The Daring Cooks’ Challenge April 2012: Boeuf Bourguignon

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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.

This is the first time that I’ve ever made Boeuf Bourguignon.  I’ve heard of it and I’ve made a number of stews and other dishes similar to it, but this is my first time for this particular dish.  It just so happens that I love to make comfort foods, so I was very excited to have an excuse for making another one.  One change that I made to the dish was that I did not get a chunk of streaky bacon nor did I use the bacon rind.  Instead, I used 4 slices of pre-packaged bacon sliced thinly.  I also decided not to strain the sauce.  It was plenty thick for my taste as it was.  We served it over polenta, so the sauce being a little thinner was actually very nice.  The picture here is the final product of what I cooked, but the recipe is Fabi’s.  She did a great job with this and deserves all of the credit.

BOEUF BOURGUIGNON

Ingredients for 6 people:

Ingredients

1 x 6 oz (200 gm) chunk of streaky bacon
Olive oil
3 pounds (1⅓ kg) stewing beef cut into 2 inches (5 cm) cubes
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (6 gm) salt
½ teaspoon (5 ml) (2 gm) pepper
3 tablespoons (45 ml) (1 oz/30 gm) flour
3 cups (1½ pint/720 ml) of young red wine. Suggestions: Bourgogne, of course, but also Bordeaux, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chianti, Rioja etc., depending on your country and your taste. Being Spanish, my choice this time was a good Rioja. It really has to be a good one but it hasn’t necessarily to be a very expensive one, you know, il ne faut pas exagérer Smile
1 carrot, sliced (I prefer to cut it into chunks, but that’s just my taste)
1 onion, sliced in julienne
1 ½ to 2 cups (¾ to 1 pint/355 to 475 ml) of beef stock or beef bouillon
1 tablespoon (15 ml) (½ oz/15 gm) tomato paste or tomato puree
2 cloves mashed garlic
½ teaspoon (2½ ml) (1 gm) thyme leaves
1 bay leave (Julia says it has to be crushed, I prefer not to crush it so that I can remove it at the end of the process)
The blanched bacon rind
18-24 small onions, brown-braised in stock
1 pound (½ kg) mushrooms sautéed in butter (Champignons are perfect for this purpose)
Fresh parsley sprigs to serve

Directions:

1.Prepare the bacon: Remove the rind. Cut the bacon into lardons (Sticks, ¼ inch thick and ½ inch (5 mm x 15 mm) long) and simmer everything in 4 cups (1 litre) of water for 10 minutes. Drain and dry carefully with paper towels.

2.Dry the meat cubes carefully with paper towels.

3.Preheat oven to hot 450ºF/230ºC/gas mark 8

4.In a fireproof casserole or a frying pan, sauté the lardons in a tablespoon of olive oil for 2-3 minutes until they’re lightly brown. Remove them to a side dish with a slotted spoon.

5.In the same casserole/pan, sauté the beef until it’s golden brown. Remove it to the side dish where you keep the bacon and set aside.

6.Still in the same casserole/pan, sauté the carrot and the onion.

7.Return the bacon and the beef to the casserole. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper, then add the flour and toss.

8.Place the casserole/dish uncovered in the middle position of the oven for 4 minutes. This gives the meat a lovely crust.

9.Remove the casserole/dish from the oven. Stir in the wine, stock, tomato paste, mashed garlic cloves, thyme, bay and the blanched bacon rind.

10.Bring it to simmering point on the stove. Now, if you were using a frying pan, discard it and put the stew in an oven proof dish.

11.Cover the casserole/dish (If your dish doesn’t have a lid, use aluminum foil and stretch it to the edges of the dish in order to minimize the loss of juices) and place it low in the oven. Adjust the heat so that the liquid simmers very slowly, it has to go on for 3-4 hours.

12.While the stew is cooking, prepare onions and mushrooms. For the onions: Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a frying pan and sauté the peeled onions until golden brown. Add beef stock until they’re almost covered and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until almost all the liquid disappears and they’re tender but keep their shape. Set aside.

13.Prepare the mushrooms as well: Wash quarter and sauté them in 2 tablespoons butter. Keep on stirring until they’re nicely brown. Set aside.

14.When meat is tender, put the stew into a sieve over a saucepan, wash out the casserole and return the stew to it. Put onions and mushrooms over the meat.

15.Skim the fat off the sauce. Put the saucepan on the stove and simmer it for 2-3 minutes. Skim additional fat if it rises. The sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon. If not, boil it until it thickens. If it’s too thick, stir in some stock or bouillon to make it lighter.

