Balsamic Chicken

October 29, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

Wow. Who knew having two people working full time would cut into the opportunity to cook some new and fun things? Me. I did. I’m still trying to do some digging and find time for new recipes though. Hence today’s winner. Pan-Fried Balsamic Chicken!

I was making some roast potatoes and onion in the oven, and needed to find a way to make the protein (that I forgot to thaw before work). Pan fry it is! A little bit of quick digging and I discovered this recipe…

Pan Seared Chicken With Balsamic Reduction

Guys. Straight up. This one is tasty, incredibly easy, and will make you look like a fancy white poofy hatted Chef. As you can see by clicking the recipe link above, you toss some garlic and onion powder (along with some salt and pepper) on a couple chicken breasts, put them in a hot oiled pan to fry, flip once, and fry the other side. Easy! A little bit of liquid goes in the pan, boil it then simmer it for a bit, and voila! This is a very rustic and hearty tasting way to eat chicken and it paired fantastic with the roast potatoes. A bit of gristle, a bit of char just makes the flavours pop that much more. A dish you can burn and make it seem like you meant to! This one will be going into the rotation. The only ‘not necessarily in your kitchen’ ingredients are some chicken broth (you can buy a can of Campbell’s or your ‘no-name’ equivalent) and some Balsamic Vinegar…which, after tasting this chicken, I will be sure to have in stock at all times.

Oh! As for the roast potatoes? Chop them up into little cubes, toss on a pan, drizzle on some olive oil, crank on some salt and pepper, and bake anywhere between 400 and 425 for about an hour. I chopped up a small onion as well. It gets a little charred and blackened and pops the potatoes a bit. Again, it’s quick to prep, pretty mindless to make, and tastes great!

-g

Hamburger Hand Pies (my GCBS Bake-Along)

October 17, 2018October 15, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

I think we can all agree that the Great British Bake Off is the single best television concept ever devised. If not? Well, you can I can still be friends, we just won’t have something in common.

I got into the Great Canadian Baking Show last year as 1) it’s a spin-off of the greatest TV show ever 2) one of the bakers (Vandana) was from the city I was living in at the time and 3) even before I started trying my hand in the kitchen, I liked watching shows about food. (Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is likewise fantastic).

On last week’s episode, Megan broke out a family hand-pie recipe that looked absolutely right up my alley. As the recipe called for a lard crust, and I don’t have of that kicking around (lard? really?) I decided to take on the challenge with a twist, following the suggestion of the judge Rochelle who thought a brioche dough would be a great compliment to these. Not familiar with brioche? Join the club. Here’s a hint, it doesn’t use lard. Lots of butter and eggs. It’s quite sticky to work with, was kind of a pain, but DANG I enjoyed making and eating these.

So Megan’s recipe is linked above. I’ll hit you with my alterations as we go here, starting with the dough.

First thing I did was ignore her dough recipe as I was going to try a brioche. Some googling took me to this recipe:

Easy Brioche

This recipe seemed to have a much shorter rise/proof time than a lot of other ones I found. That seemed like a good thing as I was starting this after lunch and wanted them ready for dinner.

Now the measurements are in grams (which is not how I roll) but with my kitchen scale I sorted it out. Basically you’re looking at 4 cups flour, 1 cup milk, a stick of butter and so on. As I don’t have a mixer, there was a lot of stirring by hand, and then I just kneaded it until the butter was all worked through before setting aside to rise. Following the first rise, I punched it down, dumped onto a floured surface and rolled it out. Now, if you’re looking at Megan’s recipe, it’s calling for 6 cups flour. It’s also calling for 1.5 lbs of beef. I had 1 lb of beef handy and my dough had 4 cups flour…that seemed to be a good sign that we’d really be working with 2/3 of a recipe. Hers called for 24 pies when it was all said and done. I’m not the best judge of how big hers wound up being, but when I was rolling out the dough I basically just went with 12 pizza pop style pies and did a stuff and fold ‘perogy style’. One, because I’m lazy. Two, because have I mentioned the dough was really sticky? It was quite a bit of hassle and I felt that cutting a bottom and a top and fitting them together would be a bit beyond my present level of skill and patience. I guess if I was really going for a 2/3 yield to her original recipe, I’d be looking at 18 finished pies, but, I went bigger. The dough stretched out and contained more filling than I had expected, so I maybe could have got to 16 pies? Live and learn.

