boeuf bourguignon with a haitian twist

What are you eating for dinner?

We've been in a dinner rut.

Maybe due to the weather changing and the fact that we have no idea if it'll be balmy or frigid. Maybe due to the lingering illnesses each of us is harboring. Maybe due to the fact that our car is in the shop (don't ask) and we have not been able to do our usual shopping runs.

In any case, we are in serious need of some inspiration. And fast.

Luckily it came to me while talking with a French friend of mine. She was telling me how she prefers to cook light meals but her husband, who is also French, prefers heavy meat dishes with burgundy sauce.

We rarely eat red meat but this sounded like the perfect way to have something hearty and sort of off the beaten path. For us any way. And my husband game-fully made the meal, happy to have the decision done - isn't the deciding what to eat worse than actually cooking it? I think so.

Boeuf Bourguignon With a Haitian Twist
Serves 2-4, adapted from Aussie True Blue Recipes

Ingredients

• 1.5  lbs stewing beef (we used organic Angus)
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 2 onion, sliced
• 6 oz canned tomatoes 
• 1 lb small potatoes
• 2 1/2 cups burgundy (or any red wine - we used Cabernet Sauvignon)
• 2 large carrot, chopped
• 3 cloves (what makes it Haitian - in my mind, any way)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 

Instructions

1. Cut steak into 1 1/2 inch cubes and coat in flour. Melt butter and fry meat until browned. Place in a casserole dish or Dutch oven when ready.
2. Brown sliced onions and add tomatoes. Cook until tender. Add burgundy, bring nearly to the boil, then pour into a casserole dish.
3. Cook in oven at 320°F for approximately 2 hours.
4. Add carrots, potatoes, salt, pepper and cloves to casserole. Cook for a further hour before serving.
5. *This dish can be done in a slow cooker also - simply place all ingredients in the slow cooker and cook on "slow". This is an ideal meal to prepare and leave cooking - and come home to this delicious aroma. 

dutch stamppot

I love the Dutch. Everything about them. Their dams, their windmills, their tulips, wooden shoes...


But seriously, had you asked me if I wanted to visit The Netherlands 20 years ago I would have scoffed. What about Italy? What about France? What about Morocco??


Then I went there. It was after I'd been to Italy, France and Morocco, in search for a better place to call my home. None of those came close. While in Morocco, my sister and I befriended some Dutch guys and we became friends for life. Then we took advantage of our new friendship and visited them the following year... and I fell in love with the country. I even tried to stay there, but was unsuccessful in getting hired. The EU, you know.


I have finally made their signature dish, which I first ate this at Restaurant Moeders - Stamppot: a mixture of root and green vegetables all mashed up, generally served with sausage of some sort. A real simple winter meal; sticks to your ribs and warms your heart.  It reveals the nature of the Dutch: straightforward, comfortable, no nonsense, and easy going.


Dutch Stamppot


Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 small bag fingerling potatoes
• 4 cloves garlic
• Water
• 1 small bag fresh baby spinach
• 10 chives, chopped
• 4 tablespoons butter
• Salt to taste
• Kielbasa or other spicy sausage

Instructions

1. Place potatoes and garlic in a pot of boiling salted water. Boil for 15-20 minutes, until tender. Remove potatoes with a slotted spoon and mash. Immediately add butter and mix in to melt.
2. Add spinach to boiling water. Cook for 5 more minutes, until spinach has wilted but is still bright green. Drain spinach and cool. Once cool place between a clean towel and squeeze excess water out. Chop finely.
3. Add chives and spinach to potatoes and mix. Salt to taste.
4. Meanwhile, fry the sausage in a skillet until warm. Serve together.

leftover chicken fried rice

Time saving has become my second name. Or at least my current obsession. How do you make a meal with various leftovers? This is probably one of the best ways to do it - make fried rice.

I used Mark Bittman's recipe from his cookbook How to Cook Everything, but altered it a bit. Growing up just a few steps from China Town NYC, every fried rice I have ever eaten has had an egg in it. Oddly Bittman's does not. So I added it in. Makes the dish come together better and adds a nice creaminess to the crunchy rice. I found this Bittman fried rice recipe where he does add eggs.

