Jack-O'-Lantern Stuffed Peppers / Stuffed Skulls

I LOVE HALLOWEEN.

I started tracking the "Halloween appropriate" movies I would watch every October with the goal of a thirty-one in thirty-one days. It combined my love of Halloween, movies, and data.

Guess which year kiddo number one was born!

I have come to accept this is a lost hobby for the next several years. So I am trying to get my Halloween thrills in other ways.

The next best thing to a Texas Chainsaw Massacre marathon?

Jack-O'-Lantern Stuffed Peppers (original recipe)

Resources:
4 orange bell peppers
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
Black pepper
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoon chili powder
1 lb lean ground beef
1 cup cooked white rice
1 cup chicken stock, divided
1 (15 oz) can diced tomatoes
1 1/4 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend, divided

Method:
Preheat oven to 350°.
Cut off and reserve the top of each pepper. Remove and discard the cores and seeds. Carve a Jack O'Lantern face into each pepper. Drizzle the inside of each pepper with olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper. Place the peppers upright in a large baking dish along with the pepper tops.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large nonstick skillet. Sauté onions until soft, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add beef and sauté until browned and cooked through, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon. Drain the fat.

Return skillet to stovetop. Reduce heat a little. Season with salt and pepper to taste and stir in the chili powder. Add the fire-roasted tomatoes, 1/2 cup chicken stock, cooked rice and 3/4 cup of cheese. Stir until the mixture is evenly combined. Remove from heat.

Divide rice and beef mixture between the hollowed out peppers. Top with remaining cheese.

Pour remaining 1/2 cup chicken stock into pan. Cover with foil and bake for about 30 minutes. Remove the foil and cook for another 10-15 minutes, until the peppers are tender and the cheese is melted.

Round two.

Stuffed Skulls (original recipe)

Resources:
1 cup shredded pizza cheese blend
1/2 cup pizza sauce
1/2 teaspoon oregano
8 oz cream cheese
one medium chicken breast, cooked, cubed
1 teaspoon minced dried onion

1 tube pizza dough (14ish ounces I think)

Method:

Mix the pizza cheese, pizza sauce, and oregano in a bowl. In a separate bowl mix the cream cheese, chicken, and onion. 

Spray your skull pan with cooking spray.

Roll out the pizza dough and roll flat and thin. Cut into six equal rectangles.

Evil baking. I dig it.

Commentary:

The jack o' lanterns are great but just any old stuffed pepper at the end of the day.

The skulls were ok. My son and I liked the cream cheese skulls more. My wife liked the pizza skulls better. Naturally you can put just about anything in them.

Skull pans are hard to come by outside of Halloween time stock up appropriately!

The only challenge is getting the dough even. About half came out perfect. The rest leaked or had big dough sides.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, both will be made again. 

Also the wifey said, no stuffed peppers without face EVER. Yes dear.

Cheesy Swedish Meatball Bake

So let us get this out of the way: FUCK Tastemade. A fb page (who I shall not mention for fear of associated them with these schmucks) reposted their video. And thus began a journey...

A blurry journey apparently.

The still before the video looked tasty, so I watched the video. It looked really good (the word Gruyère always gets me excited even if I cannot pronounce it) but no specifics. No link to the recipe either. No comments with the recipe. Nothing.

Now depending on the day's solar flare activity, the relative humidity in Johannesburg, and the frequency of the letter "L" in headlines that day, it is about 50/50 if I would have walked away or continued. That day there was just enough "L"s to continue. I posted for help. I tried their fb page and I could not find the original post. I tried their webpage. It just wanted me to install some app, which is a pet peeve of mine so no. A few hours later somebody replied with this mess "Type the recipe name in the fb search bar. It'll give you a couple recipes. One of them says full recipe. Click on it and the video comes up, but, on the right is a link to the recipe." I tried to follow these instructions, I really did because at this point I was commited. Anyway a few more hours pass by and someone replies with a link. I click the link and low and behold it is the same DAMN VIDEO but on their website instead of fb!!! I was about to give up and luckily I noticed a print button just below the video. I clicked on that and I PDF'ed the recipe. Which brings us to today.

Resources:
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground turkey
1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups egg noodles, cooked
1/2 cup Gruyère cheese, shredded

6 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 cups beef broth
1/2 cup heavy cream
Salt to taste

Method:
In a large bowl, combine ground meats, panko, eggs, melted butter and
seasonings. Roll mixture into balls.

