making Superman's beef bourguignon - with pictures!

Hey kids, you like beef?  Well, Superman does, as I wrote about when I first posted the recipe to his world-famous beef bourguignon a few weeks back.  The recipe is quite daunting and seemed perhaps a bit fancy for my tastes, but as I'm in the habit of making comic book recipes, apparently (check out my attempt at Larfleeze's Orange Lantern cookies!), I knew that I had to give it a shot - for Superman.  For Superman.

I'll repost the recipe here with pictures of my attempt so all can vicariously experience making this painstakingly-involved meal for yourselves.  One note before we get started - I'm not a big fan of booze, and as such I substituted for the alcoholic additions when they were called for.  This most certainly changed the end product's taste as mine ended up more beefy than it otherwise would have.  If you want to follow this recipe, just use wine instead of the non-alcoholic alternative and (highly flammable) brandy.  Let's begin (the recipe is italicized, my notes are in plain text)!

INGREDIENTS

            6-8 ounces salt pork, cut into 1/2 inch chunks

            4 Tbsp unsalted butter, divided

            4 pounds trimmed beef chuck, cut into 2-inch cubes, patted dry with paper towels

            Salt

            10-12 shallots, chopped, about 2 cups

            2 large, peeled carrots, 1 chopped, 1 cut into 2-inch chunks

            4-5 garlic cloves, chopped

            1 ounce of dried porcini mushrooms (optional)

            2 Tbsp tomato paste

            1/2 cup brandy, plus 2 Tbsp

            1 bottle Pinot Noir, or other red wine

            Beef Stock (low sodium), at least 1 cup, quite easily more

            1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

            2 bay leaves

            2 teaspoons dried thyme

            4 whole cloves

            24 pearl onions, fresh or frozen

            1 lb fresh shiitake, cremini or button mushrooms

            Beurre manie: 3 Tbsp flour blended with 2 Tbsp butter

METHOD

1 If you are using them, pour 1 cup of boiling water over the dried porcini mushrooms and allow them to rehydrate for 30 minutes. Remove the mushrooms and chop coarsely. Pour the soaking water through a paper towel (to remove any dirt or debris) into a bowl and set aside.

I totally didn't use this (optional) mushroom.  It was only an ounce, and while fans of mushrooms might balk at me saying this, I was already using a pound of button mushrooms and didn't think an ounce of another would make that much of a difference.

2 In a large sauté pan, pour enough water to cover the bottom by about 1/8 inch. Over medium heat, cook the salt pork in the pan until the water evaporates, stirring occasionally. Once the water is gone, reduce the heat to medium-low, and continue to cook the salt pork until much of the fat has rendered out of it. Add a tablespoon of butter and continue to cook the salt pork unti the pieces are browned and crispy. Use a slotted spoon to remove the salt pork pieces to a large Dutch oven or other large, thick-bottomed, lidded pot.

I had never used salt pork before, and as you can see, it is about 2/3rds fat to 1/3rd meat.  It popped and sizzled in the pan and smelled much like bacon.  Most of the fat melted off during the cooking, and it served as a base for the sauce that was to come later.  This ain't the most healthy meal, but I guess Superman doesn't have to worry about his arteries clogging.

3 Increase the heat to medium-high. Working in batches so that you do not crowd the pan, brown the beef. Leaving space around each piece of sizzling meat ensures that it browns and does not steam. Don't move the pieces of beef in the pan until they get a good sear, then turn them so they can get browned on another side. Take your time. This will take 15-25 minutes, depending on how large a sauté pan you have. Once browned, remove the beef from the sauté pan and place in the Dutch oven with the salt pork.

4 When all the beef has browned, add the shallots, the one chopped carrot, and the chopped porcini mushrooms if using. Stir in the pot to remove any browned, stuck-on bits in the pan. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add the garlic and the tomato paste. Cook another 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently.

5 Add the brandy and stir to combine. Boil down by half, then add the strained mushroom soaking water (if using). Scrape any remaining browned bits off the bottom of the sauté pan and pour the contents of the pan into the Dutch oven.

I pretty much ignored step 5.  Once I combined all of the ingredients (that I chose to use), I thought it looked like I had skimped on the carrot.  I might recommend adding another whole carrot to the mix somewhere, either here or later on.

6 To the Dutch oven add the bottle of wine and enough beef stock to almost cover the beef; the beef pieces should be barely poking up out of the liquid. Add the parsley, bay leaves, thyme and cloves. Cover and bring to a bare simmer. After 1 hour, add the second carrot, peeled and cut into chunks of 1-2 inches. Continue cooking for another hour, or until the beef is tender.

