Steak, Tomatoes, and Potatoes

I was in the mood for steak and potatoes late last week and, happily, had a nice piece of organic grass fed steak in the freezer. I seared the steak in a very hot pan then popped it in a 400F° oven for 10 minutes. Came out perfect!

We ate the steak with sautéed cherry tomatoes and my mom's oven-fried potatoes. They're not really fried, but that's what she called them on the recipe card. They're really awesome potatoes and taste even better then next day with a runny egg.

Mom's Oven-Fried Potatoes

Ingredients
6 medium Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large onion, chopped into thumbnail-sized pieces
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
Salt & pepper to taste
Smoked paprika
Dried parsley

Directions
Preheat oven to 450°F. Spray 13x9 baking dish. Put potatoes and onions in dish. Liberally season with salt, pepper, and paprika. Toss. Dot with butter. Cover and bake 50 minutes. Uncover and broil 10 minutes longer or until browned and a little crunchy on top.

If you want to use fewer potatoes, that's fine. Just remember the rule of thumb is one tablespoon butter per potato. Also, be very liberal with the seasonings. I'm fond of Bourbon Barrel Foods' Bourbon Smoked Paprika, but Penzeys Smoked Spanish Paprika is also pretty fine.

My First Kabobs

Several years ago, when my parents were moving house, my mother gave me her old set of stainless steel kabob skewers. I didn't really know what to do with them, having never made kabobs, but I was loathe to refuse them as I had fond memories of using them to toast marshmallow/fence with my cousins at many family picnics.

I was the Errol Flynn of marshmallow toasters, I tell you.

Anyway, the skewers sat, unused and unloved, in the back of my kitchen's junk drawer until last week when I decided it was darn well time to skewer something or let them go.

There was a pound of thawed beef chunks in the fridge I'd intended for stew, before the marvelous spring weather we've been having persuaded me that stew was the last thing I wanted to eat. Why not, I thought, skewer and broil 'em?

I marinaded the beef for two days (it was supposed to only be overnight, but ...) in McCormick Grill Mates® 25% Less Sodium Montreal Steak Marinade prepared with vegetable oil, water, and zinfandel vinegar. Sunday afternoon, I threaded the meat onto two metal skewers, lay them on a broiler pan, poured some of the remaining marinade over each skewer, and let them sit for about 20 minutes on the kitchen side.

Then I heated the broiler and broiled the kabobs about four inches from the element for about 4 minutes on each side.

I served the kabobs on a bed of Southern Living's "Basmati Rice and Pigeon Peas" and it made for a rather nice Sunday dinner. The kabobs were tender and peppery with a good hit of garlic and the lemony basmati rice paired well with them.

Overall, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself and expect we'll be eating a lot of meat-onna-stick this summer!

Slow Cooker Beef Stew w/ Merlot & Tomatoes

I made beef stew on Saint Patrick's Day and, to thumb my nose at limiting faux-Irish traditions, it doesn't have Guinness in it. Or potatoes. Hearty with thick chunks of beef and vegetables, this made a delicious alternative to corned beef, boiled potatoes, and cabbage.

Easy Slow Cooker Beef Stew

1 pound stew beef, trimmed & cut into bite-sized pieces
2 shallots, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 red onion, chopped
3 carrots, sliced thick
3 celery stalks, sliced thick
sliced mushrooms
28 oz can Muir Glen fire-roasted crushed tomatoes
1 cup Little Penguin Merlot
1 Tbsp Penzeys Beef Soup Base & Seasoning
2 tsp Penzeys Herbes de Provence
Dried parsley, as desired
Black pepper, to taste

Layer mushrooms and other vegetables at bottom of slow cooker. Top with beef. Whisk soup base into wine until dissolved and combine with tomatoes, parsley, and pepper. Pour over beef. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours. Serve over parslied egg noodles.

This stew makes a lot -- enough for four or six -- but the leftovers reheat well.

Spring Steak

My parents grill pretty much year round. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these grillmasters from their perfectly grilled steaks or chicken breasts. While I envy them, neither The Husband nor I are hardy enough to follow their example. No, we grill from May to October and count that a blessedly long season.

