Squash and Cabbage Saute

I've had this recipe marked in my book for a while, since I had so much cabbage earlier in the summer. Now that I have zucchini and peppers ready in the garden, it was time to make this recipe at last. I paired it with the goulash I posted yesterday.

For this recipe, you will need:
About 1/4 head cabbage
1 green bell pepper
1 med. zucchini
vinegar
thyme
oregano
salt & pepper

Directions: 

Heat a skillet and add 2-3 tbsp. butter.

Add 2-4 c. cabbage, shredded or sliced thinly.

Add 1 chopped green pepper (about 1 c.)

Add 1 medium zucchini, chopped (about 2-3 c.)

Saute about 10 mins, stirring a few times, until zucchini is just getting tender.

Add some thyme and oregano. A pinch of each, fresh if possible, but dried is fine, too.

Salt and pepper to taste. I like a lot of pepper.

And 1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar.

Stir in the seasonings and serve immediately.

 This recipe was really good. Usually, I'll make a vegetable side dish and think it wasn't really worth the effort, because it's just as good simply steamed with a bit of butter and salt added. But this was really good. Definitely worth the small effort. The flavors went together incredibly well. One of the best vegetable sides I've made.

Goulash Stew

We are renovating a house this summer, and so far, it's a disaster zone. We have loose boards on the back porch, and some red wasps took up residence there. The other day, my husband got stung by a wasp, so I brought him a frozen steak for the swelling around the sting. So, we had a partially thawed round steak that needed to be used.

I looked in Fannie Farmer for a recipe that used round steak, and I found this one that I wanted to make. There was a very similar one called Hungarian Goulash, and only after I started making this and realized it barely has any vegetables did I look at the other recipe and see that it had more veggies! But, I stuck with this one and made a veggie side dish. I paired it with squash and cabbage saute (recipe tomorrow).

Here's the ingredients I used:
2 tbsp. organic butter
2 onion
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp. paprika
1 lb. beef round (Fannie uses 2, but I had a package with about a lb, so that's what I used)
3 c. chopped fresh tomatoes (or a 16 oz can)
1/4 c. sour cream *AT ROOM TEMPERATURE*
salt to taste (FF suggests 1/2 tsp)

Two of these, any size. FF says large, I used medium.

Slice thin.

Saute 10 mins. in butter in casserole or dutch oven (cast iron of course)

Meanwhile, cut round steak into chunks (I tried for 1 1/2 inch).

After 10 mins, add paprika, garlic, & salt. Cook 2 mins more.

Remove onions from pan, add meat.

Turn to brown on both sides.

Put onions back in with meat.

Add tomatoes, stir pot, cover and simmer for 2 1/2 hrs.

Here it is when done.

*Now add the 1/4 c. sour cream. Unfortunately, I did not heed Fannie's advice to add it at ROOM TEMPERATURE, and instead of melting nicely and making a creamy soup, it kind of congealed and refused to melt no matter how I stirred it. So it looks kind of weird, but it tasted good!

With weird sour cream speckles.

I was a bit afraid that the steak would be tough, since I'd had the same cut recently (made into chicken fried steak) and it was a workout for the jaw. But this time, it had plenty of time to cook slowly and get nice and tender. Fannie suggests eating it over noodles, but I just ate it as stew. I could see it being very good with rice, too.

And a side of sauteed squash and cabbage.

I may make the Hungarian Goulash next time, since it's very similar but I won't have to make a vegetable to go on the side. Plus, aside from the sour cream fiasco, this was really good and worth making again. I even made it on a day when I was doing a major canning operation, and it worked out great. I just put it all together and let it simmer on the back burner for 2.5 hours while I did the canning. Since I was canning tomatoes, I ended up with about 2 c. of extra juice, so I threw that in the goulash to make it more soup-like so I wouldn't have to make noodles or rice. I also added about 6 oz. of pepper juice I had from my preserving endeavors. But none of this is necessary. The pepper juice did give it a bit more veggie flavor, though.

Fresh Salsa

I used this for a party and it was excellent. I love fresh salsa, and this was a great recipe. I would definitely make it again. This was from the newer Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and this is my adaptation, not the exact recipe.

I used:

Tomatoes from my garden.

4 medium tomatoes, about 4 c. when chopped
1 small onion, chopped fine
2 jalepenos, diced, seeds removed
Juice of 1 lime
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
half a bunch of cilantro, chopped (about 1/2 c. chopped)
pinch of oregano (I didn't have this, so I used a dash of Italian seasoning, and it wasn't noticeable).

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, and voila. Salsa. 

