Christmas Standing Rib Roast

Thanksgiving is a holiday in which turkey really shines. Many of you would rather not deal with another turkey just four weeks after Thanksgiving. Some of you might still have some frozen leftovers. The Christmas meal is a celebratory meal, and as such, celebration food is a natural at the Christmas dinner table. Enter, the standing rib roast.

Unsurprisingly, the standing rib roast is cut from the rib section of the animal. More specifically, it comprises 7 ribs - ribs 6-12. If you were to cut the meat apart into steaks, you would have rib-eye steak. You can purchase rib roast in sizes ranging from two ribs up to all seven, although for more even roasting, you’ll want to purchase at least a three to four bone roast.

When deciding how large a roast you’ll need (how many ribs), figure on 1 rib per every two to three people. For example, if you’ll be serving eight people, you will want to purchase a 4-rib roast to ensure generous servings. If you will be serving other meats at the dinner, you could purchase a 3-rib roast.

Meat Grades

Get the best piece of meat you can find and afford. Prime is the most expensive but will have the most marbling and therefore flavor. Marbled meat has the thin lines of intramuscular fat running throughout the meat. This may turn some people off, but this fat gives the beef extra flavor. Only 2% of all beef produced in the US is grated prime so it is hard to find and like I said, very expensive.

Your next choice is Choice. Most of your higher end supermarkets and places like Costco sell Choice but be sure to look on the label to be sure. I recommend you avoid Select grade.

Dry Aged Beef

If you can find dry-aged meat and want to spend the bucks, you may want to give it a try. It has a distinctive taste that not everyone enjoys so I would recommend you try dry-aged beef for the first time on a small cut of beef and decide for yourself. Since some bacterial action has started to break down the tissues, the meat will be very tender. The flavor will also be concentrated because some water will have evaporated from the meat.

Prepping the Roast

Do not do much, if any, extra trimming to the roast. You’ll want at least 1/4 to 1/2 fat cap covering the top of the meat. The idea is that the sear will happen to the fat and bone, leaving nothing but luscious, juicy medium-rare meat inside. Too much trimming will result in well-done meat near the surface, and you may as well have bought a less expensive piece of meat.

Roasting Standing Rib Roast

There are many schools of thought when it comes to roasting a standing rib roast. Some people like to start low and finish high. Some like to start high and finish low. Still others will instruct you to roast at an extremely low temperature for an extremely long period of time. You choose the method that works for you. I like the British method of starting in a relatively high oven and finishing at a relatively low temperature.

A standing rib roast has a wonderful flavor all its own. It certainly doesn’t need a lot of heavy spicing or marinades. Your roast will benefit from just a simple rub with salt and pepper to enhance, not hide, the flavor of the meat.

Standing Rib Roast

Ingredients

1 bone-in rib roast
Canola oil
Sea salt
Freshly ground pepper

Take the meat out of the refrigerator at least one hour -two would be better - before roasting.

Position the oven rack in the bottom third of the oven. Preheat oven to 425° F.

Rub the meat all over, including the bones, with a thin coating of canola or other neutral oil. Liberally coat the meat - fat, bones and all - with kosher salt and black pepper. Insert a probe thermometer into the thickest part of the meat, making sure it is not touching the bone.

Place the meat, fat side up, on an oiled rack in a shallow roasting pan. Roast at 425° F for 20 minutes. Without removing the roast, reduce the oven temperature to 325° F.

Continue roasting until the internal temperature of the roast reaches 120° F. Remove the roast from the oven, loosely tent it with foil, and let the meat rest for at least 15 minutes. The temperature will continue to rise, and the final temperature will be about 130° F. This will result in a nice medium-rare roast.

If you like your meat more towards medium, remove the roast when it reaches an internal temperature of 130-135° F. Again, let the meat rest for at least 15 minutes. This allows for carryover cooking and the redistribution of the juices and will result in a moist roast.

The larger your roast, the more carryover cooking will occur. In a smaller roast, the temperature may only rise 5 degrees. With a larger roast, you could get as much as 10-15 degrees in carryover cooking, so plan accordingly when setting your target temperatures.

My wife likes to serve a standing rib roast with Yorkshire Pudding. I’ll post a recipe for it tomorrow.

Parmesan Crusted Wild Sea Bass

Every once in a while I come across a recipe that I consider "as good as it gets" and this recipe for Parmesan Crusted Wild Sea Bass is one of them. I adapted this recipe from one of my favorite cooking magazines Cuisine at Home. Their recipe calls for halibut but when I went to one of my favorite seafood stores, Bywood Seafood Market, I was told fresh halibut was out of season so I opted for wild sea bass which worked perfectly fine.

This recipe is so good I’m sure any meaty white fish would work. In fact, there was some left over "crazy water" (read on) leftovers so I duplicated the dish with chicken thighs the next night and served it with the broth and it too was delicious. I think it would have been better with boneless chicken breasts but I had boneless thighs on hand from the local Farmer’s Market.

The "crazy water" I mentioned above is a simple broth that traditionally the fish is poached in. It consists of vegetables, water, wine, herbs and a few special ingredients to give the broth an incredibly flavorful taste that you then cook orzo pasta in to give the broth some extra body.

In this recipe, we don’t poach the fish but instead roast it so the parmesan crust can firm up and get crisp. It doesn’t take long at all to prepare this dish, only 15 minutes to roast the fish and prepare the broth. It takes more time to prep the ingredients and I highly recommend you practice "mise en place" before you start cooking. That is get all your ingredients prepped before you start. As you can see from the list below, there are a lot of ingredients but I found I had most of them in my pantry already.

