Comfort Dinner

One of the first things I ever made from the Pioneer Woman cookbook was her "Comfort Meatballs." On her site they are called BBQ Meatballs which is an equally apt name. The story goes that a friend of the family brought Ree these delicious meatballs after she had just come home with one of her babies. This story inspired me to make this dish for several of my friends to nourish their postpartum cravings. Our friends Filip and Juliane welcomed their third child this month, and in his honor I whipped up this recipe again. And if you are going to make one batch of balls, you might as well double the recipe. (Insert ball joke of your choice here.)

Pioneer Woman's recipe can be found here. One of the great things about this recipe is that it can easily be gluten free because she uses oats instead of breadcrumbs. If you are cooking for a GF family, just omit the step of dredging the meatballs in flour before frying them. You can skip it even if you aren't eating GF, they come out just fine. Also, these meatballs freeze really well. If I am giving a batch away, I just brown the meatballs, place in a tin foil tray and cover with sauce - no need to bake. Just tell the lucky recipient to thaw and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. Finally, these meatballs are perfect with mashed potatoes. I have also had them over rice, quinoa and with cheese in a panini.

Dinner for Company - Carnita Beef

On Saturday we had a our good friends John, Jen and their 7 month old son Justin over for dinner. "Uncle" Josh, Kara's favorite dinner guest, joined us too. I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to use one of the fabulous new cookbooks my mother in law gave me for Christmas.

Pam Anderson, not to be confused with the buxom former wife of rocker Tommy Lee, is a foodie, cookbook author, blogger and all around cool lady from what I can gather. Her food blog Three Many Cooks is written by Pam and her two sisters and offers some great recipes. Her cookbooks also get rave reviews. I have How to Cook without a Book and Perfect One-Dish Dinners.

For our weekend dinner, I was looking for something easy and fun that would use up some of the meat that is currently taking up all of my freezer space. "Carnita-Style Beef" from One-Dish Dinners was, in fact, perfect. Basically, you braise chuck roasts in a chile sauce, shred the meat and serve it sort of like fajitas.

Here is the basic recipe for the beef. This makes a TON of food. You could easily cut this recipe in half and it would serve 6-8 hungry adults. If you go that route, you can make the whole thing in a dutch oven. I also think this recipe could be adapted to a slow cooker. I will give that a try next time.

•  Preheat oven to 450.
• In a large bowl, cover 2 beef chuck roasts (4-6 lbs total weight) with olive oil, salt, pepper and cumin.
• In a small bowl combine 2 small cans chopped green chile peppers, 1/4 cup chili powder and 2 tsp cumin. (I might try adding a little molasses or brown sugar to sweeten it up next time.)
• Chop up 8-10 cloves of garlic.
• Heat a large roasting pan on high and cover the bottom with oil. Sear the meat on so it gets nice and crusty. Set aside.
• Add garlic to pan for a minute or so. Then add chile mixture and stir until fragrant - like another minute. Now dump in a quart of chicken stock and stir until bubbling.
• Return meat to pan and cover with several layers of foil so that the steam is staying locked in.
• Cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. You want the meat to be shredable. 
• Shred the meat and set aside until ready to serve. This is easy to freeze in bags and would be great for enchiladas, quesadillas, tacos, bi bim bap. Yum!

I fried up a couple of bell peppers and onions cut into long strips to serve with the beef as well. We just put the meat, the veggies, a bowl of rice and beans,  warm tortillas, sour cream, salsa and guacamole on the table and let everyone make their own thing. It was simple and fun.

Jen, who manages to be a doctor, a mommy and an amazing cook, brought the most delicious carrot cake cupcakes. Here is the recipe from Food & Wine Magazine. Seriously, the best cupcakes ever. Jamie de-frosted his and then devoured the actual cake in under a minute. It was a show!

Beef Stew

 

Last week I made the best stew I have ever made. I am not entirely sure how to account for this stew success. It's not that my previous stews have been bad, this one was just particularly good. I have a few theories, however, as to why this batch was especially yummy:

-I used my cast iron Dutch oven, which really helped to brown the meat.
-I deglazed the heck out of the pot with a lot of red wine. (If you are not squeamish about profanity, lewd jokes and wildly inappropriate sexual innuendo, I highly recommend the episode of South Park titled "Creme Fraiche" where Stan's dad becomes obsessed with the Food Network and starts saying things like, "I'm gonna delglaze the #*&% out of that pan!" Hilarious.)
-I coated the beef cubes in salt, pepper and flour before I browned them.
-I used a bunch of baby bella mushrooms that were about to bite the dust.
-I used about 3 cups of stock made with Better than Bouillon. I suspect that this stuff is not exactly the healthiest of food products, but it did add a nice richness, and saltiness, to the stew.


Now, you could follow a recipe to make a stew, but that's not really my style. Whenever I read recipes for something like stew, or most soups for that matter, I end up feeling like it is just all too complicated. Of course, the "recipe" that I end up improvising is probably no simpler, but it feels easier somehow. Here is an approximation of my best stew ever. Perfect for a Sunday supper and then a weeknight dinner and then the freezer bank.