In a skillet on medium-high heat, cook meatballs in olive oil, until browned on all
sides. Transfer to a paper towel-lined tray and set aside.

Prepare the gravy. In the same skillet, melt butter and whisk in the flour until
lightly browned. Slowly pour in the beef broth while whisking continuously. Keep
whisking and cooking until slightly thickened. Stir in the heavy cream and season
with salt and pepper.

Place meatballs in the gravy and simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes.

Cook egg noodles to al dente and drain. In a baking dish, mix noodles together
with meatballs and gravy. Sprinkle with shredded Gruyère cheese.

Bake at 375 degrees F until slightly golden and bubbling. 

Commentary:
I refuse to link to these jakovasaurs. I cited my source, that is all they get.

And Darth Vader Mr. Potato Head went to pieces when I asked him to help! 

I fried the meat in two batches because it was a lot a meat.

Scalding but tasty

I made one radical change: ground turkey was supposed to be ground pork. I have no regrets. The turkey made the meatballs "lighter" than I think pork would have. I think it was a really pleasant change and would probably stick with it in future go.

A few things I would change in the future. This needs more egg noodles and cheese. I would go as far as to say double both.I used a 9x13 pan. I would use something smaller next time. The cheese kind of disappeared due to the large surface area.

The leftovers kept really well. This could easily be a meal prep Sunday kind of recipe.

Conclusion:
I get it, we all have to get paid. Seriously though, fuck Tastemade and anyone else who "posts" recipes and then make you jump through this shit. If your business model involves making my life more difficult: I hate you, your children, your children's children, their pet dog, your favorite holiday, and the color of the shirt you were wearing the day you made the post.

But the meatballs were pretty good... but not great.

Beef Stew

I have skipped ahead several cookbooks to Cooking with Wine for today's entry. I know, I know I said I would not do that, but this was for the greater good of mankind!

Mmm. Tasty greater good.

Daycare does a meal train for people in need. One of the families in our classroom just had a kid and asked for stews. I could literally could not say no! Ok... not literally or even figuratively really, but I like beef stew. I went through a dozen or so cookbooks before I found the right recipe. So without further ado Mother's Old Fashioned Beef Stew or simply beef stew.

Resourses:

3 tablespoons flour
Salt / pepper to taste
3 lbs beef cut into 1 1/2" cubes
2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons beef fat
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 1/2 onion (I used Vidalia), sliced
1 1/2 teaspoon marjoram, powdered
2 bay leaves
3 cups beef stock
2 1/4 red wine (I used a cheap Cabernet Sauvignon)
6 turnips, 3/4" cubed
9 carrots, ~1/2" sliced
6 potatoes, 3/4" cubed (I used larger baking potatoes)
1 1/2 fresh flat parsley, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoon thyme (pretty sure I forgot this)
18 small white onions (I wanted pearl but couldn't find them), peeled

Method:
Put flour in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Mix. A few at a time drag the beef cubes through and coat on all sides. Refill as necessary.

Heat butter and fat in a stock pot. A few at a time brown beef cubes on all sides. When browned move to a plate or bowl to capture the juices. Add butter/fat as needed. Deglaze the pot with the wine, scrapping up all the bits. Add remaining wine, garlic, sliced onions, parsley, beef cubes, parsley, marjoram, bay leaves, and stock. Simmer for one and a half hours.

Add carrots, potatoes, small white onions, and turnips. Continue to simmer until the vegetables are tender, about two hours. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Commentary:
So I have moderately modified this recipe. The original was more or less 2/3rds the above, but I tweaked a few numbers.

One I did not modify was the extra large bottle of cheap wine.

I did not limit the excessive amount of meat either. 

This is from a Holland House cookbook. For those unfamiliar Holland House makes those cheap salted cooking wines available at the grocery. They're my go to sherry and Marsala. That said, I wanted to go with drinking wine not cooking wine (so I could drink it, duh). As a result I was pretty generous with the salt to taste part.

This is basically a commercial in book form.

Before I really got into making the recipe, I trimmed the fat and rendered it to get the fat needed.

I am just being practical.

Conclusion:
Next time a family in need needs stew count me in for this one!

Slow Cooker Garlic Ale Roast Beef Sandwiches

Apple shown for artistic reasons. What is artistic about an apple? Hell if I know, but damnit I did not take a picture without the apple so I need to make up some bs excuse... Er, I mean just leave me alone. You just do not understand my art!

