Philly Cheesesteak Strudel

I forget what recipe I was watching online when this idea came into my head.  I haven't made a savory strudel in a long time, and was pleased that there are a lot of variations of this online.

I'm choosing to use crescent rolls here, but puff pastry is a perfect alternative.  And less sticky to work with.  I went on a coupon binge at Ralphs, which included some Pillsbury and the shaved beef I'm using here.  You can also use pre-cooked deli roast beef, but shaved or thinly sliced beef is more traditional.

As long as we're talking traditional Philly, the provolone is borderline.  Cheese Whiz or American is slightly more authentic.  I prefer provolone or white cheddar, which are more popular outside Philly itself.  I get grilled onions on mine, but that's all the add-ons I believe in.  If you want to sauté up some pepper strips or mushrooms, go ahead.  In my book, that makes it a fajita on a bun.

1 Tb oil
*1/2 onion, thinly sliced 
8 oz thin slice or shaved steak
salt and pepper to taste
1 8-count package crescent rolls or 1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
flour for rolling
4 slices provolone cheese

1.  Heat oil over medium heat in a large skillet.  Add onion slices and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.

2.  Add beef to the pan and continue to cook until done, moving it around frequently.  Season with salt and pepper and stir again.  Set aside to cool at least 15 minutes.

3.  Preheat oven to 375º while you prepare the roll.  Open the crescents or defrosted puff pastry and roll into a rectangle 12" x 16", using flour as necessary.  If using crescents, you may have to pinch shut the perforations.  Place on prepared baking sheet.

4.  Place beef mixture along the center of the long ways of the pastry.  Top with the slices of cheese.

5.  Cut 1" slits along each side of the meat, then fold over the middle to make a kind of braid design.  If you want a shiny finish, brush with an egg wash.  I left mine plain.

6.  Bake until the pastry is cooked through, approximately 18-20 minutes.  Allow to rest ten minutes before slicing.  Serve while still hot.

Serves 4 as a main, 8 as an appetizer

Difficulty rating  π

Butterscotch & Pecan Oatmeal Cookies

As a reduced-carb person, I haven't bought cookies in a while.  Wow, they got expensive.  All I wanted was a box to throw in the freezer and pull out a couple when I wanted a sweet snack.  Time to make my own.  There were butterscotch chips in the mix-ins box and I had bought pecans for the muffins.  Oatmeal cookie time.

I decided to try a different recipe, one with two eggs in it so I could cut it in half.  It still made two dozen.  Sunset Easy Basics for Good Cooking came out in 1982 and is surprisingly available used on Amazon.  I don't open it often, but it has a lot of good recipes for the comfort foods everyone makes.  It's also a bit of a textbook, which was great in the days before the internet.  The first cookie recipe is oatmeal chip.

*1/2 C chopped pecans
1/2 C margarine, room temperature 
3/4 C lightly packed brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature 
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 C flour
1 C + 3 Tb rolled or quick oats
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
*1 C butterscotch chips

1.  Lightly toast the pecans, either in a dry pan over medium heat or in the oven, stirring every minute or two.  Nuts go from not done to burnt in a blink.  Set aside to cool.  Preheat oven to 350º and line a cookie sheet or two with parchment paper or a Silpat.

2.  Cream together margarine (butter is ok, but margarine or shortening makes a crisper cookie) and brown sugar until smooth.  Scrape down bowl.  Add egg and vanilla and beat again until smooth.  Scrape down again.

3.  Add flour, oats, soda, and salt and mix until combined but not over-beaten.  Stir in chips and pecans.

4.  Drop by rounded tablespoons on the prepared sheets.  I used the small cookie scoop.  At this point, you can freeze them to bag up and bake later.  I don't have room in the freezer right now for a cookie sheet and baked them all.

5.  Bake 12-14 minutes, rotating halfway through.  Let sit on the sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool.  Store airtight at room temperature up to 3 days, or freeze for longer storage.

Makes 2 dozen

Difficulty rating  π

Khoresh Fesenjan

Techie Smurf told me about this Persian recipe.  He made it with duck for Rosh Hashanah.  It's a special-occasion recipe that I figured I could make for Chanukah with duck or turkey if I liked it with chicken thighs for myself.

