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.

St. Patrick’s day celebration: Slow cook brisket with vegetables

A couple of days before St. Patrick’s day, asked around to find out what I should cook to honor the Irish holiday. Corned beef and cabbage was the hands down winner. I was looking all over the internet to see how I can make corned beef from scratch. From Martha Stewart Corned Beef recipe, I would need to cured the meat for about 3-6 days before the day of cooking. I didn’t want to buy store-bought high nitrate cured meat, so I decided to make uncured brisket instead and added some Irish stout to the recipe. The Irish Stout added sweetness into the brisket.

Now that I know I need time to cured the meat, I will plan ahead of time next year to make this Irish tradition on St. Patrick’s day.


Ingredients
*2 pound brisket
*2 tablespoon peppercorn
*2 bay leafs
*10 cloves garlic
*12-14 oz stout(I used Guinness draught)
*2 homemade beef broth
* ½ cabbage
*1/2 pound carrots
*3 cups potatoes
*salt

Directions
1) In a slow cooker, add brisket, peppercorn, bay leafs, garlic, stout and beef broth. Cook in high heat for 3 hours or low heat for 5 hours.
2) Add vegetables, and cook for high heat for 3 more hours or low heat for 4 more hours.
3) Serve hot. Add salt to taste.

The Walrus and the Carpenter restaurant review

Mr. S and I love to try out new restaurants.  He came across this new restaurant located in Ballard called The Walrus and the Carpenter which was featured in the January issue of GQ (Read article here).  If you enter through Ballard Ave, you will walk through a little ally way by the bike shop to get the petit restaurant.  The decor is pain and the staff are very nice.  I really liked their open kitchen which allows you to see the staff cracking the oysters.  This lets you know they are very fresh!

We ordered:
* Half dozen oysters
* Butter and bread
* Steak tartare, farm egg yolk & toast



Yes, steak tartare.  It was our first time trying raw ground beef.  I have had Ahi tuna or Salmon tartare many times, but have never tried steak tartare.  I thought the flavor wasn't as good as tuna tartare, but the texture was similar, so on the whole, I thought it was pretty good.

The oysters tasted fresh and sweet.  They came with 3 different sauces to try the oysters with; garlic vinegar, horseradish, and lemon.  I prefer lemon!

My overall review is 4.5 stars out of 5. The -0.5 is the price of food.

Mr. S weekend special -Dutch baby with Cinnamon-Apple sauce

Mr. S weekend special -Dutch baby with Cinnamon-Apple sauce

A couple of Saturday mornings ago, Mr. S told me he wanted to make breakfast. I was very surprised, because he never wants to cook. Apparently he saw a Dutch baby recipe in GQ where they occasionally list easy recipes for guys. The Dutch baby turned out very good but what made it better was the Cinnamon-Apple sauce. If you don’t want the Cinnamon-Apple sauce, you can add lemon juice with powdered sugar for the original taste.


Dutch baby
Ingredients
* 2 eggs
* 3 tablespoons of butter
* ½ cup flour
*1/2 cup milk
*1 teaspoon sugar
*1/4 teaspoon salt
*apple cinnamon sauce(recipe follows)

Directions
1) Turn the oven to 375F.
2) Melt the butter in a saucepan. At the mean time, mix the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl.
3) When butter is melted, pour the batter onto the saucepan and put the saucepan into the oven. Bake for 5 to 10 minutes, add apple cinnamon sauce, put the saucepan back to the oven and back for 5 to 10 minutes more or until brown on the edges.
4) Serve hot.


Cinnamin Apple Sauce
Ingredients
*1/4 cup brown sugar
*1 teaspoon cinnamon
*2 teaspoon corn starch
*2 apple, peeled sliced
*1 teaspoon vanilla
*1 tablespoon butter

Directions
1) Mix brown sugar, cinnamon and corn starch in a small bowl.
2) Heat saucepan in medium heat, add brown sugar mix to heated saucepan then stir for 2 minutes. Add apple, vanilla, butter. Stir well, simmer for about 5 minutes.

Singapore Stir-fry Noodles

I was in the mood for curry, and if you like curry then you will want to try this dish. It is a light curry dish and it is fairly easy to make, but it involves quite a bit of ingredients.


Ingredients
*2 tablespoon of oil
*2 cloves garlic, minced
*1 tablespoon minced ginger
*2 stalks celery, sliced thin
*1 medium yellow onion, sliced thin
*4 jalapeno peppers, seeded and sliced thin
*1 cup bean sprouts, rinsed and drained
*8 green onions, root end trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
*8 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked, sliced
*1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
*1 pound Chinese barbecue pork cut into matchsticks
*12 ounces of fine dry rice vermicelli, soaked for 10-20mins in hot water
*3 tablespoons oyster sauce

Sauce:
*1 tablespoon oil
*3 tablespoons curry powder
*1 tablespoon minced ginger
*2 cloves garlic, minced
*1 cup chicken broth
*4 tablespoons soy sauce
*4 teaspoons sugar
*2 teaspoons hot chili paste


Directions
3) To make the sauce, heat up 1 tablespoons of oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the curry powder, the ginger, and the minced garlic, and saute until fragrant. Add the chicken broth, soy sauce, sugar, and chili paste. Stir to combine and then cover and cook for 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and set aside.
4) Heat 1 tablespoons of oil in a large wok over high heat. Add in garlic and ginger, and stir-fry until the garlic starts to become golden. Add in the celery, onion, pepper, sprouts, green onions, and mushrooms. Stir-fry for 3 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften. Set the vegetables aside in a bowl.
5) Heat 1 tablespoons of oil in the wok over high heat. Add in the shrimp and stir-fry until they start to turn pink on both sides. Add the barbecue pork and toss to combine.
6) Add in the noodles and the vegetables. Pour on the sauce and also add the oyster sauce. Mix the ingredients thoroughly to coat all the noodles and incorporate all the vegetables.
7) Serve hot.