One more beef story

I forgot—there was leftover leftovers. Uncooked stewing beef chunks, as a matter of fact, and I didn't want to have beef for one more night.

So I found the one recipe I could locate for something that wasn't beef stew: Potted Beef. Apparently a very British recipe, seemingly designed just for the AGA (as is any recipe that tells you to just leave something in the oven overnight).

Basically? Toss the beef chunks in a casserole with a tight-fitting lid. Add some ground pepper, nutmeg, and fish sauce (about a tablespoon of the latter). Liberally cover it with slabs of cold butter--about 1/4 cup in all. Stick it in the Simmering Oven (around 250-275 degrees F) until you remember about it again, or at least five hours. I left it in overnight.

You're supposed to process the fragrant cooked beef after that. I resisted snacking on it for breakfast, and used my daughter's hand-blender to whiz it into a kind of goop, which really didn't look anywhere near as appealing as it smelled. That went into three ramekins, got sealed with a coating of melted duck fat, and popped into the fridge for a few days.

The result? Coarser than pate, much tastier than spam. My crackers haven't been this happy in a while.

Beef week

I've got nothing against cows, when they're served. But this week has been beef week.

First the roast beef on Monday.

The leftovers became Posh beef salad on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the rest of the leftovers formed the base of a tasty spaghetti sauce: I chopped the last of the roast in the food processor and simmered it with a bunch of fresh roma tomatoes from my aunt's farm.

Last night I had to use up some stewing beef chunks, so I made a beef-tomato-cauliflower curry to have over basmati rice.

Tonight? I think it'll be Breakfast for Dinner. But that's food for another post.

Important leftovers

My friend Kia says the way to get people to eat leftovers is to make them look "important."

Faced with a chunk of leftover roast beef, I decided to give it a bit of a status update as a posh beef salad.

First: sliced the beef as thinly as possible, then into ribbons about half-inch wide. Marinated them in a splash of sesame oil, a few glugs of teriyaki sauce, some crushed garlic, a dab of leftover toum from the other night, and a half-teaspoon of pureed ginger. And a few teaspoons of sugar, because it seemed like a good idea. (It was).

Next: Chopped up a butternut squash into cubes and roasted it in the hot oven with a teaspoon of coconut oil plus a few grinds of salt and pepper. When this was done, I added a blob of butter and a splash of balsamic vinegar, and stirred it around a bit until I realized it was time to take the kid to tennis class.

When we got home from the rec centre: Toasted a pan full of sunflower seeds and sprinkled them with this great new South African seasoning blend I'll have to rave about soon.

Assembled salad: Mesclun greens, decorated with warm squash chunks, marinated beef ribbons and toasted sunflower seeds. Dressed with Kraft Asian Sesame dressing, which was in the fridge.

Yummm. That beef had never felt so important.

Where's dinner? In de AGA, Jones.

Everyone's got to name their AGA. Apparently it's one of the unwritten rules of AGA ownership.

I had no idea what to call ours. It's cobalt blue, which doesn't suggest much in the way of names. Until someone asked where dinner was. And someone else, as so often happens in this house, made a bad pun, knowing how much some of us liked Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It's in de AGA, Jones.

And so was named Jones.

Shortly afterwards, Jones started to assert his (her?) personality, mostly in the form of occasional and accidental burns, nips and sizzles. Hence the other frequently heard phrase: Jones Bites. Which could be a verb, or a noun, to describe the tasty things that come out of Jones' four ovens.

There you are, the origin story.