Tonight was our inaugural run -- we had our grill hooked up to our home's (emergency generator's) propane tank last autumn so we would never have to fiddle with changing grill tanks ever again. It's awesome. And the steak came out pretty well, too!




I rubbed our last farmers' market sirloin steak with Penzeys salt-free Arizona Dreaming seasoning blend and let it sit on the kitchen side for about twenty minutes. Then The Husband grilled it for about 10 minutes -- I think 8 minutes would have been better as I like my steak closer to medium-rare and this was medium verging on medium-well. It's a fiddly business, you know, getting steak done right.

Served the steak with Dijon roasted asparagus -- tossed asparagus garlic, grape tomatoes, Dijon mustard and fresh ground black pepper then roasted it at 425°F for about 13 minutes. Delicious and heavily inspired by the recipe for "Asparagus Sauteed in Butter and Mustard" from Kitchen of Light: New Scandinavian Cooking with Andreas Viestad.

Also served the steak with Knorr Pasta Sides "Beef" flavor (made without butter) as I was just too lazy to make the rosemary-white bean mash!

Spring Snow Soup

It snowed last Friday -- hopefully, the last snow of the season -- and snow is the perfect excuse for soup-making. I have lots of barley on hand so was looking for a recipe for something tomato-y and heavy with vegetables when I found Betty Crocker's recipe for "Vegetable-Beef-Barley Soup." I tweaked the recipe a little based on the ingredients I had on hand, but still think the soup came out really well.

Ingredients: last of the farmer's market ground beef, Muir Glen no-salt-added diced tomatoes, low-sodium tomato sauce, low-sodium beef broth, random leftover frozen vegetables, quick-cooking barley, pressed garlic, black pepper, salt-free Italian seasoning blend.

This soup came out super (soup-er?) thick -- more like a stew -- which was fine by us as we are not fond of brothy soups.

Served this soup with slices of garlic toast. (They're a little misshapen because I had to trim them after I burnt the edges. Tip: don't broil and gab).

Repurposed Roast

I wanted to use up my leftover slow cooker roast, but wasn't in the mood for sandwiches, stew, or shepherd's pie. I needed something that could be cooked in hurry and would also use up all the wrinkly or limp vegetables in our crisper drawer. In the end, I just chopped everything into bits and stir-fried them with leftover gravy. Not a very elegant meal, but quick and tasty.

Sort-of Stir-fry

Ingredients
3 cups cubed leftover slow cooker roast
8 asparagus stalks, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 orange bell pepper, cut into bite-size pieces
1½ cups grape tomatoes
3 stalks celery, sliced
3 scallions, sliced and whites separated from greens
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 cup leftover gravy
Low-sodium chicken broth, as needed

Directions
Heat olive oil in a large pot until hot, add all ingredients except scallion greens and quickly cook until meat is hot and asparagus is crisp-tender, add gravy and toss until everything is thoroughly coated and gravy is hot (add a little broth if the gravy seems too thick). Sprinkle with scallion greens and serve over brown rice or quinoa.

Splendid Sunday Supper

The perfect supper for a slow, sleepy Sunday -- tender slow-cooked pot roast, buttery cabbage, and garlicky mashed potatoes bathed in rich gravy. While it looks beautiful and tasted so darn good, it took no real effort to make. Which was a good thing, because the time change had me all discombobulated for most of the day and I simply wasn't up for anything complicated.

The slow-cooked pot roast is my own recipe and I'm pretty proud of how well it turned out considering I just opened the pantry and rounded up everything that looked combinable!

Tomato-Onion Slow Cooker Roast

Ingredients
1 can Muir Glen Organic fire-roasted roasted-garlic petite diced tomatoes
1 envelope onion soup mix
1 generous handful dried onions, crushed
1 generous handful dried mushrooms, crushed
½ cabernet sauvignon
1 three pound beef roast, well trimmed but with a thin layer of fat on top

Directions
Put roast in slow cooker fat side up. Combine all other ingredients in a large bowl and mix until well blended. Pour over roast. Cook on Low for 8 hours.