I rolled out 12 circles of dough, let them rest for a few minutes and then added the filling, crimped them and added an egg white wash. I then let them rest a while as I sprinkled the tops with toasted sesame seeds, bacon crumble, and some leftover shredded cheese and then tossed them into the oven as per the brioche dough recipe. It called for 10 minutes, swap racks/turn, then another 10 minutes. Overall, I left them in for about 35 minutes I think. Again, my oven cooks ‘slow’, and with the filling inside, it took longer for the dough to bake through. Leave them in until the dough has a nice golden brown top, which if your oven is consistent would probably be 15 minutes on one rack, before changing racks and rotating for the next 15 on the other.

That’s the dough and the bake. For the filling, I followed things pretty closely there. We use turkey bacon, so I diced it up and then fried it while I was working on everything else. The pickles were a bit of a pain to cut up. Honestly, we usually have a jar of the dill bits relish kicking around, for some reason we were out, so that has since been rectified and I’ll just use that next time. The filling is quite flavourful and tasty. I think I’ll use a bit more cheese next time, possible a little less salt. Between the cheese, meat, pickle and bacon, there’s definitely a lot in there.

The dip! Basically you’re making Big Mac sauce. Homemade, but, that’s the flavour you’re looking for. I didn’t have French dressing, so a quick google told me that ketchup, sugar, white vinegar and a splash of lemon juice along with the rest of the ingredients already going into this sauce would do the trick. It worked. It’s tasty.

Overall, the kids loved them. A bit less on the pickle was the only request. Okay. I’ll take that!

On the side I did some french fries (what’s a burger without fries?) and some cola. Yeah, call it a ‘cheat day’ if you want. Sometimes you just need some fun food.

-g

Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Buns

October 3, 2018October 1, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

Here is my conundrum. Since I began this blog I have a policy of linking to all of the recipes I use as reference. I may tweak something, but if a solid 95% of the recipe is unchanged, I link there and then just let you know what I’ve riffed on.

For this one I used two completely different sources, changed a bit, and mashed them together. For the sake of continuing my trend of full disclosure, here is the recipe I followed (for the most part) for the dough. Here is the recipe I followed (for the most part) for the filling and glaze. Now, for the sake of a having a comprehensive one-stop-shop for this recipe, here’s my take on it all…

Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls

The Dough:

3/4 cup warm milk (heated to 110 deg F)

2 1/4 tsp yeast

1/4 cup white sugar

1 egg yolk (at room temp)

1 egg (at room temp)

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 cups all purpose flour (bread flour if you’ve got it)

3/4 tsp salt

Take your eggs out and leave them on the counter.

Warm up the milk and put it in a bowl. Sprinkle the yeast in there and let it sit for a few minutes. If it doesn’t look a little frothy after a while, you already screwed up. Toss it and start over. The right temp for the milk is important.

Add the sugar, egg, egg yolk and butter. Stir it up a bit until it’s well mixed. Sift in your flour, add the salt, and then stir until the dough begins to form.

Sprinkle some flour on your counter, then get to work kneading the dough. Get your hands in there and work it. I punch it a bit, fold it in on itself, just give it a good working over until it’s well mixed and just a bit sticky.

Get a big bowl, spray it with some cooking spray, then put the dough in there, put some plastic wrap on top and put it in a warm place to rise for about 90 minutes. (I turn my oven on at 180 degrees F, then turn it off as soon as it’s reached heat and just let the dough proof in there).

The dough should double in size. Once that’s done, flour your countertop, dump out the dough and roll it out into a big rectangle that looks like your HDTV flatscreen (longer than it is tall). You want the dough about 1/3 of an inch thick? Now you’re ready for the filling.

The Filling:

4 tbsp melted butter (don’t mix in the pumpkin!)

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

1 tbsp milk

1/4 cup brown sugar (packed down)

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

Okay. First of all, take the melted butter and paint your rolled out dough. Leave about a half-inch a short edge ‘butter free’.

Next, mix up all the ingredients with your pumpkin spread. Give it a good stir, then, again, like you’re saucing a pizza, paint your rolled out dough. Leave that ‘butter free’ buffer zone free of your pumpkin spread as well.

