My Market Year(s)

One of the things I preach and practice is “cook once, eat many times”.  This doesn’t mean the same leftovers, night after night, all week long.  It does mean many different meals that follow on from the first dish.  Last weekend, we made the slow grilled sirloin tip roast.   During the week, we used the leftover roast for three very different meals.

The first was French Dip sandwiches.  I took 2 cups of my brown beef stock and I reduced it by half to make a fake “au jus”.  A side note here:  Au Jus is the juice of the meat.  In mediaeval times, cooks would brown large quantities of meat and the put the meat in large presses to make Au Jus.  James Peterson’s “Sauces – Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making” has an interesting historical section on sauces and their origins.   For me, I made a rich dipping sauce with reduced stock.  We served these on a hot night with horseradish and grilled asparagus.

A couple of nights later, we used the beef in tostadas.  We had some anasazi beans in the fridge from another dinner.  I 1/4″ thick pieces off of the roast and seasoned them with chili powder, ground chipotle chili (which adds some heat and lovely smokey flavor) and dried mexican oregano (about 1 tsp of each).  I heated 2 Tbls of tomato paste along with 2 Tbls of real au jus from the beef in a small non-stick saute pan until the paste was hot and had turned darker in color (medium high heat for 3 minutes).  I added a little water to thin the sauce and the meat.   I warmed the meat over medium low gently so it would just warm up and not over cook.   We sprayed 4 corn tortillas with canola oil and put them in our toaster oven on broil until they were brown and crispy.  We flipped them once along the way.

Everything was plated with corn tortilla, beans, beef, diced tomato, some chopped greens and sour cream.

The final meal was a cold beef salad, with some cheese from Butler Farms and Potter’s 6 Grain Crackers.   I used a simple balsamic vinegar, honey and dijon mustard dressing.    We had three very different meals as leftovers for the first night’s roast.   For us, it is a great way to stretch one piece of meat for the week and to cook ahead for the week nights.