Oh, it was everything I want a slow cooker roast to be -- tender, moist, and flavorful. I served the roast with a gravy I made by thickening the juices in a saucepan on the stove with a little cornstarch-juice slurry. The rich, tomato-y gravy complimented the creamy, garlicky mashed potatoes and I could almost have eaten a bowlful of them all on their own.

Not that the cabbage deserves a snubbing! The buttered cabbage was based on a recipe from Cuisine at Home magazine -- combine a head of shredded cabbage, low-sodium chicken broth, whole garlic cloves, whole cloves, and red pepper flakes in a large covered pot and simmer until tender, then season with butter and liberal amounts of salt and pepper. As the recipe suggested, I assembled everything ahead of time and then refrigerated it until I was ready to cook. I did throw a handful of parsley in at the end for color, but I think that did not harm. Overall, I very much enjoyed this dish and look forward to making it again.

As always, I was amused by how much the cabbage reduced down as it cooked!

Veal Scaloppini with Asparagus & Mushrooms

I made this meal last month, but never got around to blogging about it. I used the recipe for "Veal with Asparagus" from Betty Crocker's Low-Carb Lifestyle Cookbook -- one of those sad, neglected cookbooks no-one has borrowed from the library since the low-carb craze died down.


Ingredients: veal scaloppini, asparagus, cremini mushrooms, garlic, shallots, thyme, white wine, olive oil.

I had high expectations for this dish as it combines some of my favorite ingredients, but we just found it "okay." While the vegetables were perfect, the veal seemed overcooked and the whole dish was a bit bland. If I were to make this again, I would cook the veal less, double the garlic, shallots, and thyme (or use fresh thyme) and include liberal amounts of fresh ground salt and pepper. I might also skip using veal and go with turkey or chicken cutlets as that's what I usually have in the freezer.

Yummy Cow

Monday, I made simply lovely steaks based on the recipe for "Cracked Pepper Steak" from Agatston's The South Beach Diet (St. Martin's Griffin, 2003). I tend to avoid making steak at home as I am a little intimidated by steak and afraid I'll do it wrong. Easier to go out to a nice restaurant ... but more expensive, too, and who knows what I'm actually eating?  (My parents had food poisoning recently and it's made me suspicious of anything I didn't cook).

It's time to master steak.

I bought two small vegetarian feed, antibiotic-free filet mignon and coated them with a mixture of crushed black pepper and dried rosemary. I heated a little olive oil in a saute pan and added the steaks to the hot pan, cooking them for about ten minutes on each side -- sounds like too long, but the steaks were perfectly medium rare and so delicious.

Served with caesar salad, it was a pretty nice meal for a Monday night and I look forward to repeating it.

Yummy Stew

Made yummy beef stew in my slow cooker today to use up some of the root vegetables leftover from last week's adventures. Served it with hot crusty rolls and it was the perfect supper for a chilly Friday evening.

Yummy Stew

5 carrots, peeled and sliced into half inch pieces
4 parsnips, peeled and sliced into half inch pieces
3 celery stalks, sliced into one inch pieces
1 onion, chopped small
4 cloves of garlic, pressed
4 medium-sized russet potatoes, halved and then cut into half inch thick pieces
1 pound stew beef, cut into one inch cubes
2 Tbsp whole grain white flour
28-oz can Muir Glen fire roasted crushed tomatoes
1 packet Lawry's beef stew seasoning mix

Toss beef with flour. Put vegetables in bottom of slow cooker. Top with beef. Stir seasoning packet and tomatoes together and pour over beef. Cover and cook on LOW for 8-10 hours. Stir and serve with hot, crusty rolls.

Lawry's beef stew seasoning mix is rather high in sodium, I must admit, but it made for easy work at eight in the morning! I don't usually buy seasoning packets, but we were at Big Lots last week and it was one of my impulse buys. I cannot help myself -- I go into a store like the Christmas Tree Shop or Big Lots and come out with a sack of odd groceries.

Fake Chili

Last week, I made "Mexican Beef and Black Beans" from Betty Crocker's Cook It Quick! as a speedy post-physio supper. Unfortunately, I didn't think this dish was very good when I sampled it and ended up dumping in a bunch of extra ingredients to make it taste better. Did I succeed? Well, it was better ... but I'm not dying to make it again.

