Tag Archives: beef

Impressive Dishes, Meat Dishes, Recipes, The Daring Kitchen

Boeuf Bourguignon Crepes

15 Comments
Recipe for the Daring Kitchen
Our May 2012 Daring Cooks’ hostess was Fabi of fabsfood. Fabi challenged us to make Boeuf Bourguignon, a classic French stew originating from the Burgundy region of France.

Like Julia, But Dirtier

Boeuf Bourguignon, particularly Julia Child’s definitive recipe, reads like poetry to me. The ingredients and process seem more a love song to an art form well-worth filing in the category of works that make my heart ache in that oh-so-good kinda way. So when it was announced by our lovely hostess Fabi that this month’s Daring Kitchen was to make Julia’s boeuf, you’d expect me to be swooning. Except I wasn’t, and all because of one little detail. I’m in Phoenix. And it’s already fucking incendiary. Continue reading Boeuf Bourguignon Crepes →

Easy to Prepare, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Pressure Cooker Recipes, Recipes

Easy Ropa Vieja (Cuban Braised Beef)

9 Comments

Shred Me to Pieces

I was born for sexy, sultry heat, which maybe has a lot to do with why I adore the kitchen.  And when the humidity cranks the knob a notch higher, my knickers turn a tizzy for a taste of something tropical.  The combinations of salty, sweet and spicy are so dizzyingly addictive, I want to break out into a salsa and shake my shit until it falls off.  Okay, maybe not until it falls out – I don’t really feel like dropping a co-pay for too much of a good time.  What I really want is a mess of this shredded beef simmered with bell peppers, sweet onions and a sexy-as-hell tomato garlic sauce to bind it all up.  And I want it with fluffy white rice and beans as dark as my intentions after too many pitchers of sangria.  I want some ropa vieja.  Stat. Continue reading Easy Ropa Vieja (Cuban Braised Beef) →

Impressive Dishes, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Poultry Dishes, Pressure Cooker Recipes, The Daring Kitchen

Red Chile Tamales

10 Comments
Recipe for The Daring Kitchen
Maranda of Jolts & Jollies was our January 2012 Daring Cooks hostess with the mostess! Maranda challenged us to make traditional Mexican Tamales as our first challenge of the year!

Spreading Your Masa All Over the Damn Town

Back when I was little, my grandmother used to have a friend at her work who’s family would make tamales en masse at Christmas.  She’d give her a few dozen and we got to feast on the little parcels of majesty for what I’d love to say was weeks after, but they barely lasted a few days.  We had them steamed plain with nothing else to slow us down except for maybe some pinto beans or fluffy Spanish rice.  I’ve long been searching for a killer tamale recipe in the same way as I’ve wanted the PERFECT enchilada sauce recipe.  I’ve gone through MANY iterations and variations of ones that come close, but I’ve yet to hit perfection.  So of course, when I found out that this month’s Daring Kitchen competition was to make tamales, I was so excited to have the opportunity to get back in the lab and start tinkering again. Continue reading Red Chile Tamales →

Easy to Prepare, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Recipes

Kefta Kebabs

2 Comments

Grind It Out

I’ve long been in love with kefta kebabs – the addictive combination of ground lamb or beef seasoned with aromatics such as onion, garlic, parsley and mint. I first truly fell in love with them at one of my most beloved spots in NYC, The Olive Tree Cafe. Aside from being the place where I went on my very first date with my now husband, it was a haunt that my friends and I would hit up back in college. The food was cheap and plentiful, the drinks strong, and if you couldn’t score a reservation to the Comedy Cellar below the restaurant for one of the stand-up shows, you could sit at a table right next to the same comedians working that night. The place has been in my life for years and years, and crazily enough, their charcoal-grilled kefta kebabs are a huge part of my love of the place. Continue reading Kefta Kebabs →

Breakfast and Brunch, Egg Dishes, Impressive Dishes, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Sandwiches

Steak and Egg Sandwich with Jalapeno Hollandaise

It’d be selling them short to claim eggs as my favorite breakfast food, as that leaves out all of the other meals where eggs win my heart.  Sure, I can appreciate a fluffy waffle or sugar-dusted french toast.  But if eggs are one of the options, all other sweet delights are off the table.  It’s eggs for me 100%.

