Ania's Infamous Stew

This is one of my favourite meals to make. Not only is it comfort food for a chilly day, it also impresses guests, and still lets me get work done. It is easy to change around depending on what you have lying around the house.  This recipe started out as one of my mother’s. It is a variation on one of my favourite childhood meals that I used to call “dokładka” which means seconds in Polish. My mother sent me the original recipe during my first year of University, and I made it using a dorm room hotplate, and a small convection toaster oven. Over the years, I added a variety of small changes which eventually resulted in this amazingly versatile dish. After all this time, it still remains a favourite.

Stewing Beef:

1 ½ -2 lbs Beef, cubed*

Paprika

Garlic (crushed)

Salt

Pepper

Cayenne Pepper

Olive oil

Broth:

2 Bay Leaves

Whole pepper kernels

Chicken Bouillon cube

1 leek

1 yellow onion

2 large carrots

3 medium to large potatoes**

1 cup of corn

1 cup of peas

1 package favourite gravy sauce

Marsala Wine

Paprika

Cayenne Pepper

Equipment:

Stewing Pot

Strainer

Frying pan
Very Large heat resistant bowl or second pot

Time: 3-4 hours

* My favourite cut of meat to use for this is eye of round, because I love it when the meat just falls apart. You can also use steak cut, stew cubes, loin, really any cuts of beef you have lying around the house. If you have a freezer, this is a great way to use up any frozen pieces of meat before they go bad. Different cuts of meat will require different lengths of stewing depending on how delicate or tough you like it.
** There are some small variations you can make to change up this meal. You can leave out the potatoes, and serve the stew over rice for a more filling meal. You can also add a sweeter Latin or South Pacific flair to this dish by using sweet potato instead of plain potatoes.  The very brave can try adding yucca, although I would recommend adding it an hour before serving, to make sure it is cooked all the way through.

How to:

1.       Make sure the meat is cut into cubes between 1-2 inches square.

2.       Rub the meat with salt, ground pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, and crushed garlic. (If you want to really saturate the meat with flavour, let it sit in the marinade for an hour to a day. Otherwise, you can proceed immediately)

3.       Heat olive oil in a frying pan until the oil is hot but not burnt. If you add a drop of water it should sizzle.  Right before you add the beef, lower the heat to medium. Add the cubes and stir consistently at first to avoid them sticking to the pan and burning. The meat should quickly coat with oil and brown nicely.

4.       Brown the outside of the meat completely. 

5.       Add a cup or two of water to the skillet.

6.       While it is simmering, add whole leeks and carrots to a pot, along with bouillon cube, bay leaves, pepper kernels, and fill with water. Take a large onion, peel it and cut it in half. For an added flavour, grill the middle side of the onion directly on the burner until it has a light brown colour. Add the onion to the vegetable broth mix. Add paprika and cayenne pepper to taste.

7.       Bring the vegetable broth to a boil, then lower to medium heat and allow it to simmer for one hour. Keep an eye on the meat mix to make sure the water does evaporate. The meat should always be covered in simmering water. Stir the meat occasionally to keep from burning. The more water you can add to the skillet, the less often you will have to stir it and refill it.

8.       After an hour, strain the vegetable broth into a large bowl. You can discard the leeks and bay leaves (some people like to keep the leeks; I find them to be too mushy after boiling. All of the nutrients are now in the broth) as well as the pepper kernels. Add the package of gravy to the bowl of broth and mix together.

9.       Pour the broth-gravy mix back into the pot. Add the meat with the simmering water. Cut up and add the cooked carrots.  If there is any space left in the pot, add more water and let the whole mixture simmer for another hour. Stir occasionally.

10.   About half an hour before serving, peel and cube the potatoes and add directly to the stew. Add also the peas, corn, and any other vegetables you might be interest in adding. If you prefer a thicker stew, add an extra gravy packet and either a tablespoon of flour, or a teaspoon of corn starch.

11.    Once the potatoes are fully cooked, add Marsala wine. One shot of wine is usually sufficient.

12.   Serve and Enjoy!

Apple Faux Samosas

I love the taste of baked apple. I was looking for something to make as a side with a molasses maple apple cider pork tenderloin.
I immediately thought of apples and I tried to think of something new to make. This is what I came up with.

Apple Samosas:

Filling:
2 Apples, peeled, cored, and cubed
1 Cup of Raisins
1 1/2 Cups of Fireball whiskey
1 Clove crushed garlic
1 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 tsp Chile flakes
1/2 cup Molasses
 4 or 5 Strips of Bacon, baked and crumbled

You can use puff pastry for dough.

