Roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy

Yet another recipe using the leftovers from our Pot au Feu. We had some of the beef left over, so we wanted to use it up, and figured this would be a nice, simple way to do it. Since the beef was already done, all we had to do was heat it up, and make the mashed potatoes and gravy.

Ingredients

• Approximately 1 lb (.45 kg) beef roast, cooked.
• Approximately 1 lb (.45 kg) baby red potatoes.
• 4 tbsp Butter
• Milk
• Cream
• Flour
• 4 cups Chicken, beef or vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup White wine

Directions

1. Halve your baby red potatoes, and boil them in lightly salted water until they are soft.
2. Depending on the consistency you like, you can either just crush them with a fork or run them through a food mill to mash them.
3. In a pot over medium heat, mix with 2 tbsp of butter, about a cup of milk, and as good splash of cream. Mix liquid into the potatoes well, until they are smooth.
4. Shred one or two small pieces of beef, then melt 2 tbsp of butter (or bacon fat) in a skillet over medium heat and brown the beef shreds in the skillet.
5. Place the rest of the leftover beef in an oven-proof dish and heat up slowly in the oven at very low temperature to avoid over-drying it.
6. Add about 2 tbsp flour to the skillet and mix in with the butter until you get a bit of a paste, cook for a couple of minutes to remove the raw flour taste.
7. Add the wine to the skillet and mix well to dissolve all the flour.
8. Add the stock a little bit at a time, making sure to mix well (even whisk if you need to), to assure that you don't get any flour lumps in your gravy.
9. Once all the stock has been added, turn the heat up to medium-high and bring the liquid to a fast boil. Stir regularly and let it reduce until you have a gravy of desired thickness.
10. Serve several slices or pieces of the beef roast, a goodly lump of mashed potatoes, and gravy over it all.

Apple Crisp

It's Thursday, and we're still posting recipes from things we made this last weekend :) This time it's a pretty simple one, an apple crisp recipe from Epicurious. This turned out pretty well, but the caramel sauce got a little too dark, and one of us would have preferred the apples being peeled (you can peel them or not, according to your taste).

Ingredients

• About 2.5-3 lbs (1.15-1.4 kg) of nice crisp, tart apples, sliced thinly.
• 1/2 cup + 10 tbsp sugar
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp ground allspice
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 3/4 sticks of butter (yup, that's right!)
• 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Directions

1. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together flour, 10 tbsp sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg.
2. Cut 10 tbsp of butter into small pieces, and cut into dry ingredients either with fingers or a pastry cutter.
3. Set topping aside.
4. Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C).
5. Stir sugar and butter together in a large skillet over medium heat until both melt and form a more-or-less smooth sauce.
6. Add lemon juice and cook, stirring constantly, until caramel sauce is medium-brown, around 5 minutes.
7. Toss in apple slices and toss until slices are well-coated.
8. Scrape the apples and caramel sauce into your baking dish(es) and spread them out evenly.
9. Sprinkle the topping over each dish.
10. Bake until apples are tender, the sauce is nice and bubbly, and the topping is lightly browned - about 40-50 minutes.
11. Let cool at least 15 minutes before serving.

Curry Squash and Pumpkin Soup with Toasted Chestnuts and Cranberry Compote

As we mentioned, we had a ton of stock and vegetables left over from the Pot au Feu, so we decided to use them, along with an acorn squash and a small pumpkin to make a curried squash and vegetable soup. We generally followed this recipe from Martha Stewart, but made some changes along the way. It turned out exceptionally well, and it goes wonderfully with the chestnuts and cranberry compote. For the recipe, I'll write how you could do it without the leftover Pot au Feu, but if you have the leftover Pot au Feu, you can just skip the parts that concern cooking the vegetables, and don't need to buy extra vegetables for it, just the squash. This recipe makes about 8 quarts/liters of soup, so it's a great one to make on a weekend day, and then can or freeze the bulk of it to just pull out if you're feeling lazy or don't have anything around to cook.

