Posts Tagged ‘beef’

One of my favorite Christmas gifts has become my subscription to Cooking Light. I always enjoyed flipping through the magazine at work but now since I’ve started to cook from it I have truly come to love it. Granted the seasoning is always underdone for me (easily fixed) and many times I stray from recipes to scale down servings or make them cheaper, but it’s full of wonderful ideas and recipes.

I know I just did another stew but I can’t help but be drawn to dishes like this when I’m trying to eat healthier and still want to feel full. At under 300 calories per serving (not including the tabbouleh) it really is a delight. This poor man’s version of Moroccan tagine is quick, cheap, and tasty. Period. I love the spicy-sweet flavor profile and as lame as it sounds, I have totally fallen in love with the Near East brand’s boxed tabbouleh salad. This came together in under 40 minutes and I see myself making this dish many times in the near future. And I hope you do, too.

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Oof. I don’t know about y’all but I have a wicked food hangover. This Christmas was filled with what felt like a week of marathon eating and drinking – whether it be snacking on appetizers at home, drinks out with friends, multiple calorie-laden coffee drinks while out running errands, Christmas dinner and its leftovers, etc. It just feels like I’ve been eating non-stop since Wednesday and I am so ready for a break…. until New Year’s Eve at least.

But onto the good stuff! The great stuff. Our dinner this year went from the over-the-top 6 rib prime rib roast we’ve done the past few years to something a little easier and more economical for our 4-person dinner: strip steaks. We all love em in the family and I did em the best way: seared in a huge cast iron skillet, popped in a screaming hot oven for a few minutes, and served with lotsa butter and blue cheese crumbles. All the side dishes I made were either done far in advance (and then reheated) or done à la minute (right before serving) so I could keep my time well divided. I did about an hour of prep, an hour of prep cooking time, and then about 20 min cooking right before dinner. It was the easiest and most delicious Christmas dinner we’ve ever had. Take that, prime rib!

So here’s a (very) random collection of photos from what I ate and drank over my holiday. Apologies for the quality and randomness. I just didn’t seem to want to take the time to use my Nikon during all the fun so the iPhone did a lot of the work this year.

Our menu:

• Pan-seared strip steaks with butter and blue cheese
• Scalloped sweet potatoes with sage
• Creamy parmesan polenta
• Roasted fresh Brussels sprouts
• Wedge salad with blue cheese and bacon
• Christopher Elbow truffles (for dessert)

Pre-dinner martini.

My least favorite vegetable. The things I do for my family…

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I know, I know, my last update was a slow cooker dish too, but I just had to make something in my crock pot again because look what I got on Friday:

We had our annual prop sale in the test kitchen / studio and tons of wares sent to us from companies and retailers (to test) all went on sale for crazy cheap prices. I got this $65 crockpot for $20 and frankly it looks like a rocketship compared to my old one. And when Pam was giving out packages of short ribs she ended up not using, I snatched up a couple pounds and knew immediately what I’d be doing with them this weekend.

I’ve had this dish bookmarked since right before summer started and finally felt like it was the right time (aka 60° and cloudy) to make them. Braised short ribs are something I’ve lovingly talked about before, and this is a fun Vietnamese twist on the flavors. These short ribs are unbelievably hearty and rich and have a nice subtle flavor from the ginger. The refreshing rice noodles served alongside (or under) help cut the richness of the beef, which may sound like heresy, but once you taste it, you’ll be on board.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

We celebrate the happiest day of the year with plenty of red meat, traditional English sides, and a froufrou dessert I always like to tackle. Usually I make a cranberry upside down cake, but this year I wanted to try something different so I made a spin on a pear tatin, which was scrumptious to say the least. Plus chruscikis, cookies, hot apple cider, Holiday blend from The Roasterie and plenty of Usinger’s during the day.

Have a holly jolly holiday! I’ll be off in my food coma now, surrounded by DVDs and my family, but here’s a nice large selection of photos from our holiday. Enjoy! (recipes at the bottom if you’d like to scroll past!)

One of my biggest holiday indulgences.

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Usually when I post on here I always start with some anecdote on what inspired me to make the dish above and go from there.  But this post is a little different because nothing inspired me other than, well, jonesing for some serious short ribs.  So as I was scratching my head, researching recipes and rewriting this post over and over trying to figure out what to say other than “Short ribs are awesome and braising is full of win,” a light bulb went off.  I could not only share the recipe, but how I got there.

When I want to make something I don’t have a favorite recipe or tried and true method for, I go through a routine to find and create the dish. I adore short ribs but have never made them at home, always having them in restaurants where all the work is done for you.  But since I have had them before, I at least knew what flavor profiles I liked. Thyme, red wine, heavy tomato base. And that was my jumping off point.

First, I go through all my cookbooks I own that I know would have recipes that fit the bill. I skim and flag anything that looks promising. Then I move onto this huge manila folder I have on top of my fridge (seen above) which is a pseudo-scrapbook of recipes I have torn out of magazines, printed off websites, transcribed from my mother, etc. I’ll pull from there. And finally, I hit up my favorite recipe websites (Epicurious, Everyday Food, Food Network, etc.) and compile those as well.  I look at all the most promising recipes and pull methods, ingredients, and measurements from them and sort of mash them altogether into the final recipe which I tweak along the way as I cook, often reducing serving sizes because I’m only cooking for one or two. And that’s how a “Based on…” recipe is born here.

And speaking of the recipe, this one is a perfect Sunday dinner treat. You can easily feed an army for cheap since short ribs are super tough cuts of meat and thus they run usually under $5 a lb. Since the cuts have a lot of connective tissue, it’s all about low and slow, braising the ribs in a great liquid base and not touching them for hours, so you get the most tender, fall-off-the-bone meat ever. Plus if you just whip up some instant polenta or steamed veggies on the side, you can just throw these in the oven for 5 hours, come back, and have dinner on the table in 15 minutes. Talk about the best way to enjoy your Sunday.

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