Tag: meat

Ingredients:

• 1 pkg of stew meat, browned.
• 2 california chile pods
• 6-10 small red peppers.
• 2 pasilla (dried ancho) chile pods.
• 6-10 small arbol chili pods.
• 3 jalapenos
• 1 can tomato sauce
• white pepper, to taste
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• garlic salt
• onion powder
• celery seed
• cumin
• 2 cans beef consomme
• 1 can chicken broth
• 1 bottle newcastle
• 1 cup ground tortilla strips

After browning the stew meat, I threw it in a crock pot along with all the dried peppers (ground), the tomato sauce, the beef consomme, the chicken broth, and the beer. I ran the jalapenos through the blender, and added them as well as the remainder of the ingredients. Easy, right? Other than running everything through the blender, the only work is browning the stew meat and occasionally stirring (I used a whisk as well). After that, I left it to cook all day- with the occasional taste and spice/salt adjustment. How will it turn out? We'll see, after tonight.

And set yourself on fire you shall. Particularly after eating this atrocity I invented last night.

Software:
1/2 lb. Ground Beef
1/2 yellow onion, diced.
1 med. Red Bell Pepper diced (this is a chile too, btw)
3 Habanero Chiles diced fine (fresh)
3 Thai Chiles diced fine (fresh)
1 Random Chile diced fine (Seriously. I bought a fresh "Hungarian" Chile from Vons. 
                                       Who the hell knows what subspecies of capsicum it is.)
2 Jalapenos diced fine (fresh)
3 tsp. Cayenne Chile (powder)
4 tsp. Naga Jolokia Chile (powder)
1 can Chipotles in Adobo (only use 5 of the chiles or so, diced)
1 14.5oz can Ranch Style beans
5 tsp. chili powder (I use homemade, store bought is sawdust)
1 cup beer (I used Peroni, because thats what I had)
Garlic Salt
Salt and Pepper

1. Brown the ground beef in a skillet, once browned, throw in onion and bell pepper. Season with Garlic Salt and Pepper to taste.
2. Done! (just kidding.)
3. Or am I?
4. No, I am. Drain the fat from the skillet. Throw in all diced chiles except the Chipotles. Soften.
5. In a soup pot, stock pot, pot of some kind, combine meat mixture, and rest of the ingredients.
6. Cook until it tastes good. Or until you can't taste anything because the chiles have beaten your
    tastebuds into submission/mass suicide.

 

On a side note: I wish the preview pane hadn't gone away, but I do like the new post editor Tele.

I love New England Clam Chowder. So when Tele and Savory decided on Northeastern America for EU Night I had to make it. I know that it goes against my MO of making desserts for EU night and everything else, but this was a must.

In making clam chowder you have a very important decision to make...canned or fresh clams. I read both types of recipes. I was a little scared of the whole shucking of clams, but that wasn't going to stop me from using fresh clams. The idea of canned clams in kind of creepy too. Alton Brown suggests using both clams, fresh in the soup itself and then topping the bowl with a few fresh clams. I don't like the idea of a shelled clam sitting upon my bowl of soup though. So that was definitely not the solution. Ohh, what to do? The decision was made for me when the meat counter guy at Smith's explained that he didn't stock fresh clams regularly, but only by special order. Alright, so there we go. Canned clams it is (even though I still found canned clams to be a strange thing).

Now to find the ultimate recipe. I started out my research in cookbooks around the house, but they just didn't have what I was looking for. I then moved to the internet and finally decided on Michael Chu's Clam Chowder New England Style on Cooking for Engineers. I love how this guy thinks. The recipes have so much wonderful detail. I have decided that it is the engineering part of my brain that leads me into doing my crazy photo journal recipes on EU. But, anyway, I digress.

Now that I was armed with the recipe and ingredients it was just time to wait for EU Night to roll around.

In true EU Night fashion I did not perform a test run of any kind on this recipe. It was either going to be good or bad, but we would all find out together. I am happy to report that it came out very good. There is an amazing amount of clams in this wonderfully creamy soup. I will say that you must not skimp on the salt. The salt is certainly a key ingredient in balancing the flavors.

