For the corned beef, I put some carrots in the bottom of the Crock Pot , mainly for flavoring. I used the seasoning packet that came with it, put a bottle of beer in and topped it off with water until the brisket was covered and cooked on low all day. Came out great.

This recipe is courtesy of How to Cook Everything, one of my most oft-referred to cookbooks
and makes just under 1 cup of Russian dressing, which should keep in the refrigerator for a week or so if well covered.

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1 Tbs red wine vinegar (or lemon juice)
• 1 dash of dry mustard powder
• 1 Tbs minced fresh onion
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix it all together and voila, there’s your Russian dressing.

I made the Reuben sandwiches on our George Foreman grill with:

• rye bread, 1 piece spread with Dijon mustard and the other with Russian dressing
• thinly sliced corned beef
• sliced Swiss cheese
• sauerkraut

Spread butter on the outside of the bread, then place on the grill or in a skillet and cook until heated through and the cheese is melted and yummy.

Last night I made some beef kabobs, adding some mushrooms, onions, green pepper and cherry tomatoes to the skewers.

Marinating with Food Saver

I marinated the beef in the recipe from Saving Dinner but used this Food Saver vacuum marinating dish to speed up the process. I also marinated the veggies for an hour or so in some vinaigrette.

• 3/4 cup dry sherry
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 cloves garlic, pressed
• 2 tsps ground ginger
• 1 onion, minced (I left this out)
• 2-3 pound flank steak or top round or chuck, trimmed of fat and cut in 1″ cubes

Mix everything but the steak together in a small bowl. Cut up your beef and put in a shallow dish and cover with the marinade. Cover and refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight. (The vacuum thing really does seem to help somehow, as I only marinated the meat for about an hour and it was fantastic!)

In a separate bowl, combine:

• onion wedges
• cherry tomatoes
• green and/or red pepper slices
• mushrooms

Beef and Vegetable Kabobs

Marinate in a simple oil and vinegar dressing while the meat marinates.

If you’re using wooden skewers, soak in water at least half an hour before cooking.

Thread the meat and vegetables on the skewers and cook on the grill 8-12 minutes, depending on how well you like your meat done.

Goes great with rice.

Here are the week’s menu suggestions for the week that includes the kabobs.

Restaurant Style Chinese Chicken

Poached Salmon with Creamy Horseradish Sauce

Cincinnati Chili

Great Greek Salad

Beef Kabobs

Lemon Roast Chicken

There are also do-ahead tips, a nice section of side dish recipes at the back, and a section on freezer cooking with four mini-sessions of chicken, beef, pork and shrimp recipes. (The freezer recipes are not casseroles and stuff you just reheat, but dinner “kits” of things like marinated chicken or chicken with artichoke sauce, shrimp creole and pork fajitas. When I used to use my freezer more, that’s exactly what made the most sense to me. I didn’t want to reheat frozen casseroles and call it dinner.)

Bierocks or Runzas: Meat Stuffed Bread

I was thumbing through old magazines as I was decluttering and came upon an Old Cooking Light magazine that had a section on Mennonite recipes. I’ve never eaten these bierocks anywhere else, but the recipe reminded me of the piroshkis we used to pick up sometimes for dinner in Sonoma, where I grew up.  These were a bit different somehow in flavor, and also that my dough here was thicker and there less filling.  They are good though and made a nice easy lunch to pack for my daughter, when combined with some fruit.

First start the dough:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 eggs, beaten lightly
• 4 cups flour

The recipe called for bread flour but I just used regular unbleached flour and increased the yeast by 1/4 tsp. Seemed to work great.

Whisk together the sugar, yeast and water. Let sit for 5 minutes to “proof” (meaning to check and make sure your yeast is active before you waste any more ingredients!)  (I keep my yeast in the freezer and just keep a small jar in the frig that I replenish from the freezer periodically. This greatly extends the life. And the price of a seemingly endless bag of yeast at the big box store versus buying individual packets makes it well worth trying! If you have a friend to split the bag with, even better!)  The yeast, sugar and water should start to bubble just a bit.