One cool think about being on social media with your hobbies is people share. Before I had an social media cooking presence, I would get the occasional recipe from my mother. Once in a blue moon, I would get a cookbook as a gift. These days on the other hand, I get recipes, tips, hat tips, etc. on a regular basis.

So a week or two back my mother-in-law send me a recipe. At the time it sounded good, but I did not expect to make it. The wifey is not a huge beef person (as you may have previously noticed we eat a lot of chicken). Well I realized I had a roast in the freezer that was getting a little old.

So I decided to make this anyway and split it into a week's worth of lunches. This is a great "Sunday meal prep" kind of recipe. It is fairly low effort. It makes enough for several meals. It was pretty cheap for me too as I usually buy roasts when they are on sale and it does not need to be a great cut.

Waiting is the hardest part!

Resources:
1 two-pound beef roast (a larger roast is fine if your slow cooker is bigger than mine)
season salt
black pepper
5 garlic cloves
1 red onion, sliced
1 cup Italian dressing (I used Olive Garden)
1 cup lite/light beer (Kentucky Kölsch, IC Lite, Hudy Delight, or in my case Miller Lite <shudder>)
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons cornstarch

Method:
Sprinkle both sides of the roast with season salt and pepper. Place the roast into a slow cooker. Place the garlic cloves, bay leaves, and the red onion on top of the roast. Then pour the Italian dressing and beer over the roast.

Cover and cook on low for 10 hours (or 6 on high). Stir once half way through.

Discard bay leaves. Trim the fat and then shred the meat with 2 forks, smash the garlic with the back of a fork and stir the garlic into the shredded meat. Separate the onions and add to the meat as desired.

Strain about a three cups (I winged this part) of the juices to a pot and heat over high heat. Stirring frequently. Once a rolling boil is achieved, mix two teaspoons cornstarch with two teaspoons of water. Mix until a paste forms. Add to the boiling mixture. Continue to stir until the sauce becomes thick (five or ten minutes based on taste). Pour the sauce over the meat and onions.

Serve on bread with toasted cheese. This made me four hearty sandwiches.

Commentary:

I modified this recipe from the original a bit. The broad strokes are the same, but the some of the details are not. The link is above if you feel like noting the details. The big change is I added the sauce back in.

Creative license.

Do not be afraid to be generous with the season salt and pepper. I know nobody wants to over salt their food, but this is a big slab o' meat!

Look at that meat!

I will mention I specified the beer and Italian dressing. Why? Those can make a HUGE difference. Not all Italian dressings are even remotely the same. Plus I could I have used the bottle of Yards Poor Richard's Tavern Spruce I had lying around, but I did not want my roast to taste like a pine cone. 

I really hate when recipes do not specify beer. At least give me a general style. Nope, not here. Original recipe: "use your favorite". What kind of lazy writing is that? Seriously what kind of stupid advice is that anyway?!? No other ingredient would people say that. This recipe needs some vegetables. "Use your favorite"! Because there is no difference between broccoli or celery or a potato. Meat? Sure, "use your favorite" because a salmon fillet is interchangeable with brisket or a pork sausage. Can you tell this really annoys me?

While we are on the topic of the original recipe: when did a slider become a generic term for a small sandwich. Some of you may be thinking where did this come from? Well I edited out the word slider from the original recipe. A slider is a WHITE CASTLE HAMBURGER or equivalent. The original is a small sandwich. Goddamn heathens.

And another thing: what is wrong the <generation>? Why do they not understand that <problem> can be fixed simply by <over simplification of problem>?!?

Phew. Glad I got that off my chest!

Honestly there's not much to this recipe. Do no over think this one. Meat, seasoning, and sauce go in a slow cooker. Cook. Shred. Eat.

Conclusion:

Good stuff. Do not skip the sauce/onions step though. The onions took on a very different flavor and the three together really made this a winner.

Pressure Cooker Sauerbraten

Protein! Carbs! Gravy! MAN FOOD! Plus: cookies. Everyone likes cookies.

A little before Christmas I bought myself a fancy dancy electric pressure cooker. It was one of those crazy deep sales they always have that time of year. I really didn't have a rhythm or reason to this. That said, it should not come as a surprise to say I like kitchen toys.

Meat is a good excuse though.

I made a recipe (lemon barbecued chicken) I have made a fair number of times and just seemed like a good match. Really it was fine. But it did not seem like I was getting anything out of the pressure cooker as the chicken was just about the same as when I make it in the oven. I guess it cooked a little faster, but not enough to justify a new toy.