16.Pour the sauce over the stew. Put the casserole on the stove or in the oven and reheat for 2-3 minutes. Serve it in the casserole with some sprigs of fresh parsley. Some goods sides are potatoes, noodles or rice.

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The Daring Cooks’ April 2012 Challenge – Create Your Own Recipe

April 15, 2012 By 6 Comments

With our diet plan for January, February, and March, we haven’t had a great opportunity to do our Daring Kitchen Challenges this year.  We are very excited to get back in the mix and take up the challenge for the rest of the year.

Our April 2012 Daring Cooks hosts were David & Karen from Twenty-Fingered Cooking. They presented us with a very daring and unique challenge of forming our own recipes by using a set list of ingredients!

As part of the challenge, we were required to pick one ingredient each from three lists:

List 1: Parsnips, Eggplant (aubergine), Cauliflower
List 2: Balsamic Vinegar, Goat Cheese, Chipotle Peppers
List 3: Maple Syrup, Instant Coffee, Bananas

I chose to use parsnips, chipotle peppers, and instant coffee to create a Coffee Rubbed BBQ Sandwich with Chipotle BBQ Sauce and Apple Parsnip Slaw.

Coffee Rubbed Beef BBQ Sandwich with Chipotle BBQ Sauce and Apple Parsnip Slaw

The combination of sweet and spicy made this a sandwich that you would go back to over and over again.  So yummy!

Ingredients

2 Tbsp instant coffee
2 Tbsp kosher salt
2 Tbsp sweet paprika
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
2 eye of round steaks
Chipotle BBQ Sauce (recipe follows)
Apple Parsnip Slaw (recipe follows)
8 sandwich rolls

Directions

 Combine first 7 ingredients (through onion powder) and coat steaks liberally.  Place into a zip top bag and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.  Pull steaks out about 30 minutes before cooking to allow them to come to room temperature.

Heat one side of a grill on medium-high heat and the other on low heat.  Sear steaks over medium-high heat about 5 minutes on each side.  Move to the low heat side and cook for another 30-45 minutes or until meat is cooked through and indents when you push it.

During the last 10 minutes of cooking, baste the meat with the Chipotle BBQ Sauce, flipping and basting at least 3 times per side.  Allow to rest 10 minutes before slicing thinly.

To serve, place a small pile of meat on a sandwich bun and top with sauce and Apple Parsnip Slaw.  Enjoy!

Chipotle BBQ Sauce

You can add more or less of the chipotle or adobo depending upon how spicy you like your sauce.

Ingredients

1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 chipotle peppers, chopped
1 Tbsp adobo sauce
1 cup ketchup
1/4 cup brown sugar

Directions

Heat oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat.  Add onion and sautee 3-4 minutes.  Add garlic, salt, pepper, and chipotles and sautee another 3-4 minutes.  Add remaining ingredients, turn heat down to low, and cook for 10 minutes.  Pour into a blender and puree sauce.  Return to heat and keep warm until ready to use.

 

Apple Parsnip Slaw

My tip:  Mix all of the dressing ingredients together before shredding the apple so that they don’t turn brown!

Ingredients

1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tsp sugar
salt and pepper to taste
2 tart apples (Fuji, Granny Smith, etc), shredded
3 medium parsnips, shredded

Directions

Combine first five ingredients.  Mix well.  Combine apples and parsnips and coat well with the dressing mixture.  Refrigerate or allow to sit at room temperature for 15-20 minutes to allow flavors to develop.

 

Have you ever created a recipe?  Given those lists of ingredients, what creations could put together?  Leave us a comment and let us know!

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The Daring Cooks Challenge: Char Sui Bao

December 14, 2011 By 19 Comments

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2011 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious!

Thanks so much Sara for a great challenge.  I’ve seen these sorts of things on some of the shows that I watch, but never really thought about how to go about making them.  Basically, char sui is a kind of pork barbecue.  Char sui bao is that same barbecue stuffed into a baked or steamed bun.  Since I don’t have a steamer basket, I wound up baking mine.

As I got to making these, I realized how really simple and flexible these could be.  The filling could be just about anything, really.  The char sui filling that we made for the challenge was supposed to have been made with pork tenderloin, but pork chops cost about half as much, so we went with that.  The filling turned out a little dry and chunky, but that’s more my fault than anything.  Next time, I think I will chop things up a little more, make the sauce for the filling a little thicker, and be sure that the dough for the buns is a little thinner.  Also, because these were a little dry for me, I think some sort of dipping sauce would be a nice touch.  Here are a couple of pictures of my little creations.

