Why hello. Welcome to Kitchen Catastrophes. Today’s post will not be like many of our others. There will be relatively few jokes, not a ton of etymology or history, though I’ll try to work it in where I can. What it will be is sad. (Editor’s note: This…well, it’s maybe not as true as it could be. There’s some levity, as things go on.) And I understand if you don’t want that. These times are hard enough without wallowing in another’s sorrows. If you just want the recipe, take this link, and go. We’ll see you on Wednesday, when we are more apt for merriment.

And, as the wry pretension of that last clause may have indicated, we may grow overwrought in this piece. I apologize if it comes off cloying, or artificial. But I will write what I can from what has churned in my mind all day. And longer.

In case you’re unaware, and hadn’t pieced together yet, while today is known to most as “Star Wars Day”, or, to the party-hungering collegiate hordes, “Cinco de Mayo eve”, it is something heavier to me. May the 4th is the day my father died. It has been two years. And still the weight of it crushes me some times. So today, I have made another dish.  One that cuts me to think of. And one that carries…so many echoes. That dish is named Beef with Ginger. And I have never made it before. And that failure is the knife scar I pick at now.  

A Mad, Mad World

This recipe starts, as all my posts do, in the past. It is two days ago for me (well, one now), from when this post will go up. But it is the present for me, now, as I write this, just as it will be the present for you, now, as you read this. It is a legacy, a memory of another present. I worry a lot about legacy, now.

But the STORY does not start today. It starts 3 years ago. April 30th. And maybe that day has weighed on my in ways that I can’t imagine, because you know what dish I made for my family that afternoon, just before I started this recipe? I made Croque Monsieur. And WITHOUT REMEMBERING THAT, completely oblivious to the timing, guess what I made for dinner tonight, before I started work on this.

IN case you don’t know, this is Croque Monsieur broiling.
Maybe we’ll cover this recipe, or maybe I’ll make it a Patreon thing.
Also, rewinding, does anyone else feel like “guess what blah blah blah” should end with a question mark, despite technically being an instruction?

I have had Croque Monsieur TWICE in the last 5 years. (well, 2.5 times: I had to remake the first batch to use up the onions, and get some extra pictures) And somehow, I blindly recreated the same pattern as the first time. It was a different recipe, and I could REALLY lean into the ‘woe-is-me’, “I’m so sad” “English lit 101 symbolism” just by pointing out how the new recipe I used lacked the sweetness of the first, and how making it was so much harder, as I fought against apathy, poor planning, a literal DOWNPOUR in the middle of buying some of the groceries. How the world of today’s attempt is so much darker and scarier than the first. But let us sketch a map of the terrain, and move on. Trust me, we’ll have time for that.

Beef and Ginger is a recipe from Jean Georges Vongrichten, a pioneer of Fine dining in the New York scene of the late 80’s. He is 2 years older than my father (or rather, he was born 2 years before my father), because of course he fucking is. He is famous for being a Michelin starred chef, of creating what’s called the “Jean-Georges Egg”, and he has many recipes I’ve considered making but never gotten around to. What’s important is the context.

See, the site at the time doesn’t tell you this, but…well, my dad was diagnosed with cancer late March of 2017, and looking back, I seem to have kind of gone insane trying to process that. Like, every recipe we put up in May of 2017 was made over like 10 days between the 20th and 30th. On the 30th I made THREE recipes for the site. (The croque monsieur, the first attempt on this meal, and the FIve-Spice Ribs) I guess my idea was “taking care of dad will take time, so let’s build up reserves of pre-cooked posts so I only need to do a couple a month”.  Which is why there’s actually no reference to this recipe until June, where I acknowledge that I made a recipe a while ago, but we haven’t eaten it yet.

Hilariously, in the ongoing saga of “for fuck’s sake, how many callbacks and overlap does this narrative NEED”, the first recipe posted in May of that year, “These Sick Beets” was made on the 18th, but the last shot wasn’t taken until the 30th. …And is a recipe out of the same Jean Georges cookbook that this one is.

For a sense of scale for Jean-Georges, he’s made a semi-credible claim that he’s the INVENTOR of the Molten Lava Cake, hence why it’s on this cover.
Even if he isn’t, he is still understood to be the man who popularized it in America.

This recipe was, in theory, my first attempt to get my father to interact with bone-marrow. And to explain that, we have to explain the recipe, so we may as well dive in.

