Der Stroganoff

From America's Test Kitchen


Ingredients

3/4 lb of beef stew meat
1 lb pack of wide egg noodles
12 oz sliced mushrooms
1 medium chopped onion (it's under the mushrooms...)
1 can Chicken Broth
1 can Beef Broth
1 small pack (8oz?) sour cream
1/4 cup brandy (not pictured)
Salt, Pepper, cooking oil





Equipment: Wooden spoon, large skillet. A large skillet is key in that you won't have to brown the meat in batches.

Cut the beef stew chunks to a more uniform size. How small is up to you but the smaller you do the less you have to cook to get it tender. I cut them into about 1/2" cubes.

Pat beef dry with a paper towel and toss with a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large skillet on high. Dump the meat in and keep it on high. Ensure that the meat is getting to brown and not overcrowd and steam. Otherwise, you may want to brown the meat in batches. You want them brown bits on the pan for flavor. Remove the beef.

While still on high heat, dump the mushrooms and onions. Season with a bit of salt and pepper. This is more to draw out the liquids as the broths are salty enough. Cover for a couple minutes for them to steam themselves.

At this point there should be enough liquid to scrape up all the brown bits in the pan. Do so with a wooden spoon. Cook uncovered to let the liquid reduce out as the onions and mushrooms cook, about 10 minutes. Add brandy and let that cook out.

Dump in the broths and add the meat back in. Bring to a boil and simmer for about an hour. Prepare about a cup of warm water on the side.


Now it's time to add the noodles. Just dump the whole bag in. I don't really care about overcooked egg noodles so I think this method's just fine. Stir in to get as much noodles as you can in the liquid.

Let simmer covered for about 2 minutes and fold the top less cooked noodles in. Simmer for another 2 minutes. Repeat this process until the noodles are fully cooked. If you don't think you have enough water, add a bit of that warm water.

Remove from heat, stir in sour cream. Serve in the skillet.

Clams Recipes Synergies

Sooooooo... you know what I turn to when I'm all tired and stressed?

Clams.

Clams fucking rock.

Baked Stuffed Clams

1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 Cherrystone Clams
1 12oz pack of bacon, finely chopped.
At least 1/4 cup Freshly Grated Parmesan
Bread Crumbs
Chopped Italian Parsley
Some cooking wine (1/4 cup?)

Clams Oreganata

2 dozen littleneck clams
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1 teaspoon italian herbs
At least 2 tablespoons Freshly Grated Parmesan cheese
Chopped Italian Parsley
Bacon Grease

Render the Bacon:
Chop up the bacon and render in a large skillet over medium heat. Now's a good time to finish up your chopping/slicing/grating/cleaning up. Render until you have crispy bits and a good about of grease. About 10-15 minutes.

Saute the veges
Empty the grease into a small bowl. Turn the heat on high. Toss in the stuffed clams veges (not the parsley). Add some black pepper (NO SALT). Saute/Sweat until the shrooms and onions are cooked. Because there're a good amount of veges, they'll probably steam up and you can use that to deglaze the skillet. Otherwise as some water or cooking wine. Remove to a mixing bowl.

Cook the Cherrystones
Toss in the Cherrystone clams with the cooking wine. After about 3-5 minutes the clams should start to open up. Remove them as soon as they open.

Separate the clam shells and take out the meat. Rinse out the shells and place on a baking sheet. Chop up the meat and mix in with the stuffed clams mixture.

Cook the Littlenecks?
Now you're supposed to shuck these guys but after a couple attempts (I never bought a shucking knife, which my parents swear by) I figured you know what... I don't really care if it's overcooked and sometimes the clams that don't close while I'm cleaning them are actually alive and when (up until I cook them.). Soooo why not.

Toss into the same skillet, which should have a good amount of liquid from the wine and cherrystones, but this time over medium heat at a low boil. Again, remove the clams upon opening, even just a bit. Separate the shells.

