site search by freefind	advanced

Meat, at its best!
I promised to do some cooking this past week and I did. But my cooking at this stage in my life is really minimal and I no longer can admit to "love-to-cook"! Lately I do blame everything on "Old-Age", so this falls into that basket as well! But, in this case, I do not think this is the only reason; somehow this place is just not conducive to cooking on a grand scale, or even eating properly! When did we last sit down here to a proper dinner? Never! We used to "dine"... Yes, it may sound silly and a bit posh to some of you, but came the evening, I set the table, there were always flowers, and we... When did we have a glass of wine with our meal here? Never! We have a small table here in a corner of the room, facing the wall and I must admit that even after all this time here, I do resent eating "dinner" at lunch time!

Dinner used to be a small event... You knew it was the end of the day and you could relax, enjoy a drink and look forward to a nice meal! After a lifetime of that, it is really quite difficult to get used to eating "dinner" in the middle of the day! OK! Enough, I hear you say! Right. I must also say something about the trays, which arrive regularly three times a day; or did we also say quite enough about them already? I must tell you something interesting though; on the morning tray, the plate of veggies and cheeses, tuna salad or pickled herring, also has scrambbled eggs or a boiled egg. The boiled egg arrives still a bit warm and never came back on me yet! Remember how unpleasant it is when that happens?... Some of us stopped eating hard boiled eggs because of that! Then a dear soul came along and taught us how to cook eggs?... Here, again - in case we forgot - is the official way. I found it just last week in a magazine: "Place your eggs in a pot and cover with cold water by 1 inch. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then cover, remove from the heat and set aside 8 to 10 minutes. Drain, cool in ice water and peel."

I said that I did some cooking and I did; the butcher was bored, so he decided to give me a lecture on meat. "This one we buy for..." and he kept pointing to cuts and telling me what to do with it! I was polite for a few minutes, then pointed to a slab of meat and said: "This one I will have!". "Wonderful choice", smiled the butcher at me, very pleased with himself, so I asked him to clean the meat off all the fat, which he did, without giving me another lecture that its good for the meat to have... Yes! We all have gone through that! And after cooking the meat and cooling the sauce separately over night in the fridge, I still chucked out about half an inch of heavy fat which collected on top of the sauce!

So to get back to the meat: I seared the meat in a bit of olive oil, well on all sides. It really was a large piece and it took some time. The first time I flipped it I added chopped onion - a very large onion - and the next time I flipped it I added lots of chopped garlic. When everything was nicely browned, I poured some red wine over it and some water, salt-pepper and thyme. I kept flipping it every half an hour; it took quite a long time, but finally I was pleased with the end result. When I judged it cooked enough, out of the sauce it came and both went into separate dishes and into the fridge. The next day we had it cold, sliced quite thickly, with salads. The second time, I made a sauce of fried onion, garlic, tomatoes and wine, some of the sauce, some herb - any herb will do - I think I added chopped rosemary. I think I also added for color some sliced green-part-of-the-scallion as well. I heated slabs of this cooked meat in that! It was marvellous! And we have another meal for three out of this great chunk, resting in the freezer for next week. I will probably heat it up in something spicy to revive it from its frozen stage!

I did something very naughty with the chicken I bought at the same time I bought the meat. Again, the butcher made me buy it! He just cut it up as "It is fresh because it was delivered that morning"... Right. I bought thighs and they sat in the fridge a couple of days too many. They had to be cooked and by then I was so tired that you will not believe this. I washed the chicken well and dumped it into the meat sauce which was still standing on the stove! Cooked it until it was done! Then fished it out of the sauce and into the fridge the chick went! The next day, I crushed a full container of mushrooms with a couple of large cloves of garlic in a processor and into hot oil it went; mix-mix, added the chicken and let it fry together. I added some gin, salt-pepper, covered it and left it for a good 20 minutes. It was great! We all enjoyed it and that is what matters! So, honestly, how you cook things is really up to you; good ingredients will always taste better. How you cook it?... Sometimes it is better not to tell....

Send your questions to The Wacky Cook: email: debbiemorgenshtern@gmail.com      

Debbie Morgenstern is the author of "My Life in Israel" and other short stories.
"My Life in Israel" can be purchased by accessing this link: "My Life in Israel"