Leftover Chicken Fried Rice
Serves 4-6. Adapted from Mark Bittman's Fried Rice recipe in How to Cook Everything

4 tablespoons vegan butter
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 egg, scrambled
3-4 cups cooked rice
4 grilled chicken drumsticks, the meat cut off the bone
2 cups steamed broccoli, chopped
1/4 cup tamari sauce

1. Saute onion in butter in a large saucepan. Add rice and flatten it in the pan. Allow to cook undisturbed for a few minutes until browned. Flip over and cook the same way on other sides. Add egg and stir until cooked and mixed in with egg and onion. Add broccoli and chicken and tamari and mix until heated. Serve warm.

sesame garlic asparagus & pan-browned brussels spouts with pine nuts

Nothing says spring like asparagus.

I don't know if that's true, but it sounds right and it looks right too. That bright pale green is what everyone thinks of when they think about Spring.

Brussels sprouts are a close second. Both of these dishes were delicious; a nice change from the usual way we make these two vegetables: boiling or steaming them... and while I am at it, we roasted a turkey breast using one of Ina Garten's recipes, and it was absolutely heavenly. Somehow all those herbs make the turkey taste like lamb - the perfect Easter dinner, for those who do not celebrate.

{asparagus recipe}
{brussels sprouts recipe}
{turkey recipe}

rolled cabbage {food matters project}

I was lazy and I cheated. I have an aversion to wasting food {which gets in the way of testing recipes quite a bit}, so I used leftovers to make our Rolled Cabbage dish for this week's Food Matters Project challenge. As a result it was probably not as tasty as it could have been.

What started out as my husband's perfect chicken soup...

... ended up mashed up in a bowl with some cooked rice, rolled into some boiled cabbage leaves, and cooked again in some tomato sauce.

Coincidentally, Deb from Smitten Kitchen also made Italian Stuffed Cabbage this past week and I used some of her tips. One was rolling the cabbage into golf ball sized packets. The second was using tooth pick to hold them together while they cook.

You can view the original recipe here. This dish was chosen by Keely Marie. See how other interpreted this dish here.

beer-glazed black beans with chorizo and orange

My husband speaks about chorizo the way some people speak about their first love. Wistfully he remembers eating well loved breakfasts at a diner in San Francisco. The kind of breakfast, he says, you cannot find in New York City. With equal frequency he speaks about using beer in recipes as a huge waste of good beer. I've combined the two here, hoping it would all come out in the wash.

He's not a real fan of bean dishes either, so I have to spruce up any bean dish I make or I am eating it solo {my son will eat them with me but he eats about a quarter, if that, of my portion}. Unfortunately it was not the beans, nor the beer that ruined this dish for him, but the orange. He didn't like how sweet this dish is.

I found it interesting, a new twist on old Mexican fare. I didn't even mind using real chorizo {especially since I was able to score the Mexican kind across the street at my local bodega} and forgoing my vegan aspirations. I went to yoga this morning so I am feeling balanced and open. Hopefully it all comes out in the wash.

Beer-Glazed Black Beans with Chorizo and Orange
from Mark Bittman's The Food Matters Cookbook
1 orange
8 oz chorizo, thinly sliced
1 red onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic
One 12 oz bottle of beer
3 cup cooked black beans, drained
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon honey
salt and pepper
chopped fresh cilantro

1. Halve the orange.  Peel one half, divide the segments, and save the rind.  Squeeze the juice from the other half.

2. Put the chorizo into a large heavy saucepan and cook, stirring to brown for 5-10 minutes.  Add onion and bell pepper and stir until soft.  Add garlic and stir another minute.  Add orange juice and rind, beer, beans, chili powder, honey, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.  Adjust the heat and cook until thick and bubbly, about 15 minutes.

3.  Eat with long grained brown rice of loaded corn bread.

duck a l'orange

For the longest time my go-to cookbook was Fanny Farmer's. It was originally published in 1896 as The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer. I just found a site that offers a pdf of the original Fanny Farmer's Cookbook. It is a much pared down version of the current one, edited by Marion Cunningham (February 7, 1922 – July 11, 2012 ), who was a California-born award-winning American food writer. Cunningham was responsible for the 1979 and 1990 revisions of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

For Valentine's Day dinner we decided to make this. Duck is a favorite in my family, everybody enjoys it with gusto. We eat it about once a month but it was extra special with the orange sauce. It really set off the meat. My husband made the duck, since he usually makes the meat for our meals, and I made the l'orange.

This is what the original cookbook says about duck a l'orange:

Roast Wild Duck
Dress and clean a wild duck and truss as goose. Place on rack in dripping−pan, sprinkle with
salt and pepper, and cover breast with two very thin slices fat salt pork. Bake twenty to thirty
minutes in a very hot oven, basting every five minutes with fat in pan; cut string and remove
string and skewers. Serve with Orange or Olive Sauce. Currant jelly should accompany a
duck course. Domestic ducks should always be well cooked, requiring little more than twice the
time allowed for wild ducks.