Now…the fun part. Grab your dough on the opposite end of your ‘butter free’ buffer zone, and start rolling. You want a pretty tight roll on this. When you get to the ‘butter free’ zone, that dough should stick to the backside of the rolled up dough and seal things up (that’s why you left it butter free!).

Next, you’ll want to cut your fancy new dough log into slices about… 1 inch thick. I find a bread knife works best for this. Saws through nice and clean and doesn’t crush the slices too much.

Take your slices, and lay them flat in a greased cake pan (I use cooking spray). 8×8 or 9×9. You should be able to get 9 of these in there like a tic-tac-toe arrangement. If you still have some dough left? Grease another pan up and drop in as many as you have left over. I got a solid 12 slices, so 9 in my one pan and 3 in my ‘reject pile’ pan. (The rolls from the ‘ends’ of the log that weren’t all pretty). Cover up your cake pans with plastic wrap and let the dough puff up and proof a bit longer. 30 minutes.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 while the buns are on their last rise. Once your 30 minutes has run out, take off the plastic and whack ’em into the oven uncovered for about 25 minutes. Once the edges start going golden brown, take them out. Being a bit ‘underbaked’ is good. Makes ’em chewier.

The Frosting:

4 oz cream cheese (basically a half-block of philly), softened

1.5 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Soften the cheese in the microwave, then using your hand blender (or whisk and some elbow grease) start mixing it up until it’s creamy. Add the sugar a bit at a time. Once that’s all mixed in, add the vanilla, then add the pumpkin pie spice to taste. I went heavy with that.

Your buns should cool a bit before you frost them, but once they’re ready, just slather this stuff on and give them some love.

That’s it! Enjoy!

My mother-in-law complimented me on these you guys. That’s an internal happy dance right there.

-g

p.s. – if you can’t find pumpkin pie spice at your grocery store (I couldn’t, and I looked at 3 different stores…) here’s what you can whip up as an approximation.

Pumpkin Pie Spice:

3 tbsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground nutmeg

1.5 tsp ground allspice

1.5 tsp ground cloves

It will make more than you need for this, but you can use what remains for your next batch (and there WILL be a next batch) or to sprinkle over your coffee like a Basic B…

Enjoy!

-g

Peanut Butter/Mayo Sandwiches

October 2, 2018October 1, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

So…this is apparently a thing.

Love ’em or hate ’em, that’s what I’ve been told. There is not a lot of grey area with this combination.

Just for giggles…here’s the recipe.

Peanut Butter/Mayo Sandwich

– 2 slices bread
– peanut butter (your choice of crunchy or smooth)
– mayonnaise

Spread peanut butter liberally on once slice of bread. Repeat with mayonnaise on the other slice of bread. Press bread slices together. |

Enjoy.

Slot me down on the love it side of things. Well, maybe not ‘love’ love, but it wasn’t an immediate gag reflex for me and if it came down to nothing else in the pantry, I’d totally pull this one out of the grab bag of goodies.

I used to do cheez whiz and strawberry jam. I wonder if that would go viral? Huh.

-g

Sweet and Sour Meatballs

September 26, 2018September 26, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

Okay, so for today’s challenge I had a couple of criteria.

1) I had about half a can of pineapple left over from making pizza that I needed to use up
2) We have a couple picky eaters that had been opting out of some of the meals as of late. I try not to take it personally. (I wounds me to the core).

Enter…meatballs! Everybody likes meatballs, don’t they? A bit of googling found me this beauty of a recipe.

Baked Sweet and Sour Meatballs

Overall, the recipe itself was pretty easy to make. Essentially all a meatball is, is a tiny round hamburger. Now, the link there called for ground turkey, chicken or pork. I went with beef as it is what I happened to have on hand (being a good prairie boy and all…). Pork is cheaper at the store, I’ve never really enjoyed ground pork. Don’t get me wrong, I find the best hamburger and meatball recipes around typically have some sort of ratio of beef to pork, I just didn’t have any handy. I also just went with 1lb of protein (as opposed to the 1.5 called for) as that’s how I portion out meat for the freezer. That worked out though – I’ll explain how in a bit….

