In Texas, my home country, we do not rush the cooking of beef; our signature barbecued food is whole smoked beef brisket which spends as much as 18 hours in a smoker at about 200 to 250 degrees (Fahrenheit), a.k.a.; slow and low... This recipe (which feeds about 6 people) is for a similar cut, the ‘braising’ or ‘short’ beef rib; a cut which the butcher at a local abattoir described to me as ‘old-fashioned.’ I guess that means that it ain’t diet food. It is similar in that both the brisket and the braising rib have a lot of connective tissue and fat, the elements that make a braise or a slow smoke work so well. Over time, at low temperature, the connective tissue (or tendons) actually melt and turn into gelatin, which is that magic, mysterious ingredient that gives slow cooked meat the amazing ‘sticky’ mouth feel that we associate with everything from pork ribs at the local Chinese restaurant to the demi-glace at the finest French bistro. The fat, which is critical, works as a slow baste, melting and helping to keep the meat moist throughout the long process. Sped up, the tendons seize and become gristle, the fat melts too quickly and becomes a frying oil, either flaring up and becoming dangerous or (depending on the cooking method) actually frying the meat and creating a different product altogether. When you do take your time, however, this ‘old-fashioned’ cut really shines!
You’ll need:
A good smoker or barbecue pit and wood, charcoal, or even (in a pinch) propane and smoking chips; this chef does not recommend propane, (I don’t care for the flavour) but should you have no choice, make sure you have lots of well soaked wood chips in an aluminum pan or in a pouch of foil with holes punched in it. Much has been written on the process of smoking, so we’ll assume you have the ability to figure this part out, but the key points are indirect heat, and mostly closed heat dampers to keep in as much smoke as possible, and choosing good wood for flavour.
5 lb. Aubin Farm’s beef braising ribs
½ cup ‘Steve’s Spicy Coffee’ barbecue rub (recipe follows...)
1-2 tablespoons salt (a good sprinkle...)
Texanadian Barbecue Sauce (recipe follows...)
Root Cellar Slaw (recipe follows...)
Buns
The evening before a lunch or early in the morning before a dinner to serve these, light your barbecue pit or smoker, then, coat the meat with the rub and the salt and let sit for about an hour, while the coals burn down. If you have a thermometer, when the internal temperature of the BBQ is about 250 degrees and you have good smoke, the coals are ready; rake them all to one side of the pit. Place your ribs on the far side of the grill, away from the fire, close the lid and allow the smoke to do its magic. Make sure there is constant smoke by feeding more soaked chips or chunks for at least the first couple of hours and also watch the temperature closely, being careful to never allow it above 250 degrees. You can even switch the meat (covered) to an oven after the first few hours and get some sleep. Most Texas BBQ pit masters will remind you that a good lager in an ample, steady supply is essential to this process and I will not diverge from that philosophy in this recipe. As Lone Star is not available here, I would recommend Beau’s Lug Tread as a more than suitable substitute. The ribs will need at least 8 and as many as 12 hours of steady, slow cooking; you’ll know they are ready when the bone lifts out of the meat without effort. Serve the pulled meat on buns with barbecue sauce and Root Cellar Slaw.
A quick note on choosing wood and two stage smoking:
I learned how to smoke meat with mesquite, a resinous wood that when used judiciously is one the world’s finest seasonings, but can also result in an acrid creosote flavour after too long with too much smoke. As such, I learned a two stage smoking process, a few hours of smoke followed by either wrapping the meat in foil to finish cooking or even removing it to an oven for the last few hours. These days, in an attempt to achieve a genuine local product, I use a wood blend that includes maple, apple, white cedar and sometimes black walnut. Including some resinous woods like the walnut and cedar reminds of mesquite, in that you can get a stronger, better smoke flavour, but it can also lead to the same problems; if you are using just maple or oak, don’t worry so much about over-smoking or wrapping, but if you, like me, want that deep flavour that only a resinous wood will provide, just plan to be judicious and ease up on the smoke after the first few hours.
Steve’s Spicy Coffee:
I took a batch of this rub to the cottage a few years back for a barbecue, but early in the morning on the day of the barbecue my groggy (...hung-over...) brother-in-law mistook it for the coffee and brewed us all a big pot; ever since, we can only refer to it as Steve’s Spicy Coffee in honour of his finest hour. (Thanks for being such a good sport, Steve...)
1 cup ground, dried medium spice peppers such as ancho, guajillo, or chilhuacle.
¼ cup freshly ground coffee beans (decaf, if you must...)
