Dinner tonight

Hey Bob,
You are a very adventurous cook. Thanks for the Cuban Mojito tip.I will
look for it next time I go. Do you think it would be good with ground
beef? I know carne asada is commonly marinated in orange juice based
mix. It never occurred to me to make rice with broth. Sounds good!
I'll try that too. BTW, I really enjoyed how you had so much free time.
I'm mom to a 5 month old, and the luxury you have (in the denomination
of minutes) was so delicious to read about. Good job!

Luiza

On Mon 24 Jan 2005 12:46:07a, Bob wrote in rec.food.cooking:

Quoted message said:

A trip to my local Trader Joe's yielded a Cuban Mojito "simmer sauce."

<snipped great dinner story>

Bob, I always enjoy your dinner descriptions and what you did here sounds
delicious and, obviously, inventive. I have to say that I want to make the
whole dinner! I'll be picking up some of the mojito sauce on my next trip to
TJ's.

Cheers,
Wayne

Luiza said:

You are a very adventurous cook. Thanks for the Cuban Mojito tip.I will
look for it next time I go. Do you think it would be good with ground
beef? I know carne asada is commonly marinated in orange juice based
mix.

I'm a little unsure how I'd put the sauce and ground beef together. The
flavors are probably fine together, but the texture and shape of the final
product are what have me a bit puzzled. You could make a kind of Sloppy Joe
with the sauce and loose ground beef; you could shape the beef into oval
patties like Salisbury Steak, brown them, and then simmer with the sauce; or
you could make meat loaf and pour the sauce over the meat in the last
fifteen minutes of cooking. Any of those would probably be fine. I believe
pork chops would also be a very good match; that's what I'm going to try
next time I get the sauce.

Quoted message said:

It never occurred to me to make rice with broth. Sounds good!
I'll try that too. BTW, I really enjoyed how you had so much free time.
I'm mom to a 5 month old, and the luxury you have (in the denomination
of minutes) was so delicious to read about. Good job!

Thanks for the compliments, and I hope you enjoy the time you get to spend
with your child!

Bob

On Mon 24 Jan 2005 08:53:04a, Bob wrote in rec.food.cooking:

Quoted message said:

Wayne said:

Bob, I always enjoy your dinner descriptions and what you did here
sounds delicious and, obviously, inventive. I have to say that I want
to make the whole dinner! I'll be picking up some of the mojito sauce
on my next trip to TJ's.

High praise indeed, coming from someone who just went on the cooking
spree that YOU just did!

Aw, heck, I just cook. And I had a spurt of energy yesterday.

Quoted message said:

I honestly thought I was CHEATING by using the mojito sauce; if I'd made
it from scratch, it probably would have been too much trouble on a
worknight. (I work twelve-hour night shifts, Friday through Monday.)
But I was really happy with the result, so I'm sure I'll make it all
again.

Hey, when you find something that tastes great and works well, that's not
cheating...it's smart! I used to get a private-labeled barbeque sauce that
was better than any I ever attempted to make. I used it for years until I
could no longer get it.

BTW, do you think the mojito sauce would work well with pork? I will use
chicken the first time, but I'm curious about trying pork.

Quoted message said:

Thanks, and happy birthday!

Thank you, Bob!

Cheers,
Wayne

Quoted message said:

Thanks for the compliments, and I hope you enjoy the time you get to

spend

Quoted message said:

with your child!

You're welcome, and I do! I'm very attached. It's just that when I cook
dinner, I want to be able to focus all of my attention/creativity on
it, instead of cooking dinner and putting her to sleep at the same
time. I can't cook like that! It is getting easier though and that sort
of craziness is subsiding (knock on wood).

I love this newsgroup. It's very active and the recipes really inspire
me. Keep up the good work.

-Luiza

Wayne said:

do you think the mojito sauce would work well with pork? I will use
chicken the first time, but I'm curious about trying pork.

I'm fairly certain that it would work with pork (as I wrote in response to
Luiza). The big question in my mind is whether it would work well with LEAN
pork. Whenever I get around to trying it, I think I'll omit the browning
step and braise pork chops in the sauce, keeping it low and slow. Or maybe
ultra-fast, cutting the pork into cubes, stir-frying them, and adding the
sauce at the end. I just don't want to toughen the pork.

It'll be a while before I make that experiment; my fridge is full of other
fixin's. I'll be making country ribs with cabbage tonight. I'm not fond of
caraway, so the dish will contain pork, cabbage, apple cider, cider vinegar,
onions, brown sugar, and paprika. I'll stir some heavy cream in towards the
end. I'm not sure what I'll have with it, probably buttered radishes and
hot tea.

Bob

Bob said:

I just don't want to toughen the pork.

I have a question for you guys. Some meat toughens when it is cooked
for a long time, like buffalo and pork (well now I know), but some
doesn't, like beef and chicken. Is that always the case with chicken
and beef? Or does it depend on what cut it is?