Thus began my quest for the specialty ingredients.  Ralphs carries pomegranate molasses, so I didn't have to go to an ethnic store.  It's pomegranate season, but I know that Pavilions carries frozen arils if I ever want to make this when fresh aren't available.  I decided to get basmati for the Persian rice, as long as I was spending on this one anyway.  A $2 pack of chicken thighs turned into a $20 meal very quickly.  It really made me appreciate the way I have stocked my pantry with ingredients I use regularly.

Making this and the rice at the same time was a bit exhausting.  I was toggling between recipes on computer tabs, trying to get everything to finish at the same time, and blogging.  There were elements I could have prepped in advance, like both the onions and walnuts.  Once those are done, it's just putting everything in the same pot and simmering until tender.

I think this would have become even more tender if I had used bone-in chicken, either with or without skin.  I'll do that next time.  Using the boneless thighs was on my wish list for the month, before restocking during a very good sale on chicken dark meat.

And this is another one that's going to land you with a ton of pots and things to wash.  Not necessarily from the stew itself, but the food processor and everything that goes into the rice.  Plus, it was my challah baking day.  After a month or so of phoning it in, I was overdue for some elaborate recipes.

3 Tb vegetable oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1-1/2 C walnuts
1/4 C water
*4 chicken leg quarters (or 1 chicken, cut up)
1 C pomegranate molasses
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper
pomegranate seeds for garnish

1.  Heat oil on medium-high in a wide skillet or large pot.  Add onion and cook until well browned, stirring frequently.  This isn't caramelized onions.  You want them fried.  It's going to take 15-20 minutes.

2.  While the onions are cooking, run the walnuts in the food processor until ground.  Slowly trickle in water to make a paste.

3.  Add chicken pieces to the pot and arrange the fried onions on top.  Smear with the walnut paste.  Pour in the pomegranate molasses, the generous sprinkle of sugar, and top everything with a dusting of salt and pepper.  Heat on medium until everything comes to a boil and the chicken starts to give up its juices.

4.  Cover pot, reduce heat to low, and cook until chicken is fall-apart tender.  Stir every fifteen minutes or so, to make sure the molasses isn't scorching and the chicken is basted.  This could take anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour, depending whether you use bone-in or boneless, skin on or off, etc.  My boneless/skinless thighs took a little more than half an hour to cook.  Also, I ended up with far more sauce than I expected.  Once the walnuts melt into the molasses and chicken fat, you're going to end up with a pool of gravy.  You can remove the chicken and turn up the heat to reduce it if desired.

5.  Serve chicken and sauce hot, with Persian rice and pomegranate arils to garnish.

Difficulty rating  :)

Vegetarian Swedish Meatballs

This is my adaptation of a vegan recipe I found.  There was nothing wrong with the original.  I didn't care if I was having vegan or gluten-free and wanted to put yogurt in the sauce.  I'm not sure if the Worcestershire sauce I bought is vegetarian, but it's the cheap store brand and doesn't list any fish ingredients.  I haven't used the stuff in years and didn't want to get the expensive bottle if it's a one-off.

I will definitely make the meatballs again, to use with any sauce.  Maybe cut back on the Worcestershire and soy sauces, but the texture and general flavor were perfect.  I would bake them on parchment, though.  Adding an egg made them stick to the Silpat.  I couldn't flip them like you were supposed to.  They did cook all the way through.  The crispy bits were only on the bottom.

Warning, you're going to have a lot of dishes to wash.  I actually combined two steps to reduce the number of pots used.  Another option is to make the entire meatball mixture ahead of time, to divide when dishes are washed.  It could easily sit in the fridge for up to 24 hours.  The sauce is best when freshly made.

Meatballs

1 Tb olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
1-1/2 C mushrooms, chopped
*4 cloves garlic, minced
*1/2 C lentils
1 C unsalted vegetable broth, or water
3/4 C rolled oats
*2 tsp dried parsley
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp pepper
*2 Tb soy sauce
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce 
1 egg

1.  In a large skillet, cook the onion and mushrooms in the oil until both are softened and the water from the mushrooms is gone.  Add the garlic and cook an additional 2 minutes.  Set aside to cool slightly.

