Homemade Corned Beef and Cabbage
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! To celebrate the feast of St. Patrick, I thought of making some corned beef from scratch. I love the garlicky flavor of this recipe!
2 lbs. packaged seasoned beef brisket
6- 8 cloves garlic
1 medium sized onion
1 medium sized tomato
cabbage
salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbsp canola oil
Cook a 2-lb. package of seasoned beef brisket in slow cooker for 8 hours or until the meat is tender enough to be shredded. When cooked, shred and set aside. Heat oil in a pan, saute onions, garlic and tomatoes until done and add shredded beef. Add half a cup of the juice from the meat and allow to absorb. Add as much cabbage as you desire. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with toasted rye or sourdough bread or your favorite bread. Enjoy!
Homemade Sardines
It’s Lent again. In observance of Ash Wednesday and the following Fridays for the next 40 days, Catholics don’t eat meat - right, Anna??? So I thought of trying this homemade sardines recipe. It turned out really good, much better than canned sardines… you won’t miss not eating meat on Fridays!
Ingredients:
2 lbs. fresh mackerel (small to medium size, heads and tail cut off)
¾ cup cooking oil
3-4 pcs Thai chili peppers
1 small carrot, sliced
2 ½ tsp. salt
2 cups tomato sauce
2 small pcs. whole sweet pickles (sliced)
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 cup water
4 pcs. peppercorn
3 pcs. bay leaves
½ tsp. pepper
Procedure:
Arrange cleaned mackerel in a pressure cooker or casserole. Pour oil, tomato sauce and water. Season with salt, pepper, vinegar, chili peppers. Add
carrots, sweet pickles, laurel leaf and pepper corn. Pressure cook for one hour
to soften the bones. If pressure cooker is not available, simmer fish in
a casserole for 2 hours. Do not stir but add water in small quantities to prevent burning. Cook until fish is tender and tomato sauce has thickened. Serve with rice.
Anna’s Chicken Parmigiana
Anna cooked this for us one evening she was home and my husband and I got stuck in traffic and didn’t have any food at home for dinner. I called her to have her cook rice while I think of something easy to cook when we get home, but she offered to make dinner. She whipped this up so quickly and was almost done when we got home! Served on a bed of penne pasta and with a good glass of wine (for her and Dad), dinner was delicious!!! Thank you, Anna!
Gina
- - - - -
Haha, you’re welcome, mom! I can’t take full credit for this one though… I learned the recipe from my good friend Jessica when I stayed with her in New York about a month ago. Actually, I think I cooked the meal the day after I got back. She got the recipe from the Food Network website… I followed it almost exactly (kinda), except I used chicken thighs instead of breasts (because we had them on hand), skipped the mozzarella and milk (we didn’t have any) and used pre-seasoned breadcrumbs instead of seasoning them myself. Okay, maybe I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. But it was still pretty good! And maybe that’s why it was so quick! Oh, I also used less of each ingredient (thanks to some advice in the comments section)… I had just enough to coat everything!
Ingredients:
- 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
- 3 cups Italian seasoned bread crumbs
- Salt, freshly ground black pepper
- All-purpose flour
- 4 large eggs
- Vegetable oil
- Olive oil
- 1 jar marinara sauce
- 1 cup grated Parmesan
Directions:
- Pound out chicken thighs to uniform thickness.
- Place the flour in a large dish. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs together. And in another large dish, combine seasoned bread crumbs, salt and pepper.
- Dredge chicken thighs in the flour and shake off excess. Then dip into the eggs and dredge in the seasoned breadcrumbs. Shake off any excess breading and transfer to a baking sheet.
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
- In a skillet, fry one thigh at a time in vegetable oil on medium-high heat until golden brown on each side. Transfer fried chicken to a paper towel-lined baking sheet.
- Lightly brush a large baking dish with olive oil. Cover the bottom of the baking dish with half of the marinara sauce and arrange the chicken in one layer over the sauce. Cover chicken with the remaining sauce. Grate the Parmesan on top.
- Bake about 30 minutes until sauce is bubbling. Serve immediately.
Enjoy!
Anna
A look back at my semi-homemade (Sandra Lee, much?) meals this past week. I have a giant, family-sized Crock Pot (thanks, mom and dad!) so that soup literally lasted me the entire week. I didn’t realize back then that I’d be blogging my meals so I don’t really have recipes, but I’ll post their inspirations:
Thai-Inspired Crock Pot Soup: http://laurenzietsman.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/thai-chicken-soup-crock-pot/ (Some notable changes: I used tofu instead of chicken, skipped the coconut milk, replaced the chili flakes with Sambal chili paste and used Trader Joe’s Red Curry Sauce, which has coconut milk in it, instead of curry paste. Oh, and I squeezed and added half a lemon for the last 5 or so minutes of cooking. Adding it sooner could make your soup bitter.)
Vegetable Red Curry and Fried Tofu: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/vegetable_stir_fry.html (I used all the fresh veggies I had on hand instead of frozen, and replaced the oyster sauce with, yes, Trader Joe’s Red Curry Sauce. DELICIOUS. Use the veggies you have, but I think the bell peppers are key in this dish.)
Orange Chicken and Roast Veggies on Rice: http://blogchef.net/orange-chicken-recipe/ (Not going to lie, I had help from TJ’s with the chicken… Just baked a bag of their stuff for 20 minutes, along with a pan of garlic, ginger, onions, grape tomatoes, chopped carrots, olive oil, salt and pepper, and combined them together with the sauce and HEAPS of Sambal when finished. I was afraid putting them all together during baking would make them soggy… Doing it this way turned out great. Served it on top of a bed of brown rice cooked with chicken broth, minced garlic and some dried herbs… WINNING. Bahaha sorry, I had to.)