Stir in the milk, oil, 1/4 tsp salt and eggs. I use my KitchenAid mixer with a bread hook to mix up bread so I proofed everything in the mixing bowl, then added the other ingredients.  Put about 3 cups of the flour into the bowl and turn the mixer on to a low setting. (High settings cause lots of flour to explode all over your counters!)  Let the mixer incorporate most of the ingredients together then add the last cup of flour, about 1/4 cup at a time until it pulls away and makes a nice elastic-looking ball. Keep the mixer on for 5 more minutes or so. (You can of course do this by hand.)

Now you want to let the dough rise for about an hour. If your house is warm, you can do this on the counter. If your house is a bit cool, turn your oven onto warm for a few minutes, then turn it off.  Rub a bit of oil in the bottom of a bowl and turn the dough into that bowl, flipping it around and turning it so that all sides are coated very lightly with oil. Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and let rise until doubled, about an hour.

In the meantime, make the filling.

• 1 tsp oil
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 1/2 pound ground beef or turkey
• 2 cups thinly sliced cabbage
• salt and pepper to taste (1/4 tsp each does it for us)

In a skillet, heat the oil then add the onion and ground meat. Cook,stirring, until the onion is softened and the meat is no longer pink.  Add the cabbage and cook a few more minutes until the cabbage wilts. Salt and pepper the meat mix and set aside to cool, covered.

When the dough has been rising an hour or so, check that it is ready by poking two fingers into it. If the indentations from your fingers remain in the dough, it’s ready!  Punch the dough down, cover and let rest 5 minutes. Meanwhile, cover a cutting board or counter with a light dusting of flour.

Divide the dough in half and roll one half into a roughly 10 x 7 inch rectangle. Cut this into six squares and place about 1/4 cup of the meat and cabbage mix into the middle of each square. Pull two opposite corners together and pinch together, then do the same with the other two corners. Place seam side down onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Preheat the oven to 375 while you cover the bierocks again and let rise about 20 minutes.

Uncover and bake about 15 minutes. Cool a bit  on wire racks then serve.   Goes great with soup!

Folding the dough over the meat

If you want to freeze them, let them cool completely and wrap each bierock individually in foil, then drop them all into a freezer bag.

Bierock

Barbecued Burgers

The hamburger recipe from Jamie’s Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals is actually pretty darn close to my mom’s old recipe. He uses cream crackers crumbled up instead of bread crumbs and leaves out the Worcestershire, ketchup and horseradish.  I have currently settled on using the crackers, which do seem to provide a nice flavor, but adding the Worcestershire, because everything is better with Worcestershire I think.   But that’ s partly because I had some cream crackers left over from the holidays, which were starting to go stale.  Now that I’ve made these burgers twice in two weeks I’m out of crackers!

• 12 cream crackers, crumbed (or 1 cup bread crumbs or other cracker crumbs)
• 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley (he says 8 sprigs,  I just chop from the ends)
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix all this up together, then form into 6 patties. (Yep, I think we don’t all need a 1/4 pound of beef in a burger! Stretch them out thin so they cover the bun and everyone will be happy.)   Pour a bit of olive oil onto them, then refrigerate a bit to firm them up before grilling.  You can cook on an indoor grill or outdoor grill or a good skillet, about 4 minutes per side.

Serve with the condiments of your choice. Ours vary depending on what we have around but might include:

• cooked bacon slices
• sliced avocado
• lettuce
• sliced onion or sauteed onion
• sliced pickles
• ketchup
• cheese

If we use cheese, I like to add it to the burger the last minute of cooking so it melts good. I also pop the split buns on the barbecue to toast them up a bit.  I’ve also found that our grocery store bakery’s Kaiser rolls cost about the same as a pack of really plain white hamburger buns and are much better tasting. Or if you’re feeling up to it, you can bake your own hamburger buns which are to die for!

You could of course mix this into a loaf and bake it that way for about an hour, or form into muffin tin loaves and bake half an hour or so, but the fastest way to cook them up will be forming into patties and cooking in a skillet on the stove.  In the picture above, I have one packed for my daughter’s lunch tomorrow with some of the leftover cheesy mashed potatoes.