(Editor’s note: This is now Jon Sunday night) Wait. Shit. I didn’t do the thing I was going to. I titled this section “Mad, Mad World” because I was going to compare my discussions about my father, the emotions of this dish and all that with Mad Men; specifically, the AMAZING scene in the season one finale, about the Carousel. Which is a powerful scene (Like, I’ve never seen a SINGLE episode of Man Men, but holy shit is that a good scene) that I do really connect to these feelings, this kind of nostalgia for the past, a “pain for home/homecoming” (which is what nostalgia ACTUALLY translates to. It doesn’t mean “the pain from an old wound”. That’s one of those narrative “lies that tells a truth”)

And I SCREWED IT UP. And that’s… maybe that’s for the best. Look, I gotta say, this post took a turn for me. I don’t know, yesterday I felt I had it in me to make this a sad but hopeful reflection, to try and be honest with you all about how much all of…this (waves vaguely as the concept of his father’s death) still hurts me, and I lost it. Not, like, the desire to communicate my feelings. But the…insight. The authenticity. I meant the things I wrote last night, but right now, I don’t feel the honest connection to those thoughts and ideas. Like I was thinking about how to integrate the fact that the cat was unusually invested in my actions Saturday night as I cooked, but maintaining distance, and explore the idea of  how she, like so many other things, represents changes dropped on my life because of my father’s illness and passing that I get no say in, and how even in the good feelings, there’s complications: sure, she’s fluffy and adorable, but she’s also needy, bitey, and I’m allergic to her.

I tried to take this picture AS she was biting me, but it was too blurry, so here’s her seconds later, where you can’t see that she’s slightly digging in her claws to keep me from taking my hand away.

But now that just feels kinda like I’m fucking patronizing a CAT for being interested in sounds when everyone else is asleep. Like, I believe those things, see those connections, but I’ve lost the conviction in my arguments. I don’t BELIEVE my own sadness or allegorical symbols.  Maybe it’s literally medical/mental: I am, currently, getting therapy for anxiety and depression connected to my feelings and grief. So maybe I was just straight up more depressed/anxious, and then the episode passed.

And maybe that’s a good thing. (I mean, objectively, “me feeling less like shit” is a good thing…alright, SEMI-objectively, I’m sure there are plenty of people with completely valid arguments on why I SHOULD feel like shit. I mean, according to some random internet thing, my particular lifestyle has benefited from the labor of 40 slaves/indentured servants globally, so I’m certainly no angel.) But I mean that while, yes, today is a sad day, it’s also STILL Star Wars day for many. And it doesn’t have to be a complete downer for me. While there’s a catharsis in expressing your emotions, there’s less benefit in dredging them up if you don’t feel them naturally. Maybe screwing this up is fine.

And I certainly hope so, because let me tell you, there were a NUMBER of screw ups with the recipe.

Making a Stocky Mess

The recipe for Beef with Ginger is, basically, a beef steak and noodles with some veggies and ginger in a hot pool of stock. It’s basically a sort of high-class riff on Vietnamese Pho, or French Pot au Feu (that’s kind of Jean Georges’ thing, by the way: he was professionally trained in France, and then opened his first restaurants in Southeast Asia. The majority of his restaurants are either ‘French classic with Asian influences’, ‘Asian dishes presented with a French haute cuisine mentality’…or ‘steakhouses’, but that kind of panders to the same “French classic” ideals, just with more hardwood.)  As such, the majority of the recipe is given over to making a beef stock, which needs to be made with beef bones such as marrow.

Irritatingly, since Fred Meyer reorganized their freezers, I can’t find/keep forgetting where their beef bones ended up. Luckily, we live near a real, active animal-processing butcher, so I was able to snag these.

We’ve talked about beef marrow before, so just a quick summary here: it’s a fat-protein mixture inside bones that packs a lot of calories, and generally functions as meat-butter. I’m not sure if it’s the best choice for this application, because I kind of don’t know what I’m aiming for: “stock” refers to a couple different products, unified by the concept of “made from simmering animal bones for a long time, typically with various flavorings”. So you can often find stocks that are basically just “more seasoned/slightly thicker broths”, and others that will straight up solidify into gel if allowed to cool. Which are we aiming for? I don’t know. The recipe is unclear. As with so much in life, we’ve just got to make our own choices.

This stock is interesting because it uses some pretty weird aromatics, by western standards. A “normal” stock would have carrots, celery, onion, maybe some bay leaves and black peppercorns. This one still has the onions, but they’re subtly different.

