welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen welcome back to another episode
of stuff in our cupboard I have to be very careful it is March 22nd 2020 when
I'm filming this I have to be very careful about the words I use because
YouTube is both d monetizing videos and outright removing them from the platform
if you say the wrong words so I'm going to be very careful to sort of dance
around what's happening there's a thing happening in the world and a lot of
people are stuck at home and Julie and I are stuck at home
and so we're eating stuff out of our cupboard and we're making meals with
stuff that we're finding and trying to put stuff together so we did a deep dive
into our freezer and found this piece of flank steak
now normally when I put stuff in the freezer for long term storage you know
buy a bunch of stuff ahead because it's on sale I will put it into freezer bags
and then vacuum seal them you know we've got a pretty good vacuum seal setup and
I put them in and it stays in the freezer for a long time and meat doesn't
freezer burn eventually it does eventually all meat freezer burns but
doesn't freezer burn too badly keeps for much longer for some reason this was
just in saran wrap and there's two of them down there so pull out the first
one and I'm gonna see what I can do with it the first thing I thought was let's
make a bridge roll we've got a Great Bridge ol recipe on the website and then
I realized we don't have all of the ingredients to make it so I'm gonna do
sort of fast and dirty version I'm going to cut this up and see if I can clean
off most of the freezer burn and we're just going to use what we have and make
a sauce and put it over the fresh pasta that we made so check out that video too
okay so I've got a pot a little bit of olive oil it's getting hot and into that
I'm going to put an onion and a couple of ribs of celery and we just want to
get those softening next up I want to trim off the worst of the freezer burn
from this steak and around the edges it is pretty tough I mean it's a tough
piece of meat to begin with and you don't need sort of that added
toughness of the freezer burn well it doesn't taste great so let's get as much
off as we can now normally I would Brown this meat before I added anything else
to start to build up some flavors I don't want to Brown at this time because
of how it is it's freezer burnt I don't want to make that toughness tougher so
I'm just gonna slice it really thin and cook it slowly we're just gonna braise
it and we're gonna braise it with a couple of ingredients that are going to
bring in the flavors that will be missing by not browning the meat so trim
a little bit more of this off and then we'll slice it real thin it trimmed up
nicely we didn't lose too much from the steak and when I sliced it I sliced it
really thin I sliced it across the grain because that keeps it from being tough
later I'm gonna wash my hands and then we'll move on to the next step the
vegetables have sweated out nicely so let's add in the beef stir that in I'm
working with a smaller pallet of ingredients which I'm sure you are too I
don't have any fresh herbs and it's March the end of March our herb garden
hasn't come up it's going to be at least another month before we even start to
see some of those herbs in our garden although it is time to plant your
tomatoes if you live sort of in Canada where we do we're planting our Tomatoes
probably tomorrow inside so that the end of May when we can actually plant
outside and the last frost has gone by we can get those Tomatoes in the ground
because we're gonna need them this summer so I've got some oregano flakes
dried oregano I'll put some of that in a little bit of basil I've got some dried
basil I'm gonna put some of that in and you know this is cooking you don't
really need to measure it just kind of guess after a while you'll know how much
you're gonna put in anyway we'll stir that in a little bit of salt
and some black pepper okay now can of tomatoes this is pretty much all I have
left so we'll see how this works out into the pot I wasn't sure how these
tomatoes were going to come out of the can I knew that they were whole tomatoes
packed in the can sometimes when you pour them out they're very watery these
ones seem to be a lot thicker the sauce that was in there so I'm gonna have to
add more liquid I'm just gonna have to go with it and see what I've got for
other liquids I am gonna add some wine so I might as well put that in now I've
got some red wine chosen I have a fairly well-stocked wine fridge but it won't
last forever so we'll see how that goes and put that in and so if you need to
add you'd add water you get a chicken stock you got a beef stock vegetable
stock any sort of liquid that you have on hand you could put in here doesn't