Though I’ve yet to meet an egg that I didn’t like, there is something about perfectly scrambled eggs in sandwich form that makes me grin bigger than Christmas morning.  This sandwich gilds the proverbial lily by adding tender steak to the party, and ups the egg quotient with a piquant topping of jalapeno hollandaise (made in the blender for quick and easy eating).  Yes, darlings, this one is trouble.  And the best kind of trouble you can get in to, no less.  Comfort-food noshing, hangover staving off, one-on-one private time with you and your breakfast a la Hall & Oates kind of trouble.  You know exactly what I’m talking about, so don’t even pretend. Continue reading Steak and Egg Sandwich with Jalapeno Hollandaise →

Easy to Prepare, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, The Daring Kitchen

Rooibos Beef Stew with Sweet Potatoes

8 Comments
Recipe for The Daring Kitchen
Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.
From the fragrant sauce of orange peel, ginger and cinnamon sticks, this beef stew screams holiday delight like no other.  Typically, when I’m prepping for a Daring Kitchen Challenge where I don’t get to choose the exact recipe that I follow for the challenge, I have a bit of a notion as to how it’ll turn out.  From all the time spent in the kitchen, I can usually gauge how well or poorly I’ll be able to execute the dish, and what the resulting taste profile will be like.  Let me tell you – this stew knocked my friggin’ socks off.  I went into it thinking, “Beef stew with sweet potatoes…this’ll be warm and comforting and simply homey.”  Boy, was I wrong – in addition to all of those things, this stew was heady with spices and full of complex flavors.  Almost floral at times.  And the rooibos tea forms a stock that is spicy and rich and glorious.  I immediately made a mental note to save this recipe for friends and loved ones, because it embodied all I love about my favorite dishes.  It personified the melding of seemingly ordinary ingredients into something novel and special – a dish worth savoring for just a little bit longer. Continue reading Rooibos Beef Stew with Sweet Potatoes →

Main Courses, Meat Dishes, The Daring Kitchen

Meatballs with Coconut Curry

Recipe for The Daring Kitchen
Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.
When tasked with creating a curry from Southern India or Sri Lanka, I decided to take cues from our host, Mary Mary Culinary, and do a little research to put a happy spin on my recipe for The Daring Kitchen. Her Sri Lankan coconut curry was divine – a blend of chilies, tamarind, fresh curry leaves and coconut milk simmered with cubes of tender lamb. I found that because of the Dutch settlers in Sri Lanka, there were several dishes that formed from the hybrid of cultures. One was the use of meatballs in various curries and baked dishes. Given that I am a lover of the meatball in all forms and ethnic spins, I decided to take Mary’s curry and marry (ha!) it with a meatball. Continue reading Meatballs with Coconut Curry →

Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Recipes

Ginger Beef with Snow Peas

Let’s talk about food worth lauding over.  The kind of dishes that don’t mess around with excesses and hit a balance of flavor and texture right on the nose.  Ingredients that are versatile – equally sassy doing the roger rabbit by themselves or the kid ‘n play with a friend.  This dish wants to rock right now – it’s Ginger Beef and it came to get down.  It’s not internationally known…okay, that’s probably enough of that.

Keeping the cooking on this one a breeze involves doing all of your chopping before even thinking about heating up your wok.  Call it your mise en place.  Call it your OCD.  Either way, you’ll be ready to wok and roll (and spout out bad puns, apparently).  Also, to get the beef to cook quickly, you’ll want to slice it so thinly, it’ll seem as if your shaving off pieces.  A trick to make this process easier is to slice the flank steak while it’s partially frozen.  The meat holds it’s shape and gives your knife stability as you cut away.  Yes, yes y’all. Continue reading Ginger Beef with Snow Peas →

Main Courses, Meat Dishes

Beef Tenderloin with Artichokes in Bechamel

Foodbuzz 24 x 24 | An Ode to Orvieto

This recipe was a part of a special menu for Foodbuzz’s June 2011 food blogger party, 24×24. Showcasing posts from 24 Foodbuzz Featured Publisher bloggers, the monthly Foodbuzz 24 highlights unique meals occurring around the globe during a 24-hour period. Read more about my meal along with all of the other recipes at An Ode to Orvieto.