See if you can spot what makes this different than most onions.

Yes, you char the crap out of them. This is a traditional step in creating pho, and it’s surprisingly pleasant: you just heat a dry pan on high, and place the onion down on it. And you will quickly realize that “charred onions” is a smell you’ve associated with several types of restaurants without knowing what it was. A kind of deep low smokiness that you’ve instinctively known made a place more authentic. We’re also charring the ginger for the stock, and tossing in a head of garlic cut on the equator, to expose the most garlic.

I also let it sit out for a while, to get that allicin going, bud.
That’s a reference you will only get if you’ve been watching Bon Appetit videos. (Specifically It’s Alive)

I didn’t char the onion or ginger as much as other recipes I’ve seen, because…well because char has been linked with higher chances of cancer, and that’s something that I’m more sensitive to now…oh, shit. Turns out that’s really only for meats (and to a lesser extent, burning vegetable oils in situations that generate smoke). That’s good to know. The next step is to toast off some more aromatics that are definitely pho-like: red chili peppers, star anise, and cinnamon.

This is one of my more “cookbook-y food-author” shots I’ve ever taken.

Once these are in the pot, you’re basically done for the next three hours….WAIT. NO YOU’RE NOT. Sorry, we also have lemongrass. Beat the crap out of it with the back of a knife (lemongrass is very fibrous, but holds a lot of essential oils, so you need to bruise it to get the oils producing) And toss it in the pot. Technically, that should have happened before the toasting of the spices, but whatever.

Once all the aromatics are in, assuming the pot’s started to boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and, if you want to, skim the scum from the top of the stock. I didn’t, because all it really does is make the final product better looking (the grey scum is just protein compounds from the bones cooking off. Like…little flecks of hamburger grease) As I said, removing them will make a better looking stock, but otherwise isn’t important, unless you’ve got ENOUGH scum that it foams over the whole pot. THEN it can ‘choke out’ the stock by insulating it, so getting rid of it would be useful.

Is this too much scum? Probably. But as noted, I was in a weird headspace Saturday, so I did nothing.

After 2 hours, I came back and found that the mixture had reduced by at least 1/3. And this is where I referenced flying blind: typically, if you were going for that thicker, almost jell-o like consistency, you’d cook this for much longer, like, up to 8 or 10 hours, in order to suck all the connective tissue and gelatin from the bones. But this is only a 3 hour stock, and some of the aromatics were starting to get beached ouf of the water, so I figured we didn’t want things to get too dry, and I added another quart of warm water. If you want a thicker, richer stock, you could add less water, and just use something to press the aromatics down to keep them submerged (though if the stock evaporates until bone is exposed, you should definitely add more water.

Another hour, and it’s time to strain. Take the stock off the heat, and let it cool for a couple minutes as you get your catching systems prepared: I lined a colander with cheese cloth, and placed it over a large Tupperware container.

A three-part system to get solid stock.

This is crucial, because you want to avoid the dreaded “Stock seppuku”: too many chefs have spent hours cooking a stock, and gone to strain the solids from it, and forgotten which part they wanted to SAVE, dumping their stock straight through a colander and down the sink, catching all the worthless solids as they destroy the very thing they sought to create. I will not make such a mistake with this bad boy. What I WILL do is discover that my set-up is slightly too small: while the container can hold all the liquid, the colander sits too low in it, meaning I have to lift it out of the Tupperware to actually drain. Toss the bones, (though I harvested the remaining marrow to experiment with), and press the rest of the solids to make sure you’ve got all the liquid, then toss them too.

Take your stock, slap a lid on it, and pop it into a fridge. (Maybe let it cool a little bit first, as it’s probably quite warm.) Leave the assembly for someone to clean up in the morning. After all, it’s just one pan, one pot, a cutting board, and the colander. (In our house, dishwashing is semi-formally Nate’s job, as tending to the chickens and cooking are semi-formally mine. (SPEAKING of the chickens, fun fact: the first time I made this recipe was the weekend before we got the chickens, who can ALSO be used in that same “I never asked for this, but now I’ve got to take care of it” symbolism with the cat.)

Now, at some point, you need to take the fat off this stock: left in the fridge, the fat is going to harden into a layer on top of the stock, so just crack through it, peel it off, and toss it. (unless you really want seasoned beef fat for something.) There might be a couple flecks of it left, but those are fine.

I was going to take the picture of the big sheets of fat, but my hands were full until I threw it in the garbage can, and we have a white garbage can, with white garbage bags, that had some white paper towels in it, that the WHITE fat was sitting on top of, so I decided that was visually unhelpful, and fuck if I’m picking fat out the trash for a photo op.

And this is actually where we failed, the first time: I made the stock, split it into several quart-containers, and froze it. And I never used it. With the immediate chaos of getting the chickens, adapting to Nate moving back, combined with my dad’s issues liking food, I just never felt like it was the right time to pop out the “kind of like pho” beef stock. I’ve talked before how my dad and I had a complicated culinary relationship, and this felt like a heartfelt effort all too likely to end in tears. I figured worst case, I’d wait until he was feeling better, and we’d have it then. Turns out, I underestimated the worst case. (slash missed the window: he did have several months in remission where we could have tried it, but by that point, it was functionally forgotten.)  

He died never trying it. And then, a couple months ago, through reasons I don’t remember, we had to throw away all the things in that freezer. (I think it somehow came unplugged? Or the door was left open for a day or two?) So literally other than like, a quick taste as I placed it in the containers, no one ever tasted the original.

Not so this time. THIS time, I got to the next half, and learned how much of a pain THAT was.

Assembling the Madness

Here things get crazy in a hurry, and this recipe REALLY shows its roots. Because finishing this dish requires you to: blanch vegetables, simmer stock, soak noodles, AND cook steaks all at the same time. That’s FOUR cooking stations needed. All for different windows of time.

I avoided it by just letting my broccoli and noodles get a little cold after getting their pots out of the way.

And that SCREAMS “I was designed for a restaurant”, to me, because it’s pretty simple in a professional kitchen, where someone else does the dishes, and you’ve got 24 feet of burner space. My family has ONE stove, older than me, with 4 burners. Also, Nate and I were playing video games all afternoon, so he never did the dishes, and So this is an “all hands” situation. Luckily, again, most of the steps are pretty simple: get about half of the stock, and pour it in a pan, and get it to a simmer. (This recipe actually says to get all the stock in a pan, but that’s to serve six people, and I’ve only got three, so half the stock.)

Get some julienned ginger in there, and get it simmering with the stock. Meanwhile, get…let’s see, the original recipe is 6 six ounce steaks, that’s 36 ounces, so 18 ounces of steak. Toss them in (2 tablespoons, halved) 1 tablespoon of soy sauce. This is technically a little early…I think, again, the recipe isn’t super precise, as they just have you season the steak, and then sear it, but I’ve found that any time you’re going to salt a steak, the longer you CAN do it, the better.

Like, theoretically, the BEST time to have done this was like, an hour ahead of time, or the night before.

It just lets the salt work on the meat more, giving a better result. Alright, meat sitting, stock simmering. Next we have to soak the noodles. Get like, a quart or two of water up to 120 degrees, toss in 8 ounces of rice noodles, cover, turn off the heat, and let sit for 15-20 minutes, until the noodles soften up.

Now, the last thing we need to prep is the green vegetables. Which is the literal instructions in the recipe: 1 pound broccoli, or other green vegetable, such as peas. We’re gonna blanch these, which means we’re going to drop them in boiling water for a couple minutes, then move them to ice water.

A clear sign Jon was getting frantic: who thought “the part people need a picture of from that process is the CONCEPT of ICE WATER”?

This method lets you get vegetables that are, you know, cooked and therefore easier to eat, while retaining their nice green color (as you cook chlorophyll, it breaks down, especially in wet environments). And NOW things are getting really spicy, because, I don’t know if you’ve been keeping track, but I had to cut these veggies on a cutting board, as well as the meat on a cutting board, then there’s the pan, the pot, THIS pot, the bowl of ice water, and the fact that Nate definitely wasn’t doing the dishes as I made dinner because that would be a total clusterfuck, so now our sink is completely full.

Luckily, I only have one last step: cook the steaks. We decided to pan-fry them, so I got a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil smoking hot and started searing the shit out of the steaks, a process that was very anxiety inducing given the amount of hissing and oil it threw everywhere, but which produced…pretty good steaks, honestly.

The lighting’s not perfect, because my belly can blot out the sun, but we’ll serve in the shade.

At which point I remembered this wasn’t the last step. I mean, technically, “assemble the dish” is the LAST step, but we also needed some scallions sliced, which I hammered out in a couple seconds. Then, it was just a matter of putting some noodles in a bowl, adding steak, and broccoli, and ladling over the stock. And the ratios just looked weird as shit, as it turns out the stock had maybe over-simmered, and we were down to like, 2 cups of liquid for three bowls.

Serving was actually a nice moment, as we all got to have a laugh together over the amount of effort I had been putting in, and my low expectations. “Okay, how does this work?” my mother asked, eying the various bowls of completed components. “It probably doesn’t,” I replied, triggering the start of the laughs. I intentionally misphrased the introduction, explaining that the dish was “for tomorrow”, giving Nate the opportunity to demand we put our bowls back and wait for the proper time. And also, it was at THIS moment that I realized I hadn’t halved either the noodles or the vegetables for the half-recipe, meaning we had twice as much broccoli and noodles as I needed, leading to a series of jokes about “look, that’s the purpose of the site: I fuck up dishes in memorial of my father, so you don’t have to.”

“wait, are they supposed to making dishes for YOUR dad, or the same dish for their dad…?”
Nate: “The lesson is, ‘if you’re going to make a recipe for a special occasion, make sure you can do it right.”
Oh, good, I’m even screwing up the MORALS of my own posts now.

And you know what? It wasn’t that bad at all! I was pretty worried, since the amount of char on the steaks was a little high, and while simmering it, the stock just kept tasting kind of burnt to me, but with all the components, I think it worked. The steak was good, the broccoli was good, the noodles were fine…I wouldn’t call the dish all that much better than the sum of its parts, and I think it only really ‘clicked’ near the end. But at least this time, we ate the stuff.

WEDNESDAY: IT IS CURRENTLY 5 AM MONDAY MORNING. I AM GOING TO TRY TO PASS OUT SO I CAN GET UP AT 11 AND GET THIS UPLOADED, AND MAYBE FINISH MY OTHER 3 GOALS I MADE LAST MONDAY.

Recipe

Beef with Ginger

Makes six servings

Ingredients

                The Stock

5 pounds beef bones

1 gallon water (or enough to cover by at least 1”)

1 large onion, halved (no need to peel)

8 oz ginger, halved (also unpeeled)

1 clove garlic, cut in half through the equator

2 stalks lemongrass, bruised

8 star anise

6” cinnamon stick

2 dried chile peppers

                Finished dish

1 two-inch piece of ginger, peeled and julienned

8 ounces rice noodles

2 tablespoons soy sauce (and more for seasoning)

6 six-ounce steaks (Roughly. I bought 4 steaks that were a total of 34 ounces, took two that were around 18 ounces, and trimmed them into 4 pieces.)

1 pound green vegetables, such as broccoli, snow peas, green beans, trimmed

 6 scallions, thinly sliced

Preparation

1. Place the bones in a large pot and cover with the water. Bring to a boil. While the water heats, use a dry skillet on high heat to char the ginger and onion on their cut sides. Add to the pot, along with the garlic and lemongrass.

2. Remove the skillet from the heat for a few minutes, and reduce the burner to medium heat. Return the skillet to the burner, and toast the star anise, cinnamon, and red peppers for about 1 minute until aromatic. Dump into the pot.

3. Once the pot boils, reduce the heat to a low simmer, and let simmer for 3 hours, until any meat left on the bones is falling off. Cool the stock, then pour through a straining apparatus into a storage container. Throw away the bones, and press the remaining solids to extract all the liquids. Allow to cool further, cover, and place in the refrigerator to cool for several hours or overnight.

4. Before assembly, remove the (now solidified) fat from the stock, and pour the stock into a saucepan roughly 30 minutes before you want to eat. Bring to a simmer, and add the julienned ginger. Toss the steaks in the soy sauce and allow to sit as you prepare the rest of the dish.

5. Heat 1 quart water to around 130 degrees, add the rice noodles, and allow to soak for 15-20 minutes until tender. Drain when complete.

6. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil, add 2 tablespoons of salt, and blanch the vegetables. (Meaning “place the vegetables in the boiling water for 1 to 3 minutes, and then move to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking”)

7. Season the simmering stock with soy sauce to taste, and cook the steak as you’d like to: grill it, broil it, pan-fry it, however you want to do it, to whatever doneness you want. Let rest for 5-10 minutes, then slice thinly.

8. Assemble the final bowl: place a portion of noodles and steak in a bowl, add the vegetables, and ladle over simmered stock. Top with scallions and serve.