• 1 pound of ground beef or turkey (I actually just used 3/4 pound)
• 1/2 cup or so diced onion
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup dry bread crumbs *
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh parsley and a bit of dried
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
• 1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Tbs Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• ketchup or tomato sauce as needed

Mix everything but the ketchup together in a mixing bowl. Using your hands is best so you won’t overmix but you can also use a mixer if you don’t like touching the meat.

Form into 6 patties, no more than 1″ thick.

Cook in a medium hot skillet about 4-5 minutes per side, until cooked through. Put some ketchup or tomato sauce on top of each patty, cover the skillet and cook 1-2 minutes until the ketchup is heated through.

These were very moist and tasty. I really liked the flavor and having meatloaf taste on the table in 20 minutes or less is pretty fantastic.

* NOTE: Whenever I have leftover bread about to go stale (or already stale!) I grind it up into bread crumbs, bake them in a low oven on a cookie sheet until dried and store them in the freezer.

Brussels Sprouts and Potatoes Cooking

Okay, I really had a plan for using my freezer stash but then on the way home from an after-school thing tonight, my youngest reminded me we needed to swing by the grocery store for a key item. Once we were there she started riffing on various dinners we might have tonight. First it was chicken caesar salad, then it was this then it was that. Walking through the  produce section she spotted some Brussels sprouts and said “Oooh, put some of those in a pan with some red potatoes and olive oil and ’stuff” and cook them up. That would go great with steak!”

Do not shop when you are hungry!

Although really, this was not a total splurge. I picked up some Brussels spouts and small red potatoes, both in season, and the cheapest steaks that were on sale. I spent $1.50 on the Brussels Sprouts (and there are leftovers), $2 on the potatoes, and $8 on the steak (lots of leftovers which WILL get used up!).  We ate less than half the steak tonight so lots of leftovers for lunch!  So maybe$2/serving tonight. A bit high but for steak!

• 1/2 pound Brussels sprouts ($1.50 here, now), ends trimmed off and sliced in half or quarters
• 1/s pound petite red potatoes ($2/pound here now), cleaned and cut in sizes about equal to the Brussels sprouts
• 1-2 Tbs olive oil
• various seasonings, I think I used garlic salt, seasoned pepper, dried parsley….
• 1/4 cup chicken broth

I tossed the Brussels sprouts and chopped red potatoes  with olive oil, garlic salt, seasoned pepper, and dried parlsey.

Brussels Sprouts and Potatoes

Heat a heavy skillet with of olive oil and add the potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Cook a few minutes until browned on one side and then stir to get another side down onto the hot side of the pan. Sprinkle with the seasonings (or experiment with your own).

Brown a few more minutes. then add the chicken broth and stir, then cover and cook until the potatoes are s0ft (test with a fork). Then remove the lid and crisp up everything and serve.

This went great with some barbecued steak ( bought on sale and sprinkled with garlic salt and seasoned pepper and a simple green salad.)

How to Freeze Ground Beef

If you’re going to freeze ground beef, or other things, you want to have as little air as possible touching the meat. (Note: It does not affect the safety of the food, just the quality.)  The vacuum sealer things help out with this, of course, and I bought one a few years back when I was cooking for more folks.  I use it much less often these days but since the initial investment is made, it’s worthwhile to keep using it.

One trick I’ve learned with things like raw ground meat is that a flatter bag is easier to store AND much faster to thaw.  When I have raw ground meat to freeze, I seal the bag with enough room to press the meat flat. It really is much easier to store that way and if you’re in a hurry, you can throw a thin package of meat into a sink of cold water and it thaws out quite quickly.

If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, you can follow the same general principle. Put the raw meat into a freezer bag and press out as much air as possible before/while sealing. Then flatten the bag out.

