Monday, October 3, 2011.
Part Two Of Tri-Tip, With Chocolate.
It's getting cold again. Forty-six degrees last night at the Cool Water Ranch. Brilliant blue, dry skies. Isn't this the California weather Mary Ann always says she loves? No, she says. Too cold here.
The uncooked half of the tri-tip beef roast we liked so much two weeks ago is still in the refrigerator, teetering on the edge of spoiling. To me, it's nicely aged, but certainly ready to go. The first dish made marinated, thin slices walk across a hot griddle. I learned that this cut doesn't really need tenderizing.
This time, I cut it into inch-and-a-half cubes, dusted it with salt and Creole seasoning, heated up some clarified butter in a skillet, and seared the chunks all around. I removed the beef from the pan when it began to feel a little firm, then deglazed the pan with red wine, a little lemon juice, a little soy sauce, and Tabasco chipotle pepper sauce. Whisked it until everything in and on the pan was dissolved.
In my hand were eight morsels of bittersweet chocolate. I didn't want Mary Ann to see me add that, because then she'd have a mental block on enjoyment. But she wouldn't go away. I threw the morsels in. They hit the bottom of the skillet with a clank. "What was that?" she asked.
I'm a prevaricator but not a liar. "Chocolate, but not sweet," I said.
"You're using my chocolate?" she accused. Yes, I was. "Well, I hope you haven't ruined that nice beef after all this time," she warned.
I'd tell you if this had been disappointing. In fact, I will tell you that I used a little too much lemon juice. (Again. Bad habit of mine.) Also, next time I will use six chocolate morsels instead of eight. But even Mary Ann thought the sauce was wonderful with the beef. The chocolate flavor was deeply hidden, but it definitely added something. A surprise enhancement from the chocolate was that it thickened what had been a sloshy sauce I was ready to reduce a lot more to a spoon-coating, medium-brown tactile delight.
She cooked some green beans and made a salad, and we loved our meal together, at the kitchen counter.
We started talking about Thanksgiving, the holiday for which this kitchen was built in 1994. That's when we took over the cooking from Mary Ann's aging parents. Their family was large, and in the first years of our serving Thanksgiving dinner we had as many as fifty people. Many of them are the same ages as Jude and Mary Leigh, which meant a lot of kids running around the lawn and in the woods, playing football and hide-and-seek. Mary Ann's brother Lee described it as "a Norman Rockwell family." It was.
But now all those kids are grown up. Quite a few have left town. Or got married, giving them another Thanksgiving option. Four major family figures have died, loosening the family bonds that kept everyone here so many years.
We are looking now at the possibility that we will have only two guests other than ourselves this year. We are both thinking about skipping Thanksgiving at our house and going on a cruise or something. Then, some generic date in December, having a big feast over here for family and friends.
We're thinking about it, I say. Two problems: Mary Leigh and Jude, both of whom cherish Thanksgiving at home and were aghast at the prospect of not doing so. Now there's a switch.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