Toss the raisins in a pot and add molasses, garlic, vinegar and whiskey.
Reconstitute the raisins by simmering them in the whiskey. Stir often since the mix will become a toffee quickly.
Add the raisins to the cubed apples, along with the chile flakes, and the bacon.

Roll out the dough and cut into squares. Add a tsp of fillings and fold into triangles. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350 Degrees. If you would like a nicer brown colour, you can use an egg wash.

You can also fry the samosas.

Bon Appetit!

Little Polish Girl's recipe for Pho

I absolutely love various types of Asian foods, including soups. Pho and Udon in particular. When I realized that I was spending most lunch times eating at the Viet-Thai restaurant across from my work, I decided it was time to learn how to make my own Pho broth.

I looked up various recipes and then through a process of trial and error, I made up my recipe.

The traditional Pho as far as I understand is made on a beef broth base. I usually use chicken broth since I tend to have some around and I use it a lot.


1 Pot full of chicken or beef broth
4 or 5 Thick slices of Daikon raddish
1 Tbsp of Soy Sauce
2 Tbsp Sugar
2 Tbsp Fish Sauce
1 tsp Rice vinager (do not use sweet rice wine vinager)

Spice Mix:
4 Star Anise
1/2 Cinnamon Stick
5 Whole cloves
Peppercorns
Three leaves thai basil
1 Small cube of fresh ginger
2 Cloves of Garlic

Set the pot of broth to simmer. Put the spice mix in a tea diffuser or wrap in a cheesecloth, and add to the broth. Add in all the rest of the ingredients. Let simmer for at least an hour. Make sure to add water to replace what boils out. If you want a stronger flavour, you can add a bit more sugar, soy, and fish sauce. The spice flavour needs time to diffuse across the broth.

Boil some pho noodles and serve with some sliced chicken, thin beef slices, or shrimp, green onions, bean sprouts, and Sriracha sauce.

Yum!

Update: A friend of mine recommended adding a tablespoon of peanut butter to the broth while it simmers. I tried it and the result was delicious. If you like peanuts, this is a winning combination.

The Perfect Meringue

I've heard a lot of people complain that their meringue never works out. Usually the complaint is that they are too runny.

Here is a basic recipe and some tips, that have never steered me wrong. When you have the right stiffness of meringue  you can have a lot of fun with them, even making mushrooms.

4 Egg Whites
1 Cup of Sugar
1 tsp White Vinegar
1 tsp of Vanilla

In a large bowl beat the eggs with an egg beater at the high setting until white and frothy. Add the sugar slowly while continuing to beat. Once you have the mixture fairly stiff, add the vanilla and the vinegar  Keep beating until the eggs are so stiff that you can safely tip the bowl upside down.

Bake between at 225 degrees Farenheit for about 1 hour, until fully dried.

If you want to make gooeyer meringue, you can add half a cup of corn syrup. This is especially true for when you make certain types of meringue cake.

Now for tips:

1. Using room temperature eggs will double the yield of your meringue.  It can also help to make sure your bowl is not cold.

2. When you separate out the egg whites, make sure there is no trace of egg yolk. Even a bit of yolk will keep your whites from stiffening.

3. Make sure none of your equipment is greasy. Like yolks, grease will keep the yolks from stiffening.

4. Some recipes call for creme de tartre instead of vinegar, but I have found vinegar to provide consistent results. 

Made these mushrooms when my egg beater broke and beat the whole thing by hand with a fork.
The pain was worth it! 

Lessons from a Beef Wellington

The other day I had some friends coming over. Before they came, I sat down and watched an episode of Hell's Kitchen, just as I was deciding what to make for dinner.

Someone had burned one of the beef wellington again and I thought to myself, why not try it? Why not try to make beef wellington. I had always been curious about the taste. I had filet mignon and some puff pastry. How bad could it be?

The idea in principle was pretty good. I came up with my own take on the recipe and thought I would give it a try. Here are some things I learned along the way.

1. If you have a a bottle of wine reducing on the stove, don't get distracted with political conversation. You will burn the wine and it will turn solid. Interesting, but also hard to clean and will fill your house with smoke.

2. NEVER try to make a beef wellington for the first time at 8:30 at night, when you have to get up early the next morning. Especially if you are going to keep getting distracted with talk that makes you abandon what you are doing to emphasize your point.

3. Remember you are using puff pastry and not pie pastry, so waiting for the spaces between the egg yolk to turn a bit more golden will result in overcooked beef.

4. If your steaks have been in the freezer for a while, even if they are still good otherwise, you may want to marinate them in order to make them more tender.

5. Even when everything goes wrong and you end up eating an overcooked but otherwise good beef wellington past midnight, with the house still smelling of burnt wine, good friends can still salvage the night and make it great.