¼ cup brown Sucanat or brown sugar
¼ cup ground cumin
2 tablespoons dried oregano
--Mix together, use as needed, store excess in an airtight container and use as you would a chili powder or a Montreal Steak Spice, etc.
Texanadian BBQ Sauce:
‘It’s the Maple Syrple!’
½ yellow onion, sliced thin
2 teaspoons canola or sunflower oil
¼ cup ‘Steve’s Spicy Coffee’ or your favourite chili powder blend
2 cups canned Utopia tomatoes and juice
4 tablespoons Utopia tomato paste
1 cup maple syrup
2/3 cup Barkley’s apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup tamari soy sauce
--Caramelize the onion in the oil. Add spice, then add remaining ingredients, simmer ½ hour. Blend.
Root Cellar Slaw:
Weather-wise, we locavores in Canada are in the dip right now waiting for the first green shoots to get long enough to pluck and eat, while concurrently staring at the bottom of last year’s barrel. The weather is drawing us outdoors to barbecue, but what veggies do we eat today? Boiled turnips again? How about taking those turnips, those beets, even the cabbage, carrots and onions from the back shelf of the root cellar and making this delicious, quick slaw?
3 cups shredded mixed roots such as carrots, beets, sunchokes and turnips
3 cups shredded cabbage
1 small onion, sliced thin
1 tablespoon salt
¼ cup Barkley’s apple cider vinegar
¼ cup honey or sugar
¼ cup sunflower or canola oil
2 teaspoons dried dill
2 teaspoons dried parsley
1 teaspoon chili flakes
1 teaspoon toasted caraway seeds
--In a large bowl, mix the veggies and salt. In a small saucepan, bring the remaining ingredients to a boil, pour the hot dressing over the veggies, stir and cover for five minutes. Then uncover, stir again and enjoy!
authentic texas specialties, amazing live music, incredible selection of local, microbrewed draft beers and locally sourced and organic foods...
Monday, April 12, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Our Daily Bread...
In three years, I’ve made every batch of brown bread at the restaurant except for one. That day, I had help from my good friend Rob Mathewson, who those of us locally know as the gentle giant genius of loaf behind Grateful Bread, the bread consortium that has anchored our local farmers’ market these past three years. He and his equally storied and infinitely interesting wife Shelley just moved on last month to the West Coast, for work, but also for family, which is also how I found myself here, so who am I to judge? Just a bit sad, that’s all...But anyway, this story is about bread, so we’ll talk about all that stuff some other time. This story is about bread, about baking, and about my favourite baker.
I guess my first experiences making bread were my grandmother’s Parker House Rolls, a recipe in which each yeasty, white ball of dough was dipped in melted butter before it was packed together in Corning ware, then risen and baked. The effect, though guilty in hindsight, was mind expanding in practice. My mom complained that her mother in law had never mentioned the second package of yeast on the recipe she wrote out, and that had she not spied that sneaky addition over her shoulder one day, no-one would have ever known. That might be why no-one else’s rolls ever came out quite as good, but I think we all suspect it was more than just that. The most critical ingredient in bread, I have come to discover, is the baker. When she baked those rolls, it was her way of showing her love.
I moved back to my home town from West Texas in ’93 or so and was lucky enough to find a job at a little scratch bakery, Brazos Blue Ribbon, that was operated by a couple of ex-hippie types who probably just wanted a place to buy whole grain fresh bread and muffins themselves and couldn’t find anyone else doing it. They had a wide selection of loaves, pastries, kolaches, and cookies and they served sandwiches and soups for lunch. I was hired as an assistant baker, which meant I never got to see lunch; lunch time, for me, was now in the middle of my night. I arrived at work every day at 2 am and left work at about ten, at least for the six short months that I managed to survive that schedule. Maybe it was as a result of these long, late hours, but the head baker there was insane, good insane, I mean; he was a hilarious, huge, jolly, loud, heavy metal singing madman, and at 2 o’clock in the morning, I was his only audience and his biggest fan. He taught me like Obi Wan taught Luke, with a pile of clichés, aphorisms, cleverly mixed metaphors and the occasional near backhand (which I probably deserved...) I was told to use my hands to mix the dough; ‘spatulas are liars!’ I was trained to taste the dough, to ‘think with my hands’, to ‘bake with my nose...’ I was no baker when I came in, I had mistakenly believed that 5 years of line cooking would qualify me for some kind of high speed ascension to that goal; but, by the time I left, I was, although not quite a baker, at least not quite as foolish as when I arrived. He was a great teacher, he loved what he did, and it showed. So why did I leave? Honestly? I wasn’t ready to give up sunlight; I don’t think I ever will be. Baking, as a profession, asks a high price from those who it calls.
