Irish Night

This past week the Sun was off from work.  Usually, the Wolf gets off work several hours before the Sun does and therefore our cooking begins at around 6:00.  However, taking advantage of the free time, we decided to make something that would take longer than we usually have time for: beef and Guinness stew.  Placed atop mashed potatoes and accompanied by sautéed red cabbage, this meal is perfect for less mild winters.  Or, you know, a night of drinking.

For the stew:
 Serves 12

 4 pounds lean stewing beef, trimmed and cut into bite size cubes
6 tablespoons oil
6 tablespoons flour
salt, pepper, Cayenne
4 large onions, coarsely chopped 
4 tablespoons tomato puree, dissolved into 8 tablespoons beef stock
 1 cup additional beef stock
2 cups Guinness stout beer
4 cups carrots
2 cups mushrooms
parsley

Toss beef in 3 tablespoons oil (if you do not have a large enough bowl, work in batches). In separate bowl, combine flour, salt, pepper, and Cayenne.  Toss beef in flour combination until lightly coated. 
Heat remaining 3 tablespoons oil over high heat in large pan.  Brown the meat on all sides.

 Once meat is lightly browned, transfer to a large pot over medium heat.  Add onions, tomato puree mixture, and 1 cup Guinness. As this settles, add 1 cup Guinness and remaining 1 cup beef stock to the pan where you browned your meat. Bring to a boil and stir to dissolve caramelized meat and meat juices. 

 Once the bottom of your pan is completely deglazed, transfer contents into large pot.  Add the carrots and bring to a boil. Once boiling, bring down to medium low heat and simmer for about 1 hour.  

 After one hour, add mushrooms and bring back to a boil and then down to medium low heat.  

Wait.

After another 1 and a half to 2 hours, taste and correct seasoning.  Reduce (as we did) if you find the stew to be too liquid-y.   

As you are waiting on your stew, get started on your mashed potatoes.

For this you will need:

 4 pounds golden creamer potatoes, halved
salt and pepper
2 cups heavy cream
4 tablespoons unsalted butter

Boil potatoes until soft.  Drain.  Pour heavy cream and add butter.  Mash until of desired consistency.   Salt and pepper to taste.  

 

Additionally, get started on your red cabbage.

Sauteed red cabbage:

 4 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, sliced
2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1 red cabbage, thinly chopped or shredded
4 tablespoons sugar
salt and pepper
2 teaspoons mustard seed (optional, we didn't use this)

Heat a skillet over medium high heat.  Add oil and onions and saute 2 minutes.  Add cabbage and keep turning it until it wilts, 3 to 5 minutes.  Add vinegar and turn the cabbage in it.  Add sugar, salt, and pepper (and mustard seed if using) and turn again.  Let cabbage cook for another 5 or so minutes or until ready to serve.

Serve stew over mashed potatoes and alongside the cabbage.

                                                         Eat!

 The beautiful Jenny Mintz brought over vegan margarita cupcakes for dessert.  Thanks, again! 

                                         I think Ariana was being Jules

                Special and rare guests Jules and Kerri (see below for more on this)

                                           Matt and Jon post dinner

                                   The Sun and The Wolf, post cooking

                                The Wolf, Ramer, Jenny, Joshua Bates

                                  The Wolf and his love, The Witch

                                         The Sun, Ariana, and Jenny

                                         Jules and Kerri, end of night 

On a side note, as we started to put out feelers for this upcoming weeks dinner, the Sun received an e-mail from Jules with a picture attached:

Dearest Sawl (the Sun),

Your dinners are really great and I cherish the times that I have had at them. But I'm at a point my life where I just cant commit to one Wednesday dinner. There are still so many places and things I want to see on a Wednesday nights. I'm just not ready to settle down. It's not your dinners, it's me. I hope in time, the emotional wounds I have inflicted on you will heal. Perhaps someday, we can even be friends again on Wednesday nights. Until then, you will forever be in my thoughts on Wednesday evenings. 

