The Cynosural Blog

Or tomorrow's leftovers today - which is somewhat of an in joke. A company where we worked, changed its name to Nextira One. My partner, who is Philippina, thought this was very funny as tira is Tagalog for leftovers, so we figured that next tira one would be tomorrow's leftovers today. Not a great slogan for a VAR.

Anyway, back to the solution for what do to with all that leftover St. Paddy's day corned beef, cabbage and potatoes. These are very simple recipes.

Make a Hash of It

Corned beef hash is easy to make. Cut about a pounds worth of corned beef from the left over chunk. I use a mezzaluna, but you can use a chef's knife, or even a food processor. Mince the meat very fine. For the potatoes, you could use the leftovers from yesterday, but I prefer to keep those for the bubble & squeak below. I also like to fry my hash very crisp. Both these criteria lead me to grate potatoes as for latke. Using the wide holes on a box grater, grate long strips of potato into a bowl. For one pound of corned, beef, I use two potatoes. Squeeze as much water as you can from the potato strands. You'll be amazed how much comes out. Mix the dry strands of potato with the minced beef. Mince two slices of sweet yellow onion [or not, or more if you like], and, over low heat, in a tablespoon of oil, butter or bacon grease, sauté until the onion is just transparent. Add the meat and potato mixture to the pan, stirring in the onion. Pat the mixture down evenly. Raise the heat to medium or medium-high. Crisp the hash on one side, flip, and crisp on the other. I like to serve it with poached eggs and the Irish Soda Bread from yesterday.

Bubble & Squeak

Also very simple, and like the hash, using some sweet yellow onion, is optional. Cube the leftover cabbage and potatoes from yesterday. Heat a heavy pan over a medium-high flame. Sauté some diced onion, if you like. Mix the cabbage, potato and onion in a bowl, and smash it down and flatten into a large pancake. Crisp on each side. This can be served with the corned beef hash, or on its own, as a side dish, or with eggs. I like it with sausages or bangers.

Reuben

The Reuben is a wonderful sandwich. The best that I ever had was at the Hawk & Dove in D.C. Oh, it just struck me. When we're presenting at Campus Technology 2007 this summer, I may be able to get back there. [Hey, Cos, is the H & D still there? You, Bunkey and I went there with Father Paul a couple of decades ago.] Now, I'm excited.

Lean corned beef, and a great pumpernickel or rye bread make the Reuben. You don't know what a Reuben is? Let me explain. A Reuben is a grilled deli sandwich, made on rye, sometimes pumpernickel bread, with Russian dressing on the inside of both slices and butter on the outside, piled high with corned beef, sometimes pastrami, sauerkraut and swiss cheese, and grilled until the cheese melts, the bread is crunchy, and the meat and kraut are hot. I've seen some places that don't have a grill offer a steamed Reuben. Don't order it. Don't order anything from such places - just leave.

Here's my version.

1. I buy my bread, and most pumpernickels that I've tried out here seem to have a burnt taste, so I use Grace Baking's N.Y. Deli Rye
2. Russian Dressing:
   
   1. 1 cup freshly made Mayonnaise
   2. 1/4 cup vinaigrette made by whisking the XV olive oil into the red wine vinegar slowly to blend
   3. 1/4 cup chili sauce
   4. 2 tablespoons minced sweet yellow bell pepper
   5. 2 tablespoons minced roasted red pepper or pimento
   6. 1 tablespoon minced yellow onion
   7. 1 teaspoon Fred's horseradish
   8. 3 tablespoons black caviar
   9. Blend all ingredients together thoroughly
3. Trim the fat from your corned beef, and slice it very very thin
4. Slice the bread a bit on the thin side, not so thin that it can't hold the filling, but not so thick that you can't eat the sandwich
5. Slather the outside of the bread slices with butter and the inside with Russian dressing and arrange half the slices dressing side up
6. pile the bread high with sliced corned beef
7. top with three tablespoons of drained, rinsed sauerkraut
8. cover with thin slices of a holey, swiss-style cheese - I use Emmentaler
9. top with the other half of your bread slices, dressing side down on the cheese
10. lay the sandwiches gently on a flat grill, and put a sandwich press or heavy pan on them
11. grill until the cheese is melted and the meat and kraut are steaming, lower heat if needed to keep the bread from burning