If you want to get fancy, you can break out a kitchen scale and weigh your meatballs for the sake of consistency. I didn’t bother. What you can do is grab an ice cream scoop or a large spoon and use that to scoop out what will become your meatball. There is something to be said about some standardization with these. It helps with cooking time, it also helps avoid any “but his is bigger!” comparisons when you’re dishing everything out at the table.

For the sauce? Follow the recipe. It worked out great. In fact, my wife and I almost came down to a coin flip for the leftovers on this one before I graciously let her have them (awww, such a nice guy, right?). It’s a sweet sauce with a touch of kick. Very flavourful. And the best part? As I made 1lb of meatballs, there was plenty of sauce left over to spoon over the rice.

Have I mentioned my trick to good brown rice? 2 cups water for every 1 cup of rice. Put rice in water. Put on high heat covered. When the water starts to boil, lift the lid, stir things up. Put the lid back on, turn the heat down to around…3. Walk away for 45 minutes. Come back, take off heat, Lift lid, fluff with fork. Bam.

The real trick of course is to use a pot that is about one size larger than you think you’ll need. Stops the rice from boiling over. That stuff is a PAIN to clean off your stove.

-g

Chicken Cacciatore

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

A bit of an aside before we begin. I am a HUGE fan of a really bold and fresh tomato flavour. When the tomato POPS, I am a happy camper. This recipe pulls that off in spades.

So…after making pizza’s the other night I had an abundance of half chopped veggies kicking around in the fridge. After a bit of searching, I found a dish that seemed to cover off the bases when it comes to flavour and also burn through some of those veg in the chill box.

Chicken Cacciatore

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts (basically 2 full chicken breasts – cubed)

1 tbs vegetable oil (canola / olive…really doesn’t matter)

1 sliced medium onion (you want this to be a bit of a ‘chunky’ cut)

1/2 sliced green pepper (again with the chunky cut)

1/2 sliced red pepper (…ditto with the choppin’)

2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (if you like them. I don’t, so….hard pass)

1 tsp minced garlic

1 big can of crushed tomatoes (796ml/28fl oz)

2 tbs chopped fresh parsley (I used a few solid shakes of dry…)

1/4 tsp pepper

1 tsp salt

2 tsp italian seasoning (I went with oregano which I had on hand)

1 tsp dried basil

parmesan cheese (to sprinkle on at the table

1 package of egg noodles (I went with fusili – I had some on hand)

This one is pretty easy to pull off. Put the oil in a deep pan and cook the cubed chicken over medium heat. Once you’re done with that, remove the chicken, toss in all of the dry veggies and basically stir fry them until the onion has become translucent. Once that happens, toss the chicken back in. Add the crushed tomato and spices, cover and simmer for 15 minutes or so. Done.

In a separate pot, boil the water, cook your noodles. Drain.

Scoop some noodles onto plate, put a big hearty scoop of the chicken/veg mix on top, and then shake on some parmesan to finish (I usually grind a bit of pepper on top for the fun of it).

This one is a winner. It tastes fresh, it has pasta, there’s all sorts of veggies in there.

Budget wise? You’re looking at…

2 chicken breasts… ~$5
can of tomato… $1 if you catch a deal, $2 if you don’t
onion/peppers…$2.50
noodles…$2.50
mushrooms…$2.00
spices…negligable

All in all, you’re looking at about $14. We had company over so this one fed 4 adults, 3 kids and we still had some leftovers. I ripped up a couple heads of romaine on the side like I usually do when serving a pasta. So that was a couple bucks more. All in all? It’s going on the list! Bellissima!

Apology Pizza

September 18, 2018September 18, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

First off, my apologies. I’m still sorting out my posting frequency on here (Just weekdays and take weekends off? Only when I have a recipe worth sharing?) Once I hammer that out I’ll be sure to let you know, in the meantime, I was hoping to kick off the new week strong, but with family visiting for the weekend, I’m just getting back into the swing of things now. On the plus side, that means I’m backed up with quite a few recipes, some of which were definite winners. As an olive branch, let’s kick back into things with a two-fer. My apology to you. Pizza. Times two!

My kids love pizza. I love pizza. Let’s face it, I think everybody loves pizza or suffers from some kind of mental glitch. Now, while my kids are quite content with a fresh n’ hot pie from Little Caesars (they’re alright in a pinch), I like my pizza to be a bit more substantial while not quite costing the same amount of a standard grocery bill. Hey, I just spent a fair amount of time in Regina Saskatchewan, the pizza capital of Canada. They do a great slice. It usually includes about a half inch of toppings, half inch of cheese and a second mortgage on your house. Finding a nice middle ground is my goal here.