This recipe was really great. She calls for 2 cloves of garlic, too, which I would use next time but I was all out. She also uses a can of green chillies, which is just weird to me. So I left those out. It still turned out great, and everyone at the party liked it, especially with the tomatoes from my garden that were super sweet. Even my son ate it, onions and all, which must be some kind of miracle. The only thing I'd change is that it wasn't at all hot, so next time, I might leave the seeds in one of the jalepenos.

Poached Eggs

I made these on a busy morning when I realized we only had one egg. So I cooked it up quickly and ate it atop a sliced tomato from our garden.

For this recipe, you will need:

• eggs (however many  you want)
• vinegar (I used apple cider, since that's what I had--1/2 tsp. per egg)
• a bit of salt (about 1/8 tsp. per egg)
• Large sliced tomato (optional)

The egg stuck to the bottom a bit so I had to coax it away.

Directions:

1. Fill a skillet or saucepan with a few inches of water.
2. Add the vinegar to help the egg coagulate.
3. Heat the water until it simmers.
4. Break each egg into a saucer, slide one by one into the water.
5. Add salt.
6. Spoon water over eggs for 3 minutes until set OR turn off heat, cover, and let sit for 5 mins.
7. Remove one by one with a slotted spoon.
8. Set each egg on a large slice of tomato and top with salt or seasoning salt (I use Tony Chachery's)

Okay, so I completely overcooked this one because somehow I missed the OR part of the time for the recipe. So I heated the egg for 3 minutes, then covered and let it sit for 5 minutes more. The yolk was completely solid instead of nice and runny how poached eggs should be. However, I will definitely try these again, since I've always wanted to know how to poach an egg and it turns out it's incredibly simple.

Braised Red Cabbage and Apples

I made this dish to go along with the pork chops I posted yesterday. I'd been meaning to make it for a couple weeks, and I finally had something to make it with.

For this recipe I used:
3-4 tbsp. butter (Fannie says to use bacon fat, if you have it)
2 tbsp. organic sugar
1/2 c. chopped onion (about 1 small)
3-4 c. thinly sliced red cabbage (Fannie says 2 lbs, but if you don't have a scale, 4 c. seems to work well. She also says to use shredded cabbage, but I had WAY too much going on with the pork chops to spend hours grating cabbage. I recommend cutting the head in half, then slicing thinly with a bread knife).
2 c. tart apples, sliced thinly (again, peel unless using organic apples. I had a bunch of apples from my mom's tree that were tiny, so I used about 8. But if using apples from the store, probably 2).
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1/2 c. red wine (Fannie says dry, but I have some sweet cooking wine, so that's what I used).
1/2 c. water
1/8 tsp. cayenne
Salt to taste

• Add butter and sugar to skillet and cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
• Add the onion and cook until golden
• Add cabbage, apples, vinegar, wine, and cayenne
• Cover and cook 10 minutes on low
• Add water and replace lid, leaving it slightly ajar.
• Cook 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally

This worked out pretty well for me. I was running around in a panic as I cooked this, pork chops, and beer bread all at once, but somehow, I only ended up needing to work on one at a time. The sugar and butter sort of crystallized, but as I continued cooking, it melted again. I stirred the mixture about every five to ten minutes, whenever I had a minute between checking other things. It started sticking around the 25 minute mark, so I had to turn it off. I left it covered for the last 5 minutes, and it was cooked enough. Unfortunately, when I uncovered the pork chops at this point, they had not fared as well.

This dish was pretty good. I'm not sure I'd make it again on an average night, but it was decent. It didn't magically transform the veggies into french fries, but it went well with the apple pork chops I made it with. I'd make it again if I had something that needed a fancied-up vegetable. But I'll probably just stick with steaming the cabbage and adding a little butter and salt most of the time.

Braised Pork Chops with Apples

Putting the chops in to fry.

Confession: I have no clue how to cook meat. I was a vegetarian for half my childhood and all of high school and college. Since then, I've learned how to cook ground beef, but anything more complicated than that leaves me wandering in the dark. So I follow the recipe pretty exactly when it comes to slabs of meat. In this case, that was where I went wrong. That, and the fact that I tried to cook three things at once, which I do NOT recommended to newbie cooks (especially if you're barely keeping your eyes open because you stayed up watching Sex & the City until 1 am the night before). I ended up so stressed I wished I'd saved my one beer instead of putting it in the cheesy beer bread I made to go with the chops. Not to mention that by the time I was done, my kitchen was a disaster area that took another half hour to clean up.

After a minute of searing.

