Fare Exchange: Share best recipes made or tasted over holidays

Good December morning to you, indispensable readers. As we clean up from Christmas and stir up for New Year’s, here are three requests:

Please share with the rest of us the best recipe you made over the holidays, the best dish you sampled over the holidays, and this specific one from S.C. of Lookout Mountain: a pot roast cooked with a coffee marinade. If you sampled a fabulous dish but didn’t dare ask the chef for the recipe, pass that on to our panel of experts – that would be all of our readers.

It was good to read Roseann Strazinsky’s name in a recent email as she is a longtime participant in Fare conversations from her home in Fairfield Glade. Here’s one of her favorite December recipes, combining cranberry juice with peaches, blueberries and grapes; the proper descriptor is “refreshing.”

Cranberry Juice Salad Mold

3 1/2 cups cranberry juice (1 1/2 cups will be boiled and the remaining chilled)

6 ounces lemon Jell-O

1 cup diced canned peaches, drained

1/2 cup blueberries

1/2 cup seedless grapes halved

1/4 cup slivered almonds

Bring to a boil 1 1/2 cups of cranberry juice. Dissolve Jell-O in a large bowl with the hot juice. Stir in the remaining chilled juice and refrigerate until thick, about an hour and a half.

Oil a 6-cup Jell-O mold lightly.

Stir fruit and almonds into the thickened Jell-O and pour into the prepared mold. Refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

Unmold and serve.

KOREAN TOUCH

Here’s a recipe with a Korean touch, from a Sabrina Daniel collection. She explained its origin.

“I tutored two Korean boys and their mom always had a pot of white rice on the stove. She cooked for me and, of course, I asked her for a recipe. It is a Korean Soy Sauce in which you marinate the meat. “

Beef with Korean Soy Sauce

Soy sauce and water in equal parts (though Ms. Daniel doesn’t specify, perhaps 1 cup each)

3/4 cup sugar (begin with less and add to taste)

Black pepper to taste

Chopped onions

Thin slices of beef

Wesson oil

Mix soy sauce and water. Add sugar to taste and black pepper. Add onions to sauce.

Marinate thin-sliced beef for 1 to 2 days. Pan-fry in oil until brown.

Serve over rice.

BEST BEEF

Karen Cline’s crock-pot roast arrived at Fare Exchange the same morning that a Christmas crock-pot came to our house. So home and column, as often happens, meet. She described these as two of their favorite recipes, one for crock-pot and one for stovetop.

Three-Envelope Roast

1 envelope dry Italian salad dressing mix

1 envelope dry ranch dressing mix

1 envelope dry brown gravy mix

2 cups water

3 pounds chuck roast

Mix dry mixes with water until blended completely.

Brown roast in a skillet in a little oil. This step is optional.

Place meat in crock-pot and pour liquid over. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 9 hours.

Serve with mashed potatoes.

Variation: Add cooked carrots, mushrooms and/or celery to leftovers for a great stew.

Beef Bourguignon in Five Steps

1 tablespoon oil

3 ounces chopped onions or shallots

3 1/2 ounces thick-cut bacon, diced

1 1/2 pounds stew beef, cut into 1 -inch pieces, patted dry

1/4 cup flour

1 1/4 cups stock, hot

1 1/4 cups red wine

1 bouquet garni (1 bay leaf, 3 sprigs thyme, 3 sprigs parsley tied together)

Black pepper

3 1/2 ounces mushrooms, quartered

Salt to taste

In heavy pan over medium heat, sauté onions and bacon in oil until browned; remove and set aside; leave drippings in pan.

Add beef and brown on all sides; brown in small batches to avoid steaming.

Sprinkle browned beef with flour, stir until browned and add stock; stir, scraping bottom of pan; add onions, bacon, wine and bouquet garni; season with pepper.

Simmer very gently 2 hours. Add mushrooms and cook additional 30 minutes; season with salt.

This is better served the next day.

– From “I Know How to Cook” by Ginetete Mathiot, recipe published in NY Times

A GOOD POUR

Our resident foodies, Mr. and Mrs. Sunday, have both preferences and directions for pour-over coffee. Though they have toasted the morning with many a pour-over cup, they still prefer the French Press method.

Pour-Over Coffee

There is a lot of mysticism about pour-over coffee but the basics are not too difficult. You’ll need these supplies:

A filter cone large enough to hold the amount of coffee you want to drink

Filter papers to match

A pot or cup large enough to hold the coffee

Hot water (there’s lots of argument here start with a medium simmer (190-200) and adjust from there)

Coffee to put in the filter cone

The variables are:

Use enough coffee: 4 ounces (volume) for 1 quart of coffee works well. It doesn’t seem to matter much if you measure the beans or the ground coffee, so do what’s convenient.

The grind matters and fresher is better. Tell the person you buy coffee from what you’re doing, and ask for grind advice.

If you have or buy a grinder, start with the standard and experiment. The finer the grind, the stronger the taste, but you can start to develop “mud” in the bottom of the cup. We don’t mind, but tastes differ.

Choose a tasty coffee. If you like Starbucks (we don’t; it tastes burnt to us), you can buy it by the pound in any of their stores. Velo has a similar roasting profile if you’d prefer to support local business. We’re very partial to Chattz coffee and strongly prefer their Brazilian, Guatemala, Antigua and House/Studio blends. Even their decaf (Ethiopian) tastes like real coffee.

Technique: Put the cone on the pot/cup, the paper in the cone, the coffee in the paper and pour. Ideally you fill the cone just once as the time it takes to empty is the proper time for the coffee to brew. Make sure all the coffee gets wet; sometimes little islands or boulders of dry coffee will form and you’ll have to break them up. Try not to break the paper in the process.

When the cone is empty of all but grounds, drink and enjoy.

Whatever the liquid, let’s clink glasses or mugs to the year just passing. It had its blessings as well as its messes, surely, as will the one ahead. And we can, if we so choose, give thanks fore and aft. So, let’s join the chorus.