Category: home cooking

beef and orange stir-fry

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I’ve been feeling bad about taking the exhausted way out of dinner lately and caving to the frozen and prepared foods aisles at the grocery store so I pulled out some cookbooks with fast or express in the title and made the shopping list.  I flipped through Good Food Fast which is a kitchens of Martha Stewart cookbook and found beef and orange stir-fry.  The recipe is here.  It was super easy and took the amount of time it took to bubble some yellow rice.  We used stir-fry precut beef from the market to make it even easier.  Our fun red bowls and chopsticks made it feel like something a little special.  It tasted good with a bit of extra soy dashed on top.

jamie oliver rocks

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I have had a terrible crush on Jamie Oliver for years.  He is (was) kind of a young guy, a drummer, a skater, a sort of devil may care hippy and not least, a chef.  One of his latest shows is Jamie at Home.  Z says it could be called Jamie in his shed.  Jamie cooks either out in the garden next to a brick oven or in a sort of lean to kitchen filled with chipped pudding basins and hanging dried herbs.  I have seen most of the episodes about five times.  One of them is entitled pastry.  Jamie flies through cooking a super-rich beef brisket, Guinness and Cheddar pie encased in puff pastry.

I’m here to tell you it took us like four hours-about 3 to make the stew and another 45 minutes to bake inside the pastry.  The end result – a pot pie filled with luscious mushrooms, beef, thick sauce and cheese.  We served it with the requisite peas, although not mushy to Z’s parents and grandparents with a bananas foster bread pudding with home-made caramel.  Pretty amazing for a Monday night or any night.

pssst

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I belong to this couponing thing called pssst by General Mills.  Periodically they email coupons to try free item along with other coupons for giving to a friend.  Their hope is you will try something and then recommend it to  friend and both be hooked forever…  A month or two ago they actually mailed me two boxes of instant potatoes.  Instant.  I suppose they realized if they went to the expense of printing coupons no one would bother to redeem them because they are, instant potatoes.  Well, yesterday I tossed a 2 1/2# brisket in the slow cooker with

  • cup of teriyaki sauce
  • 1/2 cup of rice wine vinegar
  • 1 cup of brown sugar
  • a healthy tablespoon of red pepper
  • a few sliced garlic cloves

and let it go for 4 or so hours. We decided to serve with the instant potatoes.  I figure, that’s blogworthy.  I don’t really think they are worth it although they are really quick-about five minutes.  They have a weird texture.  They don’t have near the weird flavor that they used to and for that I applaud the advances in food dehydrating.
A side note.  The garlic turned blue.  Totally bizarre and I read that it is probably due to contact with the vinegar.  We did strain it out to reduce the sauce at the end but it won’t hurt you.  Funny.

stone ground white corn cheddar grits

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we bought the dried grits at Piggly Wiggly in Charleston, SC while we vacationed there in the fall.  Last night I took the two hours needed to cook this dish.  Because of the amount of time I took on the grits I took the easy way out for the rest of the dish… Aidells Chicken Sausage and jarred roasted red peppers which I heated in a tiny splash of olive oil in the last ten minutes of cooking and a cup of balsamic I gently boiled until it reduced by half to spoon over the top.

coletti’s smokehouse burger

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another burger from Spike and Good Stuff.  The Coletti’s smokehouse burger, a 1st place winner at
the 2009 Rachael Ray Burger Bash.  For our purpose a turkey burger on Spike’s favorite potato bun topped with cheddar, thick bacon smokehouse bbq sauce and homemade Vidalia Onion Petals…that’s right.  Vidalia Onion Petals.  Messed up the kitchen a little with the frying mess but super tasty.  The sauce was made from doctored bottled sauce.  I don’t know if I would do that again because there isn’t as much control that way unless you really know the bottled sauce to begin with.  It is an interesting way to boost flavors though.

Coletti’s smokehouse bbq sauce
2 chipotle peppers and sauce diced (I keep my open cans in a flattened ziploc in the freezer and they are super easy to get a fine dice on this way)
1 cup sweet bottled bbq sauce
1/2 cup ketchup (I really like Heinz best)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
a soup spoon of Molasses

Combine all ingrediants and puree with your immersion blender if you have one.  If not, I’d take care to mash the chipotles really well and combine all ingredients w/ a spoon.  Enjoy!