Thanks!
Just a small update, currently cooking the next sauce on my list (that would be the tomato sauce with sautéed vegetables and olive oil!)
For the record:
1 can (796ml-ish) of san marzano tomatoes
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup onions
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 cup celery
Salt
Observations:
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I understood that the same amount of olive oil was to be added but to see the onions swimming in olive oil was a bit disquieting. When you said âcooked the onions until goldenâ you meant âfry the onions in olive oil until goldenâ. Check. You canât really cook onions in the same volume of oil without them swimming. Thatâs a bit contrary to what I usually do (half oil and butter, just enough to coat the onions, âsteamâ them in a closed pot for 20 minutes and caramelise them uncovered until they get golden)⊠I certainly donât use half a cup
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There will be a lot less vegetables in that sauce, 2 whole cups to be exact. The texture will not be the same.
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The carrots and celery are a lot less cooked than I expected. 1 minute in oil? Thatâs it? I thought that we would use a similar volume of vegetables than the previous sauce but cook them a lot more.
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Hazan suggested that I simmer the sauce 45 mins, Iâll do it for 1 hour because I prefer a thicker sauce generally.
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I expect to enjoy this version much more, although the previous one wasnât bad. It reminds me of a simpler version of a marinara (which is probably my favorite non meat tomato sauce variation)
30 mins to go!
Iâve never heard of a marinara sauce with onions, carrots, celery. ??? More like this: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/classic-marinara-sauce
As far as understand there are a lot of variants!
I guess Iâve just not seen one with vegetables. 'Course what does it matter its name if it tastes good?
Sounds good Captain . I would use less oil also . Maybe drizzle a little fresh when done cooking . I cook my veg tables until soft . And would cook for at least a hour on low simmer as you are doing .
I make the same recipe for marinara except I never cook the basil in the sauce . I brings a off flavor for me . Same as pesto pizza . I just do not like the cooked fresh basil flavor . So what I do is take a bunch of the sprigs and toss them in the pot after I have taken it off the heat , cover and let sit for a half hour and then remove the sprigs .
Ok, finished cooking it, finished eating it and here is my feedback:
- All in all it made 3 3/4 cups of sauce, so about 4 portions
- Served it with 100g of spaghetti and cheddar cheese
- 1/2 cup of oil is a lot of oil! A bit too much for me! You always have to mix it because the oil just floats on the top
- Taste pretty good, pretty lively, zesty, good tomato taste
- Pretty liquid! Good enough I guess but Iâm a fan of thick sauces.
- I miss the garlic!
Overall, if I do a similar sauce Iâll do one of my marinara variants (or âamerican red sauceâ or whatever you call it⊠in my head its all marinara 
). I prefer this one in the category:
The previous tomato sauce with raw vegetable had a âhealthyâ flair to it with a lot of crunchy vegetables so it had something new to offer. This one is a variant of a sauce I already do and unfortunately prefer.
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Did my prep for tomorrowâs Marcella Hazan fiesta (will be doing Risotto with its spring vegetables, Roast beef braised in red wine and mushrooms in olive oil and garlic)
Some comments:
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Hazan always starts on cold pans. It bugs me. I always start on hot pans and never put anything in them unless the drops of water falling from a wet hand on the surface sizzle and evaporate (if they roll like water marbles you are witnessing the ladenfrost effect and it means that your cooking surface is way too hot)
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She deglaze her pan on a cold pan (i.e.: she browns her meat, put the pan aside, put the wine in a cold pan and put the pan back to heat again). I always deglaze a pan just as the meat leaves it. I love the hiss of the alcohol on the cooking surface.
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She never mentions letting her roast rest. The least you can do after spending 3 hours and half cooking a roast is to make sure you donât scrap it by cutting it too soon. Whatâs 20 minutes among friends?
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I find it cute that she mentions âdry majoramâ her and âdry thymeâ there. I have them in my pantry⊠its called âdry italian seasoningâ
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Julia Child passes her cooking juice through a sieve before reducing it in a sauce. Hazan doesnât⊠weird. Iâll put that on french cooking being more precious than italian cooking.
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I almost always do a breakdown because I hate finding out I have to peel and cut a vegetable in the middle of a recipe as Iâm watching meat on a hot pan. I like prepping in advance and a nice mise en place makes sure I have pleasure cooking.
I donât do âseasoning.â I add what she tells me to.
Regarding âresting,â IMO something thatâs cooked for long hours doesnât need to ârest.â
Well, I donât always cook from the same book so sometimes my recipes call for âitalian seasoningâ. Yep, I do low brow AND high brow. Robuchon sometimes interest me, as well as that weird guy nobody knows on youtube from an italian-american heritage doing his âred sauceâ his mother from new jersey showed him (its a fictional exemple in case you wondered⊠I donât really remember why I bought italian seasoning but its usually to try a more commercial recipe out). It was meant as a fun comment, its not like I suggested we shoot the pope.
You might have a point for resting. Iâd have to try with or without resting to test it. Not sure I want to cook two roast to test it and Iâm pretty sure I donât want to scrap 3 hours of cooking because I wanted to save 20 minutes so Iâll take the ârestingâ insurance. Besides⊠all the cool kids do it!
