corned beef, cabbage and pumpkin bolognese random cooking day

This last Sunday, St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to make one of my FAVORITE meals, corned beef and cabbage. I love St. Patrick’s Day! Green EVERYTHING. Green beer, green clothes, whiskey, people out having fun, it’s a really great holiday! It’s particularly fun in Chicago. On St. Patrick’s Day here, EVERYTHING and it’s mother is green. AMAZING. Seriously amazing….except the green beer, which if you’re like me and gluten and food coloring bother you, you end up puking on the side of a dumpster in the middle of the day….whoopsies!

I also, then decided to clean out my fridge and pantry, in some ways, and made pumpkin bolognese. For some god awful reason I bought a ridiculous amount of ground beef when it was on sale sometime ago and froze it. Like an ENTIRE freezer of ground beef. I don’t even like ground beef that much haha! So I had to find a way to use it! So….we have Irish and Italian here, best of both yummy worlds if you ask me.

FYI – If more of you lovely readers could spread my blog around (the earlier ones are WAY funnier), that would be great! I’m hoping to become rich and famous off of it so I can quit grad school. HAHA!

CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE

Ingredients:

• 1 giant slab of corned beef, you can use your discretion here on how big you want it
• 2 quarts of chicken or vegetable stock
• 4 or more stalks of celery
• 12 whole carrots (or whatever comes in 2 bags of carrots, you can also use a large bag of baby carrots)
• 1 bag of red skinned potatoes
• lovely whole grain mustard
• 1 handful of while peppercorns
• 1 stick of butter
• kosher or sea salt and pepper

In a giant stockpot, put your celery stalks, 4 potatoes from your bag, cut into quarters, and about a handful or two of carrots, or if you are using whole carrots, cut them into 4 inch chunks; then add your corned beef in on top of your veg. Add your pepper corns, and one tablespoon of the whole grain mustard and cover with the 2 quarts of stock. Bring to a boil. Once at a rolling boil, turn the heat down to low. Cook for 4.5 hours. Once the meat feels tender and almost fork-pull-apartable (YES, that is a valid term, thank you very much), quarter the rest of your potatoes, cut the rest of your carrots, and quarter your head of cabbage. Add all those amazing veggies in and cover with water (the stock won’t be enough to cover all of these veggies). Cook for another hour to an hour and a half.

Next. Heat your oven broiler to high. Pull everything out and put it on a sheet pan. Yea, this is where the good part happens. Take all those veggies and the corned beef out and place on the sheet pan. Cut pats of butter and put them on the veggies, then put a nice, thick slathering of the whole grain mustard on the top of it. Put the veggies and corned beef under the broiler. The butter will melt into the veggies and the mustard will crust and seal into the beef. This doesn’t take long so watch it. Pull the sheet pan out, dust the veggies with sea salt and pepper. SERVE UP and enjoy the yumminess!

PUMPKIN BOLOGNESE

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 tablespoon olive or coconut oil
• one large white onion, diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 can of organic pumpkin puree, or make your own
• 1 large large large, or 2 small, cans of diced tomatoes
• 1 can of tomato puree, or puree your own tomatoes in your food processor!
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon red chili flakes
• salt to taste
• a large bunch of fresh basil, chiffonade that stuff!

NOTE: If you do not know how to chiffonade herbs, I have a video on my first blog post back in August. But, also, below, at the bottom,  is a lovely blog post by The Pioneer Woman, she knows what’s up! WATCH it! East peasy, lemon squeezy.

Take your lovely large stock pot and heat it up. Add the tablespoon of olive oil. Heat that up. Add your onions and cook until translucent. Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Next, add your garlic, cook it down a d bit and add the ground beef. Cook the ground beef and continuously scrape down your pan to get all of those lovely brown bits on the bottom.

Next, add your pumpkin and tomatoes, a pinch of salt, black pepper, chili flakes and oregano. Let this cook down together for about 15 minutes. While this cooks, chiffonade your basil. Add your basil and mix in thoroughly. Let this cook down again for ten minutes. Next, taste it and add salt and more pepper to taste. Let it cook about 10 more minutes.

Serve over your favorite gluten free pasta, zucchini noodles, or spaghetti squash and ENJOY! Also….you could chop zucchini and add that to this sauce too, that would be lovely! So would spinach!

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/09/how-tochiffonade-basil/

simple flavors jamming together

This week has been all about discovering what I do and do not love, so naturally, I decided to work with some simple flavors and a big fat grill today. It’s been an interesting week looking for a new job. I went on random interviews and loved all of them, but the choice right now is, what do I want to do. Right now, I’m not sure, so experimenting in the kitchen gave my mind some time to relax from graduate school and job hunting.