The Husband called this "fake chili" and would not eat the leftovers. I did eat some of the leftovers rolled in tortillas with shredded cheese and salsa -- it was pretty good that way -- but a bunch of it went to the cats.

Fake Chili

1 pound ground turkey
1 tsp parsley flakes
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp grated lime zest
3 Tbsp Penzeys Bold Taco seasoning
½ tsp red pepper sauce
1 red bell pepper, diced small
1 15 ounce can low-sodium black beans, rinsed and drained
8 can oz low-sodium tomato sauce
4 green onions, thinly sliced

Cook turkey and peppers in large skillet until turkey is browned and peppers are tender; drain if necessary. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cook about 5 minutes or until heated through. Sprinkle with onions.

Unfortunately, this was the third dish I've made from Cook It Quick! that needed doctoring up so I will be donating this cookbook to my library's Friends sale. May some other cook have better luck with it!

Stir-Fry in a Trice

Had some odds and ends of vegetables hanging around so I made an easy stir-fry for Tuesday's supper:

Ingredients:
beef, celery, peppers (from my garden!), red onion, scallions, baby corn, straw mushrooms, low-sodium chicken broth, and a Kikkoman Stir-Fry Seasoning Mix sachet

To make this stir-fry, I just followed the directions on the back of the Kikkoman sachet (except I used beef instead of chicken, broth instead of water, and slightly different vegetables). Can't have taken more than 15 minutes from stove to table.

(Served the stir-fry on a bed of medium grain rice I had cooked in low-sodium chicken broth. I'm finding I really prefer the texture of medium grain rice to the long grain we had been purchasing).

Mom's Stuffed Peppers

Everyone, I'm sure, has dishes they most associate with "home" and these stuffed peppers are one of mine.   I remember coming home from school and the whole house would smell so distractingly delicious that it would be very hard to concentrate on whatever new novel I was currently devouring ....

When I hear talk now about getting kids to help out in the kitchen to make them more conscious eaters and give them the skills they'll need to make good food choices as adults, I'm always a little amused (and surprised). I'm sure my mother never thought twice about putting me to work in her kitchen as there was no reason a clever child such as myself couldn't peel vegetables, mash potatoes, empty the compost bin, and set and clear the table. None of these were particularly difficult or strenuous activities -- although I strenuously objected to emptying the compost bin -- and I managed to do them with a certain amount of competency considering my brain was almost always only half-concentrating on the task at hand while the other half was busy thinking about the novel I wanted to be off reading.

I did not actually learn how to cook from my mother -- oh, how I resisted girlification -- but I was aware that the foods I ate at home were frequently "better for me" and more "real" than food I saw on the tables of friends and relatives. This awareness has, no doubt, served me well as an adult, but caused some resentment in my childhood when I realized most people did not view pizza or fruit roll-ups as once-a-blue-moon treats!

Admittedly, my parents didn't have a lot of disposable income so my mother's restriction on junk food might have been more fiscal than nutritional.  And that is probably also why we ate a lot of things like meatloaf, roast turkey, stuffed cabbage, and stuffed peppers -- cheap, filling, good for leftovers, and pretty nutritionally sound.

Regardless, I am grateful I had a mother who cooked (and who now shares her recipes with me).

Mom's Stuffed Peppers
6 large green bell peppers, topped and gutted
1 lb 85% lean ground beef
2 Tbsp chopped onion
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1 cup cooked rice
1 15 oz can tomato sauce

Preheat oven to 350F°.

Parboil peppers in salted water for 5 minutes or until bright green and slightly tender. Drain. Cook beef and onions in a saute pan until browned. Add salt and pepper, garlic powder, rice, and 1 cup of sauce. Mix well.

Lightly stuff meat mixture into peppers. Stand peppers up in a greased pan about as deep as the peppers are tall. Top peppers with remaining sauce.  Cover and bake for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake 15 minutes more.

Serves 6 with mashed potatoes and tossed salad.