2.  Add the lentils and broth and simmer until the lentils are tender and most of the liquid is absorbed, about half an hour.  Remove from the heat.

3.  Pulse oats in a food processor to break them up, then run half a minute to make a coarse oat flour.  Add the onion/mushroom/lentil mixture (and any remaining broth) and all remaining ingredients.  Pulse together, then run into a coarse paste.  You still want enough chunks to mimic ground meat.  Set aside 15-30 minutes to thicken.

4.  Preheat oven to 400º and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Scoop rounded tablespoons of batter onto the sheet, to make about 20 meatballs.  I used a cookie scoop.

5.  Bake for 5 minutes, then turn down the heat to 350º and continue to bake another 18 minutes or so, flipping halfway through if they're firm enough.  If not, no worries.  They will still bake through.  If serving with pasta, get the water boiling and cook according to package directions.  While all that's going on, make the sauce...

Sauce

3 Tb butter or margarine
1/4 Tb flour
1 C vegetable broth
1 C milk
1 Tb soy sauce
1 tsp mustard
1 Tb Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp garlic powder 
1 tsp onion powder 
pepper to taste
1/2 C Greek yogurt or sour cream

1.  In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.  Add the flour and briskly stir into a roux.  Cook until all of the flour is lightly browned.

2.  Add the vegetable broth slowly, stirring well after each addition and allowing sauce to thicken.  Add the soy sauce, mustard, Worcestershire, garlic powder, and onion powder.  Slowly add the milk, allowing to thicken as you go.  Taste and add pepper as needed.

3.  Remove the saucepan from the heat.  Beat the yogurt until smooth and add to the sauce.  Stir well to get it to melt into the sauce.  Add baked meatballs to the sauce, then pour over your noodles.  Serve hot.

Difficulty rating  :)

Sweet Potato Muffins

I got this recipe from Suttons Daze on YouTube.  She used freeze-dried sweet potatoes, which I don't buy.  I wanted to use a jar of what I had canned. That involved tweaking her recipe a tiny bit to account for the added moisture.  I also messed with the pecan topping.  She didn't say how many it made, so I cut it in half.  I suspected it was a dozen.  Didn't want to find out it was two dozen.  I did, in fact, get six from my new version.

This isn't going to use a full 15 oz can of sweet potatoes.  I froze the leftover purée to add the next time I make a casserole or soup with some.  The 15 oz would come up short for the original recipe.  I would rather have leftovers than not enough.

Muffins

1 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
6 Tb (1/4 C + 2 Tb) packed brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon 
1/2 tsp nutmeg
*2/3 C mashed sweet potato, either canned and well drained or roasted
1/4 C unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 egg, room temperature 
2 Tb sour cream or Greek yogurt

Streusel

1/4 C pecans, lightly toasted and chopped
2 Tb brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon 
dash of salt
1 Tb softened butter
1 Tb rolled or quick oats
1 Tb flour

1.  Preheat oven to 400º.  If not using silicone muffin cups, pan spray or line a muffin tin for a yield of 6.

2.  In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  In a separate container, beat together sweet potato, butter, egg, and sour cream.  In a third small bowl, mash together streusel ingredients into a chunky paste.

3.  Stir together wet and dry muffin ingredients.  Combine only until no large patches of flour remain.  Do not overmix.  The batter will be thick.

4.  Fill muffin cups 2/3 full.  Top with pecan goo.

5.  Bake 5 minutes at 400º, then turn down oven to 350º and bake an additional 18 minutes, or until a toothpick comes up clean.  The high temperature to start is so they puff up, but the middle won't bake properly before the outside burns unless you reduce the heat.  It's important not to forget to turn down the oven.

6.  Once cool enough to handle, turn out onto a cooling rack.  Stores room temperature for 3 days, fridge up to 7, and in the freezer for longer storage.

