Fall is here! Beef and Golden Beet Stew with Gnocchi

Don't worry about exact measurements here, to be honest I didn't actually measure out the chopped vegetables or meat, so you can play around with those amounts and it won't really matter, but I would err on the side of too much on the vegetables rather than too little. When they are chopped finely like this, they melt into the stew and become a thick comforting gravy, perfect for a chilly fall Sunday evening.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 to 2 pounds beef stew meat, cubed (chuck roast is good)
1/2 bottle red wine
water 
5 small golden beets
1/3 cup flour for dusting on the meat.
1/2 cup chopped red onion
1/2 cup finely chopped  fennel bulb
1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 heaping tablespoon herbs de Provence
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons pepper
2 bay leaves
1 package of gnocchi, or make your own homemade recipe

In your stew pot, heat up two of the tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat, then brown up the stew meat chunks that you've already dusted with flour.  This will take a few minutes, and hopefully you'll get lots of good brown stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan. When the meat is browned on most sides, dump it out on a plate and use about a cup of the wine to de-glaze the pan for one minute, still on medium-high heat, using a wooden spoon to scrape up all the crusty brown bits on the bottom.

Turn down the heat to a low simmer, and put the meat back in the pot, along with a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper and the dried herbs.

While the meat gets started simmering in that cup of wine, you can chop up the onion, celery, carrots and fennel, and then saute them in a separate frying  pan with the other two tablespoons of olive oil, on high heat. Add the other teaspoon of salt and pepper to these veggies and stir them around occasionally. 

After about five minutes of cooking, when you see some brown edges on the veggies, add some of the wine, a few splashes at a time, so that it evaporates as it goes and get absorbed into the veggies, use about a half cup of wine total for this part. 


Turn off the heat when all of the liquid is absorbed and the veggies look soft and yummy. Doing this separate step, instead of just throwing the raw vegetables in, is the difference between. "Mmm, good stew." and "Wow, this is so good!"

 
With the beets, just use a paring knife to kind of "give them a shave," just scrape the outsides to clean them up a bit, don't peel them like a potato.  

Just before adding the water and bay leaves

Quarter them and add them to the stew, along with the chopped veggies that you just cooked, and the bay leaves. 

Add enough warm water to cover the ingredients, then cover the stew and simmer on very low (just a few slow bubbles) for one hour. After  one hour, tilt the lid so it's partially open, and cook for another hour.

After the two hours, dump in your dried gnocchi packet and stir, then turn heat up to a brisk simmer and cook for about three minutes or until gnocchi is done. 

If you are making homemade gnocchi or paleo sweet potato gnocchi, just follow the recipe cooking instructions and serve the stew over them instead of mixing them in to cook.

I recommend a Tempranillo or red Zinfandel wine with this.

My Best Beef Ribs and Yukon Gold Potato Salad

Beef rib, potato salad and peach-pepper preserves

Does this really need an intro?

Ingredients:

7-10 beef ribs
1 bottle of cheap white wine
1/3 cup black-strap molasses
1 tablespoon salt 
1 tablespoon Montreal steak seasoning OR a clove of garlic and a tablespoon of cracked peppercorns. 
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon ground allspice
2 bay leaves
enough water to cover the ribs in the pot

For glazing:
One bottle of Your Favorite Barbeque Sauce
1/4 cup peach jam preserves
1/4 cup pepper jelly

Cut your rack of beef ribs into one or two-rib portions. Place in a big pot with the wine, molasses and spices, then fill with warm water until the ribs are just covered. Put the heat on high, then as soon as it starts bubbling, turn the heat down to low and simmer for at least one hour, but no more than two.

After you put the ribs on to simmer, you can make the potato salad. 

Ingredients:
24 ounces of small yukon gold potatoes, or honey gold baby potatoes (good potatoes are very important)
1/4 cup Best Foods, Hellman's or home made mayonaisse 
1/4 cup of sweet yellow onion, chopped very fine
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Malabar black pepper
1 teaspoon dried dill
1 teaspoon of plain prepared mustard
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
zest of half a lemon
juice of half a lemon

Boil the potatoes for 15-20 minutes, or just until you can stick a butter knife through one of them. Set a timer, it really sucks when you overcook them, you'll end up with mashed potatoes. 