Here's where I make the most drastic changes to the original recipe.  As I mentioned, I didn't use wine, but instead sparkling red grape juice (which is a non-alocholic substitute for the red wine the recipe calls for).  Not wanting to eat the equivalent of grape-flavored meat when all was said and done, I added more beef stock - four cups as opposed to the one it calls for (thought the recipe is a bit ambiguous) - to hold in more of the beef flavor than it otherwise might.  I probably used 2/3rds of the bottle of red grape juice instead of the entire thing to compensate.  Regardless, I used enough liquid to almost cover all of the meat.

I was also pretty luck to have all of the spices on hand.  I actually still had parsley growing in my outside garden (crazy!), and Larry brought some bay leaves from his probably better-stocked spice rack at home.

DRINK

This is what it all looked like in the pot.  Now, the recipe calls for a dutch oven, and I'm clearly using a run-of-the-mill stove-top pot in this picture.  That's because dutch ovens, other than being a funny euphemism for, well, farts, are simply fancy lidded pots.  They're thicker and they might cook a bit more evenly, but you can (and I did) get by with a simple pot with a lid.

7 Meanwhile, trim the tough stems off the shiitake, cremini, or button mushrooms and slice into 2-3 large pieces; small mushrooms leave whole. Prepare the pearl onions. Boil them in their skins for 4-5 minutes. Drain and submerge in a bowl of ice water. Slice the tips and root ends off the onions and slip off the outer skins.

The pearl onions took forever to prepare.  Ridiculous amounts of time were spent on cutting and taking off outer layers.

8 When the beef is tender, use tongs to remove all the beef and the chunks of carrots; set aside in a bowl. Strain the contents of the Dutch oven through a fine-meshed sieve set over a medium pot. This will be the sauce. Boil the sauce down, tasting frequently. If it begins to taste too salty, turn off the heat. Otherwise, boil down until you have about 3 cups. Turn off the heat.

I found that I had cooked away too much of the sauce when the meat was done.  Using some more red grape juice and another two cups of beef stock/broth, I combined it with the sauce I had remaining, and it turned out just fine.

What a gross picture that turns out to be.  I will say that it didn't look much better in person.  I'll also again point out that more carrots (the recipe calls for two at different points) might be a good thing.

9 Heat a large sauté pan over high heat and add the mushrooms. Dry sauté the mushrooms over high heat, shaking the pan and stirring often, until they release their water, about 4-5 minutes. Add the pearl onions and 3 tablespoons butter and toss to combine. Sprinkle salt over the onions and mushrooms. Sauté until the onions begin to brown. Remove from heat.

10 Returning to the sauce, reduce the heat to medium and whisk in the beurre manie. Whisk in a third of the paste, wait for it to incorporate into the sauce, then add another third of the beurre manie, and so on. Do not let this boil, but allow it to simmer very gently for 2-3 minutes. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of brandy. Taste for salt and add some if needed.

The "beurre maine" is just the flour and butter.  It took a while for it to mix in with the sauce, but it eventually did and thickened the sauce up.

11 To serve, coat the beef, carrots, mushrooms and pearl onions with the sauce and serve with potatoes, egg noodles or lots of crusty bread.

And here I am - FIVE HOURS AFTER STARTING - with Larry and plates of beef bourguignon.  How apprehensive we look!  Perhaps that's because the meal is missing something...something to make it more appealing to, say, Superman...

I KNOW!  KETCHUP!  As Larry remarked when I brought out the bottle from the fridge, "I don't think ketchup has any business being in this meal", and I'm inclined to agree.  It's a bit too hearty and beefy to demand a condiment, in my opinion, but it's a key Superman ingredient, so it stayed.

And the verdict?

Not bad!  In fact, despite it's fairly unappealing look, it was pretty good - the mushrooms in particular were a pleasant surprise.  It was very beef stew-like, though I imagine the amount of beef stock and the lack of alcohol played a significant role in that.

I don't know that I'll ever be making this recipe again, because of just how much time it took to prepare.  I realize that a lot of that's on me - I'm pretty methodical and tend to take a long time doing pretty much anything I work on.  But there were still hours of work involved no matter who was at the helm.  Add this to the fact that good old fashioned beef stew might be a good substitute, and this might be my last attempt at the Super-meal.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the entire process, though - it was challenging and rewarding to try something this different and this involving.  And now, if Superman ever comes to visit, I've got some practice in at making his favorite meal.

