Entries Tagged 'delicious' ↓

So I like the flavor of pozole, but the hominy, well, not so much. So this is what I came up with. It’s perfect for my oh too big 6-quart slow cooker crock pot thing, but I’m sure it can be slow-baked in one of those fancy enamel coated cast iron dutch ovens too. Don’t let the fact that it contains 5 jalapenos slow ya down either, after 8 hours they mellow into a flavorful sauce that won’t send you grasping frantically for your beer. I don’t measure when I cook so the amounts are approximate, just make it look & taste good to you.

Sweet Potato Stew

4 Pork Shoulder Steaks
Salt & Pepper
Oil
2 Onions, sliced thin
3 Jalapeno chilis, seeded & minced
1 Tbsp Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Meat Magic
6 Cloves Garlic, pressed
1 28oz can diced tomatoes in juice
2 Oranges (Peel a strip of zest with a potato peeler, about 12″ or so, then juice the oranges)
2 Chipotle Chilis in Adobo sauce, minced
1 Tsp dried oregano leaves
2 largish Sweet Potatoes, washed & chopped about 1/2″ cubes
Chicken Broth
corn starch
1/2 bunch Cilantro, remove the big stems & chopped

Salt & pepper then brown steaks one at a time in a dutch oven over medium-high heat. You won’t need oil, there should be enough fat on the steaks. Stack them up in the middle of your slow cooker.

Add some oil if there isn’t juices in the pan from the meat. Add the onions, jalapenos & meat magic to the pan. Cook until the onions are softened & the rendered juices have cooked out. Add the garlic & just warm it on top, don’t brown the garlic. Add the tomatoes, using the juices to scrape up all the goodness stuck on the bottom of the pan. Bring to a simmer, then add it the slow cooker.

Distribute the onions & peppers between the steaks, but keep them stacked in the center of the slow cooker. Add the orange juice, chipotles and oregano to the slow cooker & stir. Nestle the sweet potatoes & orange zest strip around the edges. Add the chicken broth until the meat & potatoes are covered.

My cooker has a low 8 hour setting. Cook for 8 hours, go to work, go to bed, whatever, just don’t stir or mess with it. If you are using the oven, cover tightly, 300° for 4 hours or so, until potatoes are soft & the meat is starting to fall apart.

Turn off slow cooker & pull the meat out & set aside to cool. Pull the potatoes out & set aside. Discard the orange zest strip. Let the juices settle & skim off the fat. Mix some corn starch with water. Add to the juices & turn slow cooker on to high to thicken sauce. Add potatoes back in & the cilantro. When the meat is cool enough to handle, pull the bones, gristle & fat bits out & toss the meat chunks back into the pot.

Spoon into bowls & serve with a daub of sour cream & some tortillas, a spritz of fresh lime, & the beer of course! Mmmm

This freezes well too.

From my friend Jan:

A small dab of goat cheese on a small square of dark chocolate, washed down with a glass of blueberry juice 

her verdict: Yum Yum!

Once again there has been too much to do and no time to shop. And yet we need to eat. Foraging in the freezer I turned up the last 2 salmon patties from Costco - wild alaskan salmon in burger format, one of our favorites. We were out of bread products but still had the last packet of Trader Joe frozen Jasmine rice. So we have protein and carbs - but what about veggies?

Rummaging through the crisper (my friend says it should more accurately be called the rotter) I turned up a few mushrooms and a bit of kale that needed some serious sorting through. Not quite enough for a meal for 2 so I needed something else. The cupboards yielded pineapple which inspired a sweet and sour stir fry. It turned out amazingly well considering its origins.

Here’s how it went down:

Fried up the salmon patties in a little oil and removed to keep them crisp. Quick and easy - about 4 minutes a side.
In the same pan I added the mushrooms, a bit of onion, kale and finally half a can of pineapple with just a bit of the juice.

For flavor some soy sauces and sweet chili sauce and for sour some rice wine vinegar.

I let that cook down a bit and poured the lot over the salmon patties nested on a bed of rice.

Turns out that pineapple works well with salmon after all and does a bang up job standing in for vegetables some times.

Ok, so wow - so very happy that we delayed last nights dinner plan until today. Our mealtime adventure started as when, as sometimes happens, Jim did a little impulse buying … he came home a few days ago with a gigundo organic rib eye steak and declared -   “I think we should start eating steak”.

This being one of my all time favorite foods (except for my stint as a vegetarian) I couldn’t find any fault with his logic. There just remained the question of what to do with it to fully celebrate the flavor and luxury. We don’t often cook meat in the house due to the intense interest our cats have in it and the fact that we don’t often eat meat just out of habit. To say I am rusty at preparing such things would be overly kind. But its hard to go too terribly wrong with great ingredients, which we happened to have on hand.

The first would be the cup or so of semi-sauted Chanterelle mushrooms from the freezer. This fall we went mushroom gathering for the first time and harvested many more than a sane person could eat in a month. We were giddy from the hunt and brought them all home. After giving some away we still had an excess, and our mushroom mentor Linda said that by quick frying them halfway in butter you could store them in the freezer. New Year’s steak seemed the perfect time to finish off the last batch.

In supporting roles would be some lovely organic purple kale and a couple of shallots left from Thanksgiving preparations. Here is how it went…

In my very largest frying pan I defrosted the chanterelles with a bit of extra butter and a couple of finely diced shallots until it was all becoming a lovely golden color. Then I added some chopped kale on top and mixed it together until the kale was wilty and brightly colored. I removed this from the pan leaving as much butter behind as possible and added a bit more.