Enter our challengers. Pizza #1 – aka “the kid pizza”

For this one, I went with something a little more basic. A quick rise dough kicks things off. I found the dough really wanted to keep springing back into a ball after stretching it out, so it took a while to get it to fit the baking sheet. It turned out alright though. I used some tomato paste as a base coat, followed by a can of Kraft pre-made pizza sauce. A few spices (oregano, garlic) sprinkled on the sauce wrapped up that part. I then added some cooked ham and pineapple on one side (yes, pineapple on pizza is a MUST), some deli sliced pepperoni on the other, leaving a corner free for my picky eater who prefers just a plain cheese pizza (we’ve yet to leave them home alone while we jetted off to Paris – so, parenting points +1). Once the toppings were on, I added a metric tonne of mozzerella cheese over the whole thing, and a bit of cheddar and parmesan over the plain cheese section. Oven. 400 degrees F for 23 minutes (I was going to do 20, but again, our oven cooks a bit slower than most it seems). This one turned out pretty solid. The crust was light, not very greasy at all. I call that one a winner. Satisfied the kids, was a bit more substantial than the pizza chain heat lamp, or even the grocery store deli ‘take and bake’. Thumbs up all around.

But I can’t just leave well enough alone, can I? Enter, Pizza # 2 – aka “the adult pizza”

Ever since I saw an online video espousing the glory of authentic Chicago style deep dish, I’ve been tempted to take a swing at one of those on my own. With an entire day on my hands and a fridge full of my favourite toppings, it was time. A google search found me what claimed to be a real Chicago deep dish dough recipe. Warning and heads up. This dough requires a significant and serious amount of rise time. We’re talking SIX HOURS at a minimum. You need to be serious and committed and have some prep time earlier in the day if you’re going to tackle this for dinner. I followed the recipe with a minor change of using canola oil (I had on hand) in place of corn oil (never knew that was a thing until today!). The rise was pretty uneventful, I thought things might puff a bit more than it did, but it worked out alright. Without a real deep dish pizza pan, I used a large Pyrex dish with some decent depth and the dough filled that up nicely.

If you’re unaware, Chicago style…and I mean REAL Chicago style deep dish pizza prides itself on a few things. A nice thick crust, and the sauce on top. That seems incredibly foreign to me. But…the mission was ‘authentic’, so…tarry on.

After stretching out the dough to fill the pan, I formed a bit of a lip on the edge of the crust. I then added a metric tonne of mozzarella. Some of my favourite toppings followed, including ham, pineapple, pepperonni, black olives, green pepper, even some feta cheese chunks I had left over from what turned out to be Greek Week a couple weeks back. Next up? Some tomato paste for a solid shot of concentrated tomato flavour, some more of that pre-fab Kraft pizza sauce (about a small can and a half) I then added some spices to the sauce, sprinkled a bit of pepper over the works, some parmesan cheese and tossed it in the oven at 450 degrees F for about 30 minutes.

I understand why most Canadian pizza joints put the cheese on top. Presentation wise, it just looks SO much more appealing to have a nice molten cheese on top, rather than what amounts to as best I can describe it, tomato puke on a plate. With that said, dang that was a good tasting slice of pie. If I had to rank things, I’m obviously going to give the edge in toppings and taste to the adult pizza I made. I mean, it was designed specifically for me. For the crust? As much as the deep dish was the more filling option, based on the sheer amount of work and rise time involved? I’m going to go with Crust #1 as the winner here.

There you have it. 2 pizza recipes for the price of…well, none.

Budget wise? This would be pricier than some of my more recent offerings. Face it, cheese ain’t cheap. With that said, my rough guess would put this at around…$15-20? And that still left me with a fair amount of cheese on the block, and leftover olives and pineapple. This won’t be an everyday meal due to cost and time involved, but if you find yourself with an abundance of cheese and some leftovers that would work out alright on a slice…go nuts! It’s also a good one for special occasions by ‘request of kid’.

