Cassie’s Ruminations

Beef Stew

This is a great beef stew that simmers slowly all day. The house smells amazing when you get home!

Beef Stew
(for at least a 4 quart slow cooker)
Makes 4-6 hearty servings

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup flour
2 pounds beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon Emeril’s Essence, or other seasoning mix of your choice
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
8-10 oz button mushrooms, sliced
1 can (2 cups) beef broth, at room temperature
2 tablespoons brandy
2 tablespoons tomato paste
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon dried basil
⅛ teaspoon ground allspice
1 clove garlic, pressed
2 pounds baby Yukon Gold potatoes, quartered
8 oz baby carrots
½ cup frozen green peas, thawed

Mix the flour, salt, Essence, and pepper in a large storage bag. Shake the beef in the bag, coating each piece completely. Set a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil to the pan and sear the beef in 2 batches, adding the second tablespoon of vegetable oil after removing the first batch until nicely browned. Remove the beef to the slow cooker. Add any extra flour to the pan with the oil and make a roux. Deglaze the pan with the beef broth and brandy, scraping up any stuck brown bits from the pan. Add the spices and herbs and tomato paste to the broth and stir to combine. Bring to a low boil to thicken and then turn off the heat.

Add the vegetables, except for the peas, to the slow cooker on top of the beef. Pour the beef broth mixture over the top. Cover and cook the stew for 8 hours on low. About a half an hour before the end of the cooking time, taste the broth for seasoning and adjust if necessary. Add the peas to the stew and stir. If a thicker broth is desired, dissolve 2 tbsp of cornstarch in ⅛ cup of cold water and stir the into the stew. If a thinner broth is desired, add a little water. Allow to cook for the remaining half hour.

Serve with crusty bread.

Posted in Beef, Food, Slow Cooker | No Comments »

Peru Com Bacon

Peru Com Bacon is a Brazilian dish that I first tried at the Rodizio Grill in Colorado. Tender chunks of turkey are marinated, wrapped in bacon, and broiled to a spicy sweet sizzling perfection. This is a copycat recipe that my mom developed. I served this with some green salad and steamed rice.

Peru Com Bacon
Makes 20 bites
Serves 4 for dinner or 10 as an appetizer

20 oz (1 ¼ lb) skinless boneless turkey breast or tenderloins
½ cup real maple syrup
½ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp red pepper flakes
1 dash cayenne pepper
12 oz package center cut bacon

Preheat the broiler. Cut up the turkey breast into big bite-size pieces about 1 oz each and toss them in a mixture of the maple syrup, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and cayenne. Cut the bacon in half widthwise. Wrap each turkey piece in a slice of bacon, securing it with a toothpick. Place the bites on a broiler pan or on a cooling rack set into a rimmed baking pan and drizzle the remaining marinade over the top. Broil the bites for about 15 minutes, flipping them over halfway through, until they are cooked all the way through and the bacon is getting crispy. Serve immediately.

Posted in Appetizers, Food, Latin, Pork, Poultry | 3 Comments »

Spicy Honey Brushed Chicken Thighs

This recipe comes from Cooking Light. As we like our food spicy, I’ve upped the amounts for the rub to get a more thorough coating, and my version is below. It makes a wonderfully sweet and spicy chicken. I lack a broiler pan, so I just use a large rimmed cookie sheet lined with foil with a cooling rack that just fits inside. It works quite well, allowing the fat to drain away and the food to brown, and you can’t beat the clean up – toss the cooling rack in the dishwasher and toss the foil in the trash. No soaking, no scrubbing, just a delicious meal!

Spicy Honey Brushed Chicken Thighs
Serves 4

2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
8 boneless skinless chicken thighs (about 1 ½ – 2 lbs)
Non-stick cooking spray
¼ cup honey
2 tsp cider vinegar

Preheat oven broiler.

Combine the spices in a bowl. Dredge the chicken thighs in the spice mixture to coat completely. Place them on a broiler pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray. Broil the chicken for 5 minutes on each side.

While the chicken is broiling, whisk the honey and vinegar together in a small bowl. Remove the chicken from the oven and brush half of the honey mixture over the pieces. Return to the oven to broil for one minute. Remove, flip the thighs, brush the second side with the remainder of the honey mixture, and return to the oven for a final one minute of broiling. Remove the thighs from the oven and allow them to rest for five minutes before serving. These also cook quickly in a grill pan using the same times and instructions.

