I feel like I always talk about food.

Okay, another meal plan post. I was good this week and made my plan before going to the store. Some of my ideas can easily morph into something else, so I feel like I did pretty well.

Monday - was going to be pot pie, but our houseguest is cooking instead.
Tuesday - mushroom, spinach, caramelized onions white lasagna, a la http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/10/mushroom-lasagna/). I just add in the extra stuff.
Wednesday- enchiladas
Thursday - either chicken with forty cloves, or chicken cacciatore. I have the ingredients for both, just depends on my mood.
Friday - veggie stir fry. My leftovers might become soup the next day, if there are any.
Saturday - chicken pot pie. Leftovers from Thursday might end up in here as well, depending on which way I go.


This is all kind of in flux, per usual. I plan on freezing a few of the pot pies anyway, so they might all get made and put in the freezer/fridge Thursday, then baked off as needed. Tomorrow I think I will go ahead and make the enchilada filling and sauce, so then all I need to do Wednesday when I get home from work is assemble them. Depending on how ambitious I am, I might attempt to freeze some of this as well.

We go together like rama llama llama dingy dingy dong

Okay so those aren't quite the right lyrics, but I tried. Anywho, at the request of my dear partner in yarn crimes Jessy, I might start throwing in some of my cooking misadventures as well as the fibre-y kind.

So before popping my food blogging cherry, here's a bit of back story. Sean LOVES pho. He is always bemoaning Asheville's lack of pho establishments (he thinks it's a pho-king shame bwhahaha yeah I went there). So the other day, I stumble upon this recipe: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/05/crockpot-vietnamese-pho-recipe.html and thought I would give it a shot. Went to the store, bought the ingredients, plus a few extras. Now I have only had pho once, and that was a good 10 or 12 years ago, so I had no clue what it was supposed to taste like. I thought it sounded odd, frankly. Well, 5-6 hours later, we sat down to eat the stuff. The reviews were mixed. I thought it was gross, picked out the mushrooms, ate enough of my noodles to not be starving, and gave Sean the rest. Sean liked it, but said it wasn't totally pho like. He assured me repeatedly that it tasted good, it just wasn't real pho. Would I make it again? Maybe, if he wanted it.

But to counter this flop (in my mind anyway) I made one of my favorite dinners of all time. The kind of meal that makes me feel like a kid again, and if I eat it prepared any other way, it is WRONG, and they obviously don't know how to cook, and sends me weeping to McDonalds. Okay, maybe that was just that one time in the UNCA caf where they used tempeh. Shudder. I find it simple, and delicious, and uncomplicated. What is this culinary delicacy you ask? How do I make this party on my taste buds dish you ask? What could it BE?

STROGANOFF. And here is my dad's recipe, word for word as it was given to me.

Ingredients:

A pound or so of ground beef (you can use slab meat cut into little cubes or shreds, but I thing ground beef is better)

A few fresh shallots (onions and a clove or two of garlic work if you don’t have enough shallots, but chop ‘em fine whatever you use)

A pound or so of fresh mushrooms (brown creminis are best, ordinary white ones are okay) sliced so they aren’t too big

Half a cup or so of white wine – something with a lot of flavor, like a white burgundy or bordeaux, not some weenie Italian white. (Red wine produces a really vile pink color, so if all you have is red wine just drink it and leave it out of the stroganoff.)

Butter (NOT olive oil)

Sour cream (not under any circumstances the low-fat shit)

Black Pepper

Grey Poupon mustard (do NOT use French’s. This is not a hot dog or a ham sandwich)

A small amount of beef base if you have it, but don’t worry if you don’t

Dried tarragon. This is non-negotiable. Fresh tarragon just doesn’t work as well, for some reason.

Salt

Process:

1. Put some butter in a large-diameter high-sided pan and melt it. Don’t be stingy with the butter.

2. Toss in the shallots and sauté them until translucent. If you use onion & garlic sweat the onions good, then add the garlic when the onions are about to be done – otherwise the garlic will overcook and be bitter like folks in small-town Pennsylvania.

3. Add the beef and brown it good, breaking up the big chunks. Add several grinds of black pepper.

4. Remove the beef & shallot/onion/garlic mix from the pan, leaving as much of the meat juice/fat/butter residue in there as possible. Don’t worry if you leave a few bits of the meat & stuff in the pan – you’re mainly making room for the next step.

5. Put the mushrooms, white wine, and about ½ a teaspoon of the tarragon in with the meat juice, etc. Cook this until just about all of the liquid is gone but not until the mushrooms get dry. It will take awhile, as mushrooms are mostly water. Adding a pinch or two of salt will help draw the water out of them, but don’t go overboard. FYI, the reason you removed the meat from the pan is the shrooms cook a lot faster when it’s gone, and it’s easy to determine if most of the water is gone, which you want – it will be a pain in step 9 if you don’t cook off most of it now.

6. Put the beef & shallots back in the pan.

7. Add several really big globs of the sour cream and about a tablespoon of Grey Poupon. Stir until everything is well mixed.

8. Taste it and see if there’s enough pepper to suit you and to see if there’s a stroganoffish balance between creaminess and mustardy sharpness. You can put in some more tarragon here if you want to, or add a bit of the beef base if it tastes wimpy. If you’re going to use beef base, use like half a teaspoon at the time, and remember it has a hell of a lot of salt in it. Don’t add salt until after the beef base is well and truly assimilated and you’ve tasted it again.

9. Cook this until it’s as thick as you want it, but don’t let it boil. This might take awhile as you’re basically getting rid of the remaining liquid from step 5, as well as what’s in the sour cream. During this step you can fiddle some more with the sour cream/mustard/tarragon balance if you need to

10. Serve over noodles.

DISCLAIMER: As far as I know, there is no one of Eastern European descent in my recent gene pool who would know how to make true stroganoff. It is entirely likely I could eat this in Russia, made by someones babushka, and think it was wrong, because it wasn't my dads recipe. But this is GOOD. Not healthy. But who cares, cause it is YUMMY.

Knitting disaster to be posted tomorrow, so sharpen your tenterhooks.