Finishing up the Stuffed Clams
Add bread crumbs and cheese to the mixture so that everything's coated with cheese and bread crumbs. Add some parsley to taste. ASo now you have a good amount of clams liquor that's also deglazed the bacon bits in the pan. Slowly add the liquor to taste (add some, mix, taste.) Spoon the mixture into the shells.

In a preheated oven at 350 degrees, bake for 15 minutes.

Finishing up the Clams Oreganata
While the stuffed clams are baking, you can mix up the clams oreganata mixture, and mix in clams liquor and bacon grease to taste. In my mind, you can never have too much parmesan cheese in it so feel free to add more. So now you should have this paste that you can smear onto the half-shell clams. Place on a baking sheet.

When the baked clams are finished, take them out to cool and turn the oven to the broiler setting (or if you have one of them bottom broilers, I guess you can do this whenever you damned well please.) Wait about 3 minutes for the broiler to heat up and put in the clams on the top rack. Leaving the door slightly ajar, broil for about 1-2 minutes or until the clams are golden brown.

Serve both with some lemon.

Rack of Lamb

Recipe
Continental

2 frenched racks of lamb (they usually come in packs of 2)
1 pack of fresh mint (1/4 cup?)
1 pack of rosemary (1/4 cup again?)
Salt 2 tablespoons?
Pepper 1 tablespoon?
4 cloves garlic
1 cup Olive Oil

2 cups Madeira Wine (The cheap stuff is fine...)

Throw all spices/herbs into a blender/food processor and start blending into a paste, gradually adding the olive oil so that it forms a paste. Brush onto the lamb.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

Set pan on high heat and sear all 4 sides of the lamb and place on a roasting rack and stick one (through the small side) with a meat thermometer. Roast in oven until internal temp reaches 140 degrees... about 3-4 hours.

While roasting:
In the searing pan reduce whine on low heat until about a half cup is left, whisking the burnt yummies into the sauce. salt to taste. You can run it through a strainer to get the gunk out but they taste good :)

Remove from oven and transfer to a cutting board or someting and cover with tin foil and let sit for 15 minutes.

Cut and drizzle sauce over it.

Yay.

Shrimp Cocktail

Topic: Recipe
Type: Continental

From Alton Brown's Good Eats

The thing about shrimp cocktail is that you need shrimp that has no preservatives in it. Usually these are sold in 5 pound blocks.

If you don't have a seafood place to buy shrimp with no preservatives and stuff, the Tiger shrimp at Sam's is pretty good, but you'll find one or two shrimp that aren't that great. The trick is to rinse the shrimp while defrosting so that when the ice melts, the preservatives don't soak into the meat, but once the ice is off, finish the defrosting in a colander in the fridge.

Anyways:

1 lb tiger shrimp with the shell on. Sam's sells them already de-veined.
2 Tablespoons salt
1/4 cup sugar
4 cups water
Some olive oil

Dissolve salt and sugar into water and cool the water with ice or in the freezer.
Brine the shrimp with the liquid for 30 minutes. If the water doesn't cover all of it, add more.

Preheat the broiler. Pat the shrimp dry and toss in olive oil. Broil for about 60 seconds on each side.

Chill immediately and serve with cocktail sauce.

Mussels / Clams / Steamers Appetizer

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Continental

Kevin asked and I responded.

1 batch of your mollusks (about a dozen)
1/4 cup white cooking wine
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil.... or butter.

french bread for dipping

clean the mollusks under cold water with old toothbrush / scour thinger

heat a large pan to medium high heat... big enough so that the mussels don't stack... if you don't have one that big just use the widest thing you have that'll hold them all.

saute garlic in the oil a bit then put in the mollusks. pour in wine. cover.

these cook pretty fast so keep an eye on them for when they open. if they're stacked a bit stir them around so that the unopened ones on the bottom can open.

filter the juice if you think it's needed (if there's sand). Take 4 roasted garlic cloves and sautee with the juice. You can thicken this up a bit with some cornstarch or flour.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Continental

Modified from the recipe by Christopher Desens.

