Archive for the 'beef' Category
I’m a negligent mum, taking off right at dinnertime thrice this Sunday-Monday-Tuesday to make myself presentable and go eat and call it part of my job. (Sunday and Monday is-was like a pub crawl, only with steak and no boom-box-bus. Tomorrow I’m going to dinner at Rouge. Don’t hate me.) And so I made a pot of something yummy the boys could dip into in my absence.
A cottage pie is a shepherd’s pie, made with beef instead of lamb. Which is how most of us make shepherd’s pie nowadays, but if I were to post this as shepherd’s pie I’d almost certainly open up my inbox to a barrage of emails saying “that’s not shepherd’s pie! Shepherd’s pie is made of lamb! Get it? Because of the shepherds and their lambs… which they apparently eventually eat.)
You could, of course, start with ground lamb and be perfectly safe in calling it shepherd’s pie.
You could also take liberties with the vegetables that go into it – sauteed mushrooms are sublime (unless you have a 6 year old who recoils at mushrooms), or parsnips with the potatoes that go on top. You can totally mess with the veggie elements without changing its identity.
Someone on Twitter just suggested I call it cow pie. Now there’s a good idea. Forget cottage pie – let’s call this cow pie!
Anyway. It’s a good thing to have in the fridge to dip into whenever you need to.
Cottage Pie
1 lb. lean ground beef
1 onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 can or 1 1/2 cups beef stock or broth
2 Tbsp. tomato paste or ketchup
a couple glugs of Worcestershire sauce
2 carrots, diced
1/2 cup frozen green peas
salt and pepper
4 large potatoes, peeled (or not) and diced
1/4 cup butter
1/4-1/2 cup milk
a big handful of grated cheese (old cheddar is fab)
Preheat oven to 375F.
In a large skillet set over medium-high heat, cook the ground beef and onion until the onion is soft and the beef is no longer pink. Sprinkle the flour overtop and stir to distribute it, then pour in the beef stock, add the tomato paste and Worcestershire, and stir to blend well. Bring to a simmer and cook for a minute or two, until the gravy thickens. Add the carrots and peas, season with salt and pepper and pour into a baking dish that will accommodate it.
Meanwhile, pour cold water over the potatoes in a medium-large pot and bring to a boil. When they’re very tender, drain and mash them (rough or smooth) with the butter and milk and spread over the beef mixture. Scatter the grated cheese overtop. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the top is golden and it’s bubbly around the edges.
Serves 6.
February 06 2012 | beef | 12 Comments »
In a perfect world, I’d spend every day playing in the kitchen, experimenting with new ingredients and cuisines, making stuff and posting it here. OK, there would likely be a few other things involved in my perfect world, but wouldn’t that be swell? In the real world, as in other peoples’ worlds (and the opposite of so many others’ worlds), some days I find myself at IKEA looking for a new desk chair, because the stuffing on my old one has somehow worked its way to the outside of the upholstery. And on this particular day, having tried to reel in my appetite, I was starving at said IKEA visit, and thus cranky, and impatient in the as-is section, and then in line, and by the end of it there was no time to go get Swedish meatballs. But it occurred to me that IKEA doesn’t actually have a monopoly on Swedish meatballs.
And if I put my mind to it, I might be able to make them my very own self.
This is the kind of revelation I’d love to dedicate my working life to. Making meatballs, and passing them on. That’s a worthy pursuit, isn’t it?
So here’s the Secret of the Swedish Meatball: you don’t really need a formula. Whether you start with frozen meatballs or make them yourself. (I generally don’t bother with unnecessary binders – like egg – or ingredients like breadcrumbs that were initially added to stretch pricey beef – but it doesn’t matter at all what you add – just do what you like.) Adding a pinch of allspice and/or nutmeg will give them that distinctive Swedish flavour. And if you cook them in a heavy skillet on the stovetop, you’ll create lovely crispy dark bits in the bottom of pan, exactly the kind that make for wonderful gravy.