Sincerely,

Jules

In response to this, all is in fact forgiven as Jules stumbled upon this gem. . .the now official (not really, dont sue us) band for Wednesday night dinners:
The Sun and The Wolf The Band

Until next time. . .thanks for reading!  

Korean BBQ Burrito Night!

Confession:  the Sun and the Wolf were a little burnt out from cooking.  Did we mention that Wednesday dinners have been taking place since August 16^th?  We needed a break and so we made something we had made before that was easy and successful.  This brings us to: Korean BBQ Burritos.  

The past couple of weeks our guests have been saying (complaining?) that we are taking too long to put out food.  This has sometimes been the case when 9:30 creeps up and dinner is still not on the table.  The Wolf had the brilliant idea of serving an appetizer in order to keep people happy and out of our hair.  So, we made soup.  A soup that was as simple as possible and yet was still well received, go figure. 

The Sun and the Wolf Korean Vegetable Soup

Serves 12

12 cups vegetable broth (or chicken broth if not serving vegetarians)

6 large white potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces

5 carrots, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces

2 cups white button mushrooms

2 cups leeks

salt and pepper to taste

red hot pepper flakes and/or Sriracha to taste. 

In a large pot, put the carrots, potatoes, and broth over high heat.  Once boiling, turn down to a simmer.  Cook for about ten minutes or until tender.  Add the mushrooms, onions, salt, pepper, and spice.  Stir and cook for about 2 minutes.  Adjust seasoning as desired.  

Korean BBQ Burritos

It’s hard to give a recipe when we didn’t really cook anything.  Lucky for us, there is a Korean section at H-Mart.  There and throughout H-Mart we bought kimchi, pickled cucumbers (different from your traditional pickles), bean sprouts, radishes, cucumbers (which we julienned), and cilantro.  Additionally and most importantly we also bought our marinated meats from the Korean section: short rib and pork belly. 

From there we cooked up some rice, sautéed the meats, and put everything in serving bowls.   

                                             Pork belly not pictured

The Potato, our resident burrito maker, rolled them up with his spider fingers. And that was the end of that. 

                              Thomas "Thumbs Up" Marks making a rice bowl

 

                                                     Spider fingers lending a hand 

  
 Thanks, Bean, for taking pictures! Her plate, complete with pork on the inside, meat on the outside.

                                              

                                                                Social Hour

                                                        After dinner conversation

                                   

                                                Joshua Bates taking his leftovers home

                                                             Dance Party Hour               

                                                  Annnd the end of the night

Soul Food Night

So, we are skipping over last week’s calzones for the time being until The Bean gets the pictures to us.  Calzone night was the biggest dinner we have had (cue multiple freak outs) and was followed by our smallest dinner so far. Which brings me to . . .

Soul food night.  Probably the most involved cooking we have done.  Last minute several people cancelled (hate you all) and so we were left with half of our weekly average.

People: 6

Total cost: $65 (since we shopped for 12)

Challenge: Making soul food for the first time/ finding smoked ham hocks or smoked turkey necks.

We food shopped on Tuesday, as usual.  After trying H-Mart and Pathmark we finally found smoked pork necks at Stop and Shop.  On the official menu was: Fried cat fish, BBQ chicken, random second chicken, black eyed peas, and candied sweet potatoes with corn bread (store bought) on the side.  After food shopping on Tuesday we boiled the pork necks for about two hours so that we would have more time for other things Wednesday.  Obviously we ended up eating at 9:30 anyway.  But aside from a few set backs it was, as always, a good time. 

                                     The Wolf in his Wednesday finest

Side note: the Sun has had a broken phone for several weeks and hasn't taken pictures.  By this Wednesday that will be remedied and the blog will have an abundance of pictures as was originally intended. Thank you, Michael Scharf, for this week's pictures.