Superman's beef bourguignon recipe

Superman is a meat eater.  I know that may ruffle some feathers, but it's been a part of his mythos for quite some time.  In recent years he's been portrayed as a vegetarian, and in all honesty, that makes a lot of sense.  Here's Superman, a god-like character who protects every living creature on the earth, someone who doesn't necessarily have to eat (or sleep), but does to appreciate the human experience.  You think he's going to just start eating birds and rabbits and sheep because other people are doing it?  Come on, Superman.  We humans do it because we have to eat to survive.  And also because it is delicious.  We're flawed beings.  But you get all your sustenance from the Sun.  You were cutting edge before solar power was cutting edge.

In any case, omnivore Superman's favorite dish is beef bourguignon.  Specifically, he eats it with ketchup.  This is something that was established decades ago, but like anything canonical (or semi-canonical) with Superman, it keeps reappearing.  In recent years, it became something of a code word between Lois and Clark, a phrase Superman could pass along that let Lois know he was okay even in the grips of some universe-shattering conflict.

Within the DC offices, it became something of a euphemism for sex between the two characters.  "Beef bourguignon with ketchup" is rather suggestive, if you think about it in the right (or wrong) way.  And though I haven't been able to find it after LITERALLY MINUTES of Internet searching, I know that there's a song where Superman references his love for meat.  Perhaps it's from the play "It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman"?  Someone help me out with that one.

In addition to these few clips from various Superman comics, there's a great scene in Kingdom Come (the extra pages added for the collected edition) where Clark sits down at a Planet Krypton restaurant and inquires about beef bourguignon.

The dish itself is fairly time consuming, but not something I'd necessarily classify as "fancy", French pronunciation aside.  It looks pretty hearty, though:

There are recipes strewn across the Internet, and they're all fairly similar, but the following is the one I'm going to try out in the next couple of weeks.  Rest assured, there will be pictures.  Who's up for eating Superman style?  Don't forget to add the ketchup.

(This comes directly from http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/beef_bourguignon/)

Beef Bourguignon

INGREDIENTS

            6-8 ounces salt pork, cut into 1/2 inch chunks

            4 Tbsp unsalted butter, divided

            4 pounds trimmed beef chuck, cut into 2-inch cubes, patted dry with paper towels

            Salt

            10-12 shallots, chopped, about 2 cups

            2 large, peeled carrots, 1 chopped, 1 cut into 2-inch chunks

            4-5 garlic cloves, chopped

            1 ounce of dried porcini mushrooms (optional)

            2 Tbsp tomato paste

            1/2 cup brandy, plus 2 Tbsp

            1 bottle Pinot Noir, or other red wine

            Beef Stock (low sodium), at least 1 cup, quite easily more

            1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

            2 bay leaves

            2 teaspoons dried thyme

            4 whole cloves

            24 pearl onions, fresh or frozen

            1 lb fresh shiitake, cremini or button mushrooms

            Beurre manie: 3 Tbsp flour blended with 2 Tbsp butter

METHOD

1 If you are using them, pour 1 cup of boiling water over the dried porcini mushrooms and allow them to rehydrate for 30 minutes. Remove the mushrooms and chop coarsely. Pour the soaking water through a paper towel (to remove any dirt or debris) into a bowl and set aside.

2 In a large sauté pan, pour enough water to cover the bottom by about 1/8 inch. Over medium heat, cook the salt pork in the pan until the water evaporates, stirring occasionally. Once the water is gone, reduce the heat to medium-low, and continue to cook the salt pork until much of the fat has rendered out of it. Add a tablespoon of butter and continue to cook the salt pork unti the pieces are browned and crispy. Use a slotted spoon to remove the salt pork pieces to a large Dutch oven or other large, thick-bottomed, lidded pot.

3 Increase the heat to medium-high. Working in batches so that you do not crowd the pan, brown the beef. Leaving space around each piece of sizzling meat ensures that it browns and does not steam. Don't move the pieces of beef in the pan until they get a good sear, then turn them so they can get browned on another side. Take your time. This will take 15-25 minutes, depending on how large a sauté pan you have. Once browned, remove the beef from the sauté pan and place in the Dutch oven with the salt pork.

4 When all the beef has browned, add the shallots, the one chopped carrot, and the chopped porcini mushrooms if using. Stir in the pot to remove any browned, stuck-on bits in the pan. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add the garlic and the tomato paste. Cook another 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently.

5 Add the brandy and stir to combine. Boil down by half, then add the strained mushroom soaking water (if using). Scrape any remaining browned bits off the bottom of the sauté pan and pour the contents of the pan into the Dutch oven.

