a99kitten's Musings

It was supposed to be cold, rainy and (hopefully) snowy over the weekend so I thought a good time to make some meat sauce and try over zucchini noodles using my new toy!

Ingredients: 

2 pounds ground beef – I used organic, grass fed 85/15%
1 shallot, finely diced (I used my food processor)
1/4 cup minced garlic
4 (14.5 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste
2 (14 ounce) cans tomato sauce
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup Cabernet Sauvignon
1 tablespoon dried Italian herb seasoning
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions:

1. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and stir in ground beef, shallot, and garlic. Cook and stir until the meat is crumbly, evenly browned, and no longer pink, about 15 minutes.

2. Transfer the meat to the slow cooker. Stir in diced tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, chicken broth, red wine, Italian seasoning, basil, salt, and black pepper.

3. cook on low for 8 hours.

Noodles:

Obviously you can use real pasta (mmmmmm) but I wanted to try zucchini noodles! SUPER EASY! First step – bought the Paderno Spiralizer 3-Blade from Williams Sonoma. Sure, sure…you can slice them manually but I know that I won’t do that and like kitchen tools :)

Once you have spiralized the zucchinis (2) heat 1 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet and cook/stir in the noodles so they are all coated in the oil. Then add in about 1/4 cup of water and cook until the zucchini is softened, about 8-10 mins or so. Season with a bit of salt and pepper as you stir occasionally.  You want the water soaked up by the noodles.

Then pour some sauce over your noodles and sprinkle some parmesan over it and YUM!

I haven’t made homemade mac and cheese in a very long time so I decided it was time! I found this recipe a few years ago in the Macaroni & Cheese cookbook put together by Joan Schwartz (easily obtained on Amazon!) I like this one because it has some spice!

Ingredients

I love Buffalo Chicken Wings (prefer boneless though.) I love Buffalo chicken pretty much anything. I hate when people call anything spicy “Buffalo” but whatever. Use Frank’s and you are pretty good :)

2 (10 ounce) cans chicken breast
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup Frank’s Red Hot original cayenne pepper sauce
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup ranch dressing
1/4 cup Greek yogurt (Fage)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place cream cheese in a medium bowl and stir until smooth. Mix in Frank’s Red Hot, mozzarella cheese, ranch dressing, and yogurt. Stir in chicken until thoroughly combined. Spoon mixture evenly into a deep 8-inch by 8-inch baking dish.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until mixture is heated through. I serve with pita chips and sliced cucumbers (also carrots and celery but yuck.) :)

Mmmmmmm

Even though it has not been terribly wintery all January (pretty much do **not** like you at all right now Mother Nature), it’s still pretty darn chilly at night. So warm and wintery dinners sound good. I found several recipes for beef stew and thought I’d try that!

As a a kid, I LOVED Dinty Moore beef stew. There is nothing short of a zombiepocolypse that could get me to eat that now (no clue what that meat is…), but boy oh boy did I love it when I was 10-11yrs old. So I combined several recipes that I found that kinda sorta looked like I remembered and changed it a little for my tastes:

Ingredients:

2 lbs of beef cut into 1″ (ish) cubes – I asked the guy at the meat counter for the best type/quality of beef (you need some marbly fat)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 clove of garlic – minced
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 shallot – chopped (all recipes I found called for onion but ick)
2 cups beef broth
1/2 cup red wine
4 baby red and 4 baby white potatoes – quartered (left skin on)
4 carrots – peeled and sliced
10 oz white mushrooms – sliced (no recipe I found called for this but I love mushrooms)

For later: 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup cream

All of the recipes called for celery – also yuck. But if you like it, go for it.

Directions:

Place meat in the slow cooker. In a small bowl, combine the flour, salt and pepper. Pour over the meat and stir to coat the meat with the flour mixture.

Stir in the garlic, paprika, Worcestershire sauce, beef broth, wine and veggies. Then put in the bay leaf and stir in but kind of on top.

Cover and cook on low for 10-12 hours. The cook on high option says 4-6 hours but I always prefer the low cook.