Have you ever tried char sui bao?  If not, I hope you take the opportunity.  Leave us some comments and let us know what you think.  If you need the recipe, just let us know and I’ll get it out to you.  Make sure you take a look at our other Daring Kitchen adventures!

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The Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Moo Shu

October 14, 2011 By 3 Comments

The October Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

I’ve never had Moo Shu before in my life.  Invariably, my order at a Chinese restaurant includes steamed dumplings and one of four items:  fried rice, lo mein, sweet and sour anything, or General Tso’s chicken.  When I first started putting this together, my simple mind thought, “Oh, it’s kind of like making a breakfast burrito!”  In a lot of ways, the two are similar.  Scrambled eggs with meat and vegetables rolled into a flour shell and topped with some sort of sauce.  The description could cover both dishes.  After I tried the Moo Shu, however, I realized how much more sophisticated the flavors are.  The biggest issue I had with the entire dish was in making those darned pancakes.  I did not realize that rolling them out would take so long.  They were well worth the effort, but I surely would have started up much earlier had I known how time intensive they were.  On that note, here is a picture of the results (sorry, no process pictures…we were pressed for time this month!) and the recipes that we used to create them.  My notes on the recipes are in italics.

Thin Pancakes

These pancakes took seemingly forever to roll thin enough and cook.  My arms were hurting by the end of it!  Still, they were extraordinarily fresh and you could taste the difference that a little time and effort made.  Definitely give them a shot!

Makes 24-30 pancakes
Preparation time: about 10 minutes plus 30 minutes’ standing time
Cooking time: 45-50 minutes

Ingredients

4 cups (960 ml) (560 gm) (19¾ oz) all purpose flour
About 1½ cup (300ml) (10 fl oz) boiling water
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vegetable oil
Dry flour for dusting

Directions:

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Gently pour in the water, stirring as you pour, then stir in the oil. Knead the mixture into a soft but firm dough. If your dough is dry, add more water, one tablespoon at a time, to reach the right consistency. Cover with a damp towel and let stand for about 30 minutes.

Lightly dust the surface of a worktop with dry flour. Knead the dough for 6-8 minutes or until smooth, then divide into 3 equal portions. Roll out each portion into a long sausage and cut each sausage into 8-10 pieces. Keep the dough that you are not actively working with covered with a lightly damp dish cloth to keep it from drying out.

Roll each piece into a ball, then, using the palm of your hand, press each piece into a flat pancake. Dust the worktop with more dry flour. Flatten each pancake into a 6 to 8 inch (15 cm to 20 cm) circle with a rolling pin, rolling gently on both sides.

Place an un-greased frying pan over high heat. Once the pan is hot, lower the heat to low and place the pancakes, one at a time, in the pan. Remove when little light-brown spots appear on the underside. Cover with a damp cloth until ready to serve.

Moo Shu Pork

I used plain white, pre-sliced button mushrooms, the sliced bamboo shoots right out of the can, and a couple of pork chops that we had in the freezer.  I was going for easy that night.  I couldn’t believe how fast the eggs scrambled!  I think that might be my new method here in the mornings.

Serves 4
Preparation time: 25-30 minutes
Cooking time: 6-8 minutes

Ingredients

2/3 cup (1 oz) (30 gm) Dried black fungus (‘wood ears’)
½ lb (450 gm) pork loin or butt
¾ cup (3½ oz) (100 gm) bamboo shoots, thinly cut
3 cups (6 oz) (170 gm) Chinese cabbage (Napa cabbage), thinly cut
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (6 gm) salt
4 tablespoons (60 ml) vegetable oil
2 scallions
1 tablespoon (15 ml) light soy sauce
2 teaspoons (10 ml) rice wine
A few drops sesame oil
12 thin pancakes to serve

Directions:

Soak the fungus in warm water for 10-15 minutes, rinse and drain. Discard any hard stalks, then thinly shred.

Thinly cut the pork, bamboo shoots, and Chinese cabbage into matchstick-sized shreds.

Lightly beat the eggs with a pinch of salt.

Heat about 1 tablespoon (15 ml) oil in a preheated wok and scramble the eggs until set, but not too hard. Remove and keep to one side.

