Dinner for Joe

Alright, so we had to get some furniture moved from Tracy’s parents’ house to our place. A co-worker and friend, simply known as Joe offered some help, so we took him up on it. His reward? Some beer and a dinner cooked by yours truly. I had casually asked Joe what his favorite meat was (Joe being a meat-eating sort of guy), and he responded prime rib. Sure thing, I always wanted to cook a prime rib and we have more disposable income than we’re used to. So here’s the plan, according to Joe’s ideal meal:

Whipped garlic mashed potatoes.
Broccoli with a cheese sauce.
Roasted prime rib.

Nice and simple, Joe likes basic, good food, and I like cooking basic, good food. Only one thing stands in my way…. mashed potatoes.

You see, mashed potatoes and I have a bad relationship. I think mashed potatoes should be mashed by hand, and I have read around a billion recipes and guides on how to properly mash potatoes. Tracy, her family, and Joe just want the potatoes beaten with a hand mixer. Although this gives you incredibly smooth potatoes, I find it gives them a texture like glue and if hand mashing is properly done, it gives them a much nicer texture. Trying to get perfect mashed potatoes has been an obsession of mine for a while, and I ALWAYS SCREW THEM UP.

Mashed potatoes are also one of the sore points between Tracy and myself. Tracy does not cook very often, and when she does, she’s rather shy and really needs some kind words and encouragement. So one day, she decides she’s going ot make mashed potatoes with the dinner. Now, during the day, I had been reading some guides on how to mash potatoes perfectly, and it gave me this huge scientific, and logical, explaination of what makes good potatoes.

1. When chopping potatoes to boil, do not make the pieces too small. If you do, they will disintegrate in the water, and give you a watery, coarse texture.
2. If you whip your potatoes too much, you will create a ‘gluey’ texture because you’re breaking up the starch in the potatoes.

So Tracy is happily dicing up her potatoes, and I charge upstairs, full of these insufferable little factoids. I immediately spot that she’s cutting them to small, and go ‘Aha! You’re cutting them too small!’ And then I realize who I’m talking to, and how sensitive she is about her cooking. So she gets MAD at me as I try to stammer out my explainations of what makes perfect mashed potatoes, and she knows full well I always screw up my mashed potaotes. A lesson for all of you here, if you have a significant other who is timid about cooking, don’t overwhelm them with irritating bits of advice about how they can be doing a better job. Just for your information.

Where was I? Oh right, the meal.

Dramatis Personae:

Tracy – My partner in crime and photo taker.
Joe – Funny guy with a beard who helped us move, and has been promised a meal.
Judy – Tracy’s mother, provider of the kitchen and unending praise.
Gary – Tracy’s Dad, a meat and potatoes guy like Joe, who’s also sick as hell.

Anyways, we make like a baby and head out… to the butcher (not something a baby would do), and lo and behold, they have a standing rib roast. Problem. I know prime rib is expensive, but sweet Holy Jesus, we’re looking at fifty dollars for a roast that will feed four people. Tracy and I talk it over, and decide to cheap out. It was probably one of the most mouth watering, succulently marbled roasts I’ve ever seen, but… we just couldn’t justify it. Unfortunately, the ONLY OTHER ROAST THERE was a rather long eye of round. This is roughly what it looked luike at the butcher, although with less fat on the outside.

I’m still learning my cuts of meat, but one look at this roast tells me it’s going to be dry and tough. Fat means mouth-meltingly-yummy. Lean means gnawing on leather. We pick it up anyways and head back.

We go through hauling furniture back and forth, and as we actually had too many people, I’m only partially useful here. Oh well, more time to cook. On the menu tonight:

Garlic and Rosemary Studded Eye of Round Roast
Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Broccoli with a White Cheddar Sauce

First step is to prep for the potatoes. I preheat the oven to 400F and throw in two full heads of garlic, skins intact on a pie plate. While this is going on, I take out the roast and start prepping, it should warm to room temperature as I work on it. I take a good four or five cloves of garlic, smash them up and slice them into thin spikes. Then I grab some fresh rosemary, and simply snip it up into little sticks. To do the roast, I take a paring knife, and then start cutting half-inch deep slits all over the damn thing. It actually feels like an obscure form of torture, especially since garlic kind of hurts when it gets in a cut.

After I’ve sliced it up, the roast still won’t talk, and so in go the garlic and rosemary. I just double up – stick of garlic, stick of rosemary in every single little slit. Just to rub some salt in its wounds I… well, cover it in kosher salt and some fresh pepper. The stubborn bastard still won’t give up the information I need, and so it’s time to sear. Many recipes like to just put the oven to 400F and sear it, but I’m terrified of dry meat, so I go for a pan sear. As Judy doesn’t have a frying pan long enough for this roast (I doubt anyone owuld) I just throw a cookie sheet on the burner with some olive oil. Heat it up until just before the smoke point, and on goes the roast. Searing looks like this:

The roast finally gets browned all over, and it’s time to check on the garlic. Pull them out, they smell delicious, and I toss them to the side. They get their turn later. The oven gets reduced to 325, and in goes the roast. Timing should be roughly an hour and a half with a roast this size. I go help move for a while, and come back to test out the roast and hour later.

