gravitywins.com - Justin Belcher, Durham, NC

Beef Stroganoff

To me, it doesn’t get much better than beef stroganoff. It’s a dish I’ve tried to perfect for as long as I’ve cooked, and while certainly a little indulgent it’s one of my favorite comfort foods. My recipe has evolved a lot over the years, but with a triumphant “wow—this is the one” from my wife I think I’m finally there.

• 1lb of tender beef (like top sirloin) cut into thin panels
• 2 shallots, chopped
• 1/2lb of cremini or shiitake mushrooms, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup white wine
• A bit of good beef stock (veal if available)
• A few sprigs of fresh tarragon, chopped
• A few grates of fresh nutmeg
• Salt & pepper
• Egg noodles (I prefer homemade noodles shaped thin & wide—about the size of Monopoly money)

1. Melt 3 Tbsp. of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Increase the heat and add beef, salt, and pepper, cooking quickly but taking care not to burn the butter.
2. Remove beef to a bowl, reduce heat to medium, and add shallots and garlic to pan. Sautée for several minutes until shallots are soft and have soaked up most of the drippings.
3. Deglaze the pan with white wine scraping up any fond. Reduce this liquid until nearly evaporated.
4. Remove onions to same bowl as meat, melt 3 Tbsp. of butter in same pan, and sautée mushrooms. Add tarragon and nutmeg toward end.
5. Reduce heat to low and add sour cream. Place beef and shallots back into the pan to rewarm. If you like your sauce a little thinner (as we do for bread sopping) stir in a little beef stock. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Serve over egg noodles. A little garlic bread makes for a fine accompaniment.

A few notes about this recipe: (1) the choice of thin beef panels instead of cubes, strips, or ground beef is a texture preference—I like how an almost carpaccio-thin cut of beef blends with the noodles (2) some recipes have you dredge the beef in flour to create a pan roux with the butter, but I don’t feel this recipe needs any help in the thickening department (3) in the past I’d deglaze with a more traditional red wine, but I like how white wine turns the shallots into bright, acidic chunks of happy that balance the richness of the cream and the umami of the beef and mushrooms.

Above is a graph that I’m both extremely proud and a little ashamed of—my weight over the past two years. This past week I finally hit my weight and body fat goals, so I thought I’d take a second to reflect.

Near the beginning of grad school I decided that I was tired of being scrawny. An obsession with being rail-thin left me at 175lbs (which for my frame is pretty gaunt), and more than a few friends had expressed concerns over my health. So I got off the ellipticals and under a barbell, where intense daily workouts and a calorie-heavy balanced macronutrient diet yielded about 35 pounds of muscle. I felt and looked great, but the stress of my masters program was really starting to get to me. My workouts became too laxed to sustain the bulky diet, and at some point I just… gave up. Looking back I’m not sure how that happened. Maybe it was the loneliness of staying in college while all of your friends move on; maybe it was collateral damage from some tough family situations at home; maybe it was just mental rebellion over years of discipline. Whatever the cause it became clear things went too far when I stepped on the scale in Christmas of ‘07: 296lbs. We’ve all had sobering moments on the scale, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget that one.

As soon as I got home to NC I began my trek back to health. In lieu of fad diets I decided to eat well and work hard, and although that sounds great it can be excruciating to only lose a few pounds a month. Fortunately the place I work at has staff nutritionists and trainers, and they helped me stay focused, informed, and challenged. There were plenty of setbacks and plateaus to fight through, but after two years I’m where I want to be: an athletic 215lbs and ~14% body fat. I’m not vain enough to post a “hey look at my muscles” after pic, but rest assured 81lbs is a world of difference.

If I were to offer any words of advice it’d be to focus on eating healthy. Eating healthy isn’t deprivation—it’s simply being accountable for your choices and making better ones when possible. This usually entails budgeting for special meals or indulgences, but really that’s something we should all do whether we’re trying to lose or not. I’ve been eating this way for a while and it doesn’t feel like a diet at all. You also have to be patient. There are plenty of gimmicks out there, but your body will fight for homeostasis and the only way to keep it off is to go slow. This might mean your future holds 5-8 hours of exercise a week for months or even years, but it’s worth it in the end.

Modularizing jQuery's $(document).ready()

While domready-type events are a welcome addition to modern JS programming, many people abuse them by dumping all of their code in there. This keeps the script overhead of your pages high when often pages only need certain functionality. There are plenty of approaches to modularizing you initialization code, but a simple approach built off of <body> ids is my go-to method.

The first step to this approach is setting up page-specific Javascript as an object literal:

1. var init = {
2. common: function() {
3. // insert common js here
4. },
5. home: function() {
6. // insert js for <body id=”home”> here
7. },
8. // etc
9. }

Then inside of your $(document).ready() function call your common js code and let the current body tag id dictate what code is loaded:

1. $(document).ready(function() {
2. // execute code common to every page
3. init.common();
4. // use the body’s ID to call page-specific js if it exists
5. $.isFunction(init[document.body.id]) && init[document.body.id]();
6. });

You’ll notice line #5 checks if the initialization function exists before calling it. This keeps you from having to make empty placeholders in your object literal for pages that don’t need anything. You could also get a lot more sophisticated by splitting each page’s JS into init, core, and teardown code or making them fire via custom events, but you get the point.

I read through Tom Colicchio’s Thinking Like a Chef this week, and the one thing that really stuck out to me is his aversion to high heat cooking. For a lot of people (myself included) the zenith of protein preparation is a ripping-hot cast iron skillet and a ride in the oven to finish. This high heat cooking imparts a great crust on the meat but at what cost? Colicchio is a firm believer that a patient roast is the way to go in terms of texture preservation and heat control, and from what I’ve seen I’d have to agree.

High heat isn’t required for browning meat (most taste-enhancing reactions happen after 300°F), but it does increase your chances for success—the heat rapidly evaporates surface moisture and lessens the effects of humectants. For people who are all about the crust the negative effects of high heat (drier/tougher protein structure) are worth it, but there’s a reason sous vide cooking is so popular in gourmet restaurants: texture matters.

To test his approach I made a simple pork loin: trussed into a uniform cylinder with kitchen twine, rubbed with kosher salt and cracked black peppercorn, and browned on all sides in a medium-high heated pan. After the meat was browned I reduced the heat to medium-low and allowed the pork to roast gently. Halfway through cooking I added some beurre fondue and a bit of fresh sage to the pan and basted the meat with this liquid. The pork was pulled at 145°F and I made a quick pan sauce with shallots, white wine, and chicken stock. After a quick rest & slice I took a bite and was quite pleased with the result: tender, juicy, delicate pork. Even unbrined this 30 minute pan roast was up there with any loin I’ve had—and it was done in a style I’ve really come to appreciate: simple preparations of quality ingredients.