Goulash, the way I learned to make it

A quick and easy dinner! Cheap, too, even when made with the best ingredients - as usually we use all organic ingredients, and whole wheat noodles. I'm sure there are a number of recipes out there for this Hungarian dish, but this is the way I learned to make and love it.

Ingredients:
• 1 1/2 lbs lean ground beef
• 1 medium onion , chopped
• 28 oz. crushed tomatoes
• 1 1/2 cup macaroni pasta, uncooked
• 3-4 tbsp sugar, to taste
• 1 dash salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:
Cook macaroni pasta to al dente, rinse and set aside.
Meanwhile, fry meat and onion in large skillet until no longer pink; drain; add tomato, sugar, salt, and pepper; stir in macaroni, allow to cook to desired consistency.

For added indulgence, this is wonderful when served with fresh, warm bread on the side (mmmmm, carbs).

Irish Soda Bread

We tried this tonight to go with our Irish boiled dinner. The bread is definitely yummy - not overly sweet but definitely belonging to the sweet bread category - but we had some problems with the recipe as it is written, so I'll give you the recipe as I found it (on www.elise.com) and also tell you where it didn't work.

• 4 to 4 1/2 cups flour
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 4 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 cups buttermilk

Add 4 cups of flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda to a large mixing bowl and mix well. Using a pastry cutter work butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal, then stir in raisins. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Add beaten egg and buttermilk and mix until dough is too stiff to stir. Dust hands with a little flour, then gently knead dough in the bowl just long enough to form a rough ball. If the dough is too sticky to work with, add in some more flour. Do not overknead! Transfer dough to a lightly floured surface and shape into a round loaf.

Even with the alloted amount of flour I could not get this to be anything but a gelatinous mess. I think I finally added an additional cup of flour (total 5 cups, so only 1/2 cup more than the max called for).

Transfer dough to a lightly greased baking sheet and score top of dough about 1/2'' deep in an "X" shape. Transfer to oven and bake until bread is golden and bottom sounds hollow when tapped with a knife, about 35-45 minutes. Check for doneness also via toothpick method.

At 50 minutes my bread was still raw at the center - completely raw - but it was browning on the outside, so I covered it in tinfoil and cooked it an additional 20 minutes (totalling 1hr 10min) before it was ready to come out.

Remove from oven and cool on wire rack. Serve bread warm, at room temperature, or toasted with butter. This we had no problem with. Yummy!

Zuppa Tuscano

This original recipe comes from Epicurious.com, one of my favorite recipe sites.  I have made quite a few changes to the recipe, though, and the one I post here is my own version, but I'll try to mention some of the points at which I varied.

• 1lb mild ground Italian sausage
• ~2 medium potatoes cut into bite sized pieces
• ~1 medium onions, diced
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 large bunch of kale, sliced with stems removed
• 32 oz. chicken stock
• 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream

Cook the sausage, garlic, and onions in a stock pot over medium heat until sausage is done, then remove from pot and set aside. To juices in pot add chicken base and potatoes and simmer until potatoes are done, then add sausage mixture back in along with kale and cream, stir well and simmer until kale has reduced in size (at least four minutes, though longer is certainly fine).  Like most soups, this is excellent reheated, too.  Serves 4 - 5

Now - I believe the original recipe calls for the use of 5 sausages instead of ground sausage (cooked and then sliced before adding back in later), several slices of bacon, sliced potatoes instead of chunks, minced garlic instead of fresh, only 3 cups of kale, and only 2T of stock (the remaining liquid being water).

No pictures this time - maybe I'll come back and add them in later.  Enjoy!

Andouille and arugula penne pasta

I like saying arugula; it's just a funny word. Thankfully it's also a nice leafy green that has a tad of spice to it, which adds color and flavor to this tangy Italian dish that we recently discovered and added to our list of favorites. I found the original recipe, which calls for chicken andouille sausage, on allrecipes.com, but following is my own version of this yummy Mediterranean meal.

• 8 oz. penne pasta (we use Meijer brand whole wheat organic)
• 4 links spicy chicken andouille sausage (we used organic spinach chicken sausage from Arbor Farms)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic , minced
• 1/3 cup pesto (I make this from scratch with organic Basil, parsley, olive oil, pine nuts, Parmesan and Romano)
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 15 oz. cannellini beans, undrained (or aobut 1 cup beans rehydrated)
• 3 cups arugula leaves, torn
• 1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
• salt & pepper to taste
• 4 oz. goat cheese, crumbled

Prepare 8oz of penne pasta as directed by package

Meanwhile, in a heavy skillet over medium heat cook 4 links of chicken sausage. Remove from heat and allow to cool, then slice into bite sized pieces. (In our case the sausages were actually pre-cooked, so we skipped this step completely and just sliced the sausages and added them with the garlic in the next step)

After removing the sausage add 1-2T oil to the pan as necessary and cook garlic until browned (remember this is also where we added our pre-cooked sausages). Add sausage back in (if not already done so) along with pesto and white wine and cook until heated.  Add cannellini beans and arugula. Cook and stir until heated through and arugula is wilted. Just before serving add tomatoes and stir until warmed, then toss with pasta and top with goat cheese to serve. Yum!

Sinterklaas Vooravond: 3 dishes for a Dutch holiday dinner

We held our annual De Vooravond Van Sinterklaas party yesterday (a day late, yes) and spiced our holiday fun with three decidedly Dutch dishes - runderlappen, hutspot, and brussels lof.  Although we can't recommend the last one, the first two were quite fun, so here you are!

Runderlappen

Runderlappen is basically meat and onions slow cooked in traditional spices, so start with 3lbs of round steak, pound it, saltand pepper it, then cut it into serving size pieces. Browned these pieces on both sides in about 1/2C of bacon drippings (I reserved these from preparing the bacon for the hutspot), then remove them to a slow cooker (with so much meat this took me several batches, and a little additional butter fat). After the final batch of meat is removed add 3 onions, sliced, and fry them slightly before adding 1C water, 3T vinegar, 1T mustard, 2 bay leaves, 1t whole cloves, and 10 peppercorns. Bring this to a boil, stirring to mix in the drippings from bottom of the pan, then pour over meat in the slow cooker. Add enough water (or broth) to just barely cover the meat and cook for 2-4 hours or until very tender. Turn meat every 1/2 hour or so. Serve hot with onions and some of the juice.

Hutspot

Hutspot is boiled potoatoes, onions, and carrots mashed together and served with meat. It's as easy as that. The recipes that we have seen call for about 6 onions, 6 carrots, and 8 potatoes to be washed, pealed, cut into pieces, and boiled in salted water alongside smoked sausages (Gelderse rookworst, to be exact). The vegetables are then removed and mashed together with 1/2C milk and 4T butter, then served with the sausages and cubed pieces of well done bacon. That's the traditional dish, but I left out the sausage and served it as the side starch to the runderlappen. I did serve it with the bacon, however, since I conveniently needed bacon fat for that dish!

Brussels lof

My computer translates this literally as "brussels praise" but I found a few web pages that make me think this is simply what the dutch call endive.  In any case, endive is popular as a cooked vegetable in the Netherlands and several other European countries.  In fact, the endive we were finally able to locate stateside had been shipped from Holland, and we don't mean Michigan.  I washed our endive, then sauted them in butter over high heat for about 2 minutes per side, after which I reduced the heat and added 3T lemon juice, 1t salt, and 1T sugar to the butter, covered the pan, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.  I can't say we enjoyed this dish.  It was relatively flavorless, and next year I might try a different endive recipe, or I might search for a completely different vegetable all together.  Who knows.

Happy (Dutch) holiday cooking!