Some of my online foodie pals had a cook along this weekend. The theme was Tagine/Moroccan. 

I'm fortunate enough to have a tagine, which I love, and had some oxtails in the freezer; Yippieee I was set. Having a tagine is not necessary, any heavy-bottom pot will do. 

Served with Harvest Grains Blend which is a mix of grains I get at Trader Joe's. 

Put on some Moroccan music and let's get cooking!

 

You'll need beef, ghee or butter, ginger, garlic, cinnamon sticks, honey, chile, coriander, onion, pistachio or pine nuts, oranges, parsley and beets. 

 

 

Melt the ghee in a tagine or pot, salt and pepper the beef.

 

 

Brown the beef. While the beef is browning, slice the onion lengthwise. 

Browning the beef is my first variance from the recipe. I think browning the meat adds another level of flavor to the dish. 

 

 

Remove the beef from the pot. Add the onions to the pot, and cook them in the ghee and meat drippings. 

Meat drippings sounds so much better than meat fat, no? 

 

 

Gather the spices and crush, grate and smash what needs to be crushed, grated and smashed. 

When the onions start taking on some color add the ginger,

 

 

and garlic. 

I put the cinnamon sticks in a little spice bag; they were falling apart and I don't like bark in my food. 

 

 

Then add the chile, coriander, 

I didn't have a fresh red chile so I used powdered chile, not the chile powder blend you use when making a pot of chile, but just plain powdered chile. 

 

 

the cinnamon sticks, beets and beef back into the pot. 

 

 

Add just enough water to almost cover the beef and bring to a boil. 

 

 

Cover and simmer until meat is tender. 

 

 

 

While the meat is simmering, peel and cut the oranges into segments. 

 

 

Add the orange segments and honey. Season with salt and pepper and cook another 10-15 minutes. 

 

I served this with the Harvest Grain Blend and a wonderful Moroccan salad. The salad will be my next post it's wonderful. 

 

 

Here's the recipe with my noted changes. 

 

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Beef Tagine with Beets and Oranges

Ethnic, meats

1-2 tablespoons ghee

3-4 cloves garlic; crushed

1 medium red onion; sliced lengthwise

1-1/2 inch piece fresh ginger; peeled and grated  or finely chopped

1  red chile; seeded and sliced

2 teaspoons coriander seeds; crushed

2  cinnamon sticks

3-4  beets; peeled and quartered

1 lb lean beef; cut into cubes

2  thin skinned oranges; segmented

1 tablespoon dark honey

1-2 tablespoons orange-flower water 

sea salt; to taste 

freshly ground black pepper; to taste

1 pat of butter; 1 tbs?

2-3 tablespoons shelled pistachios 

bunch fresh flat leaf Italian parsley; roughly chopped

Melt the ghee in a tagine or heavy-based casserole dish, and stir in the garlic, onion, and ginger until they begin to color. Add the chile, coriander seeds and cinnamon sticks. Add the beets and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Toss in the beef and sauté for 1 minute. Pour in enough water to almost cover the beef and beets and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover with a lid, and simmer for 1 hour or until the meat is tender.

Add the orange segments, honey, and orange-flower water to the tagine and season the dish with salt and pepper to taste. Cover with lid and cook for a further 10-15 minutes.

Melt the pat of butter in a small saucepan and toss in the pistachios,stirring them over medium heat until they turn golden brown.

Sprinkle them over the tagine along with the flat leaf parsley and serve.

My notes:

I made this using 2 lbs of oxtails. I had to sub some of the ingredients so here's what I did.

The recipe didn't call for this but the first step I did was to brown the oxtails. 

I used a small brown onion instead of the red.

I didn't have a fresh red chili so I used powdered chile (not the chile powder you use in chili but ground up chile)

Instead of honey I used agave syrup.

I didn't have a substitute for orange-flower water so did nothing for that.

Substituted pine nuts for the pistachios.

Notes:  Tagine, Spicy Stews from Mococco

Yield: 4-6 servings

And that's that

And sometimes I end up with something wonderful like this. 

 

 

Delicious Meat-a-ball soup. 

Let's get cooking...

I've noticed that when I'm stressed my thoughts turn toward cooking; not necessarily toward food, but toward cooking. 

I find the action of chopping, slicing and dicing very calming, centering and soothing. Cooking is therapeutic for me and much cheaper than a therapist. ;-)

This past week has been very stressful. Stan had some skin cancer removed from his nose Monday morning and by 1:00 a.m. Tuesday he was in the back of an ambulance on his way to the hospital <I'll spare you the gory details> It turns out he was having a very bad reaction to the anesthesia and a pain pill combination. He ended up in the hospital until Thursday evening. 

Backing up to Tuesday evening, after having been up for 30 something hours straight, instead of wanting to shower off the stress and go to bed, all I could think of, what was I going to cook.

I had some ground beef in the refrigerator with the intention of making Albondigas soup; so I made the meatballs for the soup; I must say they turned out better than ever. After the meatballs were made, cooked and safely ensconced in the fridge, I was rummaging around looking for what else needed to be chopped, sliced or diced and finding nothing I finally showered and went to bed. 