At around 9.5 hours I thought it looked a little watery for stew. So I added the additional 1/4 cup flour and cream. This pretty much made it perfect. It cooked for another 1hr 15 mins and YUM!

Plus I’m guessing it will be even better tomorrow!

I’m thinking next time, use 1.5 cups of broth to prevent the wateriness. Maybe? Or maybe just keep the cream ;)

Another yummy sounding winter recipe that I found after digging through my big box of recipes (that I really need to get sorted out.) Plus it sounded like a fairly easy one and I like those :) I did change it to suit my tastes AS USUAL!

INGREDIENTS:

4 (to 6) boneless chops about 1″ thick
1/2 cup flour, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
10 ounces sliced mushrooms (original recipe called for 8oz and I say the more mushrooms, the better!)
6 tablespoons butter, divided (I used unsalted)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion (I used a whole small shallot)
1/2 cup thinly sliced celery (I did not use, but did mic in about 1/4 teaspoon of celery seed)
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup milk (I used non-fat as that’s what in my house…probably even creamier with whole milk)
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 350°.

In a wide, shallow bowl, combine 1/4 cup of the flour, the paprika, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper; Stir to blend well. Dredge the chops lightly to coat all sides.

In a large skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter; add the mushrooms and cook until tender and golden brown. Remove to a plate and set aside.

Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the skillet and brown the pork chops on both sides, for about 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Remove the pork chops to a baking dish and set aside.

Add the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter to the skillet and add the onion and celery (seed). Cook, stirring, until onion is tender. Add the remaining 1/4 cup of flour to the skillet and stir to blend into the onion mixture. Add the chicken broth and milk and cook, stirring, until thickened. Stir in the mushrooms and add salt and pepper. Stir in the lemon juice.

Pour the sauce mixture over the chops in the baking dish. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 1 hour.

I served over Jasmine rice because I could live off of the saucy white rice combo :) This was DELICIOUS. It was like a homemade cream of mushroom recipe. So, less people (yes..talking to you pretentious foodies) might not be AS condescending about using not an actual can of cream of mushroom soup in a recipe. Maybe. But probably not. But then, if I cared about that, I’d probably not have a #zombiepocolypse supply of blue box mac and cheese in my pantry. :)

We feasted on pea risotto and Hunters chicken, both from the Cipriani cookbook, plus some roasted Brussell sprouts with maple and bacon on Christmas Eve.

Then the hashed brown sausage scramble casserole Christmas morning.

Then some neighbors came over and we had champagne, cheese and an amazing homemade antipasti they brought over around 3. So by the time Christmas dinner time came around, we felt some more cheese and a few bites of leftover chicken and risotto was sufficient while we watch a great Christmas classic, Trading Places :)

So December 26th became the planned Christmas dinner time! On the menu was Caramel Apple Pork Chops with au gratin potatoes, green bean casserole (because I need this at least once between Thanksgiving and New Years and had not yet had it!!) plus apple sauce.

Ingredients:

4 (3/4 inch) thick pork chops
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tart apples – peeled, cored and sliced
3 tablespoons pecans

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees F. Place a medium dish in the oven to warm.

2. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Brush chops lightly with oil and place in hot pan. The original recipe said to cook the chops for 5 to 6 minutes but I found they took about 8-9 minutes but they were probably 1″ chops. Turn the chops every couple minutes to cook evenly. Transfer to the warm dish, and keep warm in the preheated oven.

3. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, salt and pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add butter to skillet, and stir in brown sugar mixture and apples. Cover and cook until apples are just tender. Remove apples with a slotted spoon and arrange on top of chops. Keep warm in the preheated oven.

4. Now, according to the original recipe there should be some sauce to continue cooking sauce but we found there was almost none so added some butter and brown sugar and spices to create a little more. Cook this uncovered in skillet, until thickened slightly. Spoon sauce over apples and chops.

5. The recipe called to just sprinkle pecans on at the end and serve. But next time, I will roast or brown the pecans first (perhaps in the sauce at the very end) as they seemed bland. Although the tastes combined were good. I just think the pecans needed something.

I would make it again for sure but would use thinner chops and dress up the pecans. But very yum!

