
the milk I'm going to bring the milk up
to a simmer and I'm going to let the
milk simmer a little bit and pull the
flavor out of the onion
um but the beef portion of it
it may have started out as an Italian
Dish
um which is made with red wine beef and
pepper but of course my mother did it
her own way and it became beef white
wine or beer and Pepper with tomato
onion and hot pepper so I'm gonna do it
my mother's way which is much more
French than Italian but it sort of
brings you to this this point where you
realize that a lot of Cuisines are very
very similar
they just have very small Regional
differences based on differences in
taste or differences in what ingredients
were available in that smaller
geographic region okay so lid on this
pot and we'll let that onion and milk
come together this Dutch oven I'm going
to hit it generous amount of oil and use
whatever oil you like
now I know people are probably already
typing in the comments section that you
can't cook beef with white wine who's
cooking beef with white wine
um
the French
very very simply put the French
a lot of French recipes especially from
the 16 and 1700s
cooked beef
braised beef in white wine and so this
is this here is a French cookbook from
the 1700s and if you look through the
beef section pretty much to a tea every
beef recipe that uses
wine as a liquid it's white wine and if
it isn't white wine they're using
something called verju which is this
stuff and as you can see it is white or
clear even though this is made with
Pinot Noir which is a red grape
um Virgil is
is made from grapes that haven't ripened
yet so they haven't they haven't ripened
they haven't got sweet yet the sugar
hasn't developed in the grape they're
crushed the juice is extracted
um and so the juice doesn't have a very
high sugar content but it has a high
acid content so this is pretty sour
pretty acidic Works fantastic for
cooking this type of dish and
if I thought that this was readily
available to a lot of people I would be
using it today but I know that verju is
sometimes very difficult to get a hold
of you have to know which wineries are
making and bottling it and you pretty
much have to go to that Winery to get it
it's not something at least here where I
live it's not something that is readily
available so I'm going to use white wine
and like I said my mom often used beer
um never red wine it was either white
wine or beer and the beer she would use
would be about 50. so not an expensive
beer not a very great tasting beer at
all but that's what she used so
in goes all the beef
[Music]
and I'm not worried about crowding the
pot at all
um
did a recipe a while back for beef
bourguignon and it was a recipe that I
got out of a book written by Paul Bocuse
Paul Bocuse is an amazing or was an
amazing Chef probably the previous
generation's greatest chef and for him
when you put beef in a pot you put in
enough oil you got the pot hot enough
you put in all the beef and you just let
her rip
no worries about overcrowding
now I'm not touching that beef I'm just
letting it go I really want it to build
up some brown on the bottom before I
start turning it and messing with the
pot okay let's give that its first toss
okay so that's been frying on the stove
top here for about 15 minutes at this
point and it is got some incredible
gorgeous Browning going on there and I
had that on the highest heat
I was very attentive I watched it very
closely
don't walk away from an operation like
this you want to make sure that you you
keep an eye on it there's a difference
between Browning and burnt there's a
difference between caramelized and burnt
so I've got some tomato paste um
not
strictly something that you would find
in the French cookbooks at all but my
mother put tomato in everything so this
is just the way I remember eating it
so I'm going to stir that in and let it
fry a little bit
again just to caramelize the Tomato
caramelizing it just brings out a little
bit more flavor
I've got shallots we grew onions that
were very close to shellacs growing up
at the cottage at the Garden of the
cottage so I'm going to use the same
type of onion and I've just got a
handful of those
I've just peeled them I haven't chopped
anything I haven't chopped them up at
all I've just peeled those go in and
I've got a bit of a hot pepper that was
left over from pizza night a few nights
ago that's going to go in my mom always
put something like that in just to give
it a little bit of spiciness not spicy
just a little bit of spiciness
I've got some salt
that goes in I can really smell that
tomato now
oh I can smell that tomato okay I'm
gonna move quickly so I've got some
cracked black pepper and this is a very
coarse grind it's not really ground it
is cracked and I'm gonna put in about a
tablespoon at this point
and then the wine
and at the same time I'm pour it in the
wine just scraped up the fond on the
bottom of the pot
okay so about three quarters of that
bottle of wine and just glug it in there
I'm gonna hold back a little bit
so I'm just going to stir that in
I'm gonna lower the temperature I don't
want it to boil too much right now this
is going to go into the oven
so if you are someone who is one of
those people that ask me all the time
what can you use instead of wine in your
cooking verju is the answer really
Virgil is one of the answers because
verju is not fermented so there's no
alcohol
[Music]
um
so it brings everything that you want
from wine and cooking without the
alcohol which I think is for a lot of
people important now just because I've
got this going here
smells great so I've infused the milk
with that onion
waste not want not
that onion now goes into this pot
the lid goes on this pot and this pot
goes in the oven the oven is preheated
to 275 anywhere between 275 and 325 I'm
going to put that in for about an hour
hour and a half at that point I'm going
to look inside
take a look see if it needs any liquid I
know
for my oven and this pot I've got a
really good tight fitting lid I'm not
going to lose too much moisture but you
want to check it every once in a while
to make sure that you haven't lost too
much moisture that it hasn't gone dry if
it does start to go dry
add the remaining wine
if you've added all of the wine and it's
still going dry add a little bit of
water or a little bit of chicken stock
or beef stock it'll be fine just don't
let it go dry
thank you
okay now we're going to come back and
we're going to work on the Durham
semolina gnocchi this is a Roman dish
which is why I think my mom got this
this whole idea from an Italian family
down the way because it certainly didn't
come from her mother or any other place