I served this with some pan fried polenta and sautéed zucchini.

The polenta was premade and shelf stable in a tube, and I don’t think I’ll go that route again. It wasn’t bad, but it was very bland, and Shaun just wasn’t a fan of the texture.

Posted in Food, Poultry | No Comments »

Pumpkin Cranberry Bars

I got this recipe from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody, a wonderful sweet-focused blog by a fellow northwest dweller. I made a couple changes, some intentional and some inadvertent 😛 The bars came out great, despite myself. Shaun thought they would be better chocolate chips, though. I’ll have to make some cookies with the leftover pumpkin, or experiment with a layered mini chocolate pumpkin pie, as we both thought that that sounded like a really tasty thing to try to make.

My changes:

• I used and 8″x8″ pan instead of a 9″x9″ – so mine are thicker and should have been baked a bit longer. The center was a bit underdone, but still entirely cuttable and tasty 🙂
• I (unintentionally) halved the butter, only using ½ cup instead of 1 cup
• I added about ¼ tsp of freshly grated nutmeg
• I probably put in closer to 2 tsp of vanilla
• I omitted the pecans as I didn’t have any in the house at the time

Head over to Peabody’s for the recipe!

Posted in Baking, Desserts, Food | No Comments »

Homemade Chicken Noodles

This is comfort food at its best. The recipe comes to me from my husband’s folks.

Homemade Chicken Noodles
Makes a whole lot

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, ~ 4-5 lbs
4 gallons of water
1 dozen eggs
10-12 cups of flour
Salt
Pepper
Chicken bouillon cubes (I prefer Wyler)

Warning: This is an all-day evolution, but it’s worth it!

Clean off all counters and tables. You’re going to need the real estate!

Pull out your largest stock pot. Rinse off the chicken in the sink and remove any organs, neck, etc. that the store kindly included. Put the chicken into the stock pot and cover completely with water. Add some salt and pepper and 4 bouillon cubes. Let simmer over medium low heat for 2-3 hours or until the chicken is cooked completely and falling off the bone.

In the meantime, in a large mixing bowl or with your stand mixer, knead together 12 eggs, enough flour to make it a dough (anywhere from 9 to 14 cups of flour depending on the day), and salt and pepper to taste – about ½ tsp salt and 1 tsp of pepper for me. The dough should be slightly sticky still, but easy to roll.

Roll out the dough to one sixteenth of an inch thickness (a pasta machine is a godsend here, but a rolling pin works great too) and cut into long strips about an inch wide.

Set the noodles out to dry on all that clean counter space or use a pasta drying tree like mine. Dry for 2 hours on the tree or 3-4 hours on the counter. They should be stiff, but still pliable when they’re ready.

When the chicken is done, remove it to a large bowl, leaving all the broth in the pot. Skin and de-bone the chicken, and return all the meat to the stock pot. Add more salt and pepper and bouillon if necessary. Simmer for another 30 minutes to an hour as the noodles finish drying. Add the noodles to the stock pot and turn up the heat to medium high. Cook the noodles for 5-10 minutes or until the broth is slightly thickened and the noodles are cooked through and tender.

Dish up and enjoy!

Posted in Food, Pasta, Poultry | 3 Comments »

Egg Bread

Egg Bread, aka Toad in a Hole, aka Egg in a Nest, aka Egg in a Basket. This simple and tasty breakfast has many names and is popular the world over. After getting home from an overnight sleep study in a lab where I had something like 25 wires hooked up to me, a comforting breakfast was just thing. Hopefully in a couple weeks they’ll be able to tell me if I do indeed have sleep apnea and where to go from there. The recipe is very easy to scale to serve more. I pan fried some bacon to go along with the bread and just used some of the grease instead of butter.

Egg Bread
Serves 2

2 tbsp butter
2 slices bread (I used a whole wheat sandwich loaf)
2 large eggs
salt and pepper

Melt 1 tbsp of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Cut a hole in the middle of each slice of bread using a biscuit cutter or just a knife. Place the bread and cut out pieces in a skillet. Crack an egg into each of the holes in the center of the bread slices. Season with salt and pepper. Cook until the white is mostly set, about 2 minutes. Add the other tablespoon of butter and flip over the egg bread and cut outs to toast on the other side. Cook for another 2 minutes or until the egg is cooked through. Serve hot.