• Chop one large or several small onions, 5 or more carrots and 3-4 celery stalks, 10 plus mushrooms. Peel and quarter 8 medium Yukon gold potatoes. No need to be neat and tidy. Large chunks are good.
• Set all of the veggies aside and get out a package of beef cubes. About 1 1/2 pounds. In a mixing bowl, stir up about 1/2 cup flour and a hefty sprinkle of salt and pepper. Throw the beef in to the bowl and shake it around to coat all of the pieces. 
• Coat the bottom of a large pot or Dutch oven with oil, brown the beef cubes in batches and set aside. Careful not to char the bits on the bottom of the pan. Here is the point when I should warn about not overcrowding the pan: You should work in batches and you should not crowd the pan....but if you do, no biggie. Don't sweat it. You are making stew, for goodness sake, it's not that precise. (For a hilarious take on crowding the pan, check out this entry from Jenny and Andy in  Dinner a Love Story.)
• When the beef is all browned, toss the chopped onion, celery, and mushrooms into the pot. Add some crushed garlic too. Stir it all around and when the veggies have softened, pour in some red wine. Don't be shy. Dave reminds me that a beer would work too - just choose something robust like a porter or dark amber. Bud Lite would be a mistake, I fear. 
• Now add the carrots, potatoes and about 2 cups frozen peas, if you have them. Stir the mix around.
• Add the beef cubes back into the pot, too.
• Add about 3 cups of beef stock until you achieve the thickness you like. It will thicken as it cooks, too. I used the Better than Boullion method, but any stock/broth will work.
• Let this all cook for at least an hour. It is better on day two as that lets the meat soften more. If you are making it for a weekend dinner, I suggest making it on Sunday morning and letting it cook and sit for several hours.

Cooking "Club" - The First Meeting

One of the best things about having a baby, aside from the baby itself, is that people bring you food. People come over to see your new little one and give you delicious frozen meals. Moms, in particular, know that when you are hormonal and sleep-deprived, the last thing you are going to consider is cooking. To prevent the family from eating pizza or scrambled eggs for weeks, good friends and neighbors willingly share their cooking prowess.Again, aside from the new baby and all, there is really nothing as wonderful as looking in the freezer and finding the amazing pasta that Juliane made. Or defrosting the tub of soup from Valerie only to discover that your family will actually get a full serving of vegetables that night.

After experiencing this influx of frozen dinners, I had been considering how, short of having another baby, I could recreate this scenario. The only other times I bring people food is when there has been some sort of horribly stressful event like a death in the family. Obviously, tragedy is not what we are looking for here. So I wondered if I could find like-minded cooks to start a frozen dinner "club".The idea is that you make as many copies of an easily frozen dinner as there are people in your group, and you get together regularly to exchange prepared dishes. (Sounds cool, right? Almost like one of those exclusive dining clubs at Princeton?)

I heard and read about these, but I had never had the nerve to actually set one in motion. My friend Valerie is an excellent cook. And since she just had her third child, I knew she would be interested in any opportunity to have more food in her house that she didn't have to prepare. Once Val was on board, I pitched our friend Katie who is also a great cook, but seldom has the chance to flex her culinary muscles since she is trying to finish her Ph.D. and work and have a social life. Katie agreed and convinced her school friend Vivian to come on board too. So our "club" was born and a date of November 1st was set.

Like all good clubs, ours has a few rules.

1. Try to use local/in season produce
2. Try to use local/humanely raised meat
3. Cook gluten free meals

Yes, that last one really ups the ante. But Valerie is gluten intolerant, so going GF is part of the package. While this does raise the degree of difficulty a bit, I think it is an interesting challenge. I am looking forward to exploring some GF recipes this year.

We met last night and I seriously cannot wait to try these meals. Valerie made a Cuban style arroz con pollo - in quantities that far surpass what a family of four could eat. Katie brought chicken and biscuits. (Homemade biscuits, baby!) And Vivian cooked mapo tofu which I have never had but looks like the most delicious Chinese food of all time. Vivian gets extra points, too, for making a spicy and non-spicy version so that the kids can partake. To top it all off, she made a huge container of rice to go with the main dish. Really, these women are amazing. I was practically drooling looking at all this fabulous food.

My first offering is an eggplant pasta bake. This is basically the eggplant vegetarian "goulash" that I learned to make from my mom covering a layer of pasta and all of it topped with mozzarella cheese. Here is the recipe for the eggplant part.

By definition, goulash is traditionally a meat based soupy stew. This dish is meat free, but I call it goulash for lack of a better word. If you have ideas, I am interested. It can be a super thick sauce, baked like a casserole with cheese on top, or add some ground meat and you've got real goulash. This recipe is near and dear to me as it is something my mom cooked a lot and one of the first things I learned to replicate on my own. Thanks, mom!

-I think of this as the recipe of twos -- makes it easy to remember: Chop 2 small/medium onions, 2 green peppers, 2 red/yellow peppers, 2 carrots, 2 cloves of garlic.
-Heat up a large pot or dutch oven to medium high and coat the bottom with olive oil. Add the chopped veggies and cook until they are softened, but not mushy.
-While the chopped veggies are sweating away, peel and cube 2 large eggplants.
-If you have some red wine sitting on your counter, deglaze the pot. If not, no worries.
-Add the eggplant -- you may have to do this in batches to make room.
-When the eggplant is starting to soften and the volume in the pot has reduced, add two 15 oz cans of diced tomatoes.
-Stir it all together and let the mix bubble on the stove until the eggplant is soft. Season with salt, pepper and any other spices that taste good to you and your family.

Like the toddler knife on the stove? One of my favorite utensils.

-This can be served over pasta, rice, couscous, bulgar, quinoa. My favorite way to have this is over some grain with a slice of cheese melted on top. My mom used to cover her batch of goulash with slices of American cheese right in the pot. This is fabulous! It makes the whole thing creamy and rich.