After you drain off the water, cut the potatoes, holding them with a paper towel so you don't burn your hands. If you have the baby potatoes, just cut them in half, if they are bigger, cut them in quarters (duh). 

While they are still warm, toss the potatoes in a bowl with the olive oil, chopped onion, salt, pepper, and granulated garlic. Leave them out on the counter to cool to room temperature. 

Once the potatoes are no longer warm add the mayo, mustard, dill, and lemon juice and zest, mix well, taste for salt. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve. Sometimes I sprinkle it with chopped chives or fresh dill on top so it looks pretty.

Back to the ribs-

When the ribs are done simmering (covered or uncovered, either way is fine), remove them from the liquid and put them either out on the barbeque on medium low for about ten minutes to crisp up, or stick them under your broiler in the oven for ten minutes to crisp up, either way is fine. 

Glaze them with your favorite sauce (I like Rufus Teague) mixed with the peach jam and pepper jelly. (I had my own peach-jalapeno jam, so unless you live in my house you won't have that.) Put the ribs back on the grill for a few miutes to heat the sauce and make it sticky, then they're ready to serve. 

Don't put the ribs with sauce under the broiler though, if you are using the oven instead of the grill, just turn it down to 400 degrees for the post-sauce cooking.

Summer Squash "Moussaka"

Ingredients:
4-5 medium sized yellow summer squash
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup olive oil  (or more)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper pepper
2 cups of your favorite meat sauce recipe (or just add cooked ground beef, a whisper of cinnamon and extra oregano to a jar of tomato sauce if you're feeling lazy)
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
1/2 cup shredded or crumbled sharp cheese (any kind)

Topping:
1 pinch of nutmeg
1 cup of whole milk
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 pinch white pepper
1 egg 
1 dash Tabasco

Slice the yellow squash lengthwise into three or four flattish pieces each, depending on how fat they are. I would say you want them about a 1/4 inch thick. 

Coat the slices with the flour and fry them in about 1/4 cup of medium-high hot olive oil, in a non-stick pan. When they are brown on both sides (about a minute per side if the oil is hot enough) remove them from the pan to a paper towel to drain. I had to cook them in two batches, using my biggest frying pan. 

When they come out of the pan, salt and pepper them well. You might need to add more oil for the second round, but if you don't want to waste this much expensive olive oil on frying, mix it half and half with some other oil like corn oil. 

Yeah, mine is GMO corn oil, but corn oil is delicious. When they come out with organic corn oil at the grocery store (I'm looking at you, Whole Foods), I'll be the first to buy it. 

Layer the bottom of a 9x9 inch casserole dish, the square kind works well, with some of the squash slices, trying to cover evenly. Spread about a third of the meat sauce on top and sprinkle with a third of the cheese and basil. Do this two more times, but leave yourself like a 1/2 inch of room at the top (squish things down if you have to) because you're going to a put some white sauce on top.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, fry up the tablespoon of butter and flour, stirring it with a whisk. (I use rounded tablespoons here actually). Add a pinch of salt and white pepper as well as a very tiny pinch of nutmeg (optional) and a dash of Tabasco. Pour the milk in slowly, whisking the whole time. Whisk frequently as it cooks, you know, like making gravy, and then when it looks thickened (it doesn't take long) take it off the heat and very quickly whisk in a beaten egg. Pour over the top of your squash dish and bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until the top gets some brown spots on it. 

The picture up there is actually taken of a leftover piece, I love eating this cold.

Serves 4

Zinfandel Shank Stew

Ingredients:

3 or 4 cross cut beef shank slices, pasture raised if you can get it
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 whole cloves of garlic, peeled
4 or 5 small thin carrots
1/2 celery root, peeled and cubed
a few baby turnips, halved, or a regular sized turnip, cubed up
2 or 3 golden potatoes (or sweet potatoes if you prefer)
1 cup red Zinfandel wine
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
several dashes of Worcestershire sauce
water
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon savory
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1 cup shitake mushrooms
1 tablespoon Irish butter
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
several pats of extra butter

That's right. No onions.

