Borscht

This is another recipe I got from allrecipes, modified a bit according to the comments, and will probably modify a bit more next time I make it. Here's what I think needs to happen.

Ingredients:
*2/3 pound beef stew meat, cut into 1/2 inch or 1 inch cubes
*3-4 beets, peeled and chopped (see #1 below)
*1 large or 2 smallish potatoes, peeled and chopped
*1/2 cup baby carrots, chopped
*1/2 white onion, chopped
*3 cloves garlic or to taste, minced
*4 cups beef broth (may not use all)
*1 6-oz can tomato paste
*1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
*4 tbsp red wine vinegar
*3 tbsp brown sugar
*1 1/2 tsp dried dill weed
*1 tbsp dried parsley
*1 bay leaf
*1 tsp salt
*1/2 tsp ground black pepper, or to taste
*2 cups shredded green cabbage
*sour cream

1. Chop the beets. Supposedly beets are hard to peel unless you boil them for about 10 minutes first. I did this, and that did make them pretty easy to peel. I chopped them into cubes of no bigger than 1 cm, and smaller might even be better.

2. Chop the carrots, potato, and onion. The potato(es), too, should be chopped rather small. I chopped it large, because that's how we like it in curry and stuff, but it didn't get as soft as we would have liked: small is better here.

3. Put beef, beets, carrots, potato, garlic, and onion into slow cooker. Open diced tomatoes and put them into the slow cooker without draining.

4. In a bowl, whisk together the tomato paste, vinegar, brown sugar, dill, parsley, salt, and pepper with 2 cups of the beef broth. Pour into slow cooker. Add more beef broth if needed until everything is covered and there's as much liquid as you'd like. Put the bay leaf in.

5. Cook on low for 7 hours.

6. Add the cabbage and cook on high for an hour.

7. Serve with plenty of sour cream and some good hard crusty bread.

Notes: The amounts given in the original version of this recipe were too much for our 5-qt cooker - I ended up having to discard some potato and beet and carrot just to be able to fit the tomatoes in. And in the end there was no room for the cabbage, either, so we actually skipped that. According to the comments the directed half hour on high for the cabbage isn't long enough, so I'm guessing an hour might be, but that's just a guess. ...If you've never used them, everything you've heard about beets is true: they make an amazing mess. Their juice looks just like blood. But cleanup was easier than I'd expected, and my hands aren't pink, even though I didn't wear gloves. I think next time I might use canned (non-pickled) beets, to see if they work as well. I had a hard time judging how much beet to use, too: the recipe called for 4, but didn't say what size. I used five, because the ones I got seemed a little small to me, but further research makes me think maybe they weren't, so I think next time I'll use 4 or maybe only 3, if they're medium size. ...Obviously a lot of what we liked about this was the beef, but I'm sure it would be just as good without it, and with veggie broth instead of beef. The essence of it is the beet/tomato/dill soup, with the sour cream as a garnish.

Anyway, all those caveats noted, this came out pretty satisfying. I've only had borscht in restaurants a couple of times, so I don't have too much to compare it to, but it was a nice warm way to end a rainy day (you'll read those words many times between now and next May, I'm sure!).

cowboy spaghetti

Hi all. We tried this Rachel Ray recipe this week. It was fantastic.

Ingredients

* 1 pound spaghetti
* Salt
* 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 turn of the pan
* 3 slices smoky bacon, chopped
* 1 pound ground sirloin
* 1 medium onion, chopped
* 3 to 4 cloves garlic, chopped
* Ground black pepper
* 2 teaspoons hot sauce, eyeball it
* 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, eyeball it
* 1/2 cup beer
* 1 (14-ounce) can, chopped or crushed fire roasted tomatoes
* 1 (8-ounces) can, tomato sauce
* 8 ounces sharp Cheddar
* 4 scallions, chopped

Directions

Heat a pot of water to a boil. Add spaghetti and salt the water. Cook to al dente or with a bite to it.

Heat a deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add extra-virgin olive oil and bacon. Brown and crisp bacon, 5 minutes, remove with a slotted spoon. Drain off a little excess fat if necessary. Leave just enough to coat the bottom of the skillet. Add beef and crumble it as it browns, 3 to 4 minutes. Add onions, garlic and stir into meat. Season the meat with salt and pepper, hot sauce and Worcestershire. Add 1/2 cup beer and deglaze the pan. Cook 5 to 6 minutes more then stir in tomatoes and tomato sauce.

Add hot spaghetti to meat and sauce and combine. Adjust seasonings and serve up pasta in shallow bowls. Grate some cheese over the pasta and sprinkle with scallions. Garnish with crisp bacon.

