I have to apologise for my post slacking recently. I had to travel to Boston this past weekend, and then work has just gotten out of hand. Living in a dorm with 30 girls ages 14-16, in the dead of winter, with the nearest vacation a month away is getting sort of dramatic. Unfortunately its very hard to cook with girls screaming about plants, and lunch tables, and god help us all the Sadie Hawkins ”Sadies” dance is coming up. Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, let me give you a glimpse into my tragic life:
“Ms. Mac, SHE came into my room when NO ONE was here and put a plant on my desk. What kind of b*tch just goes into someones room with out permission. OMG I mean we used to be besties, but this is just a ridiculous invasion. SO I threw the plant out the window. ” (of the fourth floor, by the way)
I kid you not, this is just a small excerpt of the hour and a half long conversation I had last night. Between this fantastic part of my job, and the THREE exes that came back to haunt me for Valentines day, I have felt the need to drink heavily on a fairly regular basis, just to get through. Sadly, I can not go to the bar every night and can not go about my job reeking of booze, so I have to be sneaky about my “drinking”. I have gotten pretty good at figuring booze into most of my recipes, so I thought I would just try to do that again. I know, cooked alcohol isn’t the same, but its the flavor that counts, not the warm buzzy feeling right? (Whatever, just let me delude myself. ) So despite all of this ridiculous tom foolery in my life, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Guinness Braised Brisket….Ta Da!!! (also known in my head as BEER MEAT 
)
Ok so this is wicked easy:
Cut up one large yellow onion into wedges and put them into the bottom of a deep roasting pan and nestle your 3-4ish lb brisket into its new vegetable home. * You can also add other veggies if you like, I actually threw in a couple of wedges of tomatoes and a few kalamata olives that I had left over from a recipe. * Pour about 2 and a half bottles of Guinness Draught over it then float in a bay leaf. Sprinkle the meat with Italian seasoning, salt and pepper, then place about 5-6 fresh basil leaves on top of the meat. Cover completely with tin foil and put in a 285 degree over for about eight hours. I did it over night so that I woke up salivating. Once its done, take it out of the over and let it cool. Put it in the fridge for a few hours to let the fat rise to the top and harden. Once its cold, remove the foil and spoon off the majority of the fat. At this point you can either shred the meat or slice it and then re-heat it in the liquid and serve as you choose. I greatly suggest serving it with mashed potatoes or polenta or something that will absorb some of the liquid. I didn’t have potatoes the first night I ate this, but I just used crusty bread, and it was freaking sweet .
The beer gives it that smoky flavor with just the hint of sweetness that I love about Guinness, but there is also the great meat flavor with the onions and whatever other veggies you put in. I have eaten this two nights in a row, and tonight I’m taking the rest of the meat out of the liquid and shredding it with a Guinness stout BBQ sauce, and I’m pretty much banking on it becoming the best BBQ sandwich I’ve ever made. It might even be good enough to get me through the ridiculous drama of teen age girls and 20 something boys (not together) that I have been dealing with. Wish me luck!!
As we get further into the fall and it starts to feel like winter, I slowly begin to remember the hell that is Ohio winter. With this in mind, I decided to try to turn a negative into a positive. While winter tends to bring icy walk ways, cars that won’t start, white out snow, and literally NO sunshine for weeks on end, it also brings warm cozy sweaters, and even warmer, cozier food. Root vegetables, soups, squash, and don’t even get me started on the holiday food . So tonight I decided to make one of my all time favorite winter foods…beef stew. My mom has a stew recipe that she made while I was growing up that was done completely in the microwave. It was pretty good, but a) I don’t have any microwaveable cookware, and b) I’m always scared to microwave things like that because I’m a touch slow at times and with my luck I would blow up the microwave, and thus my kitchen. So I decided to do it in my dutch oven instead. I had never made it before, and didn’t have a recipe, but I knew the basic components, so I decided to wing it.
Here it goes:
1. pour 3/4 cup of flour into a plastic bag and season it liberally with salt and pepper. Throw about 1.5 pounds of stew beef into the bag and shake it to coat all the pieces.
