Beef, Cheddar and Potato Pie

Time for more man friendly food. The Husband is a huge fan of anything in a flaky pie crust so when I offered to make this particular recipe he was rather pleased. This recipe comes from Racheal Ray's magazine, although I made quite a few modifications which I have noted below. I have to confess that Racheal Ray really got on my nerves at one point since she was on Food Network something like three times a day and she says "EVOO" way too much but I actually like her magazine. The recipes tend to be kid and husband friendly, are pretty fast to prepare and don't have too many hard to find ingredients. As much as I like to cook I don't want to spend my entire life hunting down ingredients or preparing meals. Most of the recipes in the magazine go up on the website sooner or later so it is worthwhile to look around the website a bit.

In the recipe she uses puff pastry but since I am a pie crust kind of girl I got my food processor out and went to work.

For the filling I used  ground beef, finely chopped baby carrots, potatoes and onions, but no celery unlike the original recipe since The Husband is not a big fan. Celery is one of those things that I will buy, use maybe one or two stalks and then end up throwing away when it inevitably rots. I tend to never ever have it in the house because it just ends up going in the garbage can. Too bad you can't buy it in minuscule portions.

Since The Husband loathes beer I went to poke around the liquor cabinet and came back with my usual back up, brandy.

French booze makes pretty much everything taste better.

After adding a very generous glug I let it cook for a minute or two so that the alcohol would evaporate. At the very end I added in some cheddar cheese.

I let the filling cool down for a bit as I rolled out the pie crust. After filling it I brushed it with an egg wash.

 

 The finished product:

 

Even though I have made many, many pie crusts I always feel happy pulling out a perfectly golden pie out of the oven; it makes me feel like a 1950's housewife.

 

The pie was excellent although when I cut the first piece I didn't cut down hard enough and it sort of fell apart. Oops. It made lots of leftovers and was quite nice to have on a cold night. The recipe is very straightforward and even faster if you just use puff pastry instead of making a crust so I would definitely recommend that you give it a shot.

Mexican Layered Dip

First of all I must make the disclaimer that this is quite possibly the most pre-prepared food you will ever seen in a single one of my blog postings. With that out of the way I have to say that Mexican Layered Dip is one of my favourite dips. It is very easy to change around the layers and depending what you add to it, it can be substantial enough for a meal.

First layer: since I like my protein I took some ground turkey and sauteed it in a pan along with salt, pepper, cumin, ground coriander and ancho chili powder.

Once that was cooked I added in a can of refried beans. They weren't home made but at least they're made in Mexico. So I get points for that, right?

I also put in a few dashes of hot sauce. My Mom and sister went down to Mexico earlier this year and they said that this brand was really popular there.

Second layer: the sour cream layer. I didn't want plain sour cream so I grabbed some jalapenos that were kicking around the bottom of my veggie drawer and chopped them up. Yes, I leave the seeds in but I like to live dangerously like that.

Since I actually didn't have any sour cream I ended up using yogurt cheese, which is yogurt which has been strained to make it super thick. For more flavour I added a generous amount of lime juice along with salt and pepper.

Third layer: I think I almost cried tears of culinary joy the day they started selling guacamole in my supermarket. I love this brand since it don't have any preservatives or weird ingredients. It's basically guacamole, cilantro, salt and pepper. For some bizarre reason it doesn't have any lime or lemon juice which I find odd and I always stir some in. I used to buy avocados but half of the time they were either over or under ripe or completely bruised. Guacamole in a container is much easier.

Fourth layer: I didn't have my usual salsa so I rummaged around in my pantry and found some taco sauce.

Fifth layer: chopped green onions. Pretty self explanatory.

Sixth layer: I declined to go the route of buying pre-sliced black olives since they are always tasteless and I pitted some kalamata olives. Tasty but rather messy. The seventh layer was grated strong white cheddar but I forgot to take a picture.

 

 

 

Here is the fully assembled dip. My only round glass dish was unavailable so I ended up using a glass loaf pan since I wanted to take pictures of the layers.

I think I must have taken ten pictures trying to get a good shot of a tortilla chip with dip on it. I love the taste of the different layers all melding together but once you scoop the dip it is not longer very photogenic.

Please give this recipe a try. It is dead simple and really good. It is also one of the few foolproof ways to put avocado in a dish and not have it oxidize. This is a great party dip and really quick to make. It is good cold and can be prepared ahead of time. Unless you loathe Mexican food it would be hard to think of anyone that would not like this.

"Ribs" and Potato Skins

Let start of by saying that I loathe fighting with my food; I get no pleasure over gnawing meat off the bone. You get gristle in your teeth and grease all over your chin and it is just not a pretty sight. Since The Husband likes ribs I have come up with a way to make faux ribs that one does not have to struggle to eat. No, I am not talking about soy ribs or some other depravity of the sort, heaven forfend, but pork tenderloins made to look like ribs. I'm not even going to attempt to argue that they don't have the taste of ribs, because they don't but they do make a good substitute.

Above is a shot of my home made barbeque sauce. Honestly I can barely remember what I put in it but it was probably chili sauce with honey, balsamic vinegar, cayenne peper, rosemary and some other herbs and spices.

Here are my faux ribs. Basically you take pork tenderloins, butterfly them and then pound them flat with a meat tenderizer. I applied a dry rub of brown sugar, paprika, onion powder and garlic powder on them before they went into the oven. Obviously, it is better on the barbeque but it's October right now and since I live in the Northern Hemisphere that's not really a choice right now.

I found a recipe for potato skins in a magazine to which I subscribe. I've actually never had them but anything with potatoes and cheese intrigues me so I decided to give them a try.

The potatoes went in the oven for 45 minutes and then I hollowed them out with a spoon. I used to work at coffee shops during High School and University so after spilling hot milk over my hands a million times I now have a rather high pain tolerance in my hands and can do things like pick up potatoes after they've just come out from the oven. That is the legacy of my tuition paying jobs, that and I make can make a pretty mean latte.

After they were hollowed out I sprayed them with olive oil and a mix of cayenne pepper, paprika and salt. They want back into the oven for 10 minutes or so to get crispy.

Once they came out again I stuffed them with cheddar, green onions and turkey bacon. The handle of my cheese grater had broken and I thought it was overkill to take out the food processor hence why I cut the cheese into little chunks. Back into the oven they went for another 15 minutes.

While all of that was going on I basted the pork a few times.

They're starting to more like actual ribs at this point.

Since my potatoes seemed to be menacing to cross the threshold from crispy to burnt I took them out along with the pork.

Even without the benefit of a grill and flames they still developed a nice colour.

 

Overall my dinner was pretty good. I wish I had used stronger cheddar in the potato skins though since I used marbled and it was pretty mild. I'm not sure if I would make the potato skins again since they are a bit labour intensiver given the final result but they were fun to try at least once.