that I can think of so I've got the milk
in here it's hot the milk is hot
I'm gonna add a little bit of salt I've
got durum semolina
which is a rough ground flour from Derm
wheat same stuff I made pasta with if
you go back on the channel I made a
dried pasta with this
smells like flour and the idea is that
you just stir it into the hot milk a
little bit at a time and you try to keep
it from clumping now I've got about a
cup of milk in here
I've got about two cups of germ semolina
and I'm just going to pour it in until I
reach a consistency that I like and that
changes every time you make it so you
don't don't think of this as a an exact
quantity recipe in this regard it really
is sort of a method where you look at it
and you go that's enough and the heat is
still on for the milk we're on fairly
low I might turn it up just a touch just
to keep the heat coming
now that I'm stirring and watching
a whisk at this early stage works but
you're going to get to a point where a
whisk just isn't gonna work
okay I'm gonna say that's good
now the heat is still on I'm going to
turn that right back to the lowest
setting I've got an egg but I only want
the yolk so we'll separate this egg
and in goes the yoke
and we just
vigorously stir that in
continuing with the heat at this point
keep it cooking
you wanna you wanna you wanna cook the
semolina most of the way at this point
like 95 of the way at this point
and you're not really going to know when
it's done enough you're just going to
kind of look at it and go I'm done
stirring it I think we're ready to go so
I've reached that point I've I'm done
stirring it I'm ready to go I've got a
glass baking dish here but it could be
anything it could be a quarter sheet pan
it could just be a cookie sheet
okay I'm just going to smooth this out
into the dish
doesn't have to be crazy smooth you can
put some water on your spatula and get
really fancy and make sure that it's
perfectly smooth okay so I'm just going
to stick this in the fridge and let it
set up I'm going to keep my eye on the
on the braising that's going on in the
oven but
pretty much good to go until it's almost
time to serve supper
okay so I've got the semolina out and
I've cut it into little squares next
thing I want to do is fry it on both
sides add a little bit of color to it
and finish the cooking so I've got a
heavy cast iron frying pan here I'm
going to hit it with some oil
and this is also the point where
um you know 20 minutes before service my
mom would be prepping some veg to go
either beside or in what's happening in
the oven and it would often be broccoli
cauliflower beans whatever was coming
off of our garden when she was cooking
and so she put that into
the Dutch oven in the last 10 minutes
just to sort of get a little bit of
um just to soften them a little bit cook
them a little bit but they would still
be crunchy when you ate them
or you could just steam them up and put
them on the side it's really it's up to
you putting them in now makes it into
more of a stew having them on the side
mix it into something that's a little
bit different
okay into the oil and we give that a
little bit of a fry
and we'll just flip those over
get nice and brown oh it's wonderful and
yes I'm using a fish slice
um
for a lot of things I think the fish
slice is the perfect spatula
now the first round of gnocchi is pretty
much fried up nicely we'll get the
stewed beef out of the oven
and get the lid off and take a look at
that
there we go look at that
give that a bit of a stir now if you
want the sauce thicker we could thicken
that with bermanie now we've gone over
berminion in the past it's equal parts
flour and butter mashed together Burr
maniere mashed together and then you mix
it in
and you put it on a little bit of heat
on the stove top when you mix it in the
flour Cooks in seconds there is no raw
flour taste um
it's in these cookbooks
this is a French cookbook from the 1700s
and pretty much every stew recipe in
this book uses bermanie it's perfect for
this type of use
so the gnocchi is done it's got some
nice color so we'll plate that up put
three on here
okay we'll get some of this braised beef
on top hey Glenn hey friends
maybe a fork maybe a spoon okay please
just in case and that onion that I put
in that was in the pot of milk
completely disintegrated like completely
disintegrated ah see if we brought back
the gnocchi yeah yep finally I think I
finally got it I think I finally got it
that's great yes so look at that that
looks great uh
I'm gonna go with fork I think me too I
don't know what to try first like
because the Stew's really good but I'm
fascinated by the gnocchi I want to just
try it on its own
the meat
fall apart gender
hmm
meat and Yaki
oh it's really good
that childhood memory is perfect
yes
peppery
beefy oniony a little bit of heat from
the hot pepper
the gnocchi
which is really kind of weird because
you know we were a mashed potato family
but somehow at the cottage this is what
we this is what we ate so what's
fascinating though is the gnocchi like
mashed potatoes it's it's kind of a
fairly
hmm you know it's a fairly Bland
flavored thing that takes on whatever
you're eating with it it's there for
everything else it was definitely there
for everything else no
this is
a stew
at the very beginning you could have put
in all kinds of root vegetables
right you could have put in carrots and
parsnips in turnip and potatoes and
everything else and come up with an
amazing stew that would stand on its own
that didn't need this treatment and
that's how all of these foods are really
kind of interrelated
and you can't really don't think too
hard about it and then Yankee could be a
base for almost any type of stew-like
thing that you might eat yes a chili
yeah uh you know
just a red sauce you put any sort of red
meat sauce on that and it would be
really good
um another piece
so I think
what I what I'm what this dish was for
us was that end of the season use up the
things that we had use of the things
that really couldn't be cooked any other
way because the freezer beef was getting
a little freezer burnt by August because
it had been there since September and
use up the last of the garden vegetables
because you know you're starting to get
into fall and the garden vegetables
aren't and I think that that that ethos
stands today use what you've got use
what you can afford and you can make a
really good meal and you don't need to
use the white wine you could use a red
wine you could use a verju you could
just use beef stock
a little bit of vinegar what do you got
beef stock and a little bit of vinegar
and you could achieve pretty much
exactly the same thing
thanks for stopping by see you again
soon