Taco soup

We just got a slow cooker the other day (Crock-Pot, 5-quart: is that good? I dunno: it's just what BB&B had), and this was the first thing we tried. I got the recipe here, but modified it, partially according to the comments on the recipe, and partially according to what we had.

Taco Soup

Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
1 orange bell pepper, chopped
1 can chili beans (15 oz), with liquid
1 can black beans (15 oz), with liquid
1 can whole kernel corn (15 oz), drained
1 can tomato sauce (8 oz) (update 2/13/11: 8-oz can tomato paste works better)
12 oz or so chicken broth
2 cans diced tomatoes with green chilies (14.5 oz), with liquid
2 tbsp or so of taco or similar seasoning (we had a bottle of Paul Prudhomme's Fajita Magic, so that's what I used)
3 skinless boneless chicken breasts, whole
shredded Mexican cheese blend
sour cream
tortilla chips (we like blue corn, Garden of Eatin' brand, unsalted)

1. Open all the cans and pour them into the cooker. Chop the onion and pepper (not too fine) and put them in. Stir in the seasoning. Put the chicken breasts in and press them down so they're just barely covered by the other things.

2. Cover, turn slow cooker on "low," and cook for 5 hours.

3. Remove chicken breasts and shred them with knife and fork. Return the chicken to the soup, cover, and cook for another 2 hours.

4. Serve topped with sour cream, cheese, and/or crumbled tortilla chips to taste.

Next time I might increase the amount of corn, and maybe even use two onions and/or peppers: more veggies might be good. As for the ways our version diverged from what's on allrecipes: we used more diced tomatoes because our market only had 14.5-oz cans, instead of the 10-oz cans the recipe called for, so it was either have a half a can left over or use it all. We also took a commenter's advice and substituted chicken broth (storebought) for the bottle of beer the recipe originally called for. Also I threw in 1/2 a can of chopped olives because we had an open can in the fridge - but to tell the truth I didn't notice them at all in the finished dish, so next time I'll either skip them or use more or maybe use sliced olives instead of chopped.

We loved this. A perfect hot spicy meal for a cold and wet autumn evening, easy to make, and really convinced us that the slow cooker was worth it. The chicken got incredibly tender. And it made way more than enough for two people: we're looking forward to leftovers tomorrow night.

I'm sure this would be just as good without the chicken and with veggie broth instead of chicken broth. In that case, maybe it wouldn't even need to be made in the slow cooker, just done on the stove in much less time.

snack of the moment

Trader Joe's sells dried mango strips with chile spice on them. They are a nice firm texture and delicious. Best way to eat them: dip them in a little salt and munch away!

Go do this now.
Seriously.

Artichoke and Sun-Dried Tomato Stuffed Chicken Breast

I just finished reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, so I'm in a rare mood for cooking. Lorien does an admirable job for us of managing every night, without fail, for the past three or four years, of putting something together for us that is tasty, healthy, and minimally fattening. But since cooking is rare for me and thus less of a chore and more of a treat, I decided to focus just on tasty.

I found this recipe on the food network site by searching for "chicken breast" (because we had some in the freezer). I was surprised it was from Guy Fieri because I didn't know he cooked--I only know him from Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

Anyway, here's the recipe. It was delicious. I didn't change anything. We served it with some brown rice with rosemary and parsley. I liked it just as well two days later for lunch, so I recommend cooking all four servings and enjoying the leftovers.

More cheeses

We had a party this past weekend, and at it we tried a couple more cheeses.

1. Beemster. I think it was Beemster "Classic." This is a gouda (but from a different region of Holland, thus the different name). It's a really, really strong gouda, very cheddary. Akiko thought it was too strong to eat straight, but I couldn't stop eating it. It has that nice faint crunch a gouda can get from the salt crystals.

2. Morbier. This is weird but good. It's a soft cow's milk cheese - not soft like brie, but soft like Velveeta. It has a streak of vegetable ash running down the center, which I think is responsible for the slightly bitter aftertaste. That's not a bad thing, because it lends a little complexity to the otherwise very straightforwardly creamy flavor. I'm not as wild about this one, probably because it reminds me too much, again, of Velveeta, but it tastes much better, and Akiko and our guests really liked it.

sandwich = awesome

It seems that I have lately been inventing AWESOME sandwiches. Today I used random leftovers and created this:

two slices of whole wheat bread spread lightly with sun dried tomato cream cheese,
one slice of hard white cheddar cheese, leftover turkey pepperoni arranged in a single layer. close sandwich, cream cheese side in. heat up a drizzle of olive oil in a pan, and sprinkle the pan generously with pepper. grill the sandwich in the oil. my cheese didn't melt before the sandwich was properly grilled, so i microwaved it for 15ish seconds.

This was a super super super delicious sandwich. amen.