Irish Beef and Stout Stew

I bought a 6-pack of Guinness to make a St. Patrick’s day dinner and decided to look for more recipes to use Guinness as an ingredient. I found this recipe from Martha Stewart. It was perfect since I have a grass fed beef roast sitting in my freezer from the 1/16th of a cow I purchased. I changed a little bit of the recipe. Instead of using store bought broth, I used my homemade beef broth. Also, I used my slow cooker to make this dish so I would have food ready when I got home from work.


Ingredients
* 2 cans (6 ounces each) tomato paste
* 4 cup homemade beef broth
* 4 pounds beef chuck, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
* 2 1/2 pounds new potatoes, scrubbed
* 2 medium onions, cut into 1-inch pieces
* 10 garlic cloves, sliced
* Coarse salt and ground pepper
* 1/2 pound baby carrots
* 1 bottle Guinness

Directions
1) Mix the tomato paste and broth. Put the rest of the ingredients in the slow cooker. Then add the broth mix. Turn slow cooker on and use high setting to cook for 5-6 hours or use low setting to cook for 8-9 hours.
2) Serve hot and season with salt and pepper.

Lasagna with Spinach

I was craving lasagna since Monday when my co-worker, Baller V brought Lasagna in to work. Making lasagna is very easy and it is the perfect dish to make with your kids. I was going to make a vegetarian version so I added spinach, but I saw some grass-fed ground beef in my freezer, and I decided to use some to make this lasagna.


Ingredients
*1 pound ground beef
*Salt and pepper
*1 1/2 pounds ricotta cheese
*3 large farm eggs
* 2 bottles pasta sauce
*1 pound whole wheat lasagna sheets, cooked al dente
*2 packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
*3 cups shredded mozzarella
*1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2) In a nonstick sauce pan, add the ground beef and season with salt and pepper. Brown meat, breaking any large lumps, until it is no longer pink. Remove from heat and drain any excess fat. Set aside and allow to cool completely.
3) In a medium sized bowl, thoroughly mix the ricotta and eggs. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
4) Into the bottom of a 13 by 9-inch baking dish, spread 1/3 cup tomato sauce. Arrange the pasta sheets side by side, covering the bottom of the baking dish. Evenly spread a layer of half of the ricotta mixture, a layer of half(1 package) of the spinach, a layer of half of the ground beef, a layer of a bottle of tomato sauce and at last, a layer of mozzarella. Arrange another layer of pasta sheets and repeat previous procedure. Arrange the final layer of pasta sheets and top with remaining tomato sauce, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.
5) Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place lasagna dish on top, cover and put on the middle rack of the oven and bake until top is bubbling, about 30 minutes. Remove cover and continue to bake for about 15 minutes.

Vietamese Fresh Spring Rolls - repeat

It has been a while I have made Vietnamese Spring Rolls, so I decided to make it again.


Click here to see recipe.