2. Melt a couple TBSP of butter in the pot and put the meat in to brown. Keep stirring the meat until it is all browned.
3. While the meat is browning combine 2 cups beef broth (I used bouillon cubes since they are so much cheaper than stock), a cup and a half of red wine and a half a packet of onion soup mix (I wanted to use it up, so I threw it in…good life choice).
4. Once the meat is browned, pour in the liquid, throw in two whole or halved cloves of garlic and bring it to a boil for about 5 min, uncovered. Then reduce the heat to simmer, and cover it. Let it simmer for about an hour to an hour and a half.
5. Cut onion, celery, carrot, and baby bella mushrooms into bite sized pieces. After the meat has simmered, throw in all the vegetables and keep it covered, simmering for about another half hour (until the veggies are fully cooked).
6. Serve, and be happy. I suggest using some sort of bread product to soak up the juices, I made biscuits.
Now, I always liked my mom’s stew growing up, and I’m not trying to be a conceited bitch, but holy sh*t dude it was good. It was all smooth and buttery from the meat and the mushrooms, but with a tang from the vegetables and the wine. Seriously, I expected to tank this one since I was just sort of throwing crap in a pot, but somehow I stumbled onto something good. I didn’t put in potatoes because stew is normally heavy enough for me without the added starch, also, I did not in fact have any potato.
This is such a good dish because you can literally throw in anything you have in your fridge. You could add corn, green beans, peas, anything really. Once you have the meat done just throw in whatever you want and heat until its cooked. Its also nice because this would also be something you could easily do in a crock pot. Just brown the meat in the morning, throw it in the crock pot and set it on low. When you get home at the end of the day, just put in the veggies and turn it to high for about an hour, and you have dinner.
This is probably going to end up being one of my weekly staples this winter. Anything to get me through another damn Ohio winter
Happy Stewing!!
TT
Meatloaf is easily one of the most versatile foods on the planet. Just on this website alone, you will find at least three recipes that are impressively different from one another. This diversity is one of my favorite things about it, because no matter how you make it, its probably going to be good, and no matter what people say, it is still meat loaf 
. Growing up, I had meat loaf maybe a a half dozen times, but it was hardly a staple in our household, probably because none of us liked it. As I got older and cooking on my own, it was always one of those foods I was curious about, but I had this weird feeling that I had to be a soccer mom of four in a crazy sweater with embroidered reindeer on it to make a successful meat loaf. Somehow I thought the ingredients would not successfully make a delicious meatloaf if they were brought home in my Jetta and not a minivan. However, about a year ago, I decided to conquer my fear and tackle the challenge that was meatloaf. All of the meatloaf recipes I looked at sounded good, but didn’t really seem like they were my style, so I made one up.
Here is my take on the deliciousness that is meat…in loaf form.
Ingredients:
1lb ground beef
1lb ground sweet italian sausage
One medium onion diced fine
One large rib of celery diced fine
3-ish cloves of garlic diced fine
a couple of mushrooms (depends on how much you like them) diced fine
1 egg
bread crumbs
italian seasoning
basil
parmesan cheese
red wine – at least 1/3 cup (I usually go more, but I don’t think anyone is surprised by that)
The hardest part of this recipe is cutting all the vegetables up super fine, but the rest of it is cake. Put the meat in a bowl and mix in all the vegetables (your hands are your best kitchen tool here). Mix in the egg and red wine, then the bread crumbs, cheese and herbs until all the liquid is soaked up, if you add too many bread crumbs, the easiest fix is going to be to add more red wine. I know this would be a tragedy, but hey, sometimes you have to do things you don’t like in the name of the culinary arts. Schlep it all onto a cookie sheet and form it into a loaf type shape and top it with more shredded parmesan. Bake it at 375 for appx. an hour…I usually just shove my meat thermometer in until it gets to 160 degrees.
Of course with this, I have to make mashed potatoes. I usually try to make a different kind every time, but so far my favorites are the fully loaded mashed potatoes, carmelized onion and bacon mashed potatoes, and bleu cheese mashed potatoes.
Happy Carnivore-ing!
TT