have to be wine although wine will help release some of the other flavors
but we're going to address that in a moment with a hot pepper I don't have
any hot pepper flakes so I thought I'm just gonna take one of the pickled hot
peppers that we had from last summer they're packed in vinegar these ones in
particular and so I'm gonna put that in whole and what that's going to do is the
pepper will add some flavor some heat the vinegar will add that bright acidity
to actually brighten all of the other flavors and bring some of the other
flavors out of what else is in there put that in because I didn't brown the meat
I'm gonna add some Marmite the Marmite will compensate for that lack of
browning it will also unlock a lot of other flavors Marmite makes beef beefier
and in the place of Marmite depending on where you live Vegemite if you live in
England Bovril comes in a bottle like this that
would work really well you can also put Wurster saw seeing that that is a great
substitute as well so we're gonna stir that in next thing in is the rind from a
piece of parmesan that's been hanging out in her fridge for a little while
kind of surprised that it hasn't grown moldy but it hasn't so I'm gonna put
that in and that's gonna bring an incredible flavor to this sauce
now you need to decide how thick or how thin do you want the sauce I think I
want my sauce a little bit thinner I'm gonna cook this in the oven so I've got
an oven preheated to like 280 degrees I'm gonna put a lid on this you stick it
in the oven and it's gonna go for probably eight or nine hours I'm not
even gonna think about it I don't have to stir it I don't have to do anything
it's just gonna simmer away in the oven come together and make I hope a really
good sauce so I'm gonna add a little bit of broth you should always have I know
that I say make your own broth and I try to always make my own broth but in a
situation like this having a couple of boxes of emergency broth in your
cupboard is a really good idea so I'm gonna put some in using it sparingly
because who knows when I'm gonna get to the grocery store next so into the oven
and seven eight hours from now I'll come back and I'll roll out the pasta and cut
the noodles and we'll finish off the sauce
but an hour before we wanted to eat I took the pasta dough out of the fridge
and started to roll it out on a very lightly floured countertop
what's it was rolled out the thickness that I was looking for I put a little
bit of flour on top so that wouldn't stick as I rolled it over onto itself
and then I just used a knife to cut fairly wide bands of pasta
then I unrolled it put a little bit of flour on it so it wouldn't stick and
then cut those in half too but the length that I wanted once I got the
length I wanted I put them into a pot of salted boiling water and I only cook
them for about a minute and a half to two minutes
fresh pasta does not take long to cook egg when the dress I brought wine how's
your experiment the pasta is almost done so it doesn't take long for pasta to
cook fresh pasta to cook say that's good and the sauce smells really good the the
steak steak has pretty much completely disintegrated so if you cut it correctly
or if you cut it thin enough against the grain it pretty much just falls apart
and so I took the I took the cheese rind out that's what it looks like at the end
it's a pretty much gelatinous t pretty gelatinous mass and the sauce is nice
and thick and of course you can make the sauce as thick or thin as you like
so I'm talking to pasta and then we'll just toss it together with the with the
sauce you could cook enough pasta and put it in with the sauce but I only
cooked enough pasta for us tonight maybe just a little bit more sauce on top ok
so that looks pretty good all right can I get any mess here so just a little
taste why is good is the one good why it's
good we're getting down to the point where I think the only thing left in the
wine fridge is this good wine you know if you need a reason to drink the good
wine I think this is it okay having difficulty serving have you been
drinking the wine I haven't yet been drinking the wine now you can cut the
pasta any shape you want that's B then just a basic Sunday red sauce nothing
complicated don't overthink it it's probably a good save on that yeah I was
piece of meat I was worried about that piece of meat so do a deep dive into
your freezer if you're stuck at home find the stuff which you've been defined
and pretty much anything that's freezer burn I think if you cut off the worst of
the burnt dry bits and then do a slow long braise yeah
something with a little bit more acidity a little bit higher acidity the flavors
gonna be fine and the texture of the meat is just just all-around pretty good
yeah so thanks for stopping by stay safe stay healthy see you again soon
you