Heat the olive oil in a pot that's big enough to fit your beef shank slices along the bottom. When the oil is very hot, brown the shanks on both sides. Lower the heat to low, and add a cup of your favorite red Zinfandel wine, the Worcestershire and enough warm water to cover the meat by several inches. Add the salt and all of the spices, as well as the garlic cloves, and simmer covered for a half hour.

Prepare the rest of the vegetables, and when the half hour is up, chuck them in the pot too. Cover again and let it simmer for another half hour.

While that is happening, slice your shitake mushrooms and cook them in the butter on very high heat for five minutes, without turning or stirring them, then you can stir them up a bit and cook them to your taste. The reason you don't mess with them at first is because you want them to get roasty-toasty brown on at least one side. If your butter is unsalted, add a pinch of salt at the end.

When the stewed beef and vegetables are done, serve them up  in big bowls with a pat of butter  in each, making sure you have a little bit of everything in there, and lots of juice for you to soak up with your bread. What I do is pull the little round bones out before serving, but I take the marrow out of each one with a small knife or spoon and mix it in with the stew.

Top each bowl with fresh parsley and a sprinkling of pan fried mushrooms.

Corned Beef Ravioli...Yeah...That Just Happened

I have Mr. Alan Hall of Cabool, Missouri to thank for this dish. I don't actually know Mr. Hall, but this genius of a man made an off-hand remark on Facebook that inspired this madness. When commenting on a friend's photo of a packet of hideous green St. Patrick's Day themed cheese ravioli from Costco, he opined, "It should at least have corned beef filling." 

May Saint Patrick bless you sir, yes it should.

Corned Beef Ravioli with Brown Butter and Mustard Glaze

 Ingredients:
Small package of corned beef with spice packet
1 rutabaga
1 large sweet potato (not yam)
1 sweet onion
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
2 bay leaves
4 juniper berries
1 long peppercorn (extra black peppercorns if you don't have long pepper)

Simmer the corned beef in plenty of water and the spices, covered, for three hours. Cut the rutabaga in half, quarter the large sweet potato and trim the ends of the carrots and celery. Throw them in the pot and continue the simmer for another hour.

After four hours the corned beef should be literally falling apart, it will fall into pieces as you lift it out of the pot onto a cutting board, which is okay. Put the cooked vegetables into a food processor and process with one stick of good quality butter. Taste the puree for salt, and season if necessary. Set the puree aside to cool.

At this point you can just tear off some corned beef and serve it over the puree with a little bit of the juices from the pot, which is fine because you are going to have more than you need for the ravioli filling:

Or continue to the ravioli making:

Finely chop about two cups of corned beef and about one cup of the corned beef fat. (Yep. Fat. If you eat bacon or sausage of any kind, I don't want to hear a word.) Set this aside to cool.

For the pasta portion:

200 grams regular flour
200 grams semolina flour
4 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of cinnamon


For the sauce portion:
Butter
Grainy brown mustard
Cream sherry or white dessert wine
Salt and pepper 
 
  Mix the pasta ingredients together until you have dough, knead it for a bit, then cover the dough and let it rest for about 20 minutes before you try to start rolling it through your pasta maker. 

Lay down a sheet of pasta and use a teaspoon to distribute blobs of root veggie puree topped with blobs of chopped corned beef mixture. Dampen the pasta around the blobs with water and then lay the second sheet of pasta on top. Press down around each blob then use a ravioli cutter to cut out the ravioli.

Boil the ravioli in salted water for about two minutes, then drain and set aside.

Heat butter in a non-stick pan on medium high heat and fry the ravioli on each side about two minutes until golden brown, you can add more butter as you do different batches if you think you need it. When all of your ravioli are done frying, add about 1 part grainy mustard to 4 parts sherry in the pan, still on medium high, and then turn down the heat right away. Add salt and pepper to taste and pour immediately over the ravioli. If the glaze gets too thick, you can thin it with just a small amount of water. Sprinkle fresh chopped herbs on top, I used flat leaf parsley.

