Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Shepherd's Pie!

Heat some extra virgin olive oil in a skillet. Fry ground beef in it with pepper. Drain, set aside. add thai chili sauce to ground beef. mix throughout. don't add too much.

Drop a hunk of butter into the skillet. Let it brown. Add finely chopped sweet peppers, tomatoes and half-moon carrots. Let it brown, then add a handful of flour. Cook the flour, and add red wine.

Cook the red wine down to a third of its previous state. Add a fruity wheat beer, like Leinenkugels Sunset Wheat, and reduce to original height. Then add the ground beef, and stir to combine. Then add one Guiness, stirring continuously throughout. Once it's reduced again, add more flour and stir throughly until at proper thickness. You want it mega-thick.

if you haven't already put a pot of water on for potatoes, do so now. boil them. then run them through a food mill, along with a chunk of butter and a good amount of milk that have been microwaved in the same glass.

beat potatoes until creamy. add salt. Put in piping bag. Pipe potatoes over meat mix, that's been placed in a pan, and fluff with a fork before popping into a 350 degree oven until the top's brown.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Meatloaf!

one small white onion, peeled, chopped fine
one medium red pepper, deveined, deseeded, chopped fine
four small sweet yellow and orange peppers, deseeded, deveined, chopped fine.

enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. I used organic extra virgin.

cinnamon
kosher salt
fresh cracked black pepper
garlic powder
cumin

breadcrumbs

i used 88% ground beef - it came in a six-pound block from Costco and I used...fuck, maybe a pound and a half..

heat the olive oil in a pan. once it's warm, add the dry seasonings and let them flavor the oil. then add the finely chopped veggies and saute them down.

meanwhile, dose the ground beef in garlic and teriyaki (i used Trader Ming's Soyaki) and work it in with your hands, which will need washing immediately afterwards.

once veggies are done, toss two handfuls of breadcrumbs into the pan and stir until the oil disappears. add this to the meat, stirring first with a spatula, then your hands.

spread the mix into a 9x9 pan, and top with leftover pineapple hand glaze after stabbing holes in it with the pointy bit of the spatula.

if you don't have the most awesome glaze in existence, top with more teriyaki mixed 50-50 with ketchup. Top that with bacon.

bake at 350 for an hour. use a meat thermometer to make sure it reaches 160 in the middle. leave out to cool, then chill for storage. Eat within a week.

I want to eat this as a sandwich with mozzarella on fresh laffa, but my current location is much, much too far from Pita Plus and Liora's awe-inspiring Israeli flatbread.