Cream Cheese 'sketti

The recipe for "Spaghetti a la Philly" showed up in my twitter feed a couple weeks ago and I thought "hmmm, don't I have a couple blocks of neufchatel cream cheese in the dairy drawer?" and then forgot about it.

Well, when I planned this week's menu I decided to be honest with myself and face up to just how hard Mondays are. I come home pretty darn tired and I don't want to cook anything complicated, but I also crave comforting homey foods that I can't really get through take out. So? 'sketti!

I made this recipe using two thawed bags of freezer sauce, a package of thawed ground bison, garlic, onion, parsley, neufchatel cheese, and whole grain spaghetti. Theoretically, it's fairly nutritious as I prepared it. But we ate two servings each, so it really isn't!

Would I make "Spaghetti a la Philly" again? Of course!

Surprising Pot Roast

Surprising, because it was extremely delicious. Yes, I made snide comments about my slow cooker and, suddenly, it starts turning out some really yummy things. Must have known I was thinking about putting it out to pasture, eh?

To make this pot roast, I stuck a 3-ish pound chuck roast in the bottom of my slow cooker with the thin layer of fat on top. I mixed together half a bottle of Good Housekeeping Mushroom Marsala Steak Sauce, a handful of dried parsley, some dehydrated shallot flakes, and a can of light cream of mushroom soup and poured it over the roast. I set the slow cooker on LOW and let the roast cook for ten hours.

I served the roast with carrots, rice, and gravy and it was delicious. The gravy, in particular, was excellent -- if there had been no roast, we could have quite happily just have eaten rice and gravy. I understand that isn't a healthy meal choice, but we are all allowed to backslide every once in a while, right?

Souper Friday

Friday's slow cooker "Hamburger Soup With Barley" from Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook ended up cooking on the stove as I had forgotten to thaw any ground meat ahead of time. The soup came out pretty well on the stove and made the whole house smell delicious. Of course, as I modified the original recipe to suit my own tastes, it came out rather garlicky!

Bison & Barley Soup
1 lb ground bison (or any lean ground meat)
1 medium onion, diced
4 large cloves garlic, pressed
3 carrots, sliced
3 celery ribs, sliced
½ cup pearl barley
Wax carton low-sodium beef broth
2 14.5 oz cans Muir Glen Organic diced tomatoes
1 bay leaf
1 Tbsp. salt-free Italian seasoning blend
1 handful dried parsley
Salt & pepper to taste

Heat a little olive oil in a large French/Dutch oven or stock pot. When oil is fragrant and shimmery, add meat, onion, garlic, celery, and carrots. Cook until meat is no longer pink. Add broth, tomatoes, bay, thyme, and parsley. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for one hour. Remove bay leaf and season to taste.

Christmas Dinner With Nobs On

Christmas Dinner, 2009

~ Marinated Beef Tenderloin ~
with Port Wine Sauce

~ Do-Ahead Garlic Mashed Potatoes ~

~ Buttered Parsley Corn ~

~ Savory Slow Cooker Squash and Apple Dish ~

~ Garden Salad ~

~ Pickle Tray ~

~ Floury Rolls ~
with Garlic-Herb Butter

~*~

~ Panettone Bread Pudding ~
Served warm with
Fresh Whipped Cream

Owe most of Christmas Dinner's success to the Betty Crocker Complete Thanksgiving Cookbook (Wiley, 2003) which provided me with most of the dishes listed above. This is an excellent book which I have borrowed from the library time and time again for its tasty recipes and menus. The marinated beef tenderloin was particularly awesome (and will be repeated), but part of that was no doubt due to the quality cut of prime beef I purchased at Whole Foods.

The mashed potatoes, gravy, and butternut squash were all made on Christmas Eve and just refrigerated until needed. I reheated them in the microwave while the meat rested and then just popped them in the still hot oven until everyone was ready to sit down and feast.

Everything was really good and there were far less leftovers than I had anticipated -- my Menu Plan Monday was largely dependent on repurposed beef getting us through the weekend, but that did not happen! After seconds for four people, we managed a few small sandwiches on leftover floury rolls and that was it. Yay for KFC, eh?

