melting your mouth

Can you believe it? I’m actually on time for a Whisk Wednesday’s event! It’s amazing. (Of course, I’m also late for Daring Bakers, but that’s another story.) This week’s assignment was a Lamb Stew with Spring Vegetables. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find lamb except for chops, which I didn’t want to waste on stew, so I used stew beef instead. I took a fair amount of liberties with this one — I used rosemary instead of thyme, and changed the vegetables around a bit. (I should’ve also included pearl onions and green beans, but I left those out, and added a parsnip.) Also, I was supposed to cook each kind of vegetable (carrots, turnips, onions) in its own pot, but I didn’t have enough saucepans — and wouldn’t have wanted to clean them if I had — so I cooked them all together. I actually think to make it even easier they could’ve been just added to the stew directly, but maybe they would’ve gotten too soft, I don’t know.

I also had trouble reading the recipe, which I seem to be doing a lot of lately. More on that when I get my Daring Bakers post up. Anyway, it said to drain the potatoes before adding them, but I thought it was saying to drain the lamb. I thought it seemed strange to drain the liquid out of a stew, but figured that the folks at LCB probably know better than I, so I dutifully drained it. Then, reading again later, I realized the ambiguity, and decided I should’ve drained the potatoes and not the stew. Luckily, I had saved the broth and added it back in later, but that’s why my pictures seem to have a bit less liquid in them than they should.

Anyway, despite all the changes and screw ups, this turned out delicious. The meat had a great flavor from simmering in the water with tomatoes and especially picked up the taste of the rosemary. Since it actually cooled of this week, this was a great dinner. It also could be simplified quite easily without, I expect, losing much flavor, so that this might actually start making regular appearances at our house!

As always, if you want the recipe, check out the Le Cordon Bleu at Home book, though you can see the basics below, after the jump. And look to see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group did, on the blogroll to the right. (more…)

I remember this recipe from when I was a little kid and it is one of my favorites as I like almost any sort of pasta. My grandmother, whom I called Granny Pat, made this recipe for my mom many years. I latch on to traditions more than the rest of my family did when I was growing up. One tradition we had was having this for Christmas Eve either right before or right after a movie.

The sauce is a mix between chili and a traditional spaghetti sauce. I truly don’t know the origins of the recipe, but it very well could have come from a Campbell’s soup recipe book. I have written the recipe just as my mom has given to me, but it is fairly forgiving to add a few things for a change. I like to add garlic, fresh mushrooms, or a fresh spice like basil or oregano. One of these days I will try it in a crock pot. I hope you enjoy.

Recipe after the break.

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As Mary pointed out previously, I have had to take off my Sous Chef badge and take the helm for the next couple of weeks. Fortunately for you that means a few articles may yet get written. Unfortunately for you I am not as practiced as Mary in the art of cooking or the art of writing. So bear with me as at least I do in fact know how to cook and I am mostly using her recipes and guidance.

This chili is a wonderful warm and rich comfort food. I am sure we can learn several more recipes from the native Californians here, as I hear it is quite good. This recipe was perfect for me to cook this past week as it is really simple and relatively easy to clean up. Only two items that didn’t go in the dishwasher was the cast iron skillet used for the cornbread and the nonstick pan I used to brown the ground beef in. The reason it was so easy?…it is made the night before and assembled in a crockpot. Yes of you course you are smarter than me!, as I am sure that is not much of a novel idea.

Before we get going a couple of suggestions. First off we typically make this the night before and put in the refrigerator. If you like it spicy feel free to add more chili powder, the original recipe had 3 T. Be creative and find a topping that suits you. Since we weren’t worried about keeping it remotely healthy we added sour cream and cheese. If I weren’t too lazy I may have added some green onions. Walk it off, either after dinner or the next day. Thats about it, here we go.

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