Rob is not a baker by profession (...yet?). He worked here in Kemptville in some capacity for the government; he told me about it once, it was something to do with measuring water levels, analyzing drainage from wetlands, that kind of thing...I’m not really sure, the fact is, when I talk to Rob, it’s usually about bread. He loves bread, he loves baking...when he’s not at work (or practicing his clarinet), it’s likely that he’s baking. He always reminds me of that jolly baker from Brazos Blue Ribbon, he has that same big presence, the same quick smile and twinkling eye—and I don’t care what he gets paid for, the man is, and will always be, a baker. He understands, naturally, instinctually, what it took me so long to learn about bread, about why bread is not pure science or pure art, about how good bread is craft, plain and simple, about how your hands know more about baking than your head, and that your heart and nose are just as critical to the process as your mixer, your oven or your timer. Baking bread is about patience and care. It is about good humour and generosity. It is about love and, if you do it right (and he does...), it is about changing the way people think about every other bite of food they take.
Rob has given more to this community than just some tasty loaves; he is one of those good, generous people who come along and just can’t seem to help but share. He started, a couple of years ago, giving classes on baking to anyone who was interested, he dreamed up the whole idea as a charitable act...the classes, or workshops, were, I believe, actually a ruse to get a dozen or so extra hands out to roll dough for bread for a Salvation Army Food Bank fundraiser (I may have my facts wrong, but I believe it was for one of our Mother’s Day brunches here at the Municipal Center). The idea caught on, and soon, these workshops (again, not to be confused with free labour...) were given several times a year, baking bread for Christmas food baskets, again for our Mother’s Day brunch, for a free community Thanksgiving dinner, or, really for any event or even person that needed an extra bit of sustenance to be broken and shared. I noticed once that at the workshops, and with the free loaves of bread, he gave out a recipe on a little piece of onion skin paper along with an idea, a prayer really, a request that the holder of the recipe would bake it with others, and that in exchange for this loaf, in lieu of payment, that they would do this same giving again, for other food banks, for other friends, for anyone who might need a warm loaf of love. Luckily, at the very first workshop, the friendly friar of the leavened loaf won a convert, my sister-in-law, and really, one of the world’s all time greatest people, Denise Busby.
Now with all due respect to Rob, who was the reason I set out to write this story, within the first two or three lines I, and really, anyone who has bought bread at our exciting little market over the last few years, probably knew very quickly where this was going to end up. Denise is the kind of person who just seems to do well at most anything she tries; over the years that I have been lucky enough to know her, not only has she been a record breaking manager for a noted office supply company in the heart of Ottawa, she has evolved into a master hobby gardener, a photographer of immense talent, the most patient wife her incredibly lucky husband could hope for, and, on an incredibly personal note, the greatest aunt I could ever imagine for my, for all of our, little girl. She also, thanks to Rob’s workshops, and a great deal of that natural instinct like both my Grandmother’s and his, has become a phenomenal baker. The first year of the market, Rob alone was the baker, but starting in the second and continuing with the third, Rob was joined by Denise as a fellow ‘Grateful Bread’ baker. As often as Rob has been at the market of a Sunday, Denise has been there as well, at first with breads she learned to bake with Rob, but later and lately with scones, cookies, and even breads made with her own recipes. I am, I admit, a very picky person when it comes to the quality of food (hey, it’s my job!) and I can honestly say that during the market season, her Chipotle-Cheddar Bread is one of the greatest pleasures of my daily life.
Bread was one of the first things that we humans learned to make. Almost every culture has a bread of some kind, flour and water, maybe some other stuff, a leavening agent, some time of work, some time of rest. Bread is what we share, when we share. It is the most basic of sustenance, and, as a symbol, it speaks to the core of who and what we all are. It is the first thing we serve at most restaurants, because throughout our cultural memory, it has become an act of welcome so common that to not offer it would be out of place. Early on we learned that all of the bounteous harvest our farmers’ market’s amazing vegetables would bring people out once, but that it was the bread for which they returned.
