Slow Cooker - Curly Creamy Meaty Pasta

It seems we might be trying a bunch more slow cooker recipes, judging this school year's schedule.

For this one we first prepared 1 lb. of curlicue pasta and stuck it into the fridge.

Then we tossed the following into the slow cooker: 2 lb. stew beef, dried oregano, dried basil, salt, pepper, 1 quart of vegetable broth, 3 tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce, 2 minced cloves of garlic, and 1 tablespoon of mustard.

Then we mixed roughly 4 tablespoons of flour with a bit of water and added it as well. We turned the pot on low for 8+ hours and went about our day.

When we came home we looked into the pot, added the pasta and 1 cup of sour cream, set the table, and ate. Yummo!

Slow Cooker - Sloppy Joes

All right. Here is another Slow Cooker recipe. One that can be cooking for eight hours and be put on the table in seconds - Sloppy Joes.

It was quite simple and yes - sloppy. We browned 2 pounds of happy cow beef, placed it in the slow cooker and added a whole bunch of stuff. Namely: half a chopped onion, 1 chopped green pepper, 2 tablespoons mustard, 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, 1 can tomato sauce, half of that can worth of water, roughly one half cup of ketchup, a quarter cup of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, a little salt and pepper, and 1/8 cup of flour.

We turned the bad boy to low, turned to more pressing matters for about 8 to 9 hours and ate. 

To do so we got a bag of hamburger buns. The girls loved it!

Bloody Mary Beef - Bam!

COMFORT FOOD indeed! This was one scrumptious forklicking eat'em-up dinner for the history books. You could drown all your sorrows in this dish. Not withstanding the fact that we had to open the bar early for it. A pot roast brisket in a Bloody Mary sauce. We kid you not.

This one came straight out of the hallowed pages of Jamie Oliver's new cookbook Comfortfood and - BAM! - right into our new Christmas-present Emeril Cookware casserole. A cook-off of Titans, if you will, right in our kitchen.

We started with seasoning a 2 lb piece of  brisket with salt and pepper from all sides.

Then we cranked up the heat on that casserole dish and added a few gluggs of olive oil.

We placed the chunk of meat into the heat for a good 10 minutes until it was seared all around.

In the meantime we cranked the oven to 250F and roughly chopped up one big red onion and two sticks of celery.

We reduced the heat and gently cooked the veggies for another 10 minutes.

That gave us time to get sauced. At 11 a.m. mind you. We mixed up 3 1/2 cups of smoothly crushed uncooked tomato sauce (our best description for a "passata" substitute), the juice of 1 lemon, 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, a few drops of Tabasco sauce, 3 tablespoons vodka, and 1 tablespoon port.

All that we added to the meat and cranked up the heat to a boil.

We tied up a handful of rosemary sprigs with 2 fresh bay leaves.

The herbs got tossed into all that goodness and then ...

... we shoved it into the oven. For 5 1/2 hours. The aromas coming from the kitchen all day long made it, of course, hard to wait.

Half an hour before we were ready for dinner  we got a pot of water to a boil and tossed in a few handfuls of green beans, trimmed and halved, for just about 6 minutes. We drained them to serve.

We also boiled a pot worth of yellow potatoes, peeled and cut, until they were soft. We drained them as well and then mashed them up with about one cup of heavy cream, a few chunks of butter, salt, and freshly grated nutmeg. Oooooh, goodie.

When we brought the brisket back to daylight, we removed the herbs and pulled the meat apart with a fork.

This will be, no doubt, a holiday classic for years to come. Let's just say: New Years with all the good attentions can wait for a few days. This dinner was not for timid souls. It was made for eating.

Big British Meatballs

We took a stab at Jamie Oliver's "Big British Meatballs" from his new cookbook Comfort Food. And comfort food it was.

Lena was all over this and declared it the best Sunday dinner ever. She started by plucking the leaves of 2 sticks of rosemary.

Then she cut up 1 1/2 big onions. (The recipe asks for 2, but we truly believe that these North Carolina onions are just humongous).

We looked for Worcestshire Sauce and

started frying up the onions in a little olive oil.

Lena added 2 tablespoons of the sauce and a splash of water. We cooked it all for 20 minutes.

Then we let the onions cool and spiked them up with a little salt and pepper.

Lena got 1 pound of ground beef and 1 pound of ground pork in a bowl.

Then we whizzed up a few slices of stale bread in a food processor and

added a handful of breadcrumbs and the onions to the beef.

Lena mixed it all up and 

formed

16

equally sized

meatballs.

Next we cut up 3 oz of cheddar cheese into 16 chunks.

Then Lena pushed little holes into the meat balls and 

stuck the cheese into their centers.

Yum. We popped them into the fridge.

(Lena said to make sure to write in the blog that you want to make nice big holes in the meatballs with two fingers and just let the cheese fall in. So there. Consider it written.)

Meanwhile, for the gravy, we fried up 7 oz of more ground beef in a little olive oil.

While the meat was browning we sliced up about a 3/4 onion and the leaves of 2 more sticks of rosemary.

We added them to the meat and cooked them for about five minutes.

Next we rummaged for an Indian Pale Ale, a veggie broth cube (we couldn't find a decent beef bullion that wasn't full of ingredients we couldn't decipher), English Mustard (Well honestly, we had no idea what exactly English Mustard was. We grabbed one that was  called "Sir Kensington", which sounded English enough, but turned out to have a French flag emblazoned on it.), blueberry jam (It was supposed to be black currant jam; we tried, but couldn't find any.), flour, and malt vinegar.

Lena added the broth cube and 3/4 cups of the beer to the meat and gave the rest to Papa for good luck.

We let it all cook in for a while and then added the rest.

2 tablespoons flour, 1 tablespoon jam, 2 teaspoons mustard, and 2 tablespoons vinegar. Then we added 3 cups of water and let the whole kit and kaboodle simmer for 30 minutes. Next we turned the oven to 475F and placed into it an empty roasting pan to warm up.

When the oven was ready we added the meatballs over a drizzle of olive oil, leaving some space around each.

After 20 minutes in the oven we smothered them in our gravy and put the gooey goodness back in for another 5 minutes.

In the meantime we prepped for our favorite mashed potatoes by peeling and chopping up a bunch of potatoes.

We covered them with water and cooked them with a little salt.

When they were soft we chucked in a few pieces of butter, some grated nutmeg, and a good bit of heavy cream.

Lena mashed it all up.

To round up the affair we also sliced a handful of carrots, cooked them in butter and salt until they started to get soft, caramelized them with a little sugar, and finsihed it all off with a bit of ground coriander seeds.

Bam! Look at it. Absolute delicious scrumptiousness. It doesn't get much better than this when you are asking for a little snug comfort. Thank you Jamie Oliver.