Slow Cooker Meatballs and Marinara

So comforting and just plain good! A terrific make-ahead meal.

Pepper-Crusted Filet Mignon with Port-Cherry Reduction

Oxtail Marmalade

Insanely indulgent: expensive, time-consuming, artery-clogging and mmmmmmmmm...

Potaje de Garbanzos (Cuban Chickpea Stew) Slow Cooker Version

1 lb. dried garbanzo beans, soaked overnight, water discarded, rinsed and picked through.
2 quarts chicken broth
2 chicken boullion cubes, or, preferably, a packet of sazon with achiote
2 links of chorizo, sliced ¾" thick
1 1/2 cups sofrito
2 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced in ½" rounds
3 cloves garlic, peeled, mashed and finely minced
½ cup tomato paste
2 teaspoons paprika
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 bay leaves
1/2 lb flank steak, cut into large chunks
1 small ham hock or part of a smoked turkey drumstick
handful of chopped cilantro
Ground black pepper, to taste
Salt, to taste

Combine all ingredients in a 4 quart slow cooker, adding additional water as needed, to cover all ingredients. Cook on low for 6 - 8 hours. Adjust seasoning. Remove bay leaves and ham hock or turkey drum. Serve with crusty bread for dunking.

Syrian Tomato-Rice Soup with Kibbeh

I took a great many liberties with a recipe for tomato rice soup in the Jewish/Syrian cookbook Aromas of Aleppo, and then adapted the results to the slow cooker. Completely fabulous and incredibly easy.

Tomato Paste
1/2 cup white rice
2 1/2 quarts beef or chicken broth
2 cloves of garlic, mashed to a paste

1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 t allspice
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t cayenne
1/2 t cumin
1/2 t garlic powder
salt and pepper, to taste
1 t olive oil
2 t raw white rice
handful of chopped fresh cilantro, plus additional for garnish

Combine tomato paste and broth in the ceramic insert of a 4 quart slow cooker. Add the rice and garlic, and set the cooker on low.

In a mixing bowl, combine the beef, spices, rice and chopped cilantro, mixing well, until all ingredients are thoroughly combined. Form into 15 meatballs (kibbeh) and drop them gently into the broth in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours, turning the heat up to high during the last 30 minutes of cooking time. Garnish with chopped cilantro and serve with warm bread. Serves 6

Slow Cooker Boeuf Bourguignon

Adapted from Rick Rodgers

1 lb baby carrots
1 lb pearl onions
4 ounces of slab bacon, cut into 2 inch strips
2 lbs beef bottom round, cut into chunks
1 Tbs vegetable oil
10 oz mushrooms, quartered
4 shallots, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup dry red wine
1 cup beef broth
2 Tbs tomato paste
2 Tbs chopped parsley
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
salt and pepper, to taste
Place the carrots and the onions in the slow cooker.

In a large skillet, brown the bacon. Remove and ad to slow cooker. Brown the beef in the skillet full of bacon drippings. Brown the beef on all sides. Transfer the beef to the slow cooker and season with pepper.

Into the skillet, add the mushrooms and shallots. Cook, stirring often until the mushrooms gave given off their liquid and are beginning to brown. Add the garlic and cook for a minute. Transfer all to the slow cooker.

Add the red wine, broth, tomato paste and spices to the skillet. Cook over medium heat for one minute, scrapping up any browned bits. Pour over ingredients in the slow cooker.

Cover the cooker. Set heat to low and cook for 8 hours. With a slotted spoon, discard the bay leaf. Transfer the meat and vegetables to serving platter and cover to keep warm. In a saucepan, heat the butter over medium heat and add the flour. Cook for one minute, do not let brown. Slowly whisk in the liquid from the crock pot. Cook until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper, to taste. Pour sauce over the meat and vegetables. Serve immediately.