The original recipe is for 2 people and calls for two 4 oz. halibut fillets but I purchased 2 pounds of wild sea bass and cut 6 individual steaks for four adults and 2 kids and there was enough for everyone.

I highly recommend you try this recipe and would love to hear your comments about you’ve tried it. I think there are lots of variations you could make to this recipe and I’d like to hear what you come up with.

Parmesan Crusted Wild Sea Bass
serves 4 adults and 2 kids

Ingredients

For the Wild Sea Bass

1/2 cup panko crumbs (these are Japanese bread crumbs but regular bread crumbs work fine too)
4 teaspoons grated Parmesan cheese ( buy a chunk of Parmesan and grate it yourself - much better)
zest of 1 lemon, finely minced
12 oz. purchased or homemade pesto
2 pounds wild sea bass, cut into 6 steaks
spray olive oil

For the Broth (Crazy Water)

1/2 large red onion, minced
2 tablespoons minced garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 cups water
1 cup halved grape tomatoes
1/2 cup dry orzo pasta
2 teaspoons sugar
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 cup coarsely chopped zucchini
1 - 7.5 ounce jar of roasted red peppers, cut into thin strips (learn how to roast your own peppers)
1/2 cup of kalamata olives, halved and pitted
4 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
juice from the zested lemon above
Salt & Pepper, to taste

How to Make at Home

As I said at the start of this post, this recipe doesn’t take long to cook, but you’ll want to have all your ingredients prepped (mise en place) before you start. The recipe also suggests preparing the bread crumbs, adding them to the fish and refrigerating ahead of time (up to 4 hours) but make the broth just before serving. This is a great idea especially if you are having a dinner party and want to hang out with your friends.

As always, preheat the oven to 450º F.

Combine the panko (bread crumbs) with Parmesan cheese, lemon zest and season with salt and pepper. Apply a spoonful of pesto on the non-skin side of each sea bass steak and then top with the bread crumb mixture. Press the bread crumbs into the pesto with the back of your spoon. Spray each steak with a little spray oil, transfer to a baking sheet that has been coated with some spray oil and refrigerate until you are going to prepare the broth.

To Make the Broth

Start by heating up a saute pan over medium-high heat, adding oil, and sauteing the onions and garlic. Saute for 3 - 4 minutes until the onions are translucent. Remove the pan from the heat and add wine to deglaze the pan. Return the pan to the heat and simmer until the wine is reduced to an essence. Add the water and stir in the tomatoes, orzo, sugar and fresh thyme. Simmer for about 10 minutes until the orzo is cooked. While the orzo is simmering, it’s time to roast the sea bass.

Roasting Wild Sea Bass

Remove the baking sheet with the sea bass from the refrigerator and roast in your preheated oven for 12 minutes. The panko bread crumbs should be golden and the fish white and flaky.

Finish & Serving

When the orzo is done, add the roasted pepper strips, zucchini and kalamata olives to the broth and simmer until heated through. Remove the pan from the heat and add the fresh parsley and fresh lemon juice. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

When it’s time to serve, add some of the broth (crazy water) with vegetables to shallow bowls and place a sea bass steak into each. Serve.

Hope you get to try this and let us know what you think. This dish is outrageous!

How to Buy The 2005 Bordeaux Wine Vintage

When I was working as a Wall Street broker, I became interested in French wines, how to buy them and even started collecting some great 1985 Bordeaux wines to "lay down" so they would be perfect when I opened them 10 years later. One year I even had the opportunity to attend Kevin Zraly’s Windows On The World Wine School at the top of the World Trade Center. What an incredible experience.

Back then, French wine was expensive but no where near as expensive as it is today. With the dollar being so week and the demand for French wine growing around the world, I thought my collection days were over but then came the 2005 Bordeaux vintage. It was huge and from everything I read, a vintage worth buying and laying down.

Just recently I found a case of 2005 Talbot from the St-Julien area of Bordeaux that was given 92 points from the Wine Spectator. French wine expert Robert Parker says of the wine, "A strong effort for Talbot, the 2005 is more showy and forward than most wines of this vintage. While there is plenty of tannin, it is sweet and well-concealed behind an intriguing bouquet of sweet herbs, licorice, smoked game, black currants, and cherries. This fleshy, medium to full-bodied St.-Julien exhibits a silky sweetness to its texture and tannins. Anticipated maturity: 2010-2020+."

Now that’s a mouthful!!!

Because I’m not a wine expert, I thought it might be helpful to ask a friend of mine, wine aficionado Todd Ross from Mills Fine Wine & Spirits in Annapolis, Maryland about Bordeaux wines, the 2005 vintage in particular and buying wine futures. I’m hoping to get Todd to become more active on www.reluctgourmet.com so we can all learn more about wine from his expertise. If you are ever in the Annapolis area, I recommend you go into Mills Fine Wine & Spirit and ask for Todd. He won’t steer you wrong. Here is what Todd had to say when I asked him:

When is the best time to start drinking 2005 Bordeaux?

2005 was a "robust" vintage in Bordeaux; that is to say the wines are very full-bodied and ripe, but with considerable tannic structure. There is always the question of under what conditions will the bottles be stored. If one has a cellar that is at 55 degrees with the right humidity, then there is indeed no rush to get at the bottles.

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