Caldereta (Beef Stew)

This is one Filipino dish I don't cook often, maybe once or twice a year at the most, I'm not sure why. Too meaty? too sour or too rich? Caldereta is of course Spanish in origin, from caldera which means cauldron. This recipe is adapted from my cookbook FAVORITE FILIPINO RECIPES by Pat Limjuco-Dayrit.

Caldereta
2 pounds beef stew meat
½ cup vinegar
6 cloves garlic, crushed
½ tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
¼ cup sherry
1 bay leaf
1 sprig parsley
1½ teaspoons whole peppercorns
6 cloves garlic
1 hot green pepper
¼ cup tomato sauce
½ cup chopped roasted red bell pepper
1 cup hot water
¼ cup grated edam or gouda cheese
½ teaspoon sugar
½ cup green olives

• Marinate meat overnight in refrigerator in mixture of vinegar, crushed garlic, pepper and salt.
• Next day drain the meat and brown in batches in 2 tablespoons hot olive oil. Transfer browned pieces into a saucepan, add onions and sherry. Bring to a boil, then add the remaining olive oil and bay leaf.
• In a small food processor or mortar and pestle, puree/crush parsley, peppercorns, 6 cloves garlic and hot green pepper. Add to the mixture in the pan and put in tomato sauce and the hot water. Simmer until beef is tender, about 1 - 1 ½ hours. Turn the heat off.
• Stir in roasted red pepper and grated cheese. Add the sugar and adjust seasoning. Add olives and serve hot with steamed rice or French baguette to soak up the rich sauce, and steamed green beans.

A Really Large Pizza

I got lazy today and bought ready to bake frozen square pizza and did not notice it was huge. Only when I loaded the box into the car trunk did I realize its BIG size! It's almost as deep as my oven. This is a meat lover's pizza with lots and lots of bacon which overwhelmed everything else. See, I love bacon but this is much too much. (I think I still smell of bacon). About 3 inches of the pizza is hanging out of the largest baking sheet I could find in my kitchen. Why oh why did I buy this?:D

Cream Scones

I baked a batch of cream scones from the cookbook BAKING: FROM MY HOME TO YOURS by Dorie Greenspan, just to find out what is so great about them (none). I never tried making them before because of the fat content and all the recipes I've read indicate they may be bland and I was right. These are just fatty, unhealthy baking powder bread with absolutely no taste at all. You have to eat them with something good like lemon curd or clotted and Devon cream. I ate one wedge with mascarpone cheese and lemon curd, still not as good as, say ensaimada, brioche and kouign amann. Scones are blah. The reason I finally made them is because my brother-in-law and his wife sent us a Christmas package of goodies and one of them is a ready to bake scones with cinnamon chips. The scones did not rise and they tasted of...nothing. I had to slather it with lots of lemon curd but still the bread is incredibly tasteless. I thought maybe the commercially sold ones are not as good as homemade but I was wrong. I think no matter what you add to scones, before and after baking, they will just taste of baked flour and nothing else, even the taste of butter is gone, I can't believe it! I think it has something to do with the batter having so little sugar and no flavoring at all. What a waste of butter and heavy cream...

Don't be fooled by the pictures. Scones are the blandest baked food I have ever eaten. Well, what do you expect from a biscuit that sounds like a wall decor thing where you put candles or something.:D

Now I have to bake me some kouign amann.

Potatoes With Spanish Chorizo

One of our favorite Spanish dishes is a simple potatoes with chorizos.

Potatoes with Chorizos
1 pound potatoes, cut into chunks
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
½ pound Spanish chorizo, cut in half
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon spanish paprika
¼ cup each dry white wine and water
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

• Heat the oil in a medium sauce pan, fry the chorizo until brown. Add the garlic and onions and saute for 2 minutes, add potatoes, salt, paprika, bay leaf, and the wine. Let boil then simmer for 5 minutes. Add water and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 5 - 8 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning.

These chorizos are semi-dry homemade adapted from my cookbook CHARCUTERIE by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. The recipe is a little bit different than these fresh chorizos I posted earlier. I dry them at a very low temperature in my small food dehydrator for 6 hours, not as dry as the recipe says, then store them in the freezer.

Spanish Chorizos
5 pounds boneless pork shoulder butt, diced and chilled well
2 ounces kosher salt
1 tsp Insta Cure #2
2 tablespoons dextrose
¼ cup Bactoferm F-RM-52 (live culture)
¼ cup distilled water
¼ cup smoked Spanish paprika (no substitute)
½ minced garlic
10 ft hog casings, soaked in tepid water for 30 minutes and rinsed

• Combine the pork with the salt, Insta Cure #2, and dextrose. Grind through the large die into a bowl of a standing mixer set in ice.
• Dissolve the Bactoferm in the distilled water and add it, along with the remaining ingredients, to the pork. With the paddle attachment, mix on low speed about 1 minute.
• Stuff the sausage into the hog casings and use string to tie into 6-inch links. Using a sterile needle, prick the casings all over to remove any air pockets and facilitate drying. Hang the sausage (ideally at 60°F) until it feels completely stiff throughout, 18 to 20 days.

Yield: About 3 lbs.