One of my favorite things about Italy, particularly in the sleepier towns, meals are a whole lot more egalitarian.  Wine is cheap and plentiful, and fresh ingredients used in wholesome cooking are never at a premium.  Tasty is tasty, and everything else fails to make it to the table.

On a dinner out with a group of other students in Orvieto, one of the guys told me that whenever he saw “filetto” on a menu, he ordered it without hesitation.  For the mounds of fresh pasta and pizza and risotto that we ordered as main courses over first courses, we never managed to get to the meat courses.  Learning about this filet obsession shook me from my carb-focused complacency, and I decided to go with a Filetto ai Carciofi, a filet mignon simply grilled with artichokes.  It was in that moment that I had felt as if I’d wasted how many dinners not indulging on a perfectly cooked steak.  Better yet, the dear price tag was nowhere to be found – it was as if I had ordered a chicken breast back in the states, the cost so reasonable.  I miss those days.

This dish has been adapted as a party pleaser, replacing the filet with a whole beef tenderloin.  You have the joy of the same tender meat, but can slice thinly to feed a group.  I’ve also found that buying the whole tenderloin results in a much cheaper price tag by the pound.  As such, you can roast a tenderloin one night and cut individual filets with the rest for dinners later on.  The artichokes are the perfect accompaniment, simmered in chicken stock and dressed in a lush, creamy bechamel.  This is a seriously rich dish of food and a little bit goes a long way.  You will be impressed with how far rich, fresh ingredients go in feeding a bunch, all the while keeping the price tag reasonable.

Recipe for

Beef Tenderloin with Artichokes in Bechamel

Ingredients
1 3-4 lb. beef tenderloin
kosher salt
cracked pepper
olive oil
sprig of thyme

4 artichokes
6 c. of chicken stock
2 lemons
1 sprig of thyme
2 bay leaves
4 tbs. of butter
3 tbs. of flour
1 c. of heavy cream
2 1/2 c. of whole milk
4 tbs. of parsley
salt to taste
white pepper

Season your beef tenderloin liberally with salt and pepper.  Rub with olive oil and let sit out while you prep your artichokes.

Halve the two lemons and squeeze into a large bowl. Fill the bowl with water 2/3 of the way full. Remove the outer leaves of the artichoke until you get to the tender golden leaves in the center [photo]. Chop off the golden leaves to expose the hairy choke in the center [photo].  Use a pairing knife to smooth the outside of the artichoke and remove any tough bits of leaves [photo]. Cut off all but 1/2 of an inch of the stem and peel with a pairing knife or vegetable peeler.  Cut the artichoke into quarters and scoop out all of the fuzzy choke.  Rub all of the cut sides of the artichoke pieces with the halved lemon and then add to the water.  Continue until you have prepped all of the artichokes.

Bring the six cups of chicken stock, thyme and bay leaves to a boil.  Add the artichokes and simmer on medium high for 30 minutes.  Remove artichokes with a slotted spoon and set aside.

In a skillet, add a bit of olive oil and heat on high.  Add the tenderloin and sear on all sides until deeply browned on the outside and rare in the middle.  Place tenderloin on a cookie sheet and bake in a preheated oven until cooked off to your desired doneness, about 5 more minutes for rare to medium rare.  Remove from the oven and let rest.

While the beef is cooking, make your bechamel.  Melt the 4 tbs. of butter in a sauce pan.  Whisk in the flour to make a smooth paste.  Continue to whisk and add the milk and cream.  Working over medium heat, whisk until sauce thickens slightly.  Add the artichokes, about 1/2 tsp. of salt and a 1/4 tsp. of white pepper to taste and stir.  Continue to cook until the bechamel thickens around the artichokes.  Top with parsley.

Slice the steak into 1/4 inch slices and surround with the artichokes and bechamel.  Serve.

Impressive Dishes, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Pasta Dishes, Pressure Cooker Recipes, Recipes

Drunken Pasta with Blond Oxtail Ragu

Foodbuzz 24 x 24 | An Ode to Orvieto

This recipe was a part of a special menu for Foodbuzz’s June 2011 food blogger party, 24×24. Showcasing posts from 24 Foodbuzz Featured Publisher bloggers, the monthly Foodbuzz 24 highlights unique meals occurring around the globe during a 24-hour period. Read more about my meal along with all of the other recipes at An Ode to Orvieto.