I’ve learned a lot about baking over the years; I learned about tortillas, the bread of Mexico, from fellow cooks and older Mexican ladies at a taqueria in my home town, my first job outside of the stifling world of fast food. I learned about thin crust pizza dough from a skilled chef at Romeo’s in Austin where I baked in a wood fired oven, and I trained intensively through those dark nights at the Brazos Blue Ribbon, teaching my hands how to feel for when the dough was just right. I have learned that sometimes it’s about a second package of yeast that someone forgot to mention, and that sometimes it is about no yeast at all, just patience and courage. And I have learned, after all that, that all the knowledge in the world will only produce a pretty good loaf of bread.
Thanks Rob, it was always a pleasure to bake and to break bread with you, and I hope to do it again soon. You’ve given a lot to this community, more than we ever could have asked, Vancouver Island is lucky to have your big, generous heart in its midst. I understand why you moved to be close to family; that is, after all, also what brought us here.
I hope that my bread, the one I’ve made every batch of save one, is half as good as Rob’s, half as good as my grandmother’s Parker House Rolls. I’ve tried to shape it, learn it, understand it, infuse it with all the meaning, heart and soul that I can, and every time I make it I think maybe, maybe this time, maybe I’m getting close. Bread is more than just flour and water and yeast and salt. It is family, it is being together, it is sharing and it is love. And for me that means that on the last weekend in May, when the time is finally here at that first market of the season, I’ll be right there in line again, waiting anxiously for that first loaf, for that first taste of Chipotle-Cheddar from Denise, Abigail’s Aunt Denise, my favourite baker.
I guess my first experiences making bread were my grandmother’s Parker House Rolls, a recipe in which each yeasty, white ball of dough was dipped in melted butter before it was packed together in Corning ware, then risen and baked. The effect, though guilty in hindsight, was mind expanding in practice. My mom complained that her mother in law had never mentioned the second package of yeast on the recipe she wrote out, and that had she not spied that sneaky addition over her shoulder one day, no-one would have ever known. That might be why no-one else’s rolls ever came out quite as good, but I think we all suspect it was more than just that. The most critical ingredient in bread, I have come to discover, is the baker. When she baked those rolls, it was her way of showing her love.
I moved back to my home town from West Texas in ’93 or so and was lucky enough to find a job at a little scratch bakery, Brazos Blue Ribbon, that was operated by a couple of ex-hippie types who probably just wanted a place to buy whole grain fresh bread and muffins themselves and couldn’t find anyone else doing it. They had a wide selection of loaves, pastries, kolaches, and cookies and they served sandwiches and soups for lunch. I was hired as an assistant baker, which meant I never got to see lunch; lunch time, for me, was now in the middle of my night. I arrived at work every day at 2 am and left work at about ten, at least for the six short months that I managed to survive that schedule. Maybe it was as a result of these long, late hours, but the head baker there was insane, good insane, I mean; he was a hilarious, huge, jolly, loud, heavy metal singing madman, and at 2 o’clock in the morning, I was his only audience and his biggest fan. He taught me like Obi Wan taught Luke, with a pile of clichés, aphorisms, cleverly mixed metaphors and the occasional near backhand (which I probably deserved...) I was told to use my hands to mix the dough; ‘spatulas are liars!’ I was trained to taste the dough, to ‘think with my hands’, to ‘bake with my nose...’ I was no baker when I came in, I had mistakenly believed that 5 years of line cooking would qualify me for some kind of high speed ascension to that goal; but, by the time I left, I was, although not quite a baker, at least not quite as foolish as when I arrived. He was a great teacher, he loved what he did, and it showed. So why did I leave? Honestly? I wasn’t ready to give up sunlight; I don’t think I ever will be. Baking, as a profession, asks a high price from those who it calls.
Rob is not a baker by profession (...yet?). He worked here in Kemptville in some capacity for the government; he told me about it once, it was something to do with measuring water levels, analyzing drainage from wetlands, that kind of thing...I’m not really sure, the fact is, when I talk to Rob, it’s usually about bread. He loves bread, he loves baking...when he’s not at work (or practicing his clarinet), it’s likely that he’s baking. He always reminds me of that jolly baker from Brazos Blue Ribbon, he has that same big presence, the same quick smile and twinkling eye—and I don’t care what he gets paid for, the man is, and will always be, a baker. He understands, naturally, instinctually, what it took me so long to learn about bread, about why bread is not pure science or pure art, about how good bread is craft, plain and simple, about how your hands know more about baking than your head, and that your heart and nose are just as critical to the process as your mixer, your oven or your timer. Baking bread is about patience and care. It is about good humour and generosity. It is about love and, if you do it right (and he does...), it is about changing the way people think about every other bite of food they take.
