79. Meat & Greet #1: Let’s Have an Offal Time

Braised beef and beef tendon

I can't remember how I found the Hunter Angler Gardener Cook blog but I am so glad I did. I like the blogger's views on food: "Honest food is what I’m seeking. Nothing packaged, nothing in a box, nothing wrapped in plastic."

I'm afraid I do use things in a box and wrapped in plastic but I try to cook most meals from scratch. I don't go as far as to hunt or grow my own food, except for herbs.

Then I read about his first blog event called Meat & Greet which features offal and I was hooked. I love tripe, beef tendons, tongue, pigs' feet, etc. but don't eat it except at dim sum and seldom admit to eating it. Offal is not something I would offer my guests and here is someone who is keen on offal! Plus it seems there are others of that ilk! This is like a red meat eaters and offal support group!

Also, there is a prize for the tastiest dish of offal - The Good Cook: Variety Meats, edited by Richard Olney. This is another incentive to join.

I subscribed to the series when it was offered by Time-Life many years ago and had most of the collection. Somehow the books fell into disfavour and languished in boxes for years. Finally, a couple of years ago, in a fit of organizing my stuff, to "use it or lose it" I gave them away. One book somehow survived the purge - the book on beans and pulses. One day, I flipped through the pages and thought, hey, this is a great book! I noticed it was edited by Richard Olney, who knew how to cook. His French cookery books are a good and handy reference for me! What was I thinking to get rid of the Good Cook series? Do you know what? I am combing secondhand stores and thrifts shops to buy back the books. So far, I have found the book on vegetables.

I decided to enter and experimented with tripe first. It tasted very good so I decided to experiment further. The supermarket had a special on beef tendon and I figured it had to be a good deal as there were quite a few Vietnamese people buying them.

Beef tendon is a gelatinous treat but isn't a stand alone piece of meat so I combined it with a chuck roast. Here is my recipe for Meat and Greet.

Beef tendon

Rock sugar and dried orange peel

Chinese spice mix *

Ingredients:

2 lbs of beef tendon
2 lbs of beef chuck roast
2 large pieces of ginger, size of a thumb
4 cloves of garlic, smashed
1/2 cup of spice mix, divided
1 piece of dried orange peel, softened in hot water
1/2 cup of dark soy sauce
1/4 cup of Chinese cooking wine or sherry
1 teaspoon of sesame oil
Salt and pepper to taste.

Method:

I cooked this dish in three stages.

A. Cooking the beef tendon

1. Rinse beef tendon and put in pressure cooker with a piece of ginger and 1/4 cup of the spice mix. Add enough water to cover the beef tendon by about an inch.
   
2. Turn heat to high. Lock lid into place and bring to pressure, then lower heat and cook for 15 minutes.
3. Allow pressure to drop by the natural release method for 15 minutes.
4. When it is safe to do so, open the lid and remove the tendon.
   
5. Rinse the tendon under cold running water.
6. Transfer to plate to cool.
7. Cut the tendon into 2 inch pieces.

Note: the beef tendon becomes hard when cold but softens again when heated up.


B. Cooking the beef roast

** You need a 6 quart+ pressure cooker to cook the beef.

1. Take a glass or ceramic bowl that is about 1" smaller in diameter than the pressure cooker. Put in 1/2 cup of dark soy sauce, 1/4 cup of rice wine, a teaspoon of sesame oil, 1/4 cup of spice mix (include a whole nutmeg), rock sugar, the softened orange peel, ginger and garlic. Add ground white pepper and mix everything together.
2. Put the beef roast in the bowl and tilt it around to cover the beef with the sauce.
3. Put the pressure cooker on the stove and put a small steamer rack inside. Fill the pot with water to cover the rack by a couple of inches. Place the bowl on the rack and lock the lid in place.
4. The bowl and steamer rack must take up only 2/3 of the cooker. There should be a headroom of 1/3 of the cooker. There is a line to indicate the 2/3 level on the side of the cooker.
5. Turn the heat to high to bring the cooker to pressure. Lower heat to medium and steam for 20 minutes.
   
6. Allow pressure to drop by the natural release method for 15 minutes.
7. When it is safe to do so, open the lid and remove the beef.
8. Scrape off the bits and pieces of spices and cut the beef into 1 or 2 inch cubes.
9. Remove the bowl from the pressure cooker. This can be a bit tricky with the hot sauce and very little space for the fingers to get the bowl out. Strain the sauce into a pot big enough to hold the beef and beef tendons.
   

C. Braising the meats

1. Braise the meat and beef tendon for about 15 minutes so that the tendons absorb the sauce. Don't overcook the tendons as the longer they cook, the more gelatinous they become and soon there will be nothing but soy sauce beef aspic!
   

Note:

• The Chinese spice mix is sold packaged in Chinese herbal shops. It is the basic spice for making soy sauce chicken. The mix includes fennel, liquorice, star anise, a whole nutmeg, cassia bark and what looks like Sichuan pepper. I don't bother to put the mix in a muslin bag as I find it usually bursts open. I just smear the mix over the meat and then scrape the bits and pieces off later.

Do try my recipe. It is quite tasty and also might help your tendons.

Eat braised beef tendons as a topping on a bowl of soup noodles or with rice as part of a meal.


April 18, 2008

Update:

A friend who tasted the dish had these comments:

1. The beef was fine, it had absorbed the flavour.
2. The sauce was a bit too sweet.
   
3. The beef tendon didn't have much flavour.
   

My suggestion:

1. Use less rock sugar.
   
2. Pressure cook the tendon for ten minutes only and boost the flavour by using fresh spice mix (I think my spice mix must be 10 years old!) or adding a teaspoon of 5 spice powder.
   
3. Braise the beef tendon in the sauce for 25 minutes and then add the beef and bring everything to boiling point.
4. Cool and refrigerate dish overnight for flavours to be absorbed.