6 To the Dutch oven add the bottle of wine and enough beef stock to almost cover the beef; the beef pieces should be barely poking up out of the liquid. Add the parsley, bay leaves, thyme and cloves. Cover and bring to a bare simmer. After 1 hour, add the second carrot, peeled and cut into chunks of 1-2 inches. Continue cooking for another hour, or until the beef is tender.

7 Meanwhile, trim the tough stems off the shiitake, cremini, or button mushrooms and slice into 2-3 large pieces; small mushrooms leave whole. Prepare the pearl onions. Boil them in their skins for 4-5 minutes. Drain and submerge in a bowl of ice water. Slice the tips and root ends off the onions and slip off the outer skins.

8 When the beef is tender, use tongs to remove all the beef and the chunks of carrots; set aside in a bowl. Strain the contents of the Dutch oven through a fine-meshed sieve set over a medium pot. This will be the sauce. Boil the sauce down, tasting frequently. If it begins to taste too salty, turn off the heat. Otherwise, boil down until you have about 3 cups. Turn off the heat.

9 Heat a large sauté pan over high heat and add the mushrooms. Dry sauté the mushrooms over high heat, shaking the pan and stirring often, until they release their water, about 4-5 minutes. Add the pearl onions and 3 tablespoons butter and toss to combine. Sprinkle salt over the onions and mushrooms. Sauté until the onions begin to brown. Remove from heat.

10 Returning to the sauce, reduce the heat to medium and whisk in the beurre manie. Whisk in a third of the paste, wait for it to incorporate into the sauce, then add another third of the beurre manie, and so on. Do not let this boil, but allow it to simmer very gently for 2-3 minutes. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of brandy. Taste for salt and add some if needed.

11 To serve, coat the beef, carrots, mushrooms and pearl onions with the sauce and serve with potatoes, egg noodles or lots of crusty bread.

Larfleeze's Orange Lantern Cookies recipe (with pictures!)

One of the more pleasant surprises to come out of the Green Lantern title, specifically since there are now power rings for every color of the rainbow, has been the character Larfleeze, the solitary Orange Lantern.  For such an initially one-dimensional character, he's filled out quite nicely in the title lately, in my opinion, providing comic relief to a book that often desperately needs it as well as some pointed social commentary (though I don't get why Hal Jordan thinks he looks like Gonzo from the Muppets.  The snout?  I dunno).

A few months ago, DC published Green Lantern: Larfleeze Christmas Special, which stood out to me for two reasons.  First, I was surprised that the company actually used the word "Christmas" in the title of a book.  Even when they publish books containing stories pertaining to Christmas, DC usually goes the safe route and calls it a Holiday Special or something of the sort in the name of inclusiveness, which I understand.  Why they decided to buck that trend for this issue I don't know, especially when they missed an even better opportunity when a few years ago they changed the title of a book from DCU: Infinite Christmas Special to DCU: Infinite Holiday Special.  "Infinite Christmas" worked SO much better when you consider it was a take-off on "Infinite Crisis", but such is the inner workings of a big company like DC.

Second, the creative team on the book actually managed to tell a good story while mixing in random activities like the one you see at the top of this post: a recipe for Orange Lantern cookies.  I thought that the concept was novel enough that I decided to give it a try (as opposed to the Spider-Man wheatcake recipe I found a while ago), and, well, I took a lot of pictures in the process.  So let's give it a go, shall we?

The recipe first calls for the following ingredients to make the cookies:

- 1/4 cup butter softened
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons of orange juice concentrate, thawed
- 1 teaspoon of orange zest
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- a dash of salt
- 1/2 cup white chocolate chunks


I left out the salt in this recipe, because...well, I'm not a fan and it's usually for taste, anyway.

After I got the ingredients ready, my first task was to make the orange zest, which is, of course, just the peel shredded.  There's a kitchen tool made specifically for this (called a zester, naturally), but I said, "who needs to buy an extra tool when a cheese grater works just fine?"  If I ever make these again, I might just spring for the zester, because while the grater worked eventually, it was hell to clean.  Pure hell, I say!  So if you're going to use a grater, be warned.

The directions continue:

1) Preheat your Earth-oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit ("Earth-oven"...clever)
2) In a big bowl beat butter, sugar, brown sugar, orange juice concentrate and orange zest.  Then add an egg and vanilla until it looks delicious

3) In a small bowl, stir the flour, baking powder, baking soda and a dash of salt together (again, I left out the salt in my batch)
4) Add the small bowl to the big bowl and stir until smooth.  Mix in the white chocolate chunks
- I also had to add another 1/4 cup of flour at this stage as the dough was a bit sticky for me.