So I bought Pressure Cookers For Dummies. I found a used copy for a couple of bucks shipped. It talks a little about pressure cookers in general, which is nice. It touted its sauerbraten as one of the most impressive things to make in a pressure cooker as it reduced time from one thousand eight hundred minutes to eighty (this is way more impressive in minutes). Well that sounded damn impressive and I just so happened to have a shoulder pot roast sitting in the freezer I had no plans for.

Included because I thought this picture was pretty. 

Resources:

Wine. Wine is priority #1. Cookie crumbs are a close second.

1 cup water
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 dry red wine (I used a cabernet sauvignon that I had on hand)
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons salt
salt and pepper
4 lb beef roast
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large carrots, coarsely chopped
2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
3/4 cups crushed gingersnaps
2 bay leaves
cornstarch (optional)
egg noodles (cooked at some point)

Method:
Combine the water, vinegar, wine, brown sugar, clovers, and 2 teaspoons salt. Set aside.

Generously salt and pepper the meat.

Heat the oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Brown the meat evenly on all sides.

Add the meat, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, crushed gingersnaps, and bay leaves to the slow cooker. Pour the mixture from step 1 over the meat. Stir to combine. Cover and bring to high pressure. Cook for 60 minutes.

Release the pressure, quick-release method (mind your fingers as to avoid scalding). Open and remove the cover.

Remove the meat to a serving platter and cover with foil. Discard the bay leaves.

Pour the cooking liquid into a food processor and process until smooth. Season to taste. Whisk in cornstarch and reduce to thicken as desired in a pan over medium-high heat.

Slice the meat thinly. Serve over the meat and gravy over egg noodles.

Commentary:
I halved the above recipe because my roast was closer to two pounds than four.

Baby food and croutons are optional.

As noted, I thickened the gravy by adding cornstarch and reducing it on the stove top just a little. This is a deviation from the original recipe. Honestly, one of the big take aways for me with the pressure cooker in general is thickening sauces. Since you need large amounts of liquid for the pressure cooker to work, the final results are, well, liquidy. I have added cornstarch and reduced almost every sauce that has come out the thing since. If you have a stove top one you can do that directly. I have the electric / stand alone kind, so I have to transfer the sauce to a pan and then reduce. Not a big deal... the wifey (who I am giving one more pot to wash) may disagree.

Aside: it is kind of neat to have a sauce where you have "liquefied" onions and carrots. Is it not?

Pro tip: crush way more cookies than you need. Then you can get the leftovers by the spoonful. Mmm cookie crumbs.

Conclusion:
The grocer has roasts on sale pretty frequently (in fact I made one last night and I have one more in my freezer). This will undoubtedly be made again.

Shepherd’s Pie

Mmm. Excessive cheese.

So there are some foods I think you do a disservice by having a recipe. Something like shepherd’s pie should not be tied down by convention. It should not be shackled with unnecessary rules. Damn the man, save the Empire! Then I got married. Now you bet your ass I have an EXACT recipe. 

I tell you this not to make fun of my wife (ok maybe a little of that too), but to encourage you to play with this one. It is a very forgiving recipe, so if you are new to cooking or a seasoned veteran: experiment. I will discuss further in the commentary. BTW when you get the commentary section get comfy. I have opinions: lots and lots of opinions. Some of which are even about cooking!

Waxing philosophical aside, this is a recipe made for leftovers that keep well. This gets dinner and three to four lunches (total) for my wifey and me. That is a big selling point for me.

Resources:
2-2 1/2 lbs potatoes
1 lb ground beef
1/2-1 sweet onion, dice
1 can corn, drained
8 oz frozen peas
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon thyme
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 tablespoon flour
1 lb shredded provolone (or mozzarella ) cheese, divided
milk or butter (or better yet both)
salt and pepper

Method:
Skin and boil the potatoes until tender. Mash with 6 oz of cheese, milk, butter and salt to taste. Allow to cool slightly.

Cook the ground beef with the onion over medium heat until completely cooked. Drain some (not all) of the fat.

In a large bowl, mix the beef mixture, corn, peas, Worcestershire, thyme, cream of chicken soup, flour, and salt & pepper to taste. Transfer to an large deep baking dish (~8"x12"). Cover with a thick layer of potatoes. Top with remaining cheese.


Bake at 350ºF for 20 minutes or until it is heated throughout and the cheese is melty. Broil briefly (~5 minutes) until cheese is lightly browned. Do not burn it (duh).