Of the many meals that I’ve eaten in my life time, only two do I consider truly transcendental. One of which, a dinner served al fresco on the cobblestone streets of Orvieto, was at a little haunt called L’Asino D’oro (Italian for “The Golden Ass”). We had decided to go, a group of us, on the cryptic recommendation of one of our professors, “It’s the most amazing meal of your life. Oh, and if they have the stinco, order it. I don’t know what stinco means, but it’s incredible.” A table was set right in front of the restaurant that looked more townhouse than dining space. Apparently, only two or three parties could dine each evening, and the process of making a “reservation” was literally informing the owner that you would be popping by. In a clammour of conversations in rapid-fire english and broken italian, it was accidentally (or maybe it was intentionally) relayed to the owner to bring us one of everything on the menu. Plate after plate of deliciousness, from fat little sardines dressed in tomato sauce to marbled platters of salumi to heaping mounds of toothsome fresh cut pastas, graced the table as we barely kept up.

One dish in particular gave me pause as for the life of me, I could not figure out the angle.  Gorgeous purple noodles were topped with a savory braised stew of sorts.  I peeked at the menu and saw that it was Tagliatelle all’Ubriaco con Ragu di Coda de Bue.  What the…?  I asked one of the guys on the trip who spoke fuent italian for a little translation help, to which he proffered, “It’s some kind of tail.”  Wait, wha?

I came home and did a little research – coda de bue was oxtail and the sauce was a ragu di carne bianche, or a tomato-less ragu.  In addition, the boozy pasta was purple from a bath in red wine as opposed to the traditional salt water jacuzzi.  What a revelation!  Between the absence of tomato in the ragu and the wacky purple pasta, I knew I had to take this dish on for myself.

Because oxtails need a lot of love and time to become tender, I like to make this sauce in the pressure cooker.  In addition, they tend to be fatty, so try to make the sauce the night before you serve it for simpler deglazing.  As for the pasta, the more that it cooks, the more purple it becomes.  Try fresh or dried pastas with different cooking times to see an array of lovely crimson shades.  And above all, make this meal for folks in need of a little wonder in their lives – from start to finish, this dish is really something magical.

Recipe for

Drunken Pasta with Blond Oxtail Ragu

Ingredients
3 lbs. of oxtails
3 oz. of pancetta
1 onion, minced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 carrot, finely chopped
3 stalks of celery, finely chopped
3 parsnips, finely chopped
2 tbs. of olive oil
1 c. of dry white wine
6 c. of beef stock
3 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves removed
2 fresh bay leaves
kosher salt and black pepper to taste

2 bottles of red wine
2-3 tbs. of chopped parsley
2 tbs. of butter

Add two tablespoons of olive oil to a pressure cooker and heat on high.  Salt and pepper the oxtails and sear on all sides in the olive oil.  Remove and set aside.  Add the onions and pancetta to the pot and cook until onions are translucent.  Add the garlic, carrots, celery and parsnips and cook until fragrant.  Add the wine and cook until alcohol cooks off.  Add the beef stock, thyme and bay leaves and put on the pressure cooker lid.  Cook on high pressure for one hour.  Turn off the heat and let the pressure drop naturally.  Using a pair of tongs, remove all the oxtails and put in a plastic tupperware.  Drain the vegetables using a strainer, reserving the liquid in a second tupperware.  Add the vegetables to a third tupperware.  Refrigerate overnight.

Pour two bottles of red wine into a large pasta pot.  Fill the rest of the way with water and bring to a boil.  While the water heats up, begin by taking the meat off of the oxtails, saving the bones and fat for a homemade stock.  Skim the fat off the reserved liquid and either discard or save for the aforementioned homemade stock.  Put the stock into a saucepan and cook on high, allowing to reduce by half.  Add the oxtails and veggies to the pot and let the liquid continue to reduce.  Cook your pasta according to the package directions and then drain.  Toss the hot pasta with the two tablespoons with butter and top with the oxtail ragu.  Serve with chopped parsley and grated parmesan.