-g

Nana’s Meatloaf

September 13, 2018September 13, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

I had to google a picture. The ONE time I forget to break out my camera and take a shot, is the most staple of staple meals around our place. We call this one Nana’s Meatloaf. The recipe, I believe, came from the Once A Month Cooking cookbook I have previously mentioned. There’s a difference though. In that cookbook, this recipe as actually made up of flaked ham I do believe. We’ve made it with ham (which I typically don’t eat), we’ve made it with ground pork, but for best flavour/texture/results…I recommend good ol’ fashioned lean ground Saskatchewan or Alberta beef (call me a homer, that’s fine).

This recipe winds up with plenty of sauce to spoon over rice (which works great as a side with this one), we will also typically pair it with some corn or green peas (or both if we’re down to the dregs of the bags in the freezer!)

Nana’s Meatloaf

Loaf

1 lb lean ground beef

1 egg

1 tsp mustard

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup breadcrumbs or crunch up some crackers

Sauce

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tb mustard

1 tb white vinegar

2 tsp water

Mix up all the loaf ingredients – shape it into a loaf pan and the cover it with tinfoil. Bake at 325 degrees F for 30 minutes. Take out of the over, take off the foil and drain off the liquids that have formed. Once drained, pour the sauce over the loaf. Put back in the oven for another 30 minutes, this time uncovered. Enjoy!

It’s a pretty simple recipe. Only problem I ran into making this myself was that we’re still trying to sort out the oven in our new place. It seems to take a bit longer to bake things than did our previous stove. I’ve been getting good use from my digital cooking thermometer. As I discovered…when using one of those, make sure you’re measuring the temperature in the middle of the loaf (I pushed it in too far so it was on the outer edge of the loaf near the pan where it is hotter than in the middle. Ooops – lesson learned). I’m debating turning our oven a bit hotter, or just leaving things in for another 5 minutes or so beyond the suggested cooking time. We’ll get it sussed.

This one is 5 stars across the board, everybody including our picky eater loves it.

As for budget? If you get it on sale, your pound of beef is $3. An egg and crackers and the brown sugar are the next most pricy elements. I’d guess that between everything else in the loaf itself, combined with the rice and corn on the side you’re looking at…$7 all in for this one. It usually gives us 6 decent sized slices (or 2 ‘Daddy sized slices and 4 medium sized ones for everybody else…) so it feeds all 5 of us, and there’s usually 1 slice for leftovers. Boom!

-g

Shepherd’s Pie

September 13, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

I know I promised meatloaf, but…something came up. Namely, I decided to use that ground beef I had thawing and take a swing at Shepherd’s Pie!

I’ve made this dish I believe…once previously. It essentially wound up being a veggie casserole with potato on top. Not very good. So, while doing a little hunting online for inspiration I stumbled across this video by Gordon Ramsay.

A bit MTV, isn’t it? Yeah. While the video doesn’t really give you much in the way of measurements and actual instruction…I watched it a couple times, picked up a few ideas and decided to wing it. The verdict? My wife called dibs on the leftovers, my one kid gave it a 6 stars out of 5, and our picky eater made toast. I was tempted to throw a few Gordon Ramsay adjectives their way, but…everyone has their own preferences, right?

Here’s how it all shook down.

Gordon Ramsay Inspired Shepherd’s Pie – A DT2C mashup! (?)

The Mashed Potatoes.

2 lbs potato. Salt some water, peel and dice the potatoes and boil them until you can put a fork in them without that crunchy potato resistance.

Drain

Add a splash of milk. Mash.

Add 2 egg yolks. Stir it all up.

Add about 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese.

I started the potatoes boiling and cooking while I was doing the meat. Once the potatoes were ready for mashing, the meat was simmering off some liquid. It all timed out rather nice.

The Meat.

1 lb lean ground beef. (Ramsay used Lamb. Who’s got THAT lying around?) Brown it, strain it, set it aside for a bit. You’ll want to use a large deep pan you can load up and simmer things in.

1/4 onion – shredded with a grater. Could have done more, I had 1/4 onion on hand. Go with 1/2.

1 carrot – shredded with a grater. I did about 8 mini-carrots. A big one would have been much easier to shred. It all tastes the same.

2 teaspoons crushed/minced garlic. I’m guessing on quantity here, I was really winging this one.