You can always serve this with bubble & squeak, but I can't eat more than the sandwich

Enjoy your week of leftovers

I bought a whole brisket of corned beef, and have enough for a week's worth of hash, bubble & squeak and Reubens. I hope that you do too. If not, Betty's Ocean View Café in Berkeley and the various Max's spun off from Max's Opera House in San Francisco, have good corned beef hash and Reuben sandwiches respectively. The only place I know of that served bubble & squeak was the English Tea House in El Granada - gone now though. /sigh Wherever, however, enjoy.

What's an Italian doing celebrating Saint Paddy's day? Well, first, the holiday is much more an American holiday not Irish, right up there with Thanksgiving. Second, Palladius a.k.a. Patricius a.k.a. Patricus a.k.a Naomh Pádraig was possibly born in Roman Brittania or maybe Gaul, likely in the early 400's C.E. and thus, arguably had some Italian genes. And third, where else am I going to get the raw materials for wonderful Reuben sandwiches and glorious corned beef hash?

Corned beef has no corn in it, but is named for the salt that is used to preserve the meat. Some say that it is so-called because the salt used are corn kernel sized crystals, and others that the salt exudes out the meat as it cures, looking like kernels of corn on top of the meat. Whichever, if you can, find a butcher who corns their beef the old fashioned way, without chemicals. The beef will be more grey than rosy. Most corned beef is the brisket cut, though a beef round, or, in California, the tri-tip [sirloin] is also used. I stick with a brisket.

If the corned beef you buy is very salty, you might want to soak it overnight in water or milk - ask your purveyor. Allow at least an half-pound of beef per person for the supper, and a quarter-pound for each sandwich you'll want to make next week, and a pound for the hash to go with the poached eggs for Sunday's brunch.

1. Make up a Bouquet Garni of dried bay leaves, allspice nuts, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, cloves and black peppercorns in a piece of cheesecloth that's been doubled.
2. Rinse and wipe down your meat; place it a large, heavy pot that is large enough that the meat can be covered with liquid.
3. Place the Bouquet Garni on top of the meat and a whole, peeled sweet yellow onion.
4. Pour a bottle of brown ale, steam or stout slowly over the Bouquet Garni; living in San Francisco, I generally go with Anchor Steam. A true Irishman would never waste stout in the pot, but would drink it whilst cooking - he might be willing to waste a Newcastle brown ale though Maybe not.
5. Cover the meat with water, the pot with its lid, and set on a high flame to achieve boiling and set to boil for 10 minutes
6. Take off the lid, reduce the flame to low, skim fat and particulates from the water, set the flame to simmering, replace the lid, and simmer for 4 hours
7. Remove the beef and let it sit on a plate. Some folk like to brown it in an oven, or even glaze it. I don't.
8. Taste the cooking water. If it is greasy and salty, reserve a cup, throw the rest away, and fill the pot with fresh water, salting to taste, and bring to a boil; if it has a nice, delicate flavour use as is.
9. Clean and quarter a cabbage or two or three, so that you have a quarter cabbage per person for supper, and an half-cabbage left over for bubble & squeak.
10. Clean, peel and quarter red potatoes, one medium or half-large per person plus leftovers for hash and squeak. If there is any green on the potatoes assure that you remove it all, as this may be an algae that can cause food poisoning.
11. Boil the potatoes and cabbage 10-15 minutes until fork tender
12. Slice the cooled beef thin or thick as you and your guests like it, but only enough for the meal, as you'll want to cut the remainder differently for hash or sandwiches.
13. Toast some caraway seeds in a fry pan, and then add butter, cooking until the butter just browns, pour over the cabbage quarters.
14. Set out prepared mustard and grated horseradish, or sauces made from them, and serve it all with plenty of Irish Soda Bread and stout. Enjoy.