Posted in Breakfast, Eggs, Food | 1 Comment »

A Dim Sum Dinner, Asian Turkey Meatballs

Tonight for dinner we did dim sum. Some Ling Ling Chicken and Vegetable Potstickers, Ajinomoto Gourmet Pork Shumai Dumplings, and some homemade Asian Turkey Meatballs. We also had some steamed jasmine rice to round out the meal.

Asian Turkey Meatballs
Makes 15 meatballs
Serves 5 for an appetizer

1.25 lb ground turkey
3 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
dash cayenne pepper
1 inch of a fresh hand of ginger, peeled
4 cloves garlic

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Mince or finely grate the ginger and garlic. Mix all of the ingredients with your hands until thoroughly combined. Use a disher to divide the mixture into 15 portions (a number 20 or 30, a typical cookie disher, works perfectly for this) on a rimmed baking sheet lined with foil and sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. Use your hands to gently form each portion into a ball.

Bake for about 45 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 180 degrees F.

Serve warm

Posted in Appetizers, Asian, Food | No Comments »

Quick Shrimp Fra Diavolo

Last night’s dinner was a cheater’s quick way to make shrimp fra diavolo – a spicy shrimp pasta. A homemade tomato sauce wouldn’t be much more effort. We tried out Garofalo organic whole wheat spaghetti (from Costco) with this meal, and it was quite good.

Shrimp Fra Diavolo
Serves 4
Pasta:
1 pound spaghetti
2 tsp salt
1 tsp olive oil
Tomato Sauce
1 jar of your favorite tomato sauce (I used Barilla Mushroom and Garlic this time)
½ tsp red pepper flakes (more or less depending on your taste – this gives quite a kick)
Shrimp:
1 lb shrimp
1 tsp olive oil

Get a large pot of water boiling over high heat with the 2 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of olive oil. The salt will help flavor the pasta as it cooks, and the olive oil breaks the surface tension, preventing foam overs. When the water is rigorously boiling, add the pasta and turn the heat down to medium high. Let cook for 9 minutes or until al dente.

While the water is boiling, put the sauce and red pepper flakes into a large sauce pan and set over medium heat.

In a skillet, heat the 1 tsp of olive oil then add the shrimp and cook until pink and opaque, about 5 minutes.

Add the shrimp to the sauce and turn the heat to low.

Drain the pasta thoroughly and serve with the sauce.

Posted in Easy, Food, Italian, Seafood | No Comments »

A Quick Quesadilla

After a big lunch of pizza while watching football after seeing my folks off to the airport, neither one of us were feeling very hungry when dinner time rolled around. Shaun just had some snacks, and I constructed myself a quesadilla. You can really put just about anything that you want in these. I just used up some of the leftover pork tenderloin along with some Tillamook cheddar and a couple of the wonderful uncooked Tortillaland tortillas (available at Costco). If you’re using cooked tortillas, you won’t need quite as long in the skillet.

Quesadilla
Serves 1

2 Tortillaland uncooked burrito sized tortillas
2 slices (1.5 oz) cheddar cheese
2 thin slices (2 oz) leftover pork roast

Heat a skillet over medium high heat. Place one tortilla in the skillet and place pieces of cheese and meat all over the top. When the cheese is melted, the pork is getting warm, and the bottom tortilla is puffing up – about 3 minutes, place the second tortilla on top and carefully flip over. Cook for another 3 minutes or until the second tortilla is cooked through. Move to a plate and cut into wedges using kitchen shears or a pizza cutter.

Posted in Food, Leftovers, Mexican | No Comments »

A Celebratory Dinner

So Shaun is back from taking the LSAT, so we had a nice dinner tonight to celebrate no more LSAT studying. Tonight is the last night my folks are here as well. I made raspberry chipotle glazed pork tenderloin, roasted butternut squash (with cumin this time, which came out very nice), and green salad. All in all a nice meal.

Posted in Food, Pork, Ramblings, Vegetables | No Comments »