To recap, you make gravy by shaking flour into fat in a pan – fat + flour won’t get lumpy – then whisking in liquid, like stock or wine. It will bubble and thicken, and turn into gravy. You can add more stock if it’s too thick, or a big glop of sour cream to creamify – spellcheck says that’s not a word, but I contend that it is – the gravy into something like what you get on those deliriously good Swedish meatballs. (If you use low fat sour cream, turn down the heat. Be gentle, or it could separate.) You can totally do this, and wing it even.
If you need a recipe, here you go:
Swedish Meatballs
Adapted from Cookie, October 2008. If you want to streamline things, start by gently shaping pure ground beef into balls, straight out of the package – don’t bother mixing anything in.
1 lb. lean ground beef
1 small onion, coarsely grated
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
1/4 tsp. allspice and/or nutmeg (optional)
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. butter (optional)
1 Tbsp. flour
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup sour cream
Lingonberry or cranberry sauce (optional)
In a medium bowl, gently combine the beef, onion, breadcrumbs, egg, spices and salt and pepper with your hands, and shape it into 1-inch balls.
In a drizzle of oil in a heavy (cast iron is great) skillet set over medium-high heat, cook the meatballs, rolling them around as you need to, until deep golden and crusty and cooked through. With a slotted spoon, transfer them to a bowl and set aside.
Drain the excess fat from the pan, leaving about a tablespoon. Add the butter (if you like, or just leave the drippings in the pan) and the flour, and whisk to combine. Add the stock and stir, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan, until the mixture boils and thickens. Whisk in the sour cream and stir until it has the texture of creamy gravy. This whole process will only take a few minutes.
Return the meatballs to the pan and roll them around to coat. Serve with cranberry or lingonberry sauce. Serves 4-6.
January 13 2012 | beef | 15 Comments »
Now, it could have been the appetite I worked up at the gym, intensified by then not nibbling at all between the time I got home and managed to get dinner on the table. (Which was, to be honest, only about 20 minutes.) But this was really good. And easy. A bag of slaw would have streamlined it even further, but at this moment we have no fewer than 4 full-sized cabbages hogging a good quarter of our fridge space, begging to be used. This week’s theme just may be slaw. (More possibilities than colcannon.)
This particular slaw is sweet and gingery, with no oil. (You could add some, if you like.) The original requested red jalapenos, which I don’t expect many to have on hand (nor make a special trip for), and because the comments unanimously reported it to be too hot, I, being of wimpy palate, demoted the jalapenos to a pinch of dried red pepper flakes. Easy, sufficient, and it made removing my contacts later this evening that much less painful.
This is a keeper. If I was the sort to plan a dinner rotation, with pork chops on Mondays and chicken on Thursdays and pizza on Fridays, this might just snag the Tuesday spot.
Grilled Asian Steak with Sweet Ginger Slaw
adapted from Bon Appétit, June 2008
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 Tbsp canola oil
2 tsp sesame oil (optional)
1 Tbsp freshly grated ginger, divided
2 garlic cloves, crushed or sliced
1 1 1/2 lb flat iron or flank steak
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
pinch red pepper flakes
4-5 cups thinly sliced cabbage (or half a bag of prepared coleslaw)
a few green onions, chopped
Stir together the soy sauce, canola oil, sesame oil, half the ginger and garlic in a zip-lock bag or bowl; add the steaks and turn to coat. Let them sit for at least half an hour, or refrigerate overnight.
In a small saucepan, whisk together the rice vinegar and sugar and bring to a simmer; add the ginger and red pepper flakes and remove from heat. In a medium bowl, toss together the cabbage and green onions. Drizzle the warm vinegar mixture overtop and toss to coat.
Preheat your grill and grill the steaks to your desired doneness – 4-5 minutes per side for medium-rare. Let rest for at least 5 minutes before slicing thinly against the grain and serving atop (or alongside) the slaw. Serves 4.
September 16 2011 | beef and on the grill | 10 Comments »
It seems you’ve been getting a lot of leftovers lately. (Figuratively speaking, of course. Or have you?) Although I’ve been cooking like mad, prepping and photographing in an almost-always-near-disastrous kitchen with an often grumpy sous chef-slash-dishwasher, I can’t share most of the results with you. Sue and I are in the final stretch of the bean book, finishing up edits and photos and working on the layout and design, and the recipes and images for Alice Eats are due at the end of April (which my calendar tells me is in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS) and if I’m not done I’m pretty sure Pierre will maim me. I’ve seen how good he is with a knife. And this week I’m working on stuff for Swerve, the Herald, Parents Canada, Readers’ Digest, City Palate and Family Kitchen. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, it’s just that I haven’t been sharing. Also, I’m feeling a little tapped out when it gets to be dinnertime.