Ingredients

• Olive oil
• 1 acorn squash and 1 small pumpkin
• 1 large or 2 medium white or yellow onions, quartered
• 6-10 stalks of celery
• 6-10 carrots
• 3-4 medium leeks
• 12 baby turnips
• 1 lb small yellow potatoes
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp curry powder (we used Madras curry, specifically)
• Salt and pepper
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
• 10 fresh chestnuts
• Heavy cream

Directions

1. Fill a stock pot with approximately 6-7 quarts/liters of water, and put the onions, leeks, celery, carrots, turnips, potatoes and some salt and pepper into the water. Over medium heat, simmer the vegetables for about 2 hours (basically you're making a vegetable stock). If you have the leftover Pot au Feu, you can just skip this part and use some of the leftover stock and the vegetables from that.
2. Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C).
3. Cut the squash and the pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds, and lightly rub the flesh with olive oil. Salt lightly.
4. Place the squash and pumpkin halves face down on a baking sheet, and bake in the oven 30-40 minutes until the flesh is very soft.
5. Once the squash and pumpkin have been removed from the oven and cooled off, scrape the flesh out of the skins (or in our case, the skins separated from the flesh, so they could just be peeled right off).
6. Turn the oven up to 400 F (205 C), and cut an X shape into the shell of each chestnut. Place X side up on a baking sheet and roast in the oven until the shells split open, about 5-10 minutes.
7. Mash up the squash and pumpkin a bit, and then add the squash and the garlic to the pot with the vegetables.
8. Using a stick/immersion blender (or in batches in a blender), blend up the vegetables and squash until you have a more-or-less smooth soup.
9. Add in the curry powder and nutmeg and let simmer for 15-20 minutes.
10. Peel the chestnuts, add some butter or olive oil to a skillet, and over medium heat, toast the chestnuts until they get a bit crunchy. Chop the chestnuts coarsely.
11. Prepare this cranberry compote.
12. Over a large bowl, strain the soup through a strainer to weed out any strings from the vegetables or squash.
13. Whisk in as much heavy cream as you like, and salt and pepper to taste
14. Ladle soup into bowls, top with cranberry compote and chestnuts. Enjoy!

Cranberry Compote

We made this recently to go with a curried pumpkin and squash soup, but this would also be delicious on ice cream, pork, or a number of other things. It's really simple and very tasty. You can adjust the amount of sugar a bit depending on what you are using for and if you want it to be sweeter or more tart.

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 2 cups fresh cranberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• Zest of 1/2 lemon, or about 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp salt

Directions

1. Combine cranberries, water, sugar, lemon zest or juice and salt in a saucepan.
2. Over medium-high heat, bring liquid to a boil, and then reduce heat and simmer until cranberries pop (you can help this along with fork), and sauce thickens and becomes jam-like - about 20 minutes.