I got some good therapy and Stan got some wonderful soup when he came home. Here's what I did. 

It's a variation of the Albondigas soup I make. The meat balls are the same, just the veggies changed. 

 

 

Dice up a small onion, and 3 stalks of celery. Cook, cook, stir, stir, until the onions are translucent. 

Add a minced clove of garlic, cook and stir a few minutes more. 

 

 

Add 4 ounces of tomato paste. I freeze leftover tomato paste that's why mine is chunky looking, and one and a half quarts of chicken stock. 

 

 

Add half a teaspoon of thyme and the cooked meatballs with their gravy. 

Simmer until the meatballs are heated through. 

 

It's such a wonderfull soup and wonderfully easy. 

Here's the original Albondigas recipe I use. You can switch it up with what ever veggies you have on hand

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Albondigas Soup

soup/stew

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 large garlic clove, minced

1/2 cup of tomato sauce

3 quarts of chicken stock or beef stock

2 large carrots, sliced

1/2 lb string beans; cut into 1 inch pieces

meatballs

1 pound ground beef

1/3 cup of raw white rice

1 raw egg

1/2 cup of chopped fresh mint leaves and/or; parsley

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/1/2 cup of frozen or fresh peas dried oregano, crumbled salt and pepper

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Heat oil in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and minced garlic and sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Add tomato sauce and broth mixture. Bring to boil and simmer. Add carrots and string beans.

Prepare meatballs. Mix rice into meat, adding mint and parsley leaves, salt and pepper. Add raw egg. Form beef into 1-inch meatballs. Return soup to gentle simmer. Add meatballs to soup. Cover and let simmer for 1/2 hour. Add peas towards the end of the 1/2 hour. Add a few pinches of oregano and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish soup with chopped fresh cilantro.

Preparation time: 1 hour.

Serves 6-8.

** Exported from Now You're Cooking! v5.84 **

And that's that. 

 

Leftover steak is a wonderful thing. I know, some people have never heard of leftover steak but I just happened to have some. 

 

After I had this beautiful meal of grilled steak with fresh green beans and pine nuts, 

 

 

I had this meal of baked potato smothered with steak, onion and green peppers in a rich brown gravy. 

Grab your leftovers and let's get cookin'...

 

I don't have a photo of the ingredients because I wasn't sure when I started where I was going. 

I did know that I had half an onion, a whole green bell pepper, a nice big chunk of steak and a potato. 

I baked the potato plain, just scrubbed, poked with a fork and put into a 400*f oven. The skin was nice and crispy, exactly how I like. 

 

Into some butter and oil went the half an onion, that was thinly sliced, along with the thinly sliced green bell pepper and cooked until al dente. 

Turned the heat down and sprinkled the onion and pepper mixture with 2 tablespoons of flour. Stir, stir, cook, cook until the flour is turning a light tan. That's long enough to get rid of the raw flour taste. 

When I make gravy, I crank the heat up under the pan, I want it pretty hot, it won't be hot long enough to scorch the flour, that way when the liquid hits the roux and you stir, stir like crazy, you don't have lumpy gravy.  

 

I deglazed the pan with some red wine.

Then I added a tablespoon of beef stock paste and stirred it around in the wine to start breaking it down. 

 

 

Because I used a beef base I added water instead of stock. Turned down the heat to medium and simmered, stirring occasionally. 

 

 

While the gravy was thickening, I sliced and diced the leftover steak and added it to the gravy at the last minute, just long enough for it to heat up. 

 

 

In the meantime...I halved the potato, scooped out the pulp of one half and mixed it up with some butter, salt and pepper. 

 

 

Here comes the good part, I put the pulp back into the potato shell and topped it with the steak mixture. 

Actually_this_is the good part, time to eat. 

 

 

And that's that

 

Last Sunday we had a potluck at church so I thought I'd take something kid friendly. 

A co-worker told me about when she was in elementary school, how she always looked forward to beanie weenie day in the cafeteria. I thought I'd add the spaghetti trick to the hot dogs and call it Beanie Weenie Sketti. 

 

I like doing this around halloween and tell the kids there are spiders in the beans. 

It won't take long, lets make some.

 

All you need are some hot dogs, a couple of cans of pork and beans and raw spaghetti. I use regular spaghetti, angel hair doesn't work as well. 

 

Before you start with the hot dogs; start boiling some water for the sketti dogs and slowly heat up the pork and beans.

 

Cut the ends off the hot dogs and throw them into the beans you are heating up. Cut the hot dogs into fourths.

Thread the spaghetti through the cut ends of the hot dogs. You can leave the spaghetti long or snap them in half, I halved them this time. 

 

 

O.K. now the hot dogs are ready to be dropped into boiling water and cooked until the spaghetti is al dente. 

 

 

Yep, looks ready to me. Just drop them into the heated beans. 

Time to eat. How easy peasy was that. 

A word of caution. Do not combine the hot dogs and beans until it's time to serve them. If you combine them and have to re-heat them later, the stirring action breaks off the spaghetti and you loose the effect. 

 

And that's that