I get a lot of help from the store because a.) I’m new to this cooking thing, b.) I don’t have much refrigerator space and c.) I don’t have a lot of time. BUT I’m getting less scared of raw meat and fresh veggies, so I’m experimenting a little more… It’ll be fun to watch my culinary evolution via MMS Foodies. :)
-Anna
I work the nightside shift, so when I go home for the weekend I usually head back Monday morning. Lucky for me the last time I went home was President’s Day weekend, so I had two very willing guinea pigs to try a quick, simple, light(-ish) and DELICIOUS cinnamon roll recipe before I packed up to leave. (No, I don’t get holidays off, but that’s neither here nor there…)
Can you tell I love that canned crescent roll dough? I use Pillsbury, but I’m sure any kind will do. I’ve been watching Food Network for years, but only started cooking on my own… I’m not about to try my hand at “real baking” quite yet. One day, with mom’s help, I’ll tackle dough making from scratch.
The only change I made to the original recipe was the glaze… My parents and I don’t like anything too sweet, so half a batch was perfect for us.
Crescent Cinnamon Rolls
Ingredients:
Filling
- 2/3 cup chopped pecans
- 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 cup softened butter
Rolls
- 2 (8 oz. cans) crescent roll dough
Glaze
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 tablespoon softened butter
- 1-2 tablespoons milk
Directions:
- Heat oven to 375°F.
- Grease 13x9-inch pan.
- Mix filling ingredients.
- Unroll 1 can of crescent roll dough and press into 13x7-inch rectangle. If using perforated sheets, carefully pinch seams together.
- Spread filling over rectangle.
- Unroll second can of dough and press into 13x7-inch rectangle. If using perforated sheets, carefully pinch seams together.
- Place second sheet of dough over filling; press dough onto filling.
- Cut stacked dough into 8 (13-inch) strips.
- Twist each strip 5 or 6 times, pressing extra filling into rolls. Shape each into a coil; place in pan.
- Bake rolls 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.
- While baking, stir glaze ingredients.
- Drizzle over baked rolls.
- Serve warm. (Duh.)
If you have any extra filling after twisting, just divvy it up and put it on top of each roll before baking. I may or may not have saved a little for snacking while I waited…
Enjoy!
-Anna
And here’s the recipe for these yummy stuffed pasta shells. It seemed like a lot while we were making them but they were gone very quickly! Anna took some back to her place and the rest was lunch for my husband and I the following day. Next time we can probably try using ground turkey or chicken instead of beef and see if it comes out as good. Top it with homemade marinara sauce - yum yum!!!
Stuffed Jumbo Shells
3 packages frozen chopped spinach
3 pounds ground beef
2 (8-oz) packages cream cheese, softened
2 large onions chopped
grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
2 eggs
1 (1-lb.) package jumbo pasta shells
3 cups tomato sauce
Thaw frozen spinach and squeeze all of the water out and place in a large bowl. In a large saute pan, cook ground beef until brown. Drain meat leaving 2 tablespoon fat in the pan. Place meat in the same bowl with the spinach. Stir in softened cream cheese with the meat and spinach. Saute chopped onions in the meat fat until transparent. Transfer onions to the bowl with the other ingredients and stir well to combine. Add grated cheese, salt and pepper to taste and combine. Let cool and then add the eggs.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Cook pasta shells in boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and cool to the touch. Stuff the shells with the meat mixture. Arrange stuffed shells in a large baking pan and cover with tomato sauce. Cover with foil and bake for approximately 1 hour. Serve.
BTW, you can make the stuffing a day ahead and just keep it in the refrigerator until you are ready to stuff the shells.
Try it!
Gina
I figured the inaugural MMS Foodies post(s) should be of a meal mom and I worked on together…
I was home two weekends ago and we spent a lot of that time in the kitchen. First on the menu: Brie en Croûte. I’d made a simple version of it for a friend earlier this year, but stumbled upon a new recipe that involved jam and toasted walnuts. Uh, WOW. Moral of the recipe: jam and toasted walnuts make good cheese taste even better.
I made a few minor tweaks and it turned out nearly perfect… Nearly. The problem: our brie. It doesn’t say, but I’m pretty sure the recipe called for a standard 8 oz. round. But Costco was having a sale… A massive 16 ouncer, for something ridiculous like $5. I should’ve cut it in half, but I figured the more cheese the merrier… Which is true, BUT cutting into it was pretty messy (no photos of that though, sorry!).
Oh, and if you’re wondering about the bread… It’s just sliced and toasted whole wheat pan de sal (Filipino rolls).
Brie en Croûte
Ingredients:
- 1 round Brie
- 1 can crescent roll dough
- 1/4 cup strawberry preserves
- 1/2 cup toasted walnuts
- One egg
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Unroll defrosted crescent roll dough. If using perforated sheets, carefully pinch seams together.
- Place unwrapped brie in center of dough. Top brie with jam and nuts.
- Neatly (NEATLY! I failed at this too. I blame the monster cheese.) fold dough over brie. Cut off excess dough and form into ribbon; place ribbon on top.
- Brush pastry with egg wash.
- Place pastry on baking sheet and bake 25-30 minutes, until golden-brown.
Enjoy!
-Anna
P.S. This blog was inspired by my cousin and aunt’s blog, FOOD SHOOT. Guess it runs in the family… :)