Orange Sauce
1/4 cup butter
Few grains cayenne
1/4 cup flour
Juice 2 oranges
1 and 1/3 cups Brown Stock
2 tablespoons Sherry wine
1/2 teaspoon salt
Rind of 1 orange, cut in fancy shapes

Brown the butter, add flour, with salt and cayenne, and stir until well browned. Add stock
gradually, and just before serving, orange juice, Sherry, and pieces of rind.

Here is what Cunningham writes:

Orange Sauce
5 oranges
2 lemons {I only used one lemon}
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons wine vinegar
2 cups beef broth {I used vegetable broth}
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons red current jelly {I used prune butter - since that is what I had}
1/4 cup dry white wine

1. Using a vegetable peeler remove the zest from 2 oranges and 1 lemon. Cut zest into thin strips. Bring a pan of water to boil and steep the zest for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.

2. Squeeze the juice from the 2 oranges and 1 lemon. Set aside.

3. Peel and cut the rest of the fruit free from the membranes. Put sections in a bowl and set aside.

4. In a small heavy bottomed sauce pan cook the sugar over medium-high heat. Caramelize it by shaking the pan over the heat so the sugar turns golden brown, without burning it. Add vinegar, fruit juices, and boil rapidly until liquid reduces by half. Stir in broth and simmer for 5 minutes.

5. In a small bowl dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons water. Add it to the sauce along with the jelly {prune butter}, stirring until sauce is clear {my sauce was not clear, but that didn't seem to hurt it any} and thickened.

6. When duck is roasted, move it to a warm platter. Pour off the fat from the roasting pan and place it over a burner {here is where my husband and I differed. Does she mean place the pan, without the fat, onto the burner? Or does she mean place the fat over the burner?}. Add the wine, scrape up the bits from the bottom of the pan, and boil rapidly for 1 minute. Strain into sauce.

7. Sprinkle the duck with the fruit rind strips, surround with fruit sections, and pour enough of the rich brown sauce over to glaze the duck, serving the rest in a sauce boat.

butternut shepard's pie

All you wonderful food bloggers out there have been presenting enticing dishes in preparation for the big game coming up today.

Every time I see one I mention to my husband, "You know, maybe I should have a plan for this 'day of days', since you, my husband, will be watching, along with the rest of the country's male contingency (and a lot of its female)."

This morning my husband half jokingly asked me, "So, what are you making for the Superbowl?"

The what?
I totally forgot.

So... here is my Superbowl dish. Made from leftovers and inspiration.

Butternut Shepard's Pie
Makes 2-4 servings

3 cups leftovers from this meal's stuffing
4 small carrots, chopped
4 oz ground turkey
1/2 red onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
1 tablespoon rosemary, chopped
1 box shitaki mushrooms, chopped
Salt
2 cups butternut squash puree, with 1 teaspoons nutmeg

1. Cover the carrots with water in a saucepan and cook until a fork goes into them easily.

2. Saute turkey with a pinch of salt, until browned.

3. Saute onion until softened. Add garlic and cook until aromatic. Add herbs and a pinch of salt and cook a few minutes more. Add mushrooms and cook until softened. Add turkey and cook a bit more to meld flavors.

4. Combine all ingredients from leftovers, 1, 2, and 3 in a bowl. Mix to combine. Spoon mixture into an 8x8 inch baking dish. Spread butternut mixture on top. Bake at 350 degrees until warm. Place in the boiler to brown the top.

chicken skewers with meyer lemon salsa

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I can't cook.

Or rather, I couldn't cook before I started blogging. My husband did most of cooking for the family  and I am not sure if he's happy about the change in roles. He still makes the top standards that take us through the weekday evenings, while I try out my various, found meals when I have the time.

So, Meyer lemons. I've been hearing a lot about them lately but had no idea what they were. I set out to see for my own eyes.

Not really knowing what to expect and not finding them anywhere I usually shop, I trekked to the new Fairway on 30th and 2nd, and WOW, Meyer lemons are huge!

Wikipedia tells me they are a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange and are grown in China. And so, they are sweeter than your average lemon.

Unfortunately, this salsa didn't go over all that well in my home. I liked it alright over the skewers but I agree with my husband in saying that the chicken is better without it. I plan to make a pulpy, spicy lemonade mix I can add to my seltzer as a refreshing after dinner drink. The chicken, however, with its cilantro-yogurt marinade, was a hit. We'll be making it again soon.

{epicurious recipe}