Then one big steak was seared on both sides until it was just about done (or so I thought) when I added back the veggies and a handfull of finely chopped parsley. The steak was seasoned with salt, pepper and a dash of worcestershire sauce. I had some trouble getting all of the meat to the same level of done-ness and ended up cutting it in half so I could rotate things around. I removed the greens and mushrooms to the plates as a bed for the steak and splashed brandy on the steak in an impromtu tribute to Steak Diane.

As seems to always happen we started in eating before I thought to get a photo for the blog, so the plating is sloppy and its not the best image - it was so incredibly tasty though. I am going to try to be more mindful of taking the pictures in the future.

Jim has declared this better than restaurant steak (although not topping Ruth’s Chris) and wants to start a weekly steak tradition. Unfortunately many parts were a overdone (medium rather than medium rare) so we only had glimpses of how great this meal could have truly been. But it gave us a goal and so starts our quest for 2008 - the perfect steak.

Happy New Year
Its been too long since I have posted and I did miss some stellar opportunities with holiday foods I pretty much invented. Then today, we needed lunch and didn’t want to spoil our appetites for our special new year’s dinner, so I did the combine leftovers thing - lentil soup and pumpkin (not the same can as the previous post!). Rummaging in the cupboard I came up with the additions of paprika and hot sauce this soup proves that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I might do this again on purpose since the pumpkin made it creamy and smooth and the paprika added both color and sparkle. Anyone have another example of this to share? Here’s to a great new year of making things up as we go along.

Due to circumstances beyond my control we ended up with most of a large can of pumpkin and half of a rotisserie chicken in the fridge. I knew there must be some way of combining these items and using them both up before they were forcibly migrated to the back and forgotten until they evolved to something capable of self-directed movement. I started thinking about a local Thai restaurant’s awesome Asian pumpkin curry and an experiment was born.

As I often do I started looking through recipes for somewhere to start. Hard rains were taking down the internet at the time so I was limited to what I have at hand and not much insight turned up as to what exactly might be added (note to self - need more cookbooks containing curries). So armed only with my general accumulated knowledge of what spices pumpkin usually has as friends and that its pretty hard to mess up chicken - this is what I came up with:

In a large soup pot heat up -
1 Tbsp of olive oil
2 cloves crushed garlic
about 1 Tbsp shredded fresh ginger (I keep it in the freezer)

Add the shredded meat of about one half of a cooked rotisserie chicken to brown while adding a quarter of red onion sliced fine and some cumin, coriander and about 1/4 cup of chopped cilantro (mine was frozen). Once the onions have done their thing (become translucent) I added in the pumpkin (about a cup and a half I think - big can minus a bit) and about 8 oz of chicken stock. The stock was actually made on the spot with a Tbsp of “better than bouillon” with 8 oz of boiling water added, so I think this made it extra salty.

Once that is well mixed and over medium heat or a bit lower I added more spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and a bit of chili powder. At this point I started to get a little nervous because it was getting thick and I was on the fence about adding canned tomatoes. I know they go in some curries but all I had were ones with Italian herbs so I opted to look for something else instead - in the end I think it was a good call.

Being somewhat quick on my feet, a bit fearless and generally not too bright I decided to stir in about a quarter cup of yogurt. This was a good call as it turned out because not only did nothing bad happen but the texture became something new and interesting - somewhat along the lines of a good sag paneer - creamy, light and fluffy. I added some more chopped cilantro and running out of that about a quarter cup of chopped parsley. Taste tests proved - there was still something missing so…

I turned to my usual all purpose back up ingredient - hot sauce. I was pretty careful and end up not using too much. On a whim I also through in a couple of tablespoons of Avjar (hungarian red pepper sauce/spread) which really perked things up and pretty much finished things off.

A quick simmer to meld things together yielded something pretty wonderful and we couldn’t stop eating it. I still think there might be one more ingredient missing but can’t put my finger on it - anyone have any ideas on what to add next time? Because I am pretty sure there will be a next time even if fate doesn’t arrange for me to have a can of pumpkin and a rotisserie chicken sitting next to each other in the refrigerator.

Made up food includes made up drinks, and as I generally have a pretty pityful bar stock I do tend to get even more creative in this area.

Ok, I’m pretty sure I’m in no way the first to invent this but its a lovely limey “damn its hot” Sunday evening beverage when you want a mojito but don’t have any rum:


the Fauxito

• In a highball glass muddle 10 mint leaves with about a teaspoon and a half of sugar.Loosen this up with a small splash of bubbly water (club soda, seltzer etc. - I used talking rain plain).
• Add a bunch of ice and the juice of 1 and a half fresh squeezed limes.
• To this add a jigger of gin and top off with the fizzy stuff and a stir. garnish with cute mint leaves and enjoy.

Since we just stocked up on all kinds of goodies there won’t be the impetus to get super creative with limited ingredients. So I thought I’d share one of my favorite keep on hand ingredients - Café Yumm! Sauce.

We here in Oregon are lucky to have this local and it looks like you can buy it by phone too, but so many have loved it so much that there are scads of “hacked” recipes - try here: http://mpchickchat.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html
(about halfway down the page, I like her substitute on the fly style too!)

It’s basically (from the jar and the myriad of times my neighbor and I tried to recreate this)

Canola oil, lemon juice, almonds, nutritional yeast, garbanzo beans, soybeans, garlic and secret herbs and spices - and the process and proportions are part of the secret.

Plus check out their menu for meal inspiration ideas - just about everything we’ve had there is delightful.
And of course if you’re in Oregon find one of the restaurants and eat there.

Here are a few of the ways I use Yumm! sauce:

• Dip for those bitty carrots or chips or crackers or anything else I can fit in the jar.
• On rice with salsa for a faux Yumm bowl
• On nachos
• As a salad dressing
• With leftover chicken or meat in a pita with whatever is green (but not moving) in the fridge

If you’ve used this fantastic fattening condiment let me know what else you’ve made with it.