The one thing that I will add to the recipe next time I make it is a rib or two of celery. I didn't think I would miss the celery that Progresso's Rich and Hearty New England Clam Chowder has in it, but I really did.

Here we go! For this EU night, I decided on making Cheesesteaks. Alas, they weren't traditional, in the fact that they weren't made with Cheez Whiz (Seriously. Apparently, a hot dog vendor in Philidelphia invented cheesesteaks when he got bored with his regular faire). This is the recipe. alas. it is not exact. Why? Well because its up to you the amount of ingredients you want on the thing. Not me.

Also, note that the cut of beef required (suggested) for these is a mysterious cut known to few as "Eye of Round" Roast. In my earlier, uncertain years, I worked at a Smiths Food and Drug in the Meat department. I know quite a bit of beef from my Father and Grandfather as well, but I had never heard of this cut. I dont know why. Ask your butcher, or use a Rib-Eye steak or comparable marbled cut of beef. You can't tell the difference. Except in price, maybe, the Eye of Round is very cheap, $11 for 2.5 lbs or so. (Note: 2.5 lbs is enough to make 10 sandwiches, and thats just meat and cheese.)

2lb.      Eye of Round roast, 
          or comparable portion of 
          meat to stick in sandwiches.

8-10      Dutch style sandwich rolls (very flaky crust).

16-20     Slices of provolone cheese

?         Frenched onions, chopped bell peppers, mushrooms
          sweet cherry peppers, anything you want on there.

1         Spray bottle or mustard bottle filled with        
          clean water.

1         Bottle of Steak/Grill seasoning (optional)

Start by putting the roast, or other meat in the freezer for an hour or two. You want it frozen, but still pliable. Rock hard would be bad, and hard to cut. While its freezing, cut the vegetables, watch TV, do something.

Frozen enough? ok, get a serrated blade, yes, the type you cut bread with. What you're looking for here is to shave very thin slices of beef off of the roast. Since the beef is frozen, it should be easier to cut without tearing. After you've sliced all of the beef very thin, set it aside in a bowl. I would suggest you get a two burner cast iron griddle for this, they're good for pancakes, eggs, pretty much anything, but great for this. Lay it across one front burner and one back burner, and turn the heat on the front burner to high, and the back burner to low.

Throw a cup or so of your veggies on the front part of the griddle, and saute until desired done-ness. While this is cooking, preheat the oven to 175 degrees. If the vegetables begin to stick to the griddle, hit them with a squirt of water from the mustard bottle, it will prevent them from sticking. Once they're cooked to your liking, move them to the back of the griddle. Throw a cup of the sliced beef on there, and cook to desired doneness and again, hit with a squirt of water if it starts to stick. Once this is cooked to your liking, combine the cooked vegetables and the beef together and cook for a minute or two, blasting with water when you need to. With the spatula, form the mixture into an oval shape, and then put two slices of provolone on the oval, almost covering the meat but try to keep it off of the grill. Hit the top of the cheese with two or three squirts of water, and the steam from this will melt the cheese very very quickly.

Get one of your sandwich rolls, and cut lengthwise along one side, in the typical hot dog bun fashion. Lay the bun open side down onto the meat, and then slide the spatula underneath the entire mass. In one motion, flip the whole mess over, and you should have a Philly Cheesesteak! Yay!

I know it seems like quite a bit of work, but they are mighty tasty.

I was seriously in need of some sour cream yesterday, so I browsed the internet for a couple beef stroganoff recipes and generated something that turned out to be pretty darn fantastic.

After slicing a half-pound sirloin steak into small strips, I dredged them in flour, garlic salt, and pepper, then sauteed them in butter along with a quarter onion (diced). I added a couple dashes of Worcestershire and soy sauce (that combo is my secret weapon for meat dishes). After the onion was transparent, I added some sliced mushrooms, a shot of apple cognac (any brandy would be fine), and half a can of chicken broth. Once the whole mixture thickened, I added half a cup of sour cream, reduced the heat to medium, and let the sauce thicken.