Delicata Squash Macaroni and Cheese

We had a bunch of squash sitting around this weekend from the farmers' market, so we decided to try a couple of recipes with it. This one is based on this recipe from Martha Stewart, but we used Delicata squash instead of butternut, and roasted the squash first. It turned out to be very flavorful, but we generally like our macaroni and cheese to be a bit more gooey, so I would double all the cheese, and maybe add some more milk to the sauce as well. Of course, if you like yours more dry, this might be great for you :) Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 2 average sized delicata squash
• 1 cup (about 240 ml) chicken stock
• 1 1/2 cups (about 355 ml) milk
• Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
• 3/4 tsp coarse salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lb (about 0.45 kg) elbow macaroni or other pasta
• 4 oz (about 115 g) extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated
• 4 tbsp parmesan cheese, grated
• 2 tbsp fine bread crumbs
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup Ricotta Cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C).
2. Slice squash in half and scrape out seeds.
3. Lightly rub inside of squash with olive oil, and salt.
4. Place squash face-down on a baking sheet.
5. Once oven is up to temperature, place squash in the oven and roast for 30-40 minutes, until squash is very soft.
6. Remove squash from oven, and once it has cooled sufficiently, scrape the flesh of the squash out of the rind into a mixing bowl.
7. Mix stock and milk in with the squash and mix together.
8. Put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta, and cook until just under-done (it will cook a bit more when you bake the mac and cheese).
9. Using a potato masher or a fork, mash the squash up as much as possible.
10. Dump contents of the bowl into a skillet or saucepan, bring to a boil, and then reduce heat and simmer until you have a nice sauce (about 10-15 min), stirring regularly.
11. Once the pasta is done cooking, drain it and dump it into a large mixing bowl.
12. Add the squash sauce, the cheddar, ricotta and half the parmesan cheese, and mix thoroughly so that all the pasta is coated in sauce.
13. Transfer the pasta to one or more baking dishes.
14. In a small bowl, mix the bread crumbs, the rest of the parmesan, and the tablespoon of olive oil, and then sprinkle over the top of the pasta.
15. Cover the baking dishes either with their lids if they have them, or with foil if not, and bake approximately 30-40 minutes, until the bread crumbs brown, and the mac and cheese is nice and hot and the sauce is bubbly. If using foil, remove the foil after about 15-20 minutes to allow the bread crumbs to brown.
16. Remove from oven and serve.

Pot au Feu

Pot au Feu is a French stew, made typically with several types of beef, and a ton of vegetables. This is one of those "feed the entire extended family" recipes if you make it the way it is typically done. We pared it down a bit for our recipe, but it is still a lot of food for two people, so we are actually using some of the leftover broth and vegetables to make a vegetable and roasted squash soup today - more on that later :) The resulting beef from this stew is very tender, and you end up with a delicious broth and vegetables.

Ingredients

• 4 lbs (1.8 kg) beef chuck roast
• 2 lbs (0.9 kg) beef soup bones or marrow bones
• 8-10 medium carrots, sliced lengthwise down the middle
• 8-10 stalks of celery, chopped
• 3-4 leeks, sliced into rounds
• 12-15 baby turnips, ends trimmed but whole
• 1-2 onions, peeled and quartered
• 1 lb small yellow potatoes
• Bouquet garni (we used parsley, thyme, 2 bay leaves and 4 whole cloves, tied up in one layer of leek)
• 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups white wine
• Salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 6 thin slices of french bread

Directions

1. Fill a large stock pot with about 8 quarts of water, and place all the meat in the bottom.
2. Over medium-high heat, bring the water to a boil, then remove from heat, remove the meat from the pot, and dump the water.
3. Rinse the pot out well.
4. Fill the pot again with about 8 quarts of water, then return the meat to the pot, along with all the vegetables, the bouquet garni, wine, vinegar and salt and pepper to taste.
5. Over medium heat, allow the pot to simmer for about 2-3 hours until the beef is quite tender.
6. While this is simmering, take your slices of bread and lightly brush them on both sides with olive oil using a pastry brush.
7. Cut a garlic clove in half, and rub over the bread to lightly flavor it.
8. Put the slices of bread on a baking sheet, and bake them at 350 F (177 C) for about 10 minutes until they are nice and crisp.
9. Remove bread from oven and let cool.
10. Once the beef in the pot is tender, halve your potatoes and toss them into the pot. Let simmer another 20-30 minutes to cook the potatoes through.
11. Taste the broth and add salt and/or pepper if needed.
12. Remove the beef from the pot, and cut into small pieces or slices.
13. Put 2-3 slices of the bread in the bottom of a wide, shallow bowl.
14. Put vegetables and pieces of beef on and around the bread, and then ladle broth into the bowl until it mostly fills the bowl.
15. Serve with sliced cornichons and mustard, or by itself.