Fried Cat Fish

(Serves 4)

2 large catfish fillets cut in halves (we used basa)

1 large egg

hot sauce

About 25 Saltines smashed until almost dust

Cayenne pepper

Salt and pepper

Chili powder

Canola oil for frying

In a large mixing bowl, crack and whisk the egg, a dash of hot sauce, and salt and pepper.  Cover the fish in mixture.  In a large flat pan, mix the Saltines, the Cayenne, and the chili powder.  Dredge the fish on both sides generously.  Heat up enough canola oil to cover about half of the fish.  Test a drop of water in the oil.  Once it forms a ball the oil is hot enough for frying.  Fry one side until golden and then flip carefully.  Cook until white all the way through and the crust is golden brown.  Eat with tartar sauce, hot sauce, or as is.  

                            Fish frying in the front, black eyed peas in the back 

BAR-B Q Chicken

Sauce Ingredients:
4 tablespoon ketchup
2 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoon Worcestershire
2 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 teaspoon mustard
2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
some black pepper & red hot sauce

One whole chicken

Combine sauce ingredients and mix them to create the sauce. Cover chicken thoroughly.
Cook in a pan for about 2 1/2 hrs at 350 degrees.

                                             Carving the chickens

Sun and the Wolf Chicken

 Sauce Ingredients:

½ cup olive oil

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

¼ cup Sriracha

3 garlic cloves

¼ cup Dijon mustard

3 tablespoons honey

juice of 2 lemons

One whole chicken

Combine all ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth.  Cover chicken thoroughly.  Cook in a pan for about 2 ½ hours at 350 degrees.  *Note:  While it did taste fine, we wished that the sauce had been thicker in order to create more of a glaze for the chicken.  Still working on that one . . . 

Black Eyed Peas

8 oz. prepared black-eyed peas

1 medium jalapeno pepper (chopped)

½ small onion (chopped)

3 or 4 slices bacon (cut up)

salt and pepper to taste

Cook bacon.  Set aside but leave grease in pan.  In the same pan, sautee the jalapeno and onion until onions start sweating.  Heat up the peas in the same pan.  Add salt and pepper to taste. 

*Note: to be honest, these were kind of boring.  We will omit them the next time around.                        

Candied Sweet Potatoes

3-4 large sweet potatoes
2 cups of white sugar
1 stick of butter (not margarine)
2 teaspoons vanilla
dash of nutmeg and cinnamon

Peel and cut potatoes into chunks. Rinse well, pat dry. Put the potatoes in a pot and pour remaining ingredients over potatoes.  Bake in the oven, stirring occasionally, until tender (about 45 minutes).  *Note: These were really delicious and tasted like pie.  Highly recommended.

                                                 Sweet potatoes

Collard Greens

1/2 pound smoked meat (in this case smoked pork neck)

1 tablespoon House seasoning, recipe follows

1 tablespoon seasoned salt

1 tablespoon hot red pepper sauce

1 large bunch collard greens

1 tablespoon butter

In a large pot, bring 3 quarts of water to a boil and add smoked meat, house seasoning, seasoned salt and hot sauce. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 1 hour. Wash the greens thoroughly. Remove the stems that run down the center by holding the leaf in your left hand and stripping the leaf down with your right hand. The tender young leaves in the heart of the collards don't need to be stripped. Stack 6 to 8 leaves on top of one another, roll up, and slice into 1/2 to 1-ince thick slices. Place greens in pot with meat and add buttter. Cook for 45 to 60 minutes, stirring occasionally. When done taste and adjust seasoning.

House Seasoning:

1 cup salt 

1/4 cup black pepper

1/4 cup garlic powder

*Note:  This is Paula Deen’s recipe that we followed.  If we make this again we will not be adding the 1 cup salt for the house seasoning.  The smokiness of the pork necks was salty enough and we ended up with incredibly salty (though tasty) collard greens.  After some quick thinking we boiled new water to finish off the greens.  It kind of rinsed them off but the flavor remained.   

                                               Finished product :-)