In a perfect world, when something like a pork shoulder cooks for a lot of hours, I love to remove the meat from the âjusâ and refrigerate over night and then remove the fat.
Agree! I always de-fat broths and demi-glacĂ© but somehow always render cooking juice âĂ la minuteâ.
Not sure what that means.
That means I never put cooking juice in the fridge to remove the fat but I always do it with broth and demi-glaze.
It might be a good idea to do it for sauces too but Iâm usually too enthusiastic to do it âproperlyâ.
There is high end and there are other store-bought stock. I have never bought any tetrapaks that are satisfying, no matter how expensive it is. On the other hand, properly prepared stock from e.g. butchers are pricier any way.
60 hours- thatâs not stock, thatâs jelly!
Wedgewood! We should have a Wedgewood club here as I have one as well.
On that I agree! I guess I was thinking of comparing the option cost vs the usual stock I buy (in a tetrapak) with the fact that your own prepared stock will probably inherently be better (maybe you wonât be able to beat a good butcher but youâll be able to do something better than the industrial company!)
When I donât use my own stock, Iâve found Costcoâs Kirkland organic chicken stock (not broth) is VERY, very good. I always keep it on hand.
Thank you. I havenât used that before. I looked it up- they are cheap also. I will grab a box next time.
Just a small feedback on yesterdayâs Hazan extravaganza:
The risotto with spring vegetables was great. Its essentially risotto made with Hazanâs broth with onions, celery, carrots, zucchini, green peas and a cut up tomato with some parmezan.
Knowing risottos can drink up more than it is expected I planned 6 cups of broth instead of 5. I wound up needing 8 cups of broth so I had to finish up with vegetable broth. I would have preferred to make it with 100% Hazan broth but I just didnât have enough on hand. Next time Iâll plan to use twice of the broth Hasan asks for just to be sure.
The risotto is very balanced and harmonious, a far cry from my usual sun dried tomatoes, aged gouda and cheddar variant. I fear I still prefer my version but Iâll gladly try all the varieties of risotto Hazan has in her book.
The garlic and olive oil mushrooms were fan-ta-stic. We chose cremini mushroom because they went well with the roast (just the colour screems âserve me with roast beef!â) . Hazan cuts the mushrooms in 1/4 inches slivers but mentions the mushrooms should not crowd the pan. Our biggest pan wasnât large enough for all the mushrooms we had. They fit perfectly if we left them whole but processing 1/4 inch slices would take several batches to do because they occupy so much more surface area.
We decided to leave them whole and just steam them at the end if there was a temperature problem. I donât cook with a ton of mushrooms but I enjoyed the simple four step process:
1: Flavour the olive oil with garlic
2: Fry the mushrooms at high heat until they absorb all the oil
3: Lower the heat, salt them and let them lose their juices
4: Bring back the heat to high to evaporate the mushroom juices
Simple, effective, gave a great look at they were fantastic on their own. We didnât even have to do any further cooking even if we left them whole they were perfect.
I fear we messed up the roast. I imagined the cut would be higher and compact (we got chuck from a butcher) but instead it was low and wide. If fit tightly in the bottom of our dutch oven but it was a bit too snug for me. Next time Iâll try to ask for a cut less wide and a bit higher? We checked the cooking every 30 minutes and flipped the roast as indicated and it was going swimmingly with lots of braising liquid left but we changed the cooking temp a bit to accommodate for the pĂątĂ© lorrain and that was our mistake. The beef was braising at 350⊠the pĂątĂ© need 1 hour at 375⊠I didnât think 25 degrees would make a big difference on one third of the cooking time but it did. The last 30 minutes pretty much killed the roast, all the liquid either was absorbed or left (the dutch oven lid was closed) and the whole lot was heavily roasted and looked like a south Carolina BBQ brisket.
Donât get me wrong I love BBQ brisket but it wasnât exactly what we were going for. The interior was tender and the whole thing was falling apart but I didnât know if it was going to keep its moisture after resting. I didnât think it required resting because it was nuked but it did get its rest because we were trying to figure out was to do from there.
There was no sense of reducing the liquid for a sauce because there was no liquid left. I didnât want to deglaze the dutch over to make a sauce because it was too charred and I didnât think it would result in a good taste. I asked my host if he had demi glace and he didnât but he did have veal stock and vegetable stock. I put them in a saucepan, put the heat at the highest setting, put cornstarch in a glass of red wine to make a thickening slew, we added garlic, a bit of shaved onions, fresh thyme and other herbs we had on hand.
I cut the roast up. There werenât any pretty slices to be had because the beef was falling apart so it became a sort of beef hash (think something pulled pork-ish). I put the beef in the hot pan that cooked the mushrooms, rehydrated everything with our last minute âsauceâ we were evaporating at high heat and tasted for seasoning. It actually gave a good result. The beef was charred but falling apart tender inside and the sauce gave it much needed liquid. Everyone loved it and even asked for seconds. People fought playfully over the remaining mushrooms and beef. There wasnât any leftovers.
I guess we saved that one but Iâd like to try it again the proper way. If we could somehow have kept the incredible roast we had after 1 hour and a half and not mess things up we would have a great result. We still wound up with something good but there is a great dish in that roast recipe and I didnât do it justice. I guess we all learn!
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