Soupe a l'Oignon Gratinée

French Onion Soup is another good basic to have under your belt that can have a lot of variations. Here I'll just write the recipe for how we did it most recently, but I'll mention a few of the variations you could do if you wanted. Ours turned out really well, but came out a little bit sweet, next time I would use a red wine instead, and not add the port, and less sugar. Play with it and see what you like :)

Ingredients

• 1 lb white or yellow onions
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 4-5 cups beef stock (you can use some chicken as well if you need)
• 1 cup white wine
• 1.5 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp port wine
• 3-4 cups grated Gruyère or Emmental cheese (the more, the better)
• Several sprigs of fresh thyme
• Unflavored croutons
• Salt and pepper

Directions

1. The hardest part of french onion soup is the first part - peeling and chopping all the onions. Peel them, and then slice them in long slices as shown below.
2. Once you have the onions chopped, heat up some oil in a large pot, and get the onions sauteing. You want them to get really browned and caramelized, so you want to let them go 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. While this is going on, mince your garlic, and about 15-20 minutes in, add the sugar to the onions, and mix in the minced garlic. The image of the onions in the pot below is at about this point.
4. Once the onions are nice and browned, add the stock, wine, port and thyme sprigs. Salt and pepper to taste.
5. Let the pot simmer for about 15 minutes to cook off some of the alcohol and get everything mixed up well. Taste to determine readiness, and add more salt or pepper as needed to taste.
6. Ladle the soup into bowls, top with croutons and then put copious amounts of cheese over the top.
7. We used a culinary torch to melt and brown the cheese, since we don't have small oven-proof bowls.

Ok, variations.

The simplest variation is just to do this with oven-proof bowls, and instead of using a culinary torch to melt and brown the cheese at the end, you can just put the bowls under the broiler for several minutes until the cheese melts and browns.

You can make this a bit more like a casserole. Again using oven-proof bowls, do the same thing up through step number 4. Then, take croutons made from a whole, thin slice of a baguette, and place several in the bottom of the bowl. Spoon the soup into the bowl, and then cover the top with the cheese. Bake in the oven at 400 F (205 C) until the cheese is melted and browned. The bread will soak up quite a bit of the soup, and you'll have something much thicker this way.

You can also serve this soup without the cheese, in which case, you would just follow the recipe up through step 5, and then just ladle it into bowls and serve it.

Spicy Dill Pickles

We have been wanting to make our own dill pickles for a while now, so when we saw pickling cucumbers at the farmers' market a few weeks ago, we bought a bunch and decided to give it a go. We basically used this recipe from ehow.com, with some minor modifications, and they turned out great. We didn't actually can them, we're just keeping them in the refrigerator, but they turned out very flavorful, crisp and delicious. The only thing I would do is maybe cut down slightly on the salt, and you can adjust the chiles to however spicy you like them. These turned out just about right for me personally.

Ingredients

• 25 or so pickling cucumbers, about 4 inches (10 cm) in length
• 1 bulb of fresh garlic
• 10 or so heads of fresh dill
• 1 cup pickling salt
• 3 quarts (about 3 liters) water
• 1 quart (about 1 liter) apple cider vinegar
• 5 quart (or liter) jars with lids
• 2-3 small chili peppers like a jalapeño

Directions

1. Wash the cucumbers, and slice off a small 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) of the blossom end (opposite where the stem is/was). We soaked ours overnight in ice water as well in the fridge, to make sure they were nice and crisp, but that isn't necessary.
2. Sterilize your jars by scalding them with boiling water (especially if you are going to actually can them and leave them at room temp).
3. Pour water, vinegar, and salt into a large pot and bring to a boil.
4. While brine is heating up, peel 2 cloves of garlic per jar, and put the cloves, whole, in each jar.
5. Put two heads of dill in each jar.
6. Finely slice the chili peppers, and distribute them between jars.
7. Stuff each jar with cucumbers.
8. Once the brine comes to a boil, turn off the heat, and then ladle brine into each jar, filling them to within about 1/2 inch (1 cm) of the top of the jar.
9. Let them cool off, and then place in the refrigerator. Wait one week before opening them.