I had a massive batch of super ripe strawberries that needed to be used, so I decided to hop over to Whole Foods and get some pectin and jar up some yummy jam, but make sure that it was simple and wholesome. I never realized how easy it is to make jam! Can you believe from masher to jar it took about a half hour!? So simple. For some reason I always thought jam was a lengthy process. Super jazzed that it was so quick and easy.

For dinner, I decided to go with some simple flavors. I had chicken drummies (which also is what we call Dexter Doodle Puppy) in the freezer from U.S. Wellness Meats. I don’t know if you’ve heard of U.S. Wellness meats, but they are grass fed yumminess that you order online and the prices are unbelievable!

I picked up some sweet potatoes, for a healthy super food starch and hericot vert. I love hericot vert (for those that need the translation, hericot vert are green beans, and yummy ones at that). So here is my homage to simple flavors on the grill. By the way, sweet potato is a GREAT superfood for puppies and they gobble it up!

JAMMY JAM JAM

Ingredients:

• two large pints of strawberries
• 2 tablespoons of honey
• 3/4 cup sugar in the raw
• 1.5 tablespoons pectic (I got the all natural, no preservative, no sugars pectin from Whole Foods)
• 1 orange
• 1 lemon

Easy Peasy:

Wash and hull your strawberries. Take your orange and slice out the sections. Pour the strawberries and oranges in a large dutch oven. Turn the heat on medium to warm up the berries/oranges and start mashing away! Mash to your heart’s desire. Some like chunky jam and some like smoother jam. Once they are all mashed, turn the heat up to high and mix in the honey and sugar and mix until well incorporated and dissolved. Add pectic and bring to a boil. Boil all together for 2 minutes on high, stirring occasionally. Turn the heat off, ladle into your jars, cap the jars, let them sit until at room temperature and you’re done! You’ll hear  a pop after about a half hour meaning that the jars sealed. This makes about 1.5 jars of jam, or 2 small jars. You can put it in the fridge and use it over the next few weeks. YUM!

CHICKEN DRUMMIES HERICOT VERT AND SWEET POTATO MASH

Ingredients for sweet potato mash:

• 3 large sweet potatoes
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 tablespoon grass fed butter (Kerrygold or regular butter if you aren’t into grass fed)

HEAT UP THAT GRILL! Turn the grill and place it on high. Take the three sweet potatoes, prick them with a fork and wrap them in foil. Place on high heating grill for 1 hour. These are what take the most time. The drummies and sweet potatoes will cook together at one point, so the rest of the steps are below.

Ingredients for chicken drummies:

• 6 chicken drummies
• 1 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup balsamic
• 1 tablespoon parsley
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried onion
• 1 tablespoon oregano

Ingredients for hericot vert:

• hericot vert, about 50 beans, or a small bag
• 1 tablespoon stone ground mustard
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• splash of balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste

Take a gallon sized large plastic bag and pour in the chicken drummies. Pour in all of the ingredients listed above; olive oil, salt, pepper, dried onion, oregano, parsley, balsamic and work for a couple minutes so it is all mixed well and coating the chicken. Place in a glass bowl in your fridge, or if cooking soon, place on your counter for the meat to marinate at room temperature for at least an hour. If placing in fridge, it can marinate for up to 24 hours.

After the sweet potatoes have cooked for about 45 minutes, place the chicken drummies on the grill. They take about 8 minutes on each side, but you can determine based on your grill temp since this is a dark meat. Your grill should be placed at medium heat now. Therefore, the sweet potatoes can still cook and the drummies can cook evenly. Pour the leftover marinade on the drummies and save a bit for when you turn the drummies over.

After about 8 minutes, turn the drummies and pour on the rest of the marinade. Take off your sweet potatoes and set them to cool. Once the sweet potatoes are cool, peel off the skin and cut off the nubby ends. Mash the sweet potatoes with a fork and add the butter, salt, pepper and honey. Cover with foil to stay warm while the hericot very cook.

Take the drummies off of the grill and place under a foil tent to finish steaming and stay warm. To prep hericot vert, wash and cut off the ends. place on foil, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, balsamic and a nice lump of stone ground mustard. Pack them all up in the foil and place on grill. These take only about 6 minutes. Carefully open up the packet and mix the green beans so that the warm mustard coats them all. I like my hericot very al dente, where they are bright green and hot, yet not fully cooked so they have a nice snap!

PLATE YOUR FOOD AND EAT!