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.

Roasted Sausage with Fresh Figs and Carrots

My lovely neighbor very generously gave me a HUGE bag of fresh figs from her giant fig tree, and they were sweet and delicious. I ate ten or fifteen, but the thing is with fresh figs is that they get squishy very quickly, and sometimes if you have a lot of them getting ripe at the same time, you just can't eat them quickly enough.  

Obviously you can make jam, but they are really good in breads and meat dishes too.

Ingredients:
5 spicy Italian or Spanish sausages, cut in half
10 large fresh figs, whole
1 large sweet onion, chopped roughly into fairly large pieces
1/2 cup chopped fennel bulb
1 bunch small baby carrots, or 4 large carrots chopped into 2 inch pieces (if you don't like cooked carrots substitute sweet potato or Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed into small pieces)
2 tablespoons fresh chopped rosemary
1 teaspoon dried orange peel (or zest about half a fresh orange)
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt(or more)
1/2 cup fruity red wine OR if the figs are not very sweet use a ruby port
2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Drizzle a large roasting pan with one tablespoon of oil, then arrange all of the fruit, veggies and sausages in the pan, then pour the wine over everything, then the other tablespoon of olive oil, and then sprinkle over the spices.

Roast in the oven for about 30-35 minutes. You can dish out the sausage and carrots first, then mash up the figs and onions into the juices before serving over the top. This serves about four people, and would pair nicely with an arugula salad and a nice Tempranillo wine like Black Hat from Scribner Bend.

Kale and Red Onion Pie

Two big bunches of Italian (Lacinato) kale, chopped up (yes, you can substitute other greens but this kind of kale is really starchy and good)
8 organic eggs
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (Spanish or Greek would be good here)
4 oz. feta cheese OR shredded Manchego (go with your gut)
1 red onion (if you really hate this much onion, try a thinly sliced fennel bulb instead, but I would add a little chopped onion to the mix if you go that way)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1 pinch of mace (if you have it) 
2 heaping tablespoons of any kind of flour (rice, wheat, coconut, potato- doesn't matter, I think I used brown rice flour because that's what I had)
2 heaping tablespoons pine nuts

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix  the chopped kale, and everything else, EXCEPT the red onion and one of the tablespoons of oil. 

Meanwhile you can either line a 9X13 inch pan with your favorite pie crust OR just leave it out entirely. 

Pour your kale mixture in the pan. Then thinly slice your red onion and arrange it as nicely and evenly on top as you can, and sort of smoosh the slices down onto your kale mixture a bit. Drizzle the last tablespoon of oil on top of the onion slices and sprinkle them with a little salt and pepper. 

Bake in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour. You want the onions to get crunchy on the edges. In fact, you might want it a bit more brown than it is in my photo, this is after cooking for only 45 minutes. This might be nice for a lunch, you can serve it warm or at room temperature (like pizza really). A little fresh squeezed lemon on top wouldn't be totally out of line, or even a side of marinara or pizza sauce to dip it in.  

Eat your veggies!

Peppery Kale and Cheddar Omelette

Cereal, toast, pancakes...all delicious. The problem is, when I eat these carb-a-riffic breakfast foods I feel weak and hungry an hour or two after. So most of the time for breakfast I eat either Greek yogurt with honey, cinnamon and almonds, or eggs cooked in some way with vegetables or herbs. Today's omelette came out extra tasty, so here we go:

2 eggs
2 tablespoons of water or milk
2 teaspoons of olive oil
1 chopped green onion
1 big handful of baby kale (I got a bag of organic at Costco for next to nothing)
salt 
black pepper
nutmeg (don't skip this, it's the best part)
1 slice sharp sharp Tillamook cheddar  (or other sharp cheese)
(grape tomatoes on the side for acidity and color)

Easy peasy, start with a teaspoon of the olive oil in a small non-stick pan over medium heat. Toss in the green onion and kale, salt them ever so slightly, and cook just until the kale wilts down. Remove the kale and onion from the pan and put the other teaspoon of olive oil in. While this is heating, in a bowl whip the heck out of your eggs and water (or milk) and add a good pinch of salt and pepper and a WHISPER (a half-dash?) of nutmeg. 

Pour into the pan and cook. I like to gently push the eggs toward the middle of the pan with my spatula and then tilt the pan around in a circular motion, letting the uncooked egg from the top layer of the omelette run to the sides of the pan and cook there. Once you have just a very thin sheen of uncooked egg on that top layer, place your kale, onion, and your slice of cheese on one half, then use your spatula to flip the other half of the circle to cover everything. 

Turn the heat off and let it sit in the pan for a minute until the cheese melts inside, then serve immediately with an extra sprinkle of good black pepper over the top and some tomatoes on the side.

 This actually kept me going until lunch, so it's eggs for the win.