Paradise

A while back I aged a choice rib roast and froze it. I can’t help buying roasts when they’re on sale. It’s a thing.

I decided to cook it. A few days ago I put it in the fridge. As expected, it took eternity to thaw, so I put it on the dining room table for a few hours a day. To prevent death from bacteria, I salted the outside heavily and smeared it with pressed garlic.

Today I buttered it, stuck it on the Showtime oven spits, wrapped foil around it, and tied the foil in place with twine. I roasted it for quite some time. Ordinarily, I’d shoot for maybe 115 degrees, but I was also cooking for my dad, and he won’t eat beef until it’s carbonized, so I went to over 120. I removed the foil at the end to get some browning.

Geez, it was good. It was overcooked, sure, but it fell apart, and the taste was buttery and beefy and amazing. The fatty outer part (the part I love most) was full of the funkiness you get from dry-aging.

I would have baked it at 175 in the oven, but the oven was on the blink. I had to get it fixed today, and by the time it was fixed, it was too late to put the beef in.

I also baked a couple of small potatoes, not wanting to stuff myself silly at lunch. I baked them using my recipe. Rubbed the outsides with wet salt and put them on the rack at 450. They were magnificent.

I also made sourdough bread. I’ve been replenishing my starter stock, and I made some changes, so I wanted to do a test.

Earlier this week, I found that I only had one packet of frozen starter left, so I thawed it, mixed it with water, and used it in a big bowl of wet dough. I divided it in half, and I put instant yeast in one half. I wanted to see how well a mix of yeast and bacteria worked.

This is a starter I made a long time ago from kimchi juice. I don’t know what regular starter is like, but this stuff FLIES. Put it in dough tonight, and the dough will be sour tomorrow.

Last night I took about 1/4 pound of the yeast and bacteria starter, and I mixed it with three parts unleavened dough. I started by Cuisinarting the starter with dry flour, and then I added about 130 grams of water and blended it just until it was wet and mixed. I rolled it into a ball, and I put the ball on a sheet of floured nonstick foil. I put a big glass bowl over the foil, inverted. This way, when the dough rose, it was flat on the bottom, and it didn’t get big enough to be deformed by the walls of the bowl. The only purpose of the bowl was to keep humidity in.

Today when the dough looked sufficiently large, I slid the foil onto a stone at 450 degrees and baked the bread. I had a loaf of store sourdough on hand for comparison.

It turns out my sourdough is ten times better. It’s not as dry, and the flavor is much more intense. I love it. It has a tough crust, but I think that’s normal with sourdough.

I didn’t punch it down. Maybe I should have.

The crust didn’t have those cute little blisters everyone likes.

This is pretty satisfying. I don’t know of anyone else who uses cabbage bacteria to make bread. It has turned out to be easy to use, and it gives excellent results.

I didn’t have real horseradish sauce, so I stirred some prepared horseradish into heavy-duty mayonnaise. It was very good, and it only took a minute.

This is an eye-popping meal that doesn’t take much work. The bread is kind of a pain, but you don’t really need it.

Incidentally, I stirred some of the beef drippings into the garlic butter I used on the potato. It’s a little sick, but it works.

I can’t believe plain old choice beef can be this good. The only seasonings were salt, garlic, and butter. The horseradish wasn’t even needed. Next time I may skip it.

Next time your local grocer has rib roasts on sale, remember this. People will think you’re God’s gift to cooking, and it’s easier than making something stupid, like a casserole.

If you want to kill your guests with pleasure and heart disease, make this stuff and make brownies using my recipe. You can make them days in advance. Nuke the brownies before you serve them, and pile on whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, and hot fudge sauce, plus nuts. If you don’t have my brownie recipe, sorry. You should have bought my book. Now you pay the price.