Philly Cheesesteak in a Bowl

Ingredients

• 1 lb. skirt steak, sliced thinly
• 2 green peppers, sliced thinly
• 2 yellow onions, sliced thinly
• 8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
• 4 oz. good melting cheese (I used raw milk Colby), sliced
• 2 T butter
• 1 T Worcestershire sauce
• 1 T hot sauce
• S&P

Method

Put your oven on broil and place the rack in the middle of the oven.

In a large, oven proof saucepan, melt the butter over high heat and add hot sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Saute the beef, add the onions, peppers and mushrooms. Place a lid/cover on the saute pan and stir occasionally while the peppers and onions soften. Once that’s happened, top with cheese slices, stick the pan under the broiler until the cheese has reached the desired melty-ness stage. Some like it gooey and some like it brown and bubbly. Take it out of the oven and serve.

Melt in Your Mouth Beef Stew

Ingredients

• 3 lbs. short ribs (boneless will work if that’s all you can find, but bones add nutrition & awesome flavor!)
• 3 T butter
• 3 stalks celery, diced
• 1/2 yellow onion, diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 4 oz. mushrooms, roughly chopped
• handful of sage, rosemary and thyme, chopped
• 1 qt. chicken stock
• 2 cups roasted marinara sauce (I keep some in the freezer at all times) or tomato sauce
• 1/4 c apple cider vinegar
• s&p

Method

Get your oven to 250ºF. In a heavy bottomed, oven safe pot, melt the butter on high heat. Sear your short ribs until you see a nice brown crust on them. Remove and put them on a plate to hang out. Add the celery, onion, carrots, garlic and mushrooms. Saute until they’ve softened. Add the tomato sauce, chicken stock, vinegar and herbs. Place the short ribs back into the pot. Press a sheet of parchment paper onto the surface of the stew and place into the oven. Cook for about 4 hours or until the short ribs pull apart easily with a fork.

Once the short ribs are tender, remove the pot from the oven CAREFULLY. Remove the short ribs and bones. Once the meat has cooled, use your fingers to pull apart the meat–believe me, it’s much, much easier than using a fork. Add the meat back to the pot and serve.

Chicken and Andouille Gumbo

Ingredients

• 1 head cauliflower
• 4 T butter, cubed
• s&p
• 3 leeks*
• 3 celery stalks
• 1 green pepper
• 1 lb. Andouille sausage, chopped
• 1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs, chopped
• 6 c shrimp stock** (any stock will work)
• 1/2 lb. okra
• 1 14.5 oz. can diced fire roasted tomatoes
• 2 T Old Bay
• 2 t Quatre épices***
• 3 green onions

Method

Get your oven to 450°F. The food processor is going to be your BFF for this recipe. Get it out! Cut out the core and leaves of the cauliflower. Roughly chop and, in batches, process the cauliflower until it resembles rice. Place on a baking sheet. Toss it around with the butter and some s&p. Roast the cauliflower rice until it’s a nice pale yellow-ish color and doesn’t taste cauliflower-y, making sure to toss it one or two times while it’s roasting. About 25 minutes.

While the cauliflower is going, add the andouille sausage to a soup/stock pot, at least 5 quarts. Saute until it’s browned, remove from the pan and place on a “holding” plate. Add the chicken and saute until it’s done…if you’re a little shy of done, no worries, it’ll continue to cook in the soup. Remove the chicken and add to the plate with the sausage.

Add the green pepper, celery stalks and leeks to the food processor and blend until everybody is in small, itty-bitty pieces. Add to the stock pot and saute until everybody has softened. Pulse up the canned tomatoes in the food processor too–I don’t like when they’re too big in the soup, I like them evenly sized and textured within the soup. Add the rest of the ingredients, including the sausage and chicken, and simmer until the okra has softened, about 20 minutes. Don’t be afraid to taste the okra for the correct done-ness–soft, but still has a crunch to it.