By the way, I like the last Irish Soda Bread recipe from the "Himself" (Ed O'Dwyer), but substitute one cup each of oat and barley buckwheat, not barley - what was I thinking - flours for two of the cups of stone ground whole wheat flour in the last recipe, and add currants that had been soaked for an half-hour in dry sherry [called "Spotted Dog" according to the Himself, the BookGuy. I also use Bob's Red Mill flours.

I never have, but I should ask a friend of mine for his recipes. He's a fine Irish lad, who is off this weekend cooking, in his words "Irish soul food" for his southern Baptist in-laws.

Éirinn go Brách.

Update: The mustard was Sierra Neveda Stout & Stone Ground Mustard, and the horseradish was Fred's, and here's what it all looked like...

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Italian Beef, if you're in the Chicago area, Chicago Beef from the outside, or sometimes, Chicago Italian Beef Sandwiches, which is kinda like calling a Cheese Steak a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich. Forgedaboudit.

I'm from the Philadelphia area, but I lived north of Chicago in the early 80's [and owned a house for longer, but the first wife got that one ] between my Denver and California living experiences. This recipe takes a half a day, and the sandwiches are eaten tomorrow, but it's really, really incredible.

Being Italian in heritage, I didn't have any trouble combining family recipes, with stufato di Milano recipes, and what I read about and talked about when I was in Chicago to come up with this dish, that I've been cooking for 25 years or so.

I use a porcelain coated, cast iron pot with a lid. Pre-heat the oven to 375°F, with the pot in it. While heating the oven, take 3, yes, three heads, not cloves, heads, of garlic, and peel each clove, leaving each whole, except for removing the root end and any green at the tip of each clove. Take two celery stalks and one parsnip [or carrot, if you can't find parsnip] clean, peel, trim, and break into three or four large pieces. When the oven and pot are hot, put the pot over a medium flame, add olive oil to cover the bottom, and sear the [~ 5 pounds] tied sirloin of beef on all six planes. Here are some pictures...

Each end, and one long side have been seared in this shot of the second side being seared.

And then the next side.

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After all sides have been seared, add two glasses [approximately 12 ounces] of red wine, and the vegetables.

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• "Toast" a tablespoon or so of tomato paste in the olive oil for about a minute.
• Put the pot with the beef, vegetables and wine back in the oven, and cook at 375°F for five minutes on each of the four long sides to complete sealing the beef.
• During the last five minutes, set the temperature on the oven down to 275°F.
• For long cooking like this, I prefer dried herbs; fresh herbs should be added only near the end of cooking; so, the dried herbs to be added here are two bay leaves, and 1/4 teaspoon or a large pinch each of oregano, thyme, sage, and parsley.
• Plus toast and grind about an half-teaspoon of the spice, coriander.
• Add a rich vegetable or beef stock, and enough water to submerge the beef about half way.

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Cover with the lid, and let cook at 275°F for three more hours, turning over each hour.

If you can't wait until tomorrow, you can add a small potato or two per person, cut into quarters, during the last half-hour of cooking, and leave the pot uncovered. Add a salad, and you have supper tonight. Only slice off as much beef as you need tonight, and leave the rest whole to chill, so you can slice it very, very thin tomorrow. Also, save all of the cooking liquor, pass it through a fine food mill and refrigerate. Update: I should point out that you should remove the bay leaves before passing the liquor through the food mill, the carrot and celery are optional, but the garlic is a must to go through the mill with the liquor.

Ah, but the sandwiches are the real treat. Especially the relish.

