1. It was a good day to get caught up on some family business: mostly paying bills and figuring out a few things.
2. I'm always looking for books to read or documentaries to watch about the history of New York City. Today I discovered that through Amazon Prime that I have access to the multi-part Ric Burns documentary series, The American Experience: New York. I watched the first part today and learned more about Alexander Hamilton, New York during the Revolutionary War, the Erie Canal, the settling of debt incurred by the states during the Revolutionary War, the tension in the USA between city and country, and other matters than I had ever known before.
Instead of watching the second chapter today, I watched the first half of another fascinating documentary from the American Experience series entitled, The Rise and Fall of Penn Station. I had no idea why Penn Station was constructed, knew nothing about building train tunnels under the East River and Hudson River, or what kind of real estate transactions were required for the Pennsylvania Railroad to buy the land on which Penn Station was built. I'm at a point now in the film dealing with the rise of Penn Station and I'm eager to learn more about its fall and how it relates to the Penn Station I arrived at last week after descending underneath the Hudson River to arrive there.
3. I have sorely missed cooking in our kitchen. During the hot weather we experienced before our trip to New York, we were doing all we could to keep our stove/oven use to a minimum in order to keep the house cool.
Today I took got out the small rump roast I bought at Yoke's on Wednesday. I covered it with salt, ground peppercorns, garlic powder, and oregano and let it sit for over an hour. I returned to the kitchen and browned it on all sides, drained the fat and deglazed the Dutch oven with apple cider vinegar. Then I constructed a braise. I began with sliced onions and on them I sprinkled cinnamon and a little brown sugar. I then topped the onion slices with cilantro, celery leaves, chopped ginger, and chopped celery and over this pile I sprinkled oregano, cumin, and cayenne pepper and covered in all with sliced mushrooms. I had chopped up garlic and ginger earlier and stuck these bits into the top of the rump roast.
I placed the roast on top of this pile and poured enough water over everything so that the roast was about one third submerged. I brought the water to a boil on the stovetop and then I set the oven at 275 degrees, put the lid on the Dutch oven, and let the braising of the roast get underway.
After a couple of hours, I removed liquid from the braise and used it to make Jasmine rice. After about three hours or so, I was satisfied that the meat was done, I let it rest for a while, put the liquid in a separate dish, and steamed crowns of broccoli.
The Deke and I loved this dinner. The meat was very flavorful, the liquid made a superb topping for the rice and the meat -- next time I do this, however, I might thicken the liquid with some corn starch -- and the broccoli paired really well with the meat.
Before fixing this roast, I tried to imagine what flavors I'd like to create, doing all I could to amp up the flavor of the rump roast. I might have been a bit too cautious. Next time I do this, I think I'll increase the amount of cinnamon and cumin I use. I got the cayenne pepper about right. I also would have enjoyed the ginger being more forward in this dish.
That the Deke and I enjoyed my experiment made me very happy. So did all the fun I had putting it together. I have been longing for cooler weather for the very reason that I can be back at the stove and oven again having fun cooking.
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