Re: OT: Wedding

* Henrik Theiling said on 2005-12-02 12:41:08 +0100
> Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...> writes:
> > Juha was talking to the complaints of a young friend of his who had
> > recently got married.
> > "You know how they say marriage is like a barrel of onions with
> > honey at the top?  My marriage has been onions from the very start!"
> > Juha looks at him.
> > "You opened the barrel at the wrong end!"
>
> I *love* onions! :-)
You can eat a lot more (fried) onions than raw honey anyway - I
especially recommend (~ means "about"):

Onion-jellied steak
===================

~1 kg deboned steak of preferred meat[0]
~3    ordinary yellow onions
~1    whole garlic, be it chinese (one piece) or divisible
maybe a little bit of vegetables (mini-carrots, broccoli...)
other kinds of onions

Get a ceramic cooker/pot or whatever it's called in English, it's not
mentioned in my dictionary. It's a pot/casserole/container made of
terracotta[1], with matching lid. Make sure it's glazed/blank on the
inside (eases cleaning) and that the glaze and terracotta does not
contain lead/is safe for cooking.

Rub steak with salt+pepper, then fry it quickly to lock in juices.

Slice yellow onions, other onions, garlic into boats, chop veggies into
thimble-sized pieces or smaller.

Fill the bottom of the pot with a layer of onion/garlic.

You now have a choice to make. Either put a cooking-termometer in the
piece of meat, choice a), or don't, choice b).

If choice a) put the steak in the pot, fill around the edges (but not so
it touches the termometer) with the rest of the onion and veggies. If
choice b), put the steak in the pot, attempting to completely
surround-and-cover it with onions and veggies.

Put the lid[2] on the pot, put it in the oven.

If choice a)[3], the oven needs to be preheated to about 200 degress
celcius. Let the pot stay there for at least 30 minutes then start
checking the termometer (about every ten minutes) for the correct
cooking/roasting-temperature for that type of meat. 70 degrees celcius
is usually plenty whatever you're making.

If choice b) you can preheat the oven to the correct temperature for
that meat and let the pot stay in forever, it will eventually reach the
correct temperature then stay there until you're ready to eat. -OR- you
could preheat to 200 celcius, let the pot stay for 30-40 minutes then
wait for the onions to collapse.

Onion-collapse: When the onions are sufficiently warm they will
collapse, meaning the steak will sit visibly lower in the pot, on top of
a thick sauce/soup of veggie-spiced onions. When this occurs the steak
itself (100% of tries so far) will also be sufficiently cooked. There is
nothing more to be gained when the onions have collapsed so turn off the
oven, sneak the steak out of the pot and let it rest for at least ten
minutes.

Eat the steak and the yummy onion/veggie-mix that's left in the pot with
something that can soak up the sauce, like bulgur or fluffy rice or
potatoes. If you let the onion-sauce cool it will jellify and look
positively strange, and it will be a lot harder to clean the pot :)
If you remove the onion-and-veg remains you can freeze the sauce and
use it as stock for some other food later on.

It's a lot of food for two people but the steak-remains can be used on
sandwiches the day after and the onion/veggie-mix is so yummy it will
probably have mysteriously disappeared all by itself, as it tastes much
better than honey and the baked garlic tastes better than apples!

You can do this with other cuts of meat as well but remove the bones
or there won't be much room for the onions in the pot!
-------------------

Congrats and do take care of eachother!

[0] I usually wind up using porc, it's cheaper and comes in smaller
    amounts
[1] a word found by google but missed by dict(1), wow.
[2] might have to water-soak the lid first, depends on the lid
[3] good choice for larger steaks, not so good for several pieces of
    meat or smaller steaks


t.