Broil phase is not really NECESSARY, but it gives it some color in the cheese and I like it.

Commentary:
Is she looking? No. Ok. We are safe to talk. The wifey has a crazy ground beef issue. I like to pick the right ground beef for the job. Burgers: 80/20. Hamburger helper: 90/10. And so on. If I let her have her way it would be 93/7 all the time. We compromise on 90/10 most of the time with the occasional 85/15. For whatever reason, she really hates 80/20. Anyway the point is in this recipe it does not matter much. The only difference for me is if I was using 80/20 I would drain the beef more thoroughly than the 90/10. I leave a fair bit of the liquefied fat in (not that there is much) with 90/10.

Let us talk about what is important and what is not important. Ground beef, mash potatoes, and some veggies are what make a shepherd’s pie. Beyond that it is personal taste. So let us talk a “little” about how I arrived at the above recipe.

Vegetables: I find a total of 2-3 cups to 1 lb of ground beef is a nice ratio. But you can use anything for the vegetables. Lots of onions and corn is what I like. Too many peas turn me off though. What can I say I do not like a lot of pea-ness (file that under jokes that do not translate to the written word). If you have frozen vegetable medley lying around use that. Like some crunch? Add diced carrots. The only catch is there is minimal oven cooking here, so anything (like raw carrots) that needs more cook time that has to be done before the oven.

Check out my meat / veggie balance. See it. Touch it. Taste it.

Potatoes: the mashed potatoes to “other” ratio is SUPER-DUPER important. This recipe comes with a little bit more potatoes than other, but pretty close. I have seen versions where you have 2-3X the potatoes. I have seen versions where the potatoes barely cover the dish. Like anything else, it is a taste thing.

Cheese: completely optional, but why would you ever OPT OUT of cheese? Honestly half the time I probably use more than a pound if I have it handy.

Seasoning: you do not want to overwhelm the potatoes and vegetables, but little/no seasoning comes across as bland. I like Worcestershire and a little bit of one of the Italian basics (thyme in this case). I have used oregano before too. I have found my happy palce, you should do the same. I just advise against going hog wild. Lightly seasoned is the goal here.

Cream of chicken: finally we come to the liquid. You can use broth if you want to go a little healthier.  Yes, cream of chicken is calorically heavy. I usually get about six servings out of this recipe, so I do not feel like they put this over the top into the unhealthy category. Point is you want to have something there. Otherwise this will be way too dry.  And I like something on the thicker side. Cream of chicken and flour accomplishes that. 

If you are still reading my long winded commentary section I award you an imaginary internet point. Congrats!

Conclusion:
It hits all four traditional food groups in one meal. It is easy to make. It is flexible (which helps when you forget the <BLANK> at the grocery). The ingredients are cheap. There is a reason this is a stable of my household.

Velveeta Burrito Meat

Mystery contents

I try not to waste food. You know saving money, children in Africa, and what not. I had half a block of Velveeta left over from Buffalo Chicken Soup and I did not have the ingredients for another batch of soup. I also had an old freezer burned pound of ground beef and left over cilantro. So burritos became a plan.

The challenge with things like this, in my mind at least, is finding something that does not require buying lots more things thus defeating the saving money angle (but still doing nothing for the children in Africa because I am a bad person or something). In this case I bought a thing of shredded lettuce and some wraps. I think that put me back roughly $3 and fed me for three meals.

So to get to the point today is not a recipe I am endorsing so much as an idea: throw a bunch of stuff in a slow cooker. It is a great money savings and relatively fool proof cooking-wise. 

Resources:

1 lb ground beef

8 oz Velveeta

1/2 cup salsa

1 packet taco seasoning

1 onion, diced

Put all ingredients in a slow cooker. Set to low.

In the first couple hours, stir every 30-45 minutes until cheese is mixed in and the beef is broken up. 

Cook for a total of 8 hours.

Commentary:

So I make some some Chipotle rice because it is awesome and to get rid of the old cilantro that was lying around. I rounded it out with some pickled jalapenos and shredded lettuce

Lettuce not pictured, duh.

I layered the ingredients originally. I did this because they just do not really mix well until partially cooked. 

Ugly old beef

Fake cheese.

Seriously onion is the only decent looking ingredient.

Conclusion:
Bought wraps and lettuce to use up Velveeta, cilantro, and old beef. I am pretty sure I came out ahead on this one.