Bob said:

You could make a kind of Sloppy Joe
with the sauce and loose ground beef;

It's not the prettiest looking dish, but I usually make some ground
beef with marinara sauce, mushrooms, onions, cauliflower, and whatever
else I can find. Maybe some cumin, curry powder, paprika, garlic. And
then I serve that over whole wheat pasta, so that's why I asked about
the Mojito sauce. Do you think it would taste good with all those
ingredients, including the pasta?

Have a good dinner,

Luiza

Weezie said:

Bob said:

I just don't want to toughen the pork.

I have a question for you guys. Some meat toughens when it is cooked
for a long time, like buffalo and pork (well now I know), but some
doesn't, like beef and chicken. Is that always the case with chicken
and beef? Or does it depend on what cut it is?

Beef and chicken don't toughen when you overcook them.?
Since when?

Overcooking a nice piece of steak will turn it from a nice tender morsel
into a piece of shoe leather. A properly cooked chicken breast is tender
and juicy, but when overcooked they are dry and tough. It may not be
quite as tough as your overcooked beef, but it is certainly a lot tougher
than when properly cooked.

Quoted message said:

Beef and chicken don't toughen when you overcook them.?
Since when?

What I mean to ask is there are certain situations when you can cook
meat for a long time, like stewing beef or pot roast, and it retains
its tenderness, or becomes even more tender. In which situations is
cooking meat for a long time a good thing vs. a bad thing? In my mind,
I was not thinking of steak, but I should have been more clear. Thank
you for so eloquently pointing that out to me.

-Luiza

Weezie said:

Quoted message said:

Beef and chicken don't toughen when you overcook them.?
Since when?

What I mean to ask is there are certain situations when you can cook
meat for a long time, like stewing beef or pot roast, and it retains
its tenderness, or becomes even more tender. In which situations is
cooking meat for a long time a good thing vs. a bad thing? In my mind,
I was not thinking of steak, but I should have been more clear. Thank
you for so eloquently pointing that out to me.

You can cook meat for longer periods if you adjust the heat and control
moisture. Stewing beef is one of the toughest cuts but can be tenderized
by long, slow cooking in liquid. But you have to be careful because
boiling it will make it tough, but a few hours of simmering will make it
tender. Spareribs can be cooked at low temperature (300F) with a dry rub
and for 1 1/2 - 2 hours in a covered pan and will be so tender the meat
will fall right off the bones. Braised ox tails also make a fabulous
stew.

Luiza said:

It's not the prettiest looking dish, but I usually make some ground
beef with marinara sauce, mushrooms, onions, cauliflower, and whatever
else I can find. Maybe some cumin, curry powder, paprika, garlic. And
then I serve that over whole wheat pasta, so that's why I asked about
the Mojito sauce. Do you think it would taste good with all those
ingredients, including the pasta?

I think adding the vegetables and serving over pasta would be fine, but I'd
leave out the spices until you try it without them at least once. You might
decide that it doesn't need them.

Bob

Luiza said:

I have a question for you guys. Some meat toughens when it is cooked
for a long time, like buffalo and pork (well now I know), but some
doesn't, like beef and chicken. Is that always the case with chicken
and beef? Or does it depend on what cut it is?

It very much depends on the cut. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but
to effectively cook a piece of meat, you'll need to learn the
characteristics of the cut.

There are two things which contribute to tenderness in meat: Collegen and
fat. If a cut of meat (whether we're talking about chicken, pork, or beef)
has little or no collegen or fat, then the only way it can be tender is to
cook it as lightly as possible (within the boundaries of food safety, of
course). And even when you *do* cook something to rare, you often have to
slice it thinly to tenderize it. (I'm thinking of flank steak in particular
when I write that.)

Collegen is a type of connective tissue. If the cut of meat has a lot of
collagen but little fat, then the best way to cook it is at a low
temperature for a long period of time, preferably in a moist environment:
When collegen is cooked under those circumstances, it liquefies and turns
into gelatin, which provided tenderness. The hazard of overdoing it is that
you run the risk of drying out the meat because the muscle fibers contract
as they get cooked, squeezing out the "juice." Most pot roasts are made
from cuts which have lots of collagen.

Intramuscular fat is one of the things that meat inspectors look at in
grading steaks: If a steak has little flecks of fat throughout, then the fat
separates the muscle fibers and keeps the steak moist as it's being cooked.
Fat also carries a lot of flavor. One reason I like chicken thighs more
than chicken breasts is that the meat has more fat, and can therefore be
cooked longer while still remaining tender.

Fish isn't exempt from these rules either; fatty fish are generally cooked
differently than lean fish.

Sorry if this is a bit disjointed; I'm writing it between tasks at work.

Bob

Thanks Dave.
So, it's all about retaining the moisture and simmering? OK.

-Luiza