1. Take 1 clove of marinated garlic per sandwich
2. Add celery, pearl onion, carrot, whatever from a jar of hot giardiniera [what my family called suttacel] or from a mild giardiniera plus a marinated hot pepper or peperoncini,
3. and two strips of roasted red pepper per sandwich
4. Chop with a mezzaluna or knife until minced but not a paste

For the sandwich...

1. Preheat an oven, maybe with a pizza or baking stone, to 400F
2. Take the "au jus" from the roast, which you had, yesterday, passed through a food mill with the fine mesh, to make an incredibly rich, thick gravy, out of the fridge and remove any solid grease from the top
3. heat the gravy to boiling, and if too thick, add hot water and boil some more
4. Take the beef out of the fridge from yesterday
5. Get your sharpest carving knife and sharpen it further
6. Slice the beef very, very thin
7. Wet your hands and "dry" them on the rolls on which you'll make the sandwich, and put the rolls into a 400F oven for three minutes
8. Split the rolls and spread a tablespoon of the "relish" on each half of the roll
9. Dip the beef in the gravy, making it as wet as you want, and pile it on the bread
10. OMG - enjoy, enjoy, enjoy

We have hail. Yep, little hailstones bouncing off the deck. If we're having hail here, there might be sleet up on Skyline Drive [CA Rte. 35]. But you never know with our microclimates changing the weather every few miles. Woe the commute in the morning.

I told my partner that I was logging off from Adium to allow my MacBookPro to restart after doing the three updates currently available, one is a security update, one for the changes to Daylight Savings Time in the USA and Canada, and one is a Java for MacOSX 10.4 update that also accounts for the DST changes. This prompted her to ask if there was an update for our Palm Lifedrives. After checking Palm, Access, forums and Google, I would have to say there isn't, at least not yet. I'm not sure how my Mark/Space Missing Sync with it's time sync conduit might handle this, once DST actually begins, but there is a related discussion going on in their forums, as well as one in the Palm forums.

As an aside, I am really interested in the Access NetFront Browser 3.5, which I found along the way, but that will have to wait for another day.

Adapting what Scott [SGruby] gave in the Mark/Space Forum, and what Alan Grassia gives in his blog, here's a manual solution for handling this problem. Hopefully, Access or Palm will come out with an update to resolve this issue. One thing to keep in mind is that while the USA and Canada are changing to these new rules, Mexico is not, and I have no idea what other countries are doing. And even within the USA, not all states use DST. You're going to have to adapt every city in your time zone database to get it right, especially if you travel a lot.

1. Go into Preferences from your Palm's application launcher
2. Select Date & Time
3. To the right of Location, select the last item in the drop down list "Edit List..."
4. Select a time zone by city, such as San Francisco
5. Select Edit, a screen will appear listing Name: cityName, Time Zone, a checkbox "This location observes Daylight Savings Time", Start and End.
6. To the right of Start:, select the rule shown and reset it to be the Second Sunday in March, by selecting March in the months listed at the top, then "Second" from the drop down list to the right of "Week:" and "Sunday" from the drop down list to the right of "Day:".
7. Select OK
8. Select to the rule shown to the right of "End:", and reset it to the first Sunday in November, by selecting November in the months listed at the top, then "First" from the drop down list to the right of "Week:" and "Sunday" from the drop down list to the right of "Day:".
9. Select OK
10. Check that the Start and End rules are what you need, Select OK

11. Repeat for each City of concern to you. For me, this was...

    • Berkeley
    • Chicago
    • Dallas
    • Denver
    • Los Angeles
    • Los Gatos
    • Montara
    • Montreal
    • Moss Beach
    • New York
    • Oakland
    • Pacifica
    • Palo Alto
    • Redwood City
    • Redwood Shores
    • San Carlos
    • San Francisco
    • San Jose
    • Santa Clara
    • Santa Cruz
    • Seattle
    • Toronto
    • Tulsa
    • Washington, D.C.
12. Select Done

You may note that I've added a bunch of cities. This is to better use the "location" feature in the calendar applications that I use.