Drink a lot of beer with this, I recommend a Harp lager. 

Braised Beef and Lettuce with Dill

Cooked lettuce. It's sweet and lovely. Please don't try to be a lettuce snob and substitute something darker like kale or dandelion greens in this dish. The whole point here is to have mild sweetness- this is a happy, smiley dish. It's a dish to make you feel cozy. You may watch re-runs of Happy Days or Mork and Mindy while you eat this, you may not discuss obscure 19th Century Russian literature or translate the works of Thucydides.

Ingredients:

8 ounces of lean ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup of cherry tomatoes slices in half
1 small head green lettuce, or half of a normal sized one, roughly chopped
1/2 sweet onion, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons of sherry
1/2 cup warm water
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon dried dill (very important)

Over med-high heat, cook your ground beef in the olive oil until it is well browned. Add the sliced onions and salt and pepper to taste, and cook for another 2-3 minutes, still on med-high. Add the tomatoes, sherry and water. Let this bubble up, then stir in the dill and lettuce and turn the heat down to a low setting (like a 3) and cook for another 7-10 minutes. 

I took the picture before adding cheese, but if you are a dairy fanatic like I am, you can sprinkle on top a mild soft cheese, a dab of Greek yogurt, or a knob of Irish butter. 

This recipe serves two, with each serving adding up to only 325 calories, assuming you use lean beef and limit yourself to 1 ounce of goat cheese to top each serving. I am not suggesting you count calories, but you have to admit, that's a nice lunch for that caloric price!  

Stew...You Need Some

Well it's been awhile. Between having two different flu viruses and a cold, plus moving, I've been too sick and tired to cook for the past six weeks. I've been eating a lot of street tacos from the little Mexican place down the street, and more Chipotle burritos than is good for anyone. I'm also heartily sick of In-n-Out, and tired of turkey sandwiches. It's about time for some REAL food. 

It doesn't get any more "real" to me than beef stew. 

Ingredients:

1 to 1 1/2 pounds of beef (or lamb) stew meat
1/4 cup of some kind of organic flour
1/4 cup of good olive oil or Irish butter
1 large sweet onion, chopped
2 medium carrots, chopped (don't peel them)
3 celery stalks, chopped
1/2 fennel bulb, chopped
1 clove of garlic, whole
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon dried or fresh thyme
1 tablespoon dried savory
1/2 teaspoon dried orange peel
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon A1 Sauce
1/2 cup tawny port
1-2 cups of warm water, just enough to cover the ingredients

Cut the stew meat into small even pieces and then toss them in the flour to coat. Heat the oil or butter up in a medium sized pot, and then brown the meat pieces over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes (you don't have to brown them evenly, just get some brown stickiness going on). Remove the meat from the pan and set it aside, and yes, you have to do that. 

Now you can throw in all of the chopped veggies, I like to chop them pretty small so they sort of melt into the stew. Plus I've noticed kids and grown men who are weird about eating cooked vegetables like it better that way. Put the salt and pepper in with the veggies, and cook them, still on medium-high heat, stirring frequently. After about ten minutes, add the tawny port and then let it heat heat up before you add the stew meat and juices back in and turn the heat down to simmer. 

Next, add the warm water, just enough to cover everything, and also add in all of the spices. Cook on a good simmer, on my stove it's about a 2, uncovered, stirring occasionally for at least one hour.  
Use a wooden spoon to stir, I swear it makes it taste better. 

You can cook the stew up to 1 1/2 hours, or even two, but if you go up to 2 hours, turn the heat down to a slow simmer after the first hour. More than two hours will dry the meat out, so don't leave it too long. 

Serve over mashed sweet potatoes (not yams, that would be sort of redundant with all the carrots) or mashed sunchokes.

You're a fool if you don't at least consider drinking a big mug of porter or stout with it. Tonight we're drinking Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout