American Food: Past, Present, Future
Reason to hope, the power players of forty years ago, great old menus - and a perfect winter recipe.
Welcome back! I hope your year is getting off to a fine start. La Briffe will continue offering tips for resources that improve your life in the kitchen, interesting articles from my archive, fantastic old menus and delicious recipes. But instead of being a daily offering, La Briffe will now come to you once a week. And if we all agree it’s a good idea, there will also be a weekly conversation where we get to talk among ourselves and share ideas.
If you want to feel good about American food, go visit the White Oak Pastures website. I’ve never met rancher Will Harris in person, but over the last year I zoomed with him often enough to have fallen in love with him. I imagine he has that effect on everyone he meets.
Will, and his daughters Jodi and Jenni are the fourth and fifth generation to farm their land in Bluffton, Georgia. Will went to agriculture school and returned to farm with his father in the industrial manner they’d both learned, relying on antibiotics, hormones, pesticides and herbicides. Then, as he tells it, one day in the early nineties he looked at his animals and didn’t like what he saw.
He bet the farm on doing things the way his grandfather had. He stopped using all those inputs, turned his cattle out to pasture, and became a regenerative farmer. He built his own slaughterhouse. And ultimately, he rebuilt his community, turning a dying town into a thriving place.
White Oak Pastures people care about their animals, care about the land, and are doing their best to make the planet a better place. Every time I talk to Will I come away encouraged about the future.
Becoming regenerative invariably means diversifying. Will started out as a cattleman; today, on their zero-waste farm, the family is raising beef, pork, geese, chickens, ducks, lamb, goat and rabbits. It’s all for sale and the quality is superb. Eating food from White Oak Pastures makes me feel better in every way.
Reading this forty-two year old article I’m struck with how many of these people are still important today — and how many have been forgotten.
A Robust Winter Stew
A great stew is a wonderful thing. While it cooks it perfumes your house with promise. It is one of the few dishes that improves with age. At its best it has a complex character that provides comfort to everyone who eats it. And it takes very little to turn a good stew into something truly great.
The first rule — and the most important — is to avoid anything labeled “stewing meat.” That’s likely to be odd leftover bits from all over the animal, which will each cook differently. Buy a fatty piece of meat — beef chuck, pork butt, lamb shoulder — and cut it up yourself. And while you’re at it, cut the meat into slightly larger chunks than you think you’ll need; the larger the piece of meat, the slower it will cook.
Do not be afraid of fat; remove it at the end, not the beginning, so you get the benefit of its flavor.
Take the trouble to brown the meat. It’s extra work, but not that much, and it will reward you with richness. To do this, dry the meat well, and do not crowd the pan (which will steam the meat instead of browning it).
This is very important — cook the meat very slowly once the liquid goes into the pot. If you cook it beyond a simmer the meat will get tough. A slow burble is most easily achieved in a slow oven (as opposed to the top of the stove).
Be generous with flavorings — onions, garlic, herbs. Each will add balance and complexity. And there’s no substitute for alcohol (beer or wine), which will unleash a whirlwind of hidden flavors.
Finally, think ahead. A stew needs time to rest. Let it sit in the refrigerator for a day or two, gathering its thoughts, before removing the fat, gently reheating, and serving your stew to a few very lucky people.
A Simple Recipe for a Beef, Wine and Onion Stew
6 tablespoons butter, divided
2 onions, diced
2 strips thick cut bacon, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, smashed
5 sprigs fresh thyme
10 sprigs parsley, washed
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 pounds beef chuck, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 teaspoon sea salt, plus more to season
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper, plus more to season
¼ cup flour
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
¾ cup brandy
1 bottle decent red wine
1 stalk celery
1 bay leaf
4 tablespoons butter
1 ½ pound mushrooms, either white or crimini, cleaned and quartered
Heat the butter in a casserole or deep medium-sized pot. Add the onions, bacon, and carrots and cook until they are fragrant and translucent, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, thyme and parsley and stir for a couple of minutes until they are softened. Mix in the tomato paste and stir for one minute. Transfer the ingredients to a bowl and set aside.
Pat the beef cubes very dry and season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Put the flour in a paper bag and add the beef cubes, shaking them to coat them evenly.
Melt the olive oil and butter over medium heat in the now empty casserole or pot. Cook 1/3 of the beef, turning as it browns, about 4 minutes until the sides are evenly browned. Add to the bowl with the vegetables and cook the next third of the beef. Repeat until all the beef has been browned.
Remove the pot from the stove and lower the heat. Pour the brandy into the pot, return to the stove and scrape up the bits stuck to the bottom. Return the beef and vegetables to the pot.
Pour in 2 ½ - 3 cups of wine, add the celery and the bay leaf, and bring to a gentle simmer.
Cover the pot and put into a 300 degree oven for three hours, checking occasionally to make sure there is enough liquid (if not, add water or stock).
Remove from the oven, uncover the pot and allow the stew to cool to room temperature. When cool, cover and put in the refrigerator for a day or two.
A couple hours before serving, remove from the refrigerator. Take the fat which will have solidified off the top (this will be easy to do). Remove the celery, bay leaf and herbs.
Half an hour before serving saute the mushrooms in a medium skillet with the 4 tablespoons of butter for about ten minutes, seasoning with sea salt and ground pepper at the end.
Stir the mushrooms into the stew and gently reheat. Season with sea salt and ground pepper to taste and add the remaining wine if needed.
I love this over mashed potatoes, but it’s also delicious with a simple loaf of crusty bread.
Serves 6.
Click HERE for a printable recipe
A couple of menus from restaurants referenced in the article above. This first one, that I scribbled all over, is from La Toque, the Sunset Boulevard restaurant Ken Frank opened in 1980. He was so young at the time — just 23— that he was almost always referred to as the enfant terrible of Los Angeles chefs. A couple weeks ago, when I wrote about Michael’s (Ken was the opening chef), he sent me the nicest note. If we ever start traveling again, I’m eager to visit his Napa Valley restaurant (also called La Toque).
Looking at this menu, I’m stunned by how ambitious it was for its time. And how forward thinking. Eel salad. Raw fish. Rabbit. Sweetbreads. And look at those prices!
The late Jean Bertranou is not a household name, but in the world of LA food, he’s a legend. It was he who first introduced nouvelle cuisine to Los Angeles. He had people growing special vegetables for him, and when he couldn’t find ducks that were up to his standards, he started a farm, smuggling the duck eggs in as Easter candies. (I wrote about him here. )
Bertranou’s L’Ermitage was, for many years, LA’s most influential restaurant, and many of the city’s most important chefs credit him as their mentor. In 1979, when Bertranou was diagnosed with a brain tumor, his longtime chef Michel Blanchet took over the reins. The Fourcades bought L’Ermitage in 1986, so I’m guessing this menu is from that year. (L’Ermitage closed in 1991.)
I love the image of the stew sitting "in the refrigerator for a day or two, gathering its thoughts...".
I read your stew recipe with great interest. Every New Year's, I buy a pork shoulder or butt (whichever's cheaper, usually the shoulder), potatoes and sauerkraut to make my family's traditional New Year's pork & sauerkraut.
For decades I'd use the crockpot to cook it all in, but about six-seven years ago I started slow-roasting the pork overnight and then either putting it in the crockpot with potatoes, onions, the sauerkraut, herbs and spices (garlic, fennel, onion powder, sometimes smoked paprika), and a 12-oz. bottle of NA Beer, and letting it cook for 4-6 at HIGH, tasting about halfway and adding a bit of Worcestershire Sauce or "Kitchen Magic" to give it a bit of <i>umami</i>.
This year, for the first time, I deglazed the roasting pan instead with another bottle of NA beer (a good way to get rid of the bottle of O'Doul's Amber I somehow still had sitting around!) and put that in the pork & sauerkraut instead. I also simmered everything (having nuked the potatoes partway then cut them up, skins and all) for an hour in a saucepan rather than try and find the crockpot, which let me cook for one - usually our niece and my kid brother join us, but this year I'm on my own.
While I think the overall results are great, I'm wondering if anybody else does pork & sauerkraut for New Year's, and what your recipe might be....