To serve, place a scoop of cauliflower rice in the center of a bowl, ladle around the gumbo and sprinkle with green onions. You will have more gumbo than cauliflower. So leftovers will be “soup.”

*Leeks are dirty little suckers. To clean them: Cut off the root and to the top where it starts to get really, really green. Slice lengthwise and toss into a bowl of water. Use your hands to jiggle them around and that should remove virtually all the dirt.

**So here’s the deal with shrimp stock: I made the faux-viche one night and used shell-on shrimp. I saved the shells, added them to 3 quarts of water, simmered for 3 hours, strained and discarded the shells. Incredibly easily, and might I add, very resourceful.

*** Quatre épices is a french seasoning mix: white pepper, nutmeg, ginger, cloves. It’s not a necessary component, but it’s a nice addition. I found mine at World Market.

Country Captain

Ingredients

• 1 lb. boneless chicken thighs, skinless will work too
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 t garam masala
• 1 t curry powder
• 1/2 c raisins
• 2 t fresh ginger, minced
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 lime, juiced

Method

In a skillet, melt some fat over medium-high heat. Salt and pepper the chicken thighs. Sear them on both sides until browned and cooked through. Remove from the pan and place on your serving platter.

Add the diced onion, garam masala, curry powder and ginger to the saute pan. Saute until the onions are tender. Add the coconut milk, raisins and lime juice. Simmer for a few minutes. Spoon the sauce over the chicken thighs.

Top with fresh cilantro and sliced almonds.

Also

You will probably have leftover sauce. Here’s an idea to use it up…

To the remainder of the sauce, add 2 cups of chicken stock. Ta-da, you’ve made a coconut curry soup. Add leftover pulled chicken thighs or roughly dice up a pound of chicken breasts and add to the soup. Let the soup simmer on medium heat until the chicken is cooked through.

Hash Browns

Ingredients

1 spaghetti squash

1 yellow onion, finely diced

2 T rosemary, finely chopped

Olive Oil

S&P

Method

Get your oven to 450ºF. Line a baking sheet with foil. Split the spaghetti squash in 1/2. Use a fork to remove all the seeds. Like I’ve said before, don’t be too anal about getting out all the gunk, you won’t even notice it once the squash has roasted. Lightly drizzle some olive oil inside the cavity of the squash and lay it face down onto the baking sheet. Roast for approx. 20 minutes, flip the squash over and roast for another 15 minutes. I decided to roast the squash at a ridiculously high temperature so it wouldn’t take as long and I wanted to see some caramelization on the squash. You’ll know it’s done when you take a fork to the squash and it “threads” very easily. Remove from the oven and let cool so you can handle it.

While the squash is roasting, heat some olive oil over medium heat and add the diced onion. You don’t want to hear a sizzle when you add the onion. Turn the heat down if this happens. We don’t want burned onions! Let the onions cook until they’re translucent and slightly golden. Add the rosemary and some S&P.

Once the squash is cooled. “Thread” it and add to a large bowl. Add the onions and mix around to roughly incorporate.

Turn the burner up to medium high heat and add more oil to your saute pan, if you need it. Take a spoon (or my favorite tool, your hands) and patty up some of the squash mixture. Saute it until it’s carmelized and golden brown, about 10 minutes on each side. Repeat until all the squash is gone.

Mediterranean Feast

Ingredients

Meat Kabobs

• 1.5 lb. ground meat (we’ve used lamb, beef and buffalo with great success)
• 1 T ground cumin
• 1 T ground corriander
• 1 1/2 t ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 t garlic powder
• S & P

Tafooleh Salad

We posted this recipe way back in the day…well, it was one of our first posts anyway.

We grow tomatoes and this salad is a great way to use them up, if ya got ‘em.