This morning I covered traffic reporting on CBC (tomorrow too, I’m trying to go to bed now), which meant a 4am wakeup (and a 1am, 2am, 2:30am to make sure I wasn’t sleeping in), so I was ready for dinner mid-afternoon. I had pulled a frozen steak out of the freezer (which meant Mothers Little Helper has been playing on a loop in my brain all day). I just finished working out some recipes for a peanut butter company in New York that I may be in love with, one that makes peanut butter infused with maple and honey and chocolate (not all at once) and so have peanut butter on the brain. Also a glut of peanut butter. And a half can of coconut milk in the fridge. The combination may sound odd and a little lowbrow, but trust me – it worked. As much as anything because the sauce picked up the browned bits from the pan, enriching it far beyond the sum of its parts. Very much yum.
Also? I have some New York peanut butter for you if you want some.
Quick Peanut Butter Beef Curry
1 steak, cut into bite-sized pieces or strips
canola oil, for cooking
3 garlic cloves
2 tsp curry paste (or to taste)
a big spoonful of peanut butter
half a 14 oz (398 mL) can coconut milk
Pat the beef dry with a paper towel and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Drizzle some oil into a large, heavy skillet (cast iron is ideal) set over medium-high heat. Brown the meat, getting some good colour on it – don’t worry about cooking it completely through. (It is a steak, after all.) Transfer to a plate.
Add the garlic and curry paste to the pan, then the peanut butter and coconut milk. Stir to blend and melt the peanut butter, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
Cook for a minute or two, until well blended and thickened; return the beef to the pan and heat through, simmering a little longer if the beef is still too pink inside. Serve immediately, over rice. Serves 2-4, depending on appetites.
April 18 2011 | beef | 13 Comments »
I practically got a standing ovation for this last night, even though I called en route home and asked Mike to pop it from fridge to stovetop and didn’t suggest he check the level of liquid inside, and then I didn’t either, and by the time the biscuits had cooked through it was starting to burn on the bottom.
To be a true Irish stew this would have to be made with chunks of lamb, which you could use just as easily and without having to change anything – bison would do well, too. In keeping with the beer theme of St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow, you could make this with stout – a nice dark Wild Rose Oatmeal Stout, or Guinness – but more stock would work just as well. Mushrooms would do well in this, too. The dumplings are simple – they’re just cream biscuits, scooped (I used a little ice cream scoop with a lever, which was oh-so-satisfying) onto the top of the simmering stock. They will steam through with the lid on, but if you want them golden, take the lid off and run it under the broiler for a few minutes. It’s amazing what a golden crust does for the appeal of a biscuit.
Beef Stew with Stout & Parsley Dumplings
canola or olive oil, for cooking
2-3 lb beef stewing meat, cut in bite-sized pieces
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 bottle or can of stout beer (or a couple cups of beef stock)
2-3 cups beef stock
4 thin-skinned potatoes, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1/2-1 cup frozen peas
Parsley Dumplings:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 handful fresh parsley, chopped
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup heavy (whipping) cream
In a large, heavy pot, brown the meat in a drizzle of oil in batches (without crowding) over medium-high heat. Transfer to a bowl and cook the onions in the same pot. Pour in the stout or stock and bring to a simmer, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Return the meat to the pot, cover and put into a 300F oven for 2 1/2-3 hours.
Remove from the oven and add the stock along with the potatoes and carrots, cover and cook on medium-high on the stovetop for another 20-30 minutes. Meanwhile, make the dumpling dough: in a medium bowl, stir together the flour, parsley, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the cream and stir just until the dough comes together. Drop the biscuit batter by the large spoonful on top of the simmering stew, cover and cook for 15 minutes, until the biscuits are cooked through. If you like, put the pot under the broiler for a few minutes to allow them to brown. Serves 6.
March 16 2011 | beef | 14 Comments »
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