Lasagna Soup OR It’s Superb Owl day and neither of us are giving a single care.

Over the past 5 weeks, our household has experienced H1N1, sinus infections, bronchitis, and strep throat. Fevers, chills, cough syrup, too many antibiotics. Here we are, beginning February–and Henry woke up with a fever. My cough is returning. I am bone deep tired of being sick. With that said, it’s been a great winter. Wonderful holiday trips to Alderdale and Bellingham. Work at my high school has been going exceptionally well, considering the change in our grading system. Things are plugging along. I am feeling rather optimistic…so much so that I just got done painting my fingernails. And now I am actually doing a blog post. Henry is on hour four or five of homework and I am considering starting dinner.

I chose this recipe based solely on the pictures. Drool.  I mostly followed it. I can’t wait to eat it!

It’s simple. I tweaked it a bit–I thought the addition of spinach at the end would lighten it up a bit and make it more healthy. Now I only wish I had bought some french bread to go with it!

Beef Chile Colorado

I decided to make this recipe after the kids were settled in last night, watching Lion King. I managed to finish it right about at 8, finish my homework, and get into bed around 9. Not too bad.

So, now as I wait for my pot of coffee to finish brewing and as the kids watch Mystery Incorporated, I am smelling the crock pot simmering away. The recipe was simple enough. Fry the meat, soak and blend the chilis, combine in a crock pot.Simple stuff.

Ingredients:

• 3-4 pounds of meat (beef or pork)
• 10 ancho chilis, stems and seeds removed
• 5 guajillo peppers, stems and seeds removed
• 1 large onion, diced
• 6 cloves of garlic (I omitted due to the 2 T of granulated garlic)
• 4 cups of stock and water
• 2 T cumin
• 2 T granulated garlic
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 1 T Mexican oregano
• Salt

Method:

Start by soaking the cleaned peppers in boiling water to cover for 40 minutes.

Season the meat with granulated garlic, salt, pepper, and cumin. Brown in small matches to ensure a good maillard reaction. Don’t worry about cooking all the way through. You just want a good sear.

Add the seared meat to a crock pot.  When the meat’s done, sauté the onion and add that to the pot.

Retrieve the softened peppers from the soaking liquid and add the peppers, 2 cups of stock, salt, and Mexican oregano to a blender. Blend until smooth.

Add the chili puree the meat and onion. Salt to taste and turn it on low. When is it done? I don’t know. Mine has been for about 11 hours now and I haven’t tasted it yet. Figure it out on your own and according to your own tastes.

Original Recipe.

 

Mexican Steak Sandwiches

• 1 steak
• half of an onion, sliced
• 1 Roma tomato, sliced
• 1 red bell pepper, sliced
• cumin (some)
• mexican oregano (enough…don’t you love how exact I am?)
• juice of half a lime, juiced
• one chipotle, minced and deseeded
• s and p
• baguette
• pepper jack cheese
• beer (some Widmer Dark Saison Brewmasters’ Release)
• garlic, minced

Marinate the steak in the lime juice, salt and pepper, cumin, and Mexican oregano.

While it’s doing it’s thing, saute the onions, garlic, and red pepper.  Add the chipotle pepper, minced, but make sure to scrape out the inner seeds and membrane so your final dish isn’t ridiculously spicy.

After the veggies are nice and caramelized, take them out of the pan and set them aside in a bowl.

Fry the steak in some butter in the pan you sauteed the veggies in.

When the steak is done, let it rest.

Add the peppers and such back to the pan and pour in some beer. Throw in a sliced Roma tomato. Let it simmer and reduce.

Slice the steak.

Cut the bagette in half and open it up. Butter both sides and broil it, cut side up.  Add the cheese slices to the bread after a minute or so. Watch it carefully–broilers can take some from toasty to charred beyond recognition in seconds.

Assemble the sandwiches once the bread is ready to come out. Layer the peppers and onions with the steak.

Delicious sandwiches. Would be good with chicken, shrimp–any protein, really. That marinade lends itself well to whatever you slather it on. If you decide to try it, you may want to marinate your meat longer than the 45 minutes I did. Overall, I’m really pleased with how the meal turned out. Perfect for a night watching Battlestar Galatica, curled up on the couch.

Caramelized Onion and Red Chard Enchiladas

Ingredients:

• two large sweet onions
• 2 tablespoons bacon grease
• 1 bunch red chard and 1 bunch beet greens
• 2 cloves of garlic
• frozen corn
• cumin and mexican oregano; salt and pepper
• enchilada sauce (El Pato)
• Feta
• 8 corn tortillas

Measure two tablespoons of bacon grease into a large skillet.  Add onions. Caramelize   Add seasonings.

Add greens.  Saute until tender.  Add frozen corn.

Soften tortillas in the microwave.  Fill them with the greens, onion, and corn.   Roll and place tortillas seam side down in a casserole dish.  Spoon enchilada sauce over the filled tortillas.

Crumble feta over the enchiladas.  Bake in a 375 degree oven until they are done–melty and gooey and heated all the way through. 