That being said, if not for the overcooked part, the wellingtons' themselves were quite good. This recipe is going on the keep pile, with a couple alterations to be tested.

The Infamous Turducken

My wife is American, and we live in Canada. As such, we have the option of two thanksgivings to celebrate. To make things more interesting, his birthday falls around the American thanksgiving. Since we are in Canada, we have to celebrate the Canadian thanksgiving. That being said, we decided to have a little fun for his birthday and make Turducken.

For those of you who don't know, a turducken is a chicken stuffed in a duck and stuffed in a turkey. My wife often follows up with the joke that the ultimate challenge is the dish that starts with a hummingbird and ends with a cow.

Still turducken is enough of a challenge to start.

All three birds need to be completely deboned, although the turkey legs and wings can have their bones.

I am lucky and I have a great place to get birds. Saslov's meat market in the Byward market.They were nice enough to do the deboning for me, so that when I had half the work to do.

I decided to brine all three birds. This ended up being a great idea. One of the biggest risks with turducken is making sure that all three birds are safely cooked all the way through.  This could lead to the birds being dry. That being said, I also decided not to put stuffing in between the layers. Instead I filled it with seasonings.

Then came problem number 2. I needed to close each bird, but the end result has to be able to be sliced. If I sowed them closed then I wouldn't be able to slice.  I used some metal skewers and then used some string to tie the skewers and provide a means of pulling them out.Once everything was ready and set, I started baking.

That is when the success of the brining really showed. There was soo much gravy that about half way through the cooking process, I had to pour off the gravy. Why? There was so much gravy that the whole thing was covered! I wasn't going to have roasted turducken, I was going to have boiled poultry!

I poured out the liquid and made a lot of gravy. By the end of the roasting, I had half of a pan again of gravy. It was incredible!

The turducken was a hit. It was a fun recipe to make  and one I would make again.

Not an easy thing to slice for the first time.

To Brine or Not to Brine?

In my third year in Ottawa, I decided to stay there and make Thanksgiving dinner on my own. Turkey was always one of those recipes that was up on a pedestal. Every show on tv always had that one thanksgiving where someone burns the outside of the turkey and has the inside raw or frozen. Or better yet, the bird looks beautiful but the meat is dry.

Needless to say, I was a little nervous about making the turkey perfect.

I knew from my family that turkey had to be basted often to prevent drying out. I don't believe in stuffing a turkey. The heat and time needed to cook the stuffing to a safe temp would increase the risk of drying out.

That first time I made a basic turkey. I filled the cavity with herbs and rubbed the outside with salt pepper and a little garlic. The end result was delicious with me obsessively basting every half hour. The final product was delicious. The main problem was in how little gravy was produced. After the first half hour, there was no liquid to baste with. I countered this problem by adding a glass of water the first year, and a glass of chicken broth the second year.

That year started what would become a tradition. Over the next 4 years, Thanksgiving at my place would become a tradition. In year 3 I was watching some random TV while working on homework. I ended up seeing an Alton Brown special where he was talking about something called brining. The idea seems to be to soak the turkey in ice water, broth, and spices. The idea is to infuse the meat with enough moisture to guarantee  a moist bird. I decided to give it a try. The end result was amazing. The bird was so filled with juice that I ended up with a good jug of gravy and a perfect bird. I fell in love.

In the questions of to brine or not to brine, for me the question is easy.... Brine! 

That being said, both options have their disadvantages and advantages.

Not brining has the advantage that it needs less prep. You can defrost the bird the night before and not have to worry about it till the morning of. The lack of gravy and juice can be mitigated by adding water or broth early on and using that to baste at the very beginning.

With brining you have to be ready to work the night before serving. You want to brine for about 8-12 hours. You will need ice, salt, hot and cold water, and broth, along with the right container to soak the bird. My first two times using this method, I used a band new outdoor garbage can that I purchase from a home hardware for this purpose alone. The last time, I used a cooler that I got from my parents. The advantage of the cooler was a little bit more portability.  My favourite aspect of brining is that this is a great way to infuse flavour into the meat. Whatever flavour you want in the meat should be in the brine.  I love adding lots of honey and adding a great kick of sweetness.

Before roasting, I rub down the turkey with a butter mixture that has lots of garlic, paprika, pepper, and some cayenne. The little extra fat helps to brown the skin a bit more, while the spice flavour gives the meat that little kick.

 

This is not my turkey! I can cook, but as you will see, my photography leaves a bit to me desired. Picture taken from http://houseandhome.com/food/recipes/holiday-roast-turkey-recipe