5) Drop small balls of dough across a greased cookie sheet
- I greased the cookie sheets with butter, and also had to slather my hands a few times with it, as the dough was still a little sticky, and I didn't want to just keep adding flour for fear of messing up the recipe.

The batter made 24 cookies, which is exactly how much the recipe calls for, interestingly enough.  And this after I ate a few, uh, spoonfuls of the dough.  If I had to do this again, I'd use three cookie sheets instead of two, as more than a few cookies expanded into a neighbor while baking.  The cookies ended up pretty large.

6) Bake 12-14 minutes or until golden brown
- I had the cookies in for 12 minutes and that was enough for me.

7) Let the cookies cool as you mix the frosting
- As you can see, some of the cookies blobbed right into the one next to them.  Bah!  But overall, they came out well and looked good.

I moved the cookies to cooling racks and moved on to the frosting.  The recipe calls for the following ingredients:

- 2 tablespoons orange concentrate, thawed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 cup butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

The frosting directions continue:

1) Mix all the above until it looks like frosting!
- This may seem like a facetious remark, but it's true.  Just keep mixing (with a spoon, not an electric mixer as with the cookie ingredients) until it looks right.

2) Spread the frosting across cooled cookies (it will melt otherwise!)


I had just enough frosting to cover all 24 cookies (I'm a bit of an overindulger, though, so this doesn't necessarily have to be the case for everyone).  The instructions, unfortunately, end here without any mention of the Orange Lantern symbol that frankly make the cookie worth baking.  It wasn't difficult to figure that part out, though, as the solution consisted of simply making more icing and adding some food coloring.

I cut the frosting ingredients to a third of what the original recipe called for (because I wouldn't need all that icing just for the decoration) and added food coloring in the following quantities: nine drops yellow, three drops red.

Oh, and then I just went ahead and used the remaining orange concentrate to make orange juice.  "Waste not, want not"...I guess.

Once the new frosting was mixed, I took a small Ziploc bag (or perhaps the generic equivalent) and cut off one of the bottom corners.  The actual cut was very small.  Then I filled the bag with the icing and twisted it, forcing the icing down into the corner with the cut.  It worked pretty well!  While drawing the design on the cookies, I realized how much the Orange Lantern symbol just looks like an angry Larfleeze.

And here's the end result!  Oh, and also a picture of my Mac.  The cookies turned out pretty well, aesthetically, but there was only one test I was concerned with...the taste test:

And the verdict...well, they're okay.  Honestly, my expectations were pretty low to begin with, as I'm not a huge fan of orange flavoring in things other than, uh, oranges.  But the white chocolate is a big hit in my book, so they have something going for them.  I don't know that I'd make these all the time, but I'd be willing to try them again.  Plus the look is really the key, here - getting an excuse to make comic book related cookies is enough of a reason to take the time to fire up the oven and get to work.

I do think that these will be my new convention cookies for this coming season.  Really, regardless of how they taste (like I said, they're okay), it's sure to catch attention...so if you wander past the Wagon Wheel Comics booth in 2011, come get a cookie.  They're made with love and oranges.

Spider-Man's Wheatcakes recipe

I picked up the 1996 Untold Tales of Spider-Man annual a little while ago - there was a Spidey/Fantastic Four crossover I wanted to grab.  This particular issue had a number of secondary features, but the one that stood out most to me was on the last page, which displayed the recipe to Aunt May's "famous" wheatcakes.

I've scanned a copy and have uploaded it here if for no other reason than I have NO IDEA why Stan Lee felt it prudent to incorporate this little bit into the Spider-Man mythos.  Wheatcakes?  Really?  Now that I see the recipe laid out for me, I'm even more perplexed.  It seems like they'd be disgusting.  Is this what people ate in the 1950s and '60s?  Did it help us defeat communism?  Seriously, wheatcakes.  I don't ever want to try them.

In case the scan isn't readable, here's the recipe, all written out-like:

May Parker's Famous Wheatcakes

Mix together:
- 1 cup buckwheat flour
- 1 cup sifted whole wheat flour
- 2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt


In a separate bowl, mix 2 cups buttermilk and 2 teaspoons molasses, then set aside.


Add to the four mix:
- 2 beaten eggs
- 1/4 cup melted butter
- the buttermilk/molasses mixture

Whip 2 egg whites until stiff (but not dry!), then fold them into the batter gently until blended.  Don't overmix!


Cook on a greased hot griddle or frying pan, until small bubbles appear on top.  Then turn pancakes over, and cook until bottom is lightly browned.  Serve hot, with butter and maple syrup.


I'd be really interested in seeing if anyone could possibly eat these, and what their opinion might be, or if this might be just a really long-running comic book joke.