Serves 6

Steak and Semi-German Potato Salad

There was a request for steak salad for dinner tonight. The results were very memorable - a good example of how a dish can somehow magically exceed the sum of its component parts.
I started with a composed salad of mixed greens and herbs, endive, fennel, cherry tomatoes, minced red onion, and grilled marinated artichokes as the foundation. Then I took a hot baked Yukon Gold potato and sliced it up and tossed the slices with a squeeze of lemon juice and a few tablespoons of mustard vinaigrette and then layered the warm dressed potatoes on top of the composed salad. I sliced and heated the leftover steak and fanned out the slices on top of the potatoes, pouring the accumulated steak juices over everything, and voila! A little extra vinaigrette on the side, and dinner was served...

Vietnamese Steak

Oh...my...god...
This was insanely good. This precise mix of flavors: charred, salty and rich, is pretty much exactly what you want to taste when you're craving steak. The recipe came out of a back issue of Saveur. In Vietnamese its called Thit Bo Bit-Tet (pronounced Teet Baw Beet-teht).
Photo by Andre Baranowsky

3 tbsp. Maggi seasoning sauce
3 tbsp. vegetable oil
3/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 top sirloin steak (about 1 1/2 lbs. in all)
Rice

1. Stir together Maggi seasoning sauce, oil, pepper, and garlic in a wide, shallow dish. Add steak; rub all over with marinade. Cover; let marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes.

2. Remove steak from marinade; scrape off most of the garlic. Heat a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Add steak and cook until well browned, 3–4 minutes; flip steak and cook until medium rare, 2–3 minutes more.

3. Transfer steak to a cutting board; tent with foil. Thinly slice both steaks across the grain. Serve with rice, and any accumulated juices.

Serves 2-3

Steak Salad

My mom is a huge steak salad fan...or she was, anyway, before she went 95 percent vegetarian. I bet the steak salad I whipped up tonight would still tempt her though. It was Bill's first steak salad. He gets it. The tastes of corn and tomatoes and basil and seared steak seem imperative right now, to gt us through this looooong cold early spring.

Steak and Marinade:
1 lb flank steak
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup sugar
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced

Slice the steak into a few pieces. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Mix all marinade ingredients together in a large bowl. Marinate the steak, covered, in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours, and up to two days. Preheat the broiler and broil the steak until medium. Let it sit for a couple of minutes and then slice thinly across the bias. Serve warm, along with any accumulated juices, on top of the dressed salad. Pass extra vinaigrette at the table if anyone wants it.

Salad:
Mesclun
grape tomatoes, halved
cucumbers, sliced into half moons
chopped scallions
fresh herbs: cilantro, chives, basil
canned corn, or corn cut from the cob
cooked garbanzos
diced fennel

Herb Vinaigrette:
balsamic vinegar
extra virgin olive oil
dijon mustard
minced garlic
salt and pepper
chopped basil
chopped cilantro
minced chives

Wandering Chopsticks' Bo Luc Lac (Vietnamese Shaking Beef)

We put away several platters of Bo Luc Lac during a marathon dinner with 14 friends at Tamarind Tree in Seattle last week, and then just yesterday I stumbled across this recipe at Wandering Chopsticks' mouthwatering and informative blog. This was spectacular. If you haven't seen Wandering Chopsticks blog - go check it out. The recipe (with a couple of minor edits) and photo are both hers. I'm going to make her salad rolls next...

2 lbs beef, filet mignon or sirloin, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 onion, sliced
1 or 2 tomatoes, sliced (or a handful of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half)
1 bunch watercress, or mixed field greens or lettuce
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup white or rice vinegar
2 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
Optional: Add 1 minced fresh red chili into the marinade.