Rob has given more to this community than just some tasty loaves; he is one of those good, generous people who come along and just can’t seem to help but share. He started, a couple of years ago, giving classes on baking to anyone who was interested, he dreamed up the whole idea as a charitable act...the classes, or workshops, were, I believe, actually a ruse to get a dozen or so extra hands out to roll dough for bread for a Salvation Army Food Bank fundraiser (I may have my facts wrong, but I believe it was for one of our Mother’s Day brunches here at the Municipal Center). The idea caught on, and soon, these workshops (again, not to be confused with free labour...) were given several times a year, baking bread for Christmas food baskets, again for our Mother’s Day brunch, for a free community Thanksgiving dinner, or, really for any event or even person that needed an extra bit of sustenance to be broken and shared. I noticed once that at the workshops, and with the free loaves of bread, he gave out a recipe on a little piece of onion skin paper along with an idea, a prayer really, a request that the holder of the recipe would bake it with others, and that in exchange for this loaf, in lieu of payment, that they would do this same giving again, for other food banks, for other friends, for anyone who might need a warm loaf of love. Luckily, at the very first workshop, the friendly friar of the leavened loaf won a convert, my sister-in-law, and really, one of the world’s all time greatest people, Denise Busby.
Now with all due respect to Rob, who was the reason I set out to write this story, within the first two or three lines I, and really, anyone who has bought bread at our exciting little market over the last few years, probably knew very quickly where this was going to end up. Denise is the kind of person who just seems to do well at most anything she tries; over the years that I have been lucky enough to know her, not only has she been a record breaking manager for a noted office supply company in the heart of Ottawa, she has evolved into a master hobby gardener, a photographer of immense talent, the most patient wife her incredibly lucky husband could hope for, and, on an incredibly personal note, the greatest aunt I could ever imagine for my, for all of our, little girl. She also, thanks to Rob’s workshops, and a great deal of that natural instinct like both my Grandmother’s and his, has become a phenomenal baker. The first year of the market, Rob alone was the baker, but starting in the second and continuing with the third, Rob was joined by Denise as a fellow ‘Grateful Bread’ baker. As often as Rob has been at the market of a Sunday, Denise has been there as well, at first with breads she learned to bake with Rob, but later and lately with scones, cookies, and even breads made with her own recipes. I am, I admit, a very picky person when it comes to the quality of food (hey, it’s my job!) and I can honestly say that during the market season, her Chipotle-Cheddar Bread is one of the greatest pleasures of my daily life.
Bread was one of the first things that we humans learned to make. Almost every culture has a bread of some kind, flour and water, maybe some other stuff, a leavening agent, some time of work, some time of rest. Bread is what we share, when we share. It is the most basic of sustenance, and, as a symbol, it speaks to the core of who and what we all are. It is the first thing we serve at most restaurants, because throughout our cultural memory, it has become an act of welcome so common that to not offer it would be out of place. Early on we learned that all of the bounteous harvest our farmers’ market’s amazing vegetables would bring people out once, but that it was the bread for which they returned.
I’ve learned a lot about baking over the years; I learned about tortillas, the bread of Mexico, from fellow cooks and older Mexican ladies at a taqueria in my home town, my first job outside of the stifling world of fast food. I learned about thin crust pizza dough from a skilled chef at Romeo’s in Austin where I baked in a wood fired oven, and I trained intensively through those dark nights at the Brazos Blue Ribbon, teaching my hands how to feel for when the dough was just right. I have learned that sometimes it’s about a second package of yeast that someone forgot to mention, and that sometimes it is about no yeast at all, just patience and courage. And I have learned, after all that, that all the knowledge in the world will only produce a pretty good loaf of bread.
Thanks Rob, it was always a pleasure to bake and to break bread with you, and I hope to do it again soon. You’ve given a lot to this community, more than we ever could have asked, Vancouver Island is lucky to have your big, generous heart in its midst. I understand why you moved to be close to family; that is, after all, also what brought us here.
I hope that my bread, the one I’ve made every batch of save one, is half as good as Rob’s, half as good as my grandmother’s Parker House Rolls. I’ve tried to shape it, learn it, understand it, infuse it with all the meaning, heart and soul that I can, and every time I make it I think maybe, maybe this time, maybe I’m getting close. Bread is more than just flour and water and yeast and salt. It is family, it is being together, it is sharing and it is love. And for me that means that on the last weekend in May, when the time is finally here at that first market of the season, I’ll be right there in line again, waiting anxiously for that first loaf, for that first taste of Chipotle-Cheddar from Denise, Abigail’s Aunt Denise, my favourite baker.
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