Roasted Garlic Baba Ganoush Dip

• 2 medium eggplants
• 7 cloves garlic, skin kept on!!
• 1/2 c olive oil
• 2 T sesame oil*
• 1 lemon, juiced
• S &P

Method

For the Kebabs

Turn the grill onto HOT and keep it there! Completely submerge 5-6 wooden skewers (if you have metal skewers, skip this step) in water for about 30 minutes. You’re trying to wet the wood so it doesn’t burn on the grill. In a medium sized bowl, combine all the ingredients for the kebabs and mix together with your God given forks, yo hands!

Form the meat around the water soaked skewer, like you’re be making a lollipop, or perhaps a meat-sicle. Haha! Place the meat-pops on the grill and cook for about 5 minutes, turn and cook another 5 minutes on the other side.

For the Roasted Garlic Baba Ganoush Dip

Get your oven to 350ºF. Cover a baking sheet with foil. Cut the stems off the top the eggplants and split them in 1/2. Place them on the baking sheet and give them a light drizzle of olive oil. Grab a small sheet of foil and place the garlic cloves in the middle (DO NOT remove the skin of the garlic!), drizzle with olive oil and close up tight, like a little bundle of love. You’re making roasted garlic baby–some of the tastiest stuff on Earth! Place in the oven and roast until the eggplant can easily be pierced with a knife, about 45 minutes to an hour.

Once the garlic is cool enough to handle, remove the skins. The garlic should be nicely golden, brown. In a food processor, add all the ingredients and blend until smooth.

*Typical baba ganoush uses Tahini, which is sesame seed paste. It’s expensive and a mono-tasker kind of ingredients–I only really make one recipe with it. It’s just not worth it, so I use sesame oil instead, something I use a lot in Asian recipes.

Imagine eating a chili dog with slaw, onions and yellow mustard. Now imagine taking off the bun and eating it in a bowl with a fork and you’ve got the idea behind this recipe. Another way to look at it, we’ve taken off the sour cream, avocado and cheese from chili and added hot dog toppings.

Ingredients

Chili Ingredients

• 1 lb. ground meat* (I used ground chicken, but anything would work)
• 1 package hot dogs, chopped (I used sugar-free beef franks from U.S. Wellness Meats)
• 1 can Rotel tomatoes, juice drained, chopped small
• 1 c tomato sauce
• 2 chipolte peppers in adobe sauce, chopped finely
• 1 t garlic powder
• 1 t cumin powder

Slaw Ingredients

• 1 red cabbage, sliced thinly (The cabbage should quite small–weighing about 1 lb., you won’t need more than that)
• 1/2 c mayo
• 1/2 red onion, sliced
• 3 T pickled jalapenos, finely chopped**
• 5 T pickled jalapeno juice**
• 1 T yellow mustard

Method

In a medium sauce pan, cook the ground meat all the way through and then add the cut up hot dogs. Throw the rest of the ingredients in the pot and let it simmer while you make the slaw.

For the slaw, get out a large bowl and add all the ingredients, except the cabbage, and whisk to combine. Add the cabbage to the slaw base and mix to combine.

To serve, place the chili on the bottom of the bowl, then add some slaw and top with whatever hot dog fixings you like. Yellow mustard is an absolute must!

*If you’re pinching pennies, you can definitely leave out the ground meat and just use hot dogs. Chop the hot dogs rather small so they go further.

**Don’t be afraid of the pickled jalapenos or the juice. It’s not nearly as spicy as fresh jalapeno…but as always, add a little at a time and taste as you go–because you can’t take it away after you’ve added it.

Roasted Throw Together

Ingredients

• 1 lb. Italian (or any other flavor) sausage, casing removed, if link, and crumbled
• 2 onions, sliced
• 1 8oz. package mushrooms, halved
• 1 apple, chopped large

Method

Get your oven to 450ºF.

We’re going to build “layers” so that the fat from the sausage will seep down onto the other ingredients and there’s no need to add any additional fat. In a roasting pan, in this order, add: onions, mushrooms, apples and then the crumbled sausage. Place in the oven and roast until everything is softened, browned and cooked through–about 30 minutes. Make sure to mix things around about half way through.