Saute the onions and carrots, cook them down a bit, then toss the ground beef back in. Alright, now it’s time for some seasoning. Here goes (to my recollection).

2 teaspoons rosemary

2 teaspoons thyme

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons Tomato paste (I used a couple squirts of bottled pizza sauce I had handy – saving the tomato paste in the pantry for another recipe this week…)

a few good cranks of black pepper from the pepper mill

1 cup chicken stock/broth

Let everything relax and simmer together. This would be a good time to pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F (180 Celsius). You want to get the beef mixture cooked down so it’s still moist, but not runny. Okay. Time to toss it all together.

Grab a casserole dish. The round ones with a lid (you won’t need the lid unless you have leftovers – and with this one you won’t have leftovers. Yum.) Put the meat mixture on the bottom, press it down a bit. Next, put the mashed potato mix on top, kind of like you’re icing a cake. Once that’s done and smoothed over a bit, take your parmesan cheese and sprinkle generously over the top of the potato. I then gave a few cranks of black pepper from the pepper mill and sprinkled some paprika spice on top to give a bit of colour to everything. Not much, just a light dusting.

Whack it in the pre-heated oven for…20-25 minutes. Scoop. Serve. Enjoy.

With the ground beef running around $3.50, the potatoes about $1.50 and then various spices, odds and ends and parmesan…I’m guessing all tallied this one came out to about $8 to pull off? I shredded up a head of romaine to have alongside this. I mean, there’s already veggies, starch, protein and dairy included…and as a heavier dish, a light salad made a good companion.

Butter Chicken and Naan

September 12, 2018September 12, 2018 ~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

I tried making butter chicken sauce once. It took most of the day in the slow-cooker and turned out….alright. With that said, we will typically pick up a jar of pre-fab butter chicken sauce at Costco. The bottles are a bit bigger than the usual VH sized ones at your grocery store and we really enjoy the sauce. I’ll stretch it a bit more by adding a 1/2 cup of yogurt or sour cream when it’s simmering.

So the bulk of the meal looks like this…

Chicken – 2 chicken breasts cubed, seasoned with paprika, pepper, curry. Fry in a touch of olive oil in a pan. Once done, drain any juice if you want, add the butter chicken sauce and simmer. Add a 1/2 cup of yogurt (mango flavoured is amazing in this).

Rice. 4 cups water, 2 cups rice. Cover, bring to boil. Once boiling, turn down to about 30% heat for a slow boil, stir, cover, then leave it alone for about 40 minutes.

NOW…here is where I play and have fun with this meal. The Naan. Fresh made bread is hard to beat. Here’s the recipe I’ve used that works amazingly well.

Naan

I usually just use vanilla yogurt instead of greek yogurt. Sour cream works good too. Basically you just need a high fat content dairy in there. I avoid the melted ghee and cilantro for garnish and instead add some powdered garlic, tumeric and fennugreek. (I saw that combination at a bakery once, and it tastes pretty good in this spice universe). I never really measure the spice I put it, more of an eyeball thing, but if I had to guess I’d say about 1 tablespoon of each. If you think you’ve put too much in, you’re probably right where you need to be flavour wise. Heads up that tumeric can and will stain just about anything (my plastic mixing bowl is now a permanent shade of yellow in places), but it’ll usually come off your countertop if you get at it right away. I’ve resorted to a Lysol disinfectant wipe on occasion if it’s being particularly ornery.

I’ve discovered through trial and error that you need to really roll the dough pretty thin for it to bubble and puff up. I burn these a bit on purpose on the griddle and skip the ‘hold over open flame’ as described in the recipe. I’m sure that would work great, I just don’t have a gas range handy to pull that off.

We have a couple picky eaters in our house, but this one is a 5 star win across the board and that surprised us. There’s a bit of spice, but again, if you thin it out a bit with yogurt or sour cream that will take some of that heat off.

I usually serve with a side of peas. Want to go vegetarian? Swap out the chicken for paneer (if you can find it). It’s a hard style of cheese that gets used in Indian cooking a fair bit. Not all grocery stores carry it. My best success in Saskatchewan has been at the Independent chain of stores, which probably means you’ll find it at Superstore as well.

There! I think tomorrow we’ll delve into one of the all-time favourites around our place. Nana’s Meatloaf!

-g