Over buttered egg noodles, this one was pretty fantastic. There was just a hint of the apple flavor from the cognac. If I do this again, I will wait to add the steak until after the onions are done; it certainly wasn't overcooked, but I would have liked it to be a little less cooked anyways.

So, there's this sushi bar down the street, on Flamingo and Fort Apache. The itamae there are part of some sort of sushi cabal, and they look at you like you're a freak if you can't put away at least fifty bucks worth of sushi in a single sitting. (For the record, that's about eight or nine orders of nigiri. You could choke a small dog with that.)

Savory, Tarthead, and I, brave adventurers all, decided to brave the rapids there. Savory was my secret weapon, my revenge for getting the you no eat sushi very often look. In the course of a typical workday, I've seen Savory pack away four donuts, two submarine sandwiches, and a plate of pad thai. Like most men with the capability to ingest several times their own mass in meat, he's freakishly small.

After dropping off the kids with a random stranger, we converged upon the restaurant and were presented with one of those sushi tick mark sheets.

I hate those sheets. First of all, I'm perfectly capable of ordering sushi in Japanese (I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak sushi). Second of all, with three people, two tick marks can be easily mistaken for an eleven. I've seen people mow through eleven orders of hamachi nigiri before, so that is totally not an uncommon scenario. And thirdly, yes, please, let us all handle a piece of random paper and then hand it to the guy who touches the uncooked belly meats that go in your mouth.

All of this has nothing to do with this particular sushi restaurant. I just need to rant sometimes. And it's going to be freaky in the future when you have to ICQ your itamae just to get your maguro pronto.

Anyways, having been given the paper bullet, we had to plan ahead. No problem; by the time we all had one order of something to eat, we had a traffic pile-up of little plates. This is a situation that the Japanese call frickin awesome.

And the fish? Yeah. The fish was great. I wouldn't say they're particularly above par on the fish I like to eat (for instance, the closer Hikari sushi bar has the best, butteriest yellowtail ever invented). The unagi was pretty standard, the tuna, delicious. Of course, I didn't order what the others ordered, and I can tell you they both have a pretty hefty recommendation for you. When they get around to posting...

One of the most interesting things one will find on an internet bender is that throughout the world one will find poultry to be pretty much canonical wherever Christmas is celebrated.

In most of the western world, poultry is defined as turkey. However, children in Japan apparently wait in long lines outside of their local KFC in order to get a bucket of fried chicken. Ukraine families celebrate with a gigantic, twelve course meal in the name of the twelve apostles, devoid of any meat except for fish, while children wait for Father Frost to visit their homes. In the United Kingdom, duck or goose may replace roast turkey, depending on the number of guests.

Before the turkey was introduced to the UK in the 1700s, the traditional medieval dish was either peacock or boar. In modern Hawaii, it isn't uncommon to see Japanese influences such as turkey teriyaki. The Christmas chook, meaning chicken or fowl, is a common sight in Australia.

Obviously, one of the things we're going to have to delve into during this month is the preparation of poultry dishes, in celebration of Christmas tradition and fantastic cuisine. We're looking forward to it.

One of the search keyphrases that hit our site was 'do you pasteurize meat before or after cooking'.
Dear future foodie: pasteurization is the sterilization of a substance through the application of heat. In other words, in a sense: pasteurization is cooking. Use this knowledge wisely.

Oh, that little ubiquitous display in the produce section of the grocery store. You know exactly what I mean- the really expensive-seeming meat and cheese display, where markets display their largesse and where seemingly only the rich and epicurean seem to shop.

I've long lusted over this section, as it seems to have the most concentrated stink of adventure in the entire grocery. Seriously, even more than the cultural foods. On one weekend, our curiosity was so potent that we had to take the dive and grab ourselves a hefty chunk of diversity.

As Americans, we tend to be less curious about cheeses than our friends overseas. I'm guessing a few too many folks who watched Pepé Le Pew get mistaken for limburger as children grew up frightful about the entire variety cheese concept. Wake up, America. You're missing out.

