Food Log: Quick Sauerbraten with Gingersnap Gravy

Over the past couple months, Little Buddy suddenly became interested in cookbooks. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but he pulled some off the shelf in the kitchen and demanded we read them to him. He's been into cooking/baking for a while now-- specifically he's really into "mixing." He loves to pour the ingredients into the bowl and then try to mix them himself. He will just randomly go into the kitchen and try to open the cabinet (he recently figured out how the child-proof locks work, hurrah), and go, "mix, mix, mix."

At first it was a pair of Pillsbury cookbooks (one for muffins and bread, one for cookies) that we own, but soon it was every cookbook that had nice illustrations. You have to go through the cookbook page by page, and either he tells you what each image is (he has a very good memory), or you tell him. A lot of times he'll tell you that he would eat it: "[Little Buddy] eat cookie." Yes, I'm sure you would, pal!

For a while, he was particularly obsessed by a smoothie cookbook we have, so I started buying the stuff to make smoothies with him... this hasn't panned out too well because it turns out that turning the blender on makes him break down in tears!

But one thing this did do is make me conscious of the wide array of cookbooks we own that I've never really looked at. It's not even as many as it could be, as Hayley purged a lot of them before we moved to Florida. But it's still a lot. I have a tendency to kind of make the same dishes again and again, so it's been a nice change of pace. 

Recently, I've settled into alternating between two different cookbooks. One is A Wok a Week: 52 Lite & Easy Meals, which has-- you might guess-- fifty-two weeks worth of Chinese recipes, each week giving you a main dish and two sides. (Many recipes repeat across the book, but in different combinations.) I have sporadically cooked out this for several years, but the title is a bit misleading, as not all the recipes are wok-based, and I used to only pull it out if I wanted a stir fry. But now I've been working through it in order; not literally doing every recipe in turn, but doing ones in turn that look good to me, and since I'm not opening it when I specifically want a stir fry, I've been trying different things. This week I made "Baked Gourmet Beef Patties," for example, with "Shanghai String Bean Salad" and "Fragrant Rice" on the side.

The other one I've been into is the 1969 Betty Crocker's Cookbook (1974 printing), which used to belong to Hayley's Great Aunt Mildred. (Is there a more stereotypical great aunt name?) I'm not working through this one in order; rather I use a random number generator to pick a page, and then work forward from that page until I find something that sounds good.

Most recently, that was "Quick Sauerbraten with Gingersnap Gravy." Sauerbraten is a German dish of marinated meat-- usually marinated for several days, but this one is quick because you only marinate for fifteen minutes! Despite my German heritage, I've never had sauerbraten as a far as I know, but my father informed me that his mother used to make it, and that one of his sisters used to always request it as her birthday meal.

Part of the meal is that you take the juices at the end and thicken them: specifically with crushed gingersnaps! The blog of Dann Woeller the food etymologist (a fellow Cincinnatian) informs me that this is specifically a German-American immigrant thing; rather than do the fiddly work of making a roux, you'd just take some stale gingersnaps, crush them, and throw them in your sauce! (I guess your average nineteenth-century German immigrant was always likely to have a box of gingersnaps to hand.) As he says, "The gingersnap method was so widely used that Good Housekeeping listed 15 gingersnaps as equal to one cup of roux flour."

The sauerbraten was delicious. The meat was tender and tasty, and I really liked the gravy. (Publix gingersnaps, by the way, have quite a lot of kick to them!) So I've reproduced it here for you, though with the modifications I made in the course of cooking, thanks to ingredient availability and/or laziness. (I am a failure of a food blogger, though, because I didn't take any pictures of it!*) To be forewarned, though, it won't be ready until about four hours after you start, so plan accordingly.

I served it with gnocchi (frozen gnocchi from Publix; I wasn't making my own!) and buttered carrots (I used the recipe from Betty Crocker and seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves). Hayley said, "This one is a keeper."

Recipe: Quick Sauerbraten with Gingersnap Gravy 

adapted from Betty Crocker's Cookbook (Golden, 1969), p. 241

Ingredients

• 4 pounds beef (rolled rump roast)
• 4-5 ounces instant meat marinade (about 3 packets)
  
• ⅔ cup white vinegar
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
• ¼ teaspoon pepper
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons flour
• ⅓ cup crushed gingersnaps
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Directions

1. Place meat in large pot. Mix marinade and vinegar and pour over meat. Pierce surface of meat with fork; marinate 15 minutes, turning occasionally.
2. Add onion, bay leaves, Old Bay, and pepper. Cover tightly; simmer on stovetop for 3 hours.
3. Remove meat. Strain drippings to remove onion and bay leaves. Measure out 2½ cups of the liquid (add water if you don't have enough).
4. Melt butter in the now-empty pot on low; blend in flour. Stir until mixture is smooth. Gradually stir in liquid, and heat to boiling while stirring constantly. Boil and stir for 1 minute.
5. Return meat to pot; cover and simmer for 30 minutes, turning meat occasionally. (This is the ideal time to make your sides; see above.)
   
6. Place meat on platter and keep warm. Stir gingersnaps and sugar into liquid left in pan, heating to boiling while stirring constantly. Boil and stir for 1 minute.
7. Serve meat with gravy (and sides).
   

* No, I must be a successful food blogger because I blathered on for ten paragraphs before actually getting to the recipe. Sure it's annoying when other people do it, but when I do it it's interesting!