Heat the remaining oil. Stir-fry the shredded pork for about 1 minute or until the color changes. Add the fungus, bamboo shoots, Chinese cabbage and scallions. Stir-fry for about 2-3 minutes, then add the remaining salt, soy sauce and wine. Blend well and continue stirring for another 2 minutes. Add the scrambled eggs, stirring to break them into small bits. Add the sesame oil and blend well.

To serve: place about 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of hot Moo Shu in the center of a warm pancake, rolling it into a parcel with the bottom end turned up to prevent the contents from falling out. Eat with your fingers.

Hoisin Sauce

(source: http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/13249/hoisin-sauce.html)

I put all of these ingredients into a Mason jar and just shook them until they all came together.  A great job for the kids!!

Ingredients

4 tablespoons (60 ml) soy sauce
2 tablespoons (30 ml) peanut butter OR black bean paste
1 tablespoon (15 ml) honey OR molasses
2 teaspoons (10 ml) white vinegar
1/8 teaspoon (⅔ ml) garlic powder
2 teaspoons (10 ml) sesame seed oil
20 drops (¼ teaspoon) Chinese style hot sauce (optional, depending on how hot you want your hoisin sauce)
1/8 teaspoon (⅔ ml) black pepper

Directions:

Simply mix all of the ingredients together by hand using a sturdy spoon. (At first it does not appear like it will mix, but keep at it just a bit longer and your sauce will come together.)

Thanks Shelley and Ruth for a great challenge!

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The Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Stock to Soup to Consomme

September 14, 2011 By 13 Comments

Recently, I signed up with The Daring Kitchen to be a “Daring Cook.”  Basically, each month our host cook challenges us to recreate one recipe.  We all create basically the same thing with a few variations allowed, but we all end up with wildly different results.

Peta, of the blog Peta Eats, was our lovely hostess for the Daring Cook’s September 2011 challenge, “Stock to Soup to Consommé”. We were taught the meaning between the three dishes, how to make a crystal clear Consommé if we so chose to do so, and encouraged to share our own delicious soup recipes!

This challenge was right up my alley for my first time here.  I love, love, love soup.  I make stocks and broths all the time.  I always save ham bones and chicken carcasses in the freezer (seriously, I paid for them!  Why waste?).  For this challenge, I chose to create a corn stock and then use that stock to create a corn chowder.  Just in case you are wondering, yes, I do keep and freeze corn cobs just for the purpose.  If you want to know more about that, check out our post on Freezing Corn.

Corn Stock

This beautiful amber liquid smells like summer.  Use it in soups or risottos to add that little extra bit of comfort when it gets cold outside.  Make sure not to add salt to the stock.  When it reduces, it will be very salty and high in sodium.  Just add it to your final dish using the stock.

Ingredients

1 large onion
3 stalks celery
2 carrots
4 cloves garlic
2 T peppercorns
12 corn cobs
water to cover

Directions

Chop onion, celery, and carrots into large chunks.  Put into a large stockpot with next three ingredients.  Cover with water.

Bring water to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer 3 hours or until liquid is reduced by half.

Remove and discard the biggest chunks.  Pour liquid through a strainer lined with cheesecloth into another container.  Let cool before refrigerating.  Yield:  about 4 cups

Corn Chowder

This recipe is very fresh and very easy.  If you want to up the ante a little, some bacon, shrimp, or both would go well with this dish.  We served it with a side of freshly baked rosemary bread.  It soaked up the liquid beautifully.  I had the leftovers for lunch the next day in a freshly baked mini-boule.  Unfortunately, I got the better of myself and wolfed it down before I could get a picture.  The corn that I used for this recipe naturally came off of the corn cobs that I used to make the stock above.

Ingredients

2 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 C flour
4 C corn stock
2 C heavy cream
1 1/2 C peeled, diced potato
2 C fresh or frozen corn
salt and pepper
sliced green onions (optional)

Directions

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium heat.  Add onion and garlic, cooking until soft, about 10 minutes.  Add flour and stir until well combined.  Cook about 3 minutes.  Add corn stock and bring to a boil.  Add cream and potatoes and boil for 8-10 minutes.  Reduce heat, add corn, and simmer for another 10 minutes.  Ladle into bowls, garnish with green onions, and serve hot with fresh bread!

 

These two recipes are very simple, healthy, and inexpensive.  They use just a little heavy cream, some fresh produce, and a little time.  I definitely enjoyed my first challenge with The Daring Kitchen.  I look forward to future challenges.  Let me know what you think.

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