In the center of the cracker tray above is a container of Greek-style hummus, a Middle-Eastern favorite made of garbanzo beans and tahini (which is essentially sesame-seed butter). Hummus is fantastic. If you're not eating it, you're missing out. This particular variety was strongly flavored of pepper, garlic, and lemon juice.

The triangular wedge on its own platter is Brie, a relatively familiar French cheese. The white coating on the outside is mold, but don't let that put you off- soft, spreadable Brie is fantastic with or without this part, but definitely has a bit more zest if you take it altogether. Brie is a cow's-milk cheese, and is nutty-flavored and delicious.

The other plate has a few pieces of summer sausage, as well as some folded pieces of Italian salami, cured in oil. Off these meats, we played a few different cheeses.

In staying with our American/British roots, there were some slices of hickory-smoked cheddar, probably the most familiar cheese in the States. Cheddar is named for the process by which it is made- stacking the cheeses until the bottom ones are pressed firm. As a result, it is a sturdy and strongly flavored cheese.

The small white-yellow strips of cheese are Gruyere, a Swiss cheese (but not 'the' Swiss cheese, which is known as Emmenthaler). Like Emmenthaler, it is a bit waxy, and is very delicately flavored- I was a bit put off by it, because the flavor was not apparent when combined with other ingredients.

Possibly not showing in the photo above were some slices of Havarti, a Danish cheese often impregnated with dill. This tasted almost exactly like Emmenthaler, but with a much more pleasing texture. It's enough to make me swear off the Swiss cheese for good.

Finally, there is a small container of goat's cheese, or chevre. This has a very strong flavor that is somewhat gamey; we ended up not eating very much of it. But I did use it later in the Greek night lamb recipe.

Don't let fear get you down. Eat the cheese. Learn to experiment. Live a little. You only get to do it once, after all.

Chicken Pot Pie.

Think about that steam curling up from the crust.

Chicken Freaking Pot Pie.

The Pennsylvania Dutch enslaved an entire nation with this rustic dish, which is one of the few meat pies enjoyed this side of the Atlantic (I KNOW YOU'RE THERE, NATCHITOCHES MEAT PIE. I will find the filthy, forbidden love that is deep fried meat pie some day).

The PD's (like they call them back in the hood) also brought us pretzels, apple butter, and funnel cakes, because they are sheer butter-encrusted evil. Their plan is to fatten all of humanity and use their disgusting man-fat to grease the largest slip-n-slide in history. But, you're not cleared for that information.

Her Tartness did the crust for this one, so I'll let her add that one.

1. I cut up two chicken breasts (p.s. - they liked it) and half a white onion (small cubes for the chicken, finely chopped for the onion). Utterly confused by what I was going to do to make these chunks into some sort of pie, I sweated the onion in a stick of butter.

WHAT? Butter comes by the stick. It's how I measure. We are a very skinny family. Bite me.

1. The chicken went in after the onion was clear, along with some soy sauce, pepper, paprika, finely chopped celery (2 sticks) and garlic powder.

2. Double barrel action after the chicken was thoroughly cooked as I unceremoniously plopped one can of cream of chicken and one can of cream of mushroom into the skillet. It sat there, jellied, like some disgusting panna cotta. I stirred it all in anyways.

3. Once it was less... upright, I threw in some mixed vegetables (frozen). What goes with mushroom and chicken? The T herbs! In went some fresh thyme (man, what I would have given for a marijuana smoker to break down those two twigs) and dried tarragon. When things thinned out a bit too much I added a tablespoon of cornstarch and stirred it in.

4. Tasting... what do I need? More soy sauce. A dab of worcestershire. Meanwhile, Tart-on was making some kind of dough as I simmered everything on low.

Magically, all those ingredients with the crust fit perfectly in a circular 9-inch baker. Turned oven to 400. Docked the crust with a fork and brushed it with one beaten egg. Put into the oven. WAITED A HORRIBLY LONG FORTY FIVE MINUTES.

1. Littleroq asked for chicken pot pie for BREAKFAST the next day. Take that, Marie Callender. I have evaded your charms.

Note: Why do I add soy sauce to so many things? Because the MSG in soy sauce makes everything taste like store-bought.