Dump & Cook Beefy Barley Stew

Saturday night, I had some car troubles and ended up coming home late enough I no longer felt like making "Saucy Pepper steak." However, I knew the beef steak was thoroughly thawed and would have to be cooked on Sunday and, while I could simply have made the pepper steak, I was no longer in the mood for something even remotely fiddly. Basically, I wanted a dump and cook slow cooker stew.

I settled on a modification of "Hearty Beef Barley Stew" from Lipton's Recipe Secrets. I used "Beefy Onion" for this and, as the sachet was high in sodium (4,270 milligrams), used no-salt-added Muir Glen diced tomatoes and low-sodium broth.

The stew came out pretty well -- deliciously thick and hearty with a nice tomato tang. Don't have any more "Onion" or "Beefy Onion" sachets left so don't know if I'll make it again -- the stew was tasty and convenient, but that's still a lot of salt.

(Upon refrigeration, all the broth was absorbed by the barley so I stirred in some vegetable broth when I reheated the stew).

Comfort Food For Dreary Weather

We had my parents up for Sunday dinner and, as it was a wetgreyhorribleday, I made meatloaf. Not my mom's meatloaf, but a meatloaf based on Lipton Recipe Secrets's "Souperior Meatloaf." Nothing wrong with my mother's meatloaf (it remains the meatloaf by which I measure all other meatloaves), but I wanted to try something a little different and there was a box of onion soup mix in the back of a cupboard so ... "Souperior Meatloaf."

Of course, I had to go and try to healthify by the recipe by using 87% lean beef, no salt added seasoned bread crumbs, and no salt added ketchup. Then, because I am my mother's daughter and meatloaf isn't meatloaf without tomato gravy, I dumped a can of Muir Glen creamy tomato soup over the top of the meatloaf before popping it in the oven.

How did it taste? Good enough that everyone had "just a little more." The flavor was excellent -- beefy, tangy, tomato-y -- and the body was good -- tender and moist, but no so much that it fell apart when served.

We at this meatloaf with Cook's Illustrated's "Mashed Potatoes," corn, and tossed salad. (One can of soup made just enough gravy for a dollop on everyone's meatloaf and mash).

Pantry Raid: Tomato Sauce

Ordering the case of canning tomatoes last weekend reminded me that I had quite a number of 28-oz jars of crushed tomatoes in our pantry with some tomato paste and a packet of spaghetti sauce mix (bought, many months ago, to make a casserole I promptly lost the recipe for). Then, I also remembered the sweet Italian sausage links and lean ground beef in our freezer ... obviously, I had to make sauce!

Easy Meaty Tomato Sauce

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 shallot, minced
6 cloves garlic, pressed
1 lb sweet Italian sausage links, thawed and removed from casings
1/2 lb lean ground beef, thawed
2 28-oz cans Muir Glen Crushed Tomatoes with basil
1 14-oz can Muir Glen No Salt Added diced tomatoes, undrained
1 envelope McCormick Italian-Style Spaghetti Sauce Mix
1 6-oz can Muir Glen tomato paste

Heat oil in a large pot. Add shallot and garlic and cook until shallot becomes translucent. Add meat and cook until no longer pink. Drain meat in a paper towel-lined colander. Return to pan. Add tomatoes and spaghetti sauce mix and simmer, covered, for about thirty minutes. Add tomato paste. Stir well and cook thirty minutes more. Allow sauce to cool. Parcel out into quart bags and freeze.

This recipe worked out really well! The sauce was rich and meaty with just the right amount of seasoning. (Good thing it tastes so nice, because the recipe made almost four quarts worth of sauce).

As an aside, I was excited to discover I could order Muir Glen tomato products by the case from Amazon. The price is less than what I would pay per can at the grocery store and less per case than what I would pay if ordering directly from Muir Glen. And almost every single case qualifies for free shipping! And if I order through Amazon's Subscribe & Save, I'll automatically receive a new shipment at intervals of my choosing and save an extra fifteen percent per case (shipping remains free)!

You have no idea how chuffed I am with the possibilities. Cases of Muir Glen tomato products at my door every six three months? Lovely jubbly!