Adapted from this recipe.  

Roasted tomato, oyster mushroom, and garlic pasta (with mizithra)

Ingredients:

• Tomatoes (some.  I think I used five or six)
• Oyster mushrooms (some?)
• 1 onion (finally, something quantifiable!)
• 1 head of garlic
• s&p
• basil, oregano, cayenne pepper
• splash of balsamic vinegar
• linguine
• mizithra cheese

Method:

In a 450 degree oven, roast tomatoes (tomatoes [chopped], seasoned with s & p, doused with balsamic vinegar and olive oil) and whole head of garlic (wrapped in tin foil, doused in oil and salt and pepper), until desired doneness.

While tomatoes and garlic are roasting, saute mushrooms and onions until caramelized.  Add s & p, basil and oregano–cayenne, also.

Add tomatoes and their juices to sauteed mushrooms and onions.

Mash your roasted garlic and add that to the tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions.

Simmer ingredients together for awhile.  Realize that you are getting tired and the wine you bought from Trader Joe’s is making you drowsy.  Also realize that two dishes in one night is quite ambitious.  You decide to finish your sauce and put it in the fridge.  Pasta can be made tomorrow.

Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Curry

The dish I am making today is a combination of two recipes I found this morning.  The first one is from The CopyCat Cook.  The combination of creamy sweet potatoes and red lentils sounds like a good pair.

This curry seems to be (and I’m definitely not a curry expert) an Indian-inspired curry (cumin, turmeric, and lentils) and I’m in the mood for Thai, so I found this recipe, which calls for Thai curry paste, cilantro, and fish sauce:  Sweet Potato Thai Curry.

The final dish will use green curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, spinach, lentils, ginger, garlic, onion, cilantro, and of course,  sweet potato.

(Vegetarians should omit the fish sauce!)

Finals Notes:

I decided to partially cook the sweet potatoes and lentils in their own pots prior to adding all the ingredients together in the curry.  I wanted to make sure that all the ingredients were cooked through at the same time, spent the right amount of time in the curry sauce, and cooking those ingredients separately seemed the best way to do it.  It was a bit more work, but I felt I had more control over the final dish this way.  No crunchy lentils or potatoes for me!

As I added the potatoes and lentils to the curry sauce, I also added some veggie stock to thin out the coconut milk.  Green curry also tends to taste soapy to me (am I the only one?) and the veggie stock mellows out the curry paste.

I ended up leaving out the fish sauce and the spinach and adding a healthy dose of lime juice at the very end of cooking.

This is, by far, the best curry recipe I’ve ever made.  I highly recommend it!

In process: Pasta with goat cheese, kalamata olives, roasted tomatoes, and basil

Process: Chop tomatoes; slice onions; prepare two heads of garlic.  Douse in olive oil. Salt and pepper. 425 degree oven. Roast. Don’t let them stick or burn.

Take vegetables out of the oven.

Set tomato/onion mixture aside.

Let garlic cool. Make it into a paste. It’ll spread like butter.

Boil pasta in salty water.  I used rigatoni.

Mix garlic paste, goat cheese, basil (chiffonade), chopped kalamata olives with some starchy water reserved from the pasta. (Cut your left hand and burn your right. Drink wine to dull the pain.)

This is the sauce.

Mix the tomatoes/onions with the garlic, basil, roasted garlic goat cheese.

Drain pasta.

Pour sauce over pasta.

Done.

Without counting or measuring.

Steps 1-5:  Washing, chopping, drizzling, sprinkling, roasting.

400 degrees

Roasted:

Vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie

butternut squash, zucchini, mushrooms, carrots, celery, onion, roasted garlic, red potatoes, bell pepper, flour, milk, vegetable stock, salt and pepper, oregano, basil, olive oil.

Peel and chop as you feel like it.

Roast butternut squash and garlic.

Sauté zucchini, mushrooms, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, bell pepper. Season. Stir. Check your email. Compliment your spouse (he vacuumed).  Ask him to change the music from Pink Floyd to Simon and Garfunkel.  He complains, but concedes.

Stir some.

When the mushrooms are deeply colored and the onions sweet, add oil or butter to pan.  Sprinkle flour, incorporating it into the fat with your wooden spoon.  Cook away the raw flour taste.

Slowly add milk and stock, bit by bit, until the flour absorbs and holds the liquid.

Continue to stir.

Eventually, you’ll have a gravy. Taste it. Season it.

Layer vegetables into a casserole dish.  Drown the vegetables in the gravy.

Boil red potatoes.

Mash them. (add milk, butter, salt and pepper if you like.  Or goat cheese. Or sour cream. or whatever you want.)

Spread potatoes over vegetables and gravy.

Cover with tin foil (aluminum foil?).

Bake at 300-something degrees until you feel inclined to take it out of the oven.  You may begin to smell it.  You may just be impatient.  Or you may have casserole intuition.  Whatever way you measure casserole-in-the-oven time, embrace it.