Dice the beef into 1-inch cubes. Add 2 tsp fish sauce, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground black pepper, and 1/2 tsp sugar to marinade. Set aside and let it marinate at room temperature.
Slice onion as thin as possible. Arrange onion slices in a shallow bowl and add enough vinegar just so the onions are covered, about 1/2 a cup or so. The vinegar will soften the harshness of the onions and add a tartness to the salad.
Wash greens. Slice tomatoes. Arrange on the plate in an attractive pattern, with concentric circles of greens on the outside and an inner circle of tomatoes. Top with vinegared onions (just the onions, you don't want the vinegar juices).
Mince garlic.
In a wok on high heat, drizzle a bit of oil. Add minced garlic. Add in the beef and "shake" it until edges are charred and beef is cooked to your liking.
Scoop beef onto salad, making sure to drizzle beef juices over the salad as well. Serve with rice on the side.
Serves 6

Empanadas/Pastelillos

So these are pastelillos if you're from Puerto Rico, and empanadas if you're from anywhere else. My friend Maya taught me how to make them when we were about 15 years old. I make them for parties all the time, and people love them. They're also a super economical way to feed a group of folks. My aunt Linda has suggested on numerous occasions that I could probably get rich pushing an empanada cart.

Ingredients
1 lb ground beef
2 teaspoon plus one tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion, diced medium
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 green pepper, diced small
1/2 red pepper, diced small
1/2 cup pimento stuffed olives, chopped (or more, to taste)
1/2 cup raisins
fire roasted tomato sauce or sofrito tomato paste -- about a cup
ground cumin
adobo
cayenne pepper
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
30 Goya frozen discos para empanadas, thawed.

Heat the teaspoon of olive oil in a large saute pan, and sear the ground beef, breaking it up as it sears. Take it off the heat while the meat is still undercooked in places. you want the flavor of the sear, but you don't want the meat to overcook. Set the meat aside in a large bowl, and wash out the pan. Return the saute pan to the stove and heat the remaining tablespoon of oil to saute the onions, peppers and garlic together until the vegetables begin to soften - about 4 minutes. Add the spices and the tomato sauce. Cook for a few minutes. Take the vegetables off the heat and add them to the meat in the bowl. Add the olives and raisins. Taste for seasoning. The mixture should be extremely flavorful and moist, and even tending towards being a little overseasoned is fine, because the empanada dough will tone the seasoning down a little bit. The filling can be made the night before and sit covered in the refrigerator. Taste for seasoning again before filling the empanadas. Fold in the cilantro just before filling the discos.

On a cutting board, take each disco and stretch or roll it out. Pile a heaping scoop of the filling on one half of the dough. Pull the other half of the dough over the filling and press the edges together to make a half circle. The edges must be tightly crimped together. Take a fork and crimp around the edge to make a decorative border.

Heat the oil in a large pan until it is hot. Add the empanadas, 3 OR 4 at time, and fry them until they are brown on one side, about 1 minute. Turn them over carefully and brown on the other side. Remove the empanadas from the oil with a slotted spatula and let drain on paper towels, adding more empanadas to the oil until they are all fried. Serve hot.

Yield: 30 empanadas

Three Bean and Beef Chili

I adapted this recipe from Ellie Krieger, a nutritionist who has a healthy cooking show on the Food Network.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, diced (1 cup)
1 red bell pepper, diced (1 cup)
2 stalks of celery, diced (1/2 cup)
3 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 pound extra-lean ground beef (90 percent lean)
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1 cup tomato sauce
1 cup water
1 chipotle chile in adobo sauce, seeded and minced
1 teaspoons adobo sauce from the can of chipotles
Salt to taste
1 (15.5-ounce) can white or black beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15.5-ounce) can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15.5-ounce) can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Heat the oil in large pot or Dutch oven over moderate heat. Add the onion, bell pepper and celery, cover and cook, stirring occasionally until the vegetables are soft, about 10 minutes. Add the cumin and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the ground beef; raise the heat to high and cook, breaking up the meat with a spoon, until the meat is no longer pink. Stir in the tomatoes, water, tomato sauce, chipotle and adobo sauce, oregano and salt. Cook, partially covered, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes. Stir in the beans and cilantro and continue cooking, partially covered, 20 minutes longer. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Serves about 8. We served this with diced avocado and leftover raita. it definitely needs some kind of cooling crema up against the spicy chile.