• 1/2 cup of cilantro, leaves and stem
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/4  yellow onion
• 1/2  jalapeño pepper
• 1/8 cup lime juice
• 1/8 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp corriander seeds
• 1/4 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/4 tsp chipotle chili powder
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 2 tsp red wine vinegar

As you can see, I left out a few things and didn’t cut the recipe down exactly in proportion. I would have put the paprika in but just forgot it.  I had no orange juice, so left that out, but think it would taste good!  I grow jalapenos, so had those, as well as fresh lemon and garlic. The lime juice was bottled.

I only marinated this an hour or so. I put the thin slices of meat in a glass dish and salted and peppered them, then poured on the marinade, turning to cover the meat thoroughly. Covered with plastic wrap and let sit a room temperature an hour while I fixed up a salad, made a bit of guacamole, mixed up some dressing, etc.  I also opened a can of refried beans and heated that, put a bowl of grated cheese and some sour cream on the table.

These grilled fairly quickly as they were very thin, maybe 1-2 minutes per side at the most. I let them sit an minute and then sliced them thinly. They were quite good!

Pictures to follow as soon as my daughter emails me her pictures. My camera’s batteries needed recharging.

Tostada with Ground Beef and Fixings

My youngest has a new friend spending the night and asked for tostados for dinner, a perfect request since we had a perfect ripe avocado. I pulled some ground turkey from the freezer and cooked it up with some taco seasonings.  A while back I bought a container of taco seasoning but I actually prefer this recipe with onions and tomato sauce and cumin.  But sometimes you’re in a hurry and the mixes aren’t all that bad.   You could also make up your own taco seasoning packets if you’d like.

While the meat was cooking, I served up small dishes of grated cheese, sour cream, lettuce, sliced olives, diced avocados, diced tomatoes and got out some bottled green salsa and hot sauce.  I also heated up a can of refried beans.

Tostado Fixings

When the meat was done, I removed it to a serving dish and covered it to keep warm, rinsed out the cast iron skillet I was using, then put in a small amount of canola oil and fried up some corn tortillas for the base of the tostados.

Leftovers will make a great taco salad or soft tacos.

<edited later to add pictures!>

Carne Asada Soft Tacos

This is a good recipe from the November issue of Cooking Light magazine, (one year for $15 at Amazon).  I couldn’t find the skirt steak they recommended but used a thinly sliced package of beef round tips I saw on sale instead.   The steak came out a bit “limey” if you ate it plain, but in a taco it was fantastic!  So if you were going to adapt this for something else, you might want to cut back on the lime juice or cut it with some olive oil or something. But as I said, in the tacos it was fantastic. I served them to my youngest and her friend and her friend’s father. All thought they were quite tasty!  We did a mix of soft corn tortillas and crispy ones.

Carne Asada

Marinate the steak a few hours in:

• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper  (recipe called for ground red pepper, I used black)

I mixed the marinade ingredients together in a shallow glass dish, then put the steak slices in and moved them around and turned them over until they were well coated, then covered the dish and refrigerated. I pulled the steak out while I started making the salsa.

When the salsa was ready, I heated a cast iron skillet on the stove and cooked each slice of steak a few minutes on each side, then removed to a plate while I cooked the rest. When they were all done, I sliced them into strips then cut the strips into smaller pieces, about 1/2″.

Avocado Pico del Gallo

Avocado Pico del Gallo

• 1 tomato, seeded and diced
• 1/4 cup diced yellow or white onion
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, diced
• 1/2 a jalapeno, seeded and diced (we’re wimpy. you might like more heat.)
• 1 Tbs lime juice
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 avocado, diced
• salt to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and let sit while you cook the steaks and heat the corn tortillas.

Putting It All Together

If you want soft tacos, you can heat the corn tortillas either directly over a gas burner, in a cast iron skillet, or in the microwave (either in a tortilla warmer or wrapped in some paper towels).

If you want crisp tacos you can buy the package of course. Or heat up some oil in a skillet and fry each tortilla, turning once, a few minutes on each side. Drain on a paper towel, folding the tortilla in half so it hardens in a half circle.

Serve with sour cream, grated cheese, and the pico de gallo salsa.