This recipes makes a LOT of soup so be prepared for leftovers or make this for at least 4 people.

4 oz Butter
4 oz Yellow Onion, chopped.
5 cups water
1 bouillon cube (chicken or vege)
6 oz Finely Shredding Smoked Gouda. Regular Gouda works just as well.
4 oz diced Celery. Sometimes grocery stores sell celery sticks at like the salad bar.
4 oz. flour
2 cups heavy cream.
1 clove Minced Garlic
1/2 cup Madeira. This wine is a pretty good wine for cooking. It has a sort of woody rustic flavor. Good with cheese too.
1-2 Tbsp Chopped Fresh Thyme. Must be fresh or else it just doesn't taste as good.
6 oz Shitake Mushrooms sliced. If you get the ones from the Asian grocery store you can use the stems too so long as you cut them pretty finely.
Some shitake mushrooms for garnish. Usually just the leftover shrooms you have from when you bought them packaged.

1 tspn Salt.
Cracked black Pepper.


The Shitakes and the Thyme can be replaced with Portobellos and Parsley. Of course it's not the same but it tastes just as good and it's a hell lot cheaper and easier to find. Fresh Shitakes are best bought at asian grocery stores. Other "specialty" grocery stores tend to have pretty lame ass shrooms that are pretty dried out. I'm sure the Asian ones were set in water before packaged but at least they're not all bruised and crap. The Asian grocery stores sell them for a lot cheaper too.

Melt Butter in a large pot on medium heat.
When the butter starts to bubble add the garlic, celery, onion, and shrooms. Season with salt and saute until cooked. No need to brown the onion unless you like it like that.
Sprinkle flour while mixing to make a roux. Stir for about 5 minutes to coat all the ingredients and the roux has a relatively dark brownish grey color.
Stir in the bouillon, madeira, and thyme.
Add the water and then gradually stir in the cheese. Finally, stir in the cream.
After the cheese and cream has been added, be careful not to boil the soup or you're get some skin on top or stuff stuck at the bottom. If you're worried about bacteria and crap, before adding the cheese and cream, bring the soup to a boil. Then turn the heat down to a simmer and add the rest.

Use a hand blender to blend well and simmer until the it's a thick smooth consistency.

Saute the leftover sliced shrooms with a pinch of salt to taste and garnish the soup with a couple slices. Of course with vege bouillon it's vegetarian and it actually works. Stupid vegetarians. Here's your damned soup.

Spare Ribs

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Continental

This one's taken from the Good Eats guy. I think it's under "who luvs ya baby back" at foodtv.com. I don't even know why I changed it... I think it was cuz I didn't have the cash to invest in spices... ah yes... the college life.

2 slabs of spare ribs.

Rub:
4 tablespoons brown sugar
liberal amounts of salt (or seasoned salt), garlic powder, rubbed thyme, cracked black pepper.
Liberal as in you're shaking the hell out of the shaker :P
Some cayenne pepper depending on how you like it.

Liquid:
1 cup white wine (cheap ass cooking wine... I used the asian stuff :P)
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce (or more if you like it )
2 tablespoons honey
2 cloves chopped garlic (you can never have too much so throw some more in for good measure.)

Preheat oven at 250 degrees.

I usually just have the ribs on heavy aluminum foil (shiny side down) and shake everything on it one ingredient at a time. I guess the proper way of doing it is mix everything together so that it's all blended then rubbing it on. wrap each slab in foil and let the ribs sit for a while (1-2 hours) in the fridge.
Pour liquid into the foil pouch thingers and braise in the oven for 2.5-3 hours. you can do it longer if you like your meat more erm.... pull offable.

Unwrap and grill them for that burnt flavor. You can take the braising liquid and reduce it and use that for a sauce. I like sweet baby ray's. If crazy vegetarians like that crap on white rice... it has to be good. apply the sauce while grilling.

Now you know why I get excited when spare ribs are on sale for less than 2 bucks a pound :P