Christmas morning breakfast needed to be something to tide us over to dinner. And fuel us for snow hikes! Oh…this did! My interwebz were basically down yesterday (on Christmas) as the tourist hordes come up here and everyone tries to use it at once. And apparently Suddenlink doesn’t realize Bay Area tourists use the internet like water so refuse to upgrade (oh…I’ll be sending off a scathing letter to corporate as my technician suggested.)

ANYHOO….didn’t get this recipe up ON Christmas.

Hash Brown and Egg Casserole

Ingredients:
1 (2 pound) package frozen hash brown potatoes – THAWED. I used the Alexia brand with onions, garlic and white pepper
The original recipe called for a diced small onion which I did not use as the potatoes had it and I’m not a huge fan of onion.
1 pound pork sausage – cut up in small pieces
5 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
salt and ground black pepper to taste
12 ounces shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Directions:

0. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9×13 pan – I used a nonstick pan and did melt about 2 tbspns of butter and spread it around. Place the hash brown potatoes in the bottom of the baking dish. The original recipe did not have this step but I baked the hashed browns in the pan (pour some melted butter over the top to add yumminess) for about 30 mins.

1. If you have a double oven, pre-heat the second oven to 350 degrees. If not, lower single oven to 350.

2. Heat a skillet over medium heat and cook and stir the sausage and onion until the sausage is crumbly, evenly browned, and no longer pink. Meanwhile, whisk together the eggs, milk, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and pour over the potatoes. Layer with half the cheddar cheese, the sausage mixture, and the remaining cheddar cheese. Cover with aluminum foil.

3. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 – 60 minutes. Remove cover; return casserole to the oven and bake until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean, about 10 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

This WAS SO GOOD. Mmmmmmmm.

Brown Butter Blondies with Cherries, Chocolate, Cashews & Pecans

Found this recipe on Williams Sonoma. First time trying it so who knows but let’s face it…how can it possibly taste bad??

Ingredients:

16 Tbs. (8 oz.) unsalted butter
3 cups (21 oz.) firmly packed dark brown sugar
4 eggs
1 Tbs. vanilla extract
2 Tbs. bourbon
2 tsp. salt
2 cups (10 oz.) all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1 cup (4 oz.) coarsely chopped cashews
1 cup (4 oz.) coarsely chopped pecans
1/2 cup (2 oz.) dried tart cherries
2 cups (12 oz.) chocolate chips or chopped semisweet chocolate

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 9-by-13-inch baking pan with foil and grease well. I melted a bit of butter and spread it in there.

In a saucepan over medium heat, warm the butter, stirring constantly, until it turn golden and the butter has a nutty fragrance. Be careful not to let the butter burn. Remove from heat and stir in the brown sugar. Set aside and let cool slightly.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, bourbon and salt. Whisk in the cooled butter mixture, then fold in the flour and baking powder.

Making sure that the mixture is almost at room temperature (to prevent the chocolate from melting), stir in the nuts, cherries and chocolate chips. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake until the top is shiny, set and slightly cracked around the edges, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool completely before cutting.

We just “tested” these. WOW!!!! SO GOOD!!!!!

Merry Christmas!!

It’s cold & snowing outside and my 49ers just lost and got booted out of play-off contention so comfort food is needed. Stat.

First. Put this on.

:)

Then….

Slice up spicy Italian sausage (I used 5)
Slice up some mushrooms (I used a package of mushrooms – 10 oz)

Brown them in some olive oil

Meanwhile, boil some water

Make some pasta – I used a box of Gluten-free, non-GMO Quinoa rotini (yeah…we’ll see…)

Once both are done, mix in a baking dish, pour in a jar of sauce (or gravy if you prefer Corleones) and a few handfuls (big giant football player handfuls) of mozzarella. Make sure mixed well and bake at 350 (oh yeah…preheat your oven) for 25 minutes or so. FYI – I used “Rao’s Homemade Arrabbiata” sauce to keep with the spicy theme.

Then sprinkle Parmesan on it and bake a few more minutes.

Eat.

Simple.

And if your team lost and you are out of play-off contention, pour a glass of red too :)