So, on with the chops. I had a package of frozen pork chops my sister had given us after she raised pigs (along with the ham). I looked up how to cook them in Fannie Farmer and followed the recipe pretty exactly. I made the recipe for Braised Pork Chops with Sweet Potatoes, but used the apple alternative. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that she said to use 1 1/2 inch thick chops, and mine were more like 3/4 inch. So, when she said to cook them on medium high for 30 minutes, and I cooked them for 25 on low, they still ended up a bit burned in the spot towards the middle of the pan. Luckily I checked them five minutes early or they would have been charred to a crisp.

See the burnt spots? I never claimed I could cook!

Fannie's recipe, with my adaptations:

• Take 4 pork chops (1 1/2 inch thick)
• Coat them lightly on both sides with 1 1/2 tbsp. flour
• sprinkle with salt and pepper
• put 2 tbsp. of butter in a skillet and cook on medium high, 1 minute on each side
• Lower heat to medium, add 2 c. sliced apples (peeled unless they are organic--you don't want to eat what's on a commercial apple skin), cover the pan and cook for 30 minutes. Note the thickness of your chops and alter accordingly so you don't end up with chops like the ones above.

Despite the charring, these really weren't bad. My pan seemed to be sizzling a LOT, so after about 5-10 mins, I turned the heat to low. I'm really glad, too, or I might have caused a kitchen fire or something! As it was, I just scraped off the burned bits and everything tasted fine. My husband just ate his and said he didn't even notice. So they weren't bad. But I will definitely remember the timing lesson next time I make chops!

The apples in the pan with the chops were really good, and probably saved them from getting dried out. Plus, they went really well with the side dish, Braised Red Cabbage and Apples. Even though the chops had a bit of charring, they weren't dry or tough at all. Even my son ate them without complaining about anything but the strips of fat going through the meat. Overall, this is a good, simple recipe for pork chops that I may make again now that I know not to cook them so long (edit: for a more successful cooking experience, see my second attempt here).

Stuffed Zucchini

I planted a garden for the first time this year, and since I don't really know much about gardening, I just shoved plants in the ground whenever I had a little spot in the garden that wasn't filled. So when I had a little bit of a row, I planted 4 hills of zucchini. One of my plants seems to be taking steroids. It has produced 2 full fruits, each one going from about an inch to 8 inches in about 4 days. It's nuts!

Anyway, I had a zucchini to use, and I needed a recipe, so to Fannie Farmer I went. She doesn't have a hundred zucchini recipe as I'd have liked, but she did have a couple. Here's my take on the stuffed zucchini. It's a little different from my usual stuffing, as I don't usually use bread crumbs, but I wanted to make it more like the recipe, so I tried to follow along sort of closely.


I used:
2 squash (1 zucchini, 1 yellow)
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 lb. ground beef
2 tomatoes, chopped (I used one of my GIGANTOR tomatoes, so only one. And as you can see, it was enough!)
1/2 c. cornbread crumbs (Fannie calls for bread crumbs, but I was trying to do gluten-free a while back, so I had some leftover cornbread made into bread crumbs, waiting to be used)
1 tbsp. Italian seasoning
salt & pepper to taste
It wasn't in the recipe, but I also added 1/4 c. parmesan and 1/4 c. shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 350

Put squash in to steam for about 10 mins

Meanwhile, saute onion in olive oil until translucent

Add garlic and ground beef and cook until no pink left in meat

 

***NOT PICTURED: Remove zucchini, cut lengthwise, and remove seeds and a bit of pulp 

Add zucchini pulp and tomatoes to meat mixture and cook a few minutes

 Add cornbread crumbs, Italian seasoning, parmesan and salt & pepper and stir until blended

 Fill cavities hollowed out in zucchini, place in pan/baking dish/casserole pan and bake 30 mins.

 Midway through, add about a tbsp. of shredded cheese to each zucchini and return to oven for remaining time.

Fannie doesn't call for any cheese, but since I had to use Italian seasoning instead of parsley and basil as Fannie directed (I didn't have those), I thought I'd give it a bit of Italian flavor. Hence, the parmesan. Also, I don't know how you could make stuffed ANYTHING without covering it in cheese. So I added that as well. I always cover my stuffed veggies in cheese. If you want to leave it off, I'm sure it would be good anyway.

This turned out really well. I'd never used bread crumbs or parmesan in my stuffed veggies before, and I can't say I noticed much different with the bread crumbs in it. But they were definitely good. I would make this recipe again for sure. It did make a bit more filling than I could fit in the squash, so I used the leftovers to stuff a couple peppers I had on hand. Yay for leftovers!

For another stuffed pepper recipe, see this post.