True to my suspicions, the roast needs another half hour to squeal, and so it’s time for more prep. This part is easy. I grab a handy Y-peeler and start going at the potatoes, as shown here.

I should mention I -loathe- peeling potatoes, but the invention of the Y-peeler makes it easy enough that I can only complain for so long. Still, this took a while. Judy has a steaming pot, and so I slice the broccoli florets into there, and just leave them since they’ll steam very quickly. Poatoes get diced and put on for the boil, and it’s time for the cheese sauce!

We’re using an aged white cheddar that taste pretty damn good. My recipe for cheese sauce is pretty basic. Tablespoon butter, tablespoon flour, low heat – make a roux. Add a cup or so of milk, half a teaspoon nutmeg, a teaspoon or so of white pepper, and salt for seasoning. Cook on a low heat until I get desired consistency, done. Taste tests indicate this is a pretty damn nice cheese sauce.

We fast forward a bit, and the potatoes are done. I strain them, and put them on the heat a bit to evaporate excess water, and then put that pre-roasted garlic in a pot before mashing it up with a spatula. We get this.

Now, Joe likes whipped potatoes with that gluey consistency (he made it clear good mashed potatoes should put you in danger of choking and dying), and so I oblige. Also, a hand mixer means I won’t screw them up. So I hand mash the suds for a little bit with the garlic, and then start going with the hand mixer. Slowly, I’m adding bits of butter to emulsify, and finally some milk. For seasoning, lots of salt and white pepper and a bit of extra garlic powder. End result tastes great, has that texture I’m never fond of, but whatever. It’s still pretty good.

Now, previous to the potatoes being mashed, the roast gets done, and I have to take it out of the oven to rest. It looks great, although it wasn’t quite fatty enough to give me enough for gravy. I could have brought some wine to help make a sauce, but I as I’m pleasing a meat & potatoes crowd, that might be a little much. Also, as I’m working on the potatoes I realize the roast is going to go cold. So it goes back into the oven at 150 just to keep warm.

Broccoli is put on, and everything gets done roughly at the right time. I finally take out the roast, and get straight to carving… shit.

Since the roast did a little bit of cooking in the oven, it needed to settle again. Judy, bless her heart, doesn’t have a grooved cutting board, and so it bleeds EVERYWHERE. I quickly start mopping up this huge mess, and that takes a bit as we get to serving. Finally, I carve up the roast, saving end pieces for Gary and Judy, and serve. Notice the elegance and poise by which I placed the roast slices on the plate. At least the pieces were mostly the same size.

After the roast is serve, we serve out the mashed potatoes and broccoli with cheese sauce, and here we are!

The Verdict:

Steamed Broccoli with a White Cheddar Sauce

Steaming broccoli is child’s play, but it’s easy to oversteam, which I didn’t. Cheese sauce was delicious, and my only wish is that I made more. White cheddar seems to be a big thing out here in Vernon, and it’s invariably of a very high quality. Perfect sauce.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

I stole the roasted garlic for potatoes idea from Emeril, who I normally don’t care much for, but man, this made pretty tasty potatoes. Joe triumphantly declared that one wrong move and he could be choking to death, which indicated the potaotes had the perfect texture for him. I’m going to snap and buy a fucking potato ricer some day. That way I get Dave style potatoes without the melodrama.

Rosemary and Garlic Studded Eye of Round Roast

Well…. not bad. Forgetting the let the roast rest a second time cost me dearly, and the pieces on my plate were dry as hell. Joe, who likes his meat quite rare, was extremely pleased as his portion of the roast had rested enough, and was very juicy. The garlic and rosemary didn’t come out nearly enough with the roast, and some gravy or another sauce would have improved it. My roast was mediocre, but everyone else was quite happy with it, and so I’ll only complain so much.

The Beer

And of course, my beer for the meal. You’ll notice I did not pour this into a glass like I normally do. To be honest, I don’t think it would have really changed much about the beer, and I didn’t want Joe to start calling me Nancy Girl.

Joe lived in Mexico for several years, and although normally a Budweiser man (which to me is like proudly proclaiming that you like to stomp babies and consort with Hitler), Joe developed a taste for Dos Equis. Dos Equis gave me the choice of a lager or an ale, and although I’d normally pair an ale with the roast, I went with the lager anyways. The result was sort of like what Corona would be like if Corona wasn’t this horrid combination of horse urine, the juice of banana rinds, some carbonation, and enough preservatives to ensure that any who imbibe this “beer” will never decompose after death.

Dos Equis was solidly, and unapologetically alright. It was almost flavourless, but had a decent enough body and served as a spectacular palate cleanser and worked well with the extremely garlicky meal. Joe mentioned that it’s generally better with a lime, and although I hold the snobby opinion that if you need citrus to make your beer taste good, it’s not worth drinking in the first place, he might be right. It’ll never be a favorite since I like beer with flavour, but definitely something to consider for those crazy hot summer days we’re seeing more and more of.