Makes 6

Difficulty rating  :)

French Onion Slow Cooker Pulled Beef

This was something I threw together on a whim when I needed a Crockpot meal to come home to.  Leftover French onion soup from the sandwiches and a pound of beef roast I got on clearance sounded like something I could do with one minute of prep in the morning.  I took photos in case I wanted to post it, but thought they'd be trashed by the end of the day.

Oh no, this is getting posted.  It's considerably more prep when you make the soup first.  It takes at least half an hour to caramelize the onions.  But once you've made the small quantity of soup needed to braise the meat, everything goes in the slow cooker and you can leave it for hours.

*2 C beef broth
1 onion
1 Tb olive oil
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 lb beef roast of choice

1.  To caramelize the onion, heat the oil in a wide pan over medium-low heat.  Peel the onion and slice thinly .  Scatter in the pan and sprinkle with salt.  Slowly cook, stirring every five minutes or so, until a browned jammy mess.  This will take at least half an hour.

2.  Add broth and thyme to the onions.  Stir and add salt or other seasonings as desired to make the "soup".  You can also add a touch of red wine if desired.  This portion of the meal can be done the day before.

3.  Early in the day, transfer the soup to a small (max 2.5 qt) slow cooker.  If necessary, cut the roast into pieces so it fits comfortably in the crock.  The liquid should come at least halfway up the sides of the meat.  Set on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4.

4.  Once meat is falling apart when pierced by a fork, it is done.  You can shred it either inside the crock or on a cutting board.  Can be served on its own, over potatoes or noodles, or as a French dip with the cooking broth on the side.

Difficulty rating  π

Toum

I decided to amp up a sheet pan meal with this Lebanese garlic sauce.

I found a recipe for toum by a Jordanian woman, Rana's Mediterranean Recipes, that looked authentic.  Also easy and few ingredients.

Her posted recipe made way more than I needed, so I did the easy math and cut it in thirds.  It still made a lot.  Even if I had cut it in quarters, it would have been more than four servings the way I consumed it.  I used it for the next meal as salad dressing, then used the rest as garlic oil for cooking greens.

Doing this "smaller" batch, I used the mini food processor.  It was too small for that to be effective, and I switched to the blender.  That worked, so I'm giving blender directions for my scaled-down version.

As an emulsified sauce, you really do need to add the oil slowly.  I didn't go slowly enough, and it separated in the fridge.  If that happens, you can whip it back up at serving time.  The clear portion is still garlic oil and yummy, it just won't have the whipped texture.

*1/3 C peeled garlic cloves
3/4 tsp kosher salt
*1 C neutral oil like canola
*3 Tb lemon juice

1.  Once the garlic is peeled, slice each clove in half and remove the "sprout" germ.  That will keep the sauce from turning bitter.

2.  Combine garlic and salt in a blender, pulsing until chopped into a paste.

3.  Running the blender on its lowest setting, start drizzling in the oil.  Go very slowly at first, a few drops at a time.  Once there is enough substance that you can see the sauce spinning, add a teaspoon or two of lemon juice to aid the emulsion.

4.  Continue alternating a slow stream of oil and teaspoon of lemon juice until all has been added and the mixture is white and fluffy.  It's ok to stop and scrape down the sides, or to let the blender rest for a moment.  If it seems sluggish, turn up the speed a notch, but don't go full speed or the emulsion could break.  This is going to take a minimum of five minutes, and maybe as long as ten.

5.  Pour sauce into a non-reactive container and chill until ready to use.  I recommend glass because of the garlic smell.  I wasn't thinking of that and put it in plastic.  Stir before serving to distribute any solids that may have settled.  Can be used as a dipping sauce, frying oil, or as part of a salad dressing.

Makes one cup

Difficulty rating  :)

Part XVII : Festive Cooking

I'm still trying to cook using pantry items first, and following a reduced-carb Mediterranean template.  However, holiday meals tend to break the budget.

As I was tweaking October's meal plan of protein choices into an actual grocery list, I ended up with a lot of new items I don't normally stock.  My grocery spending for the year has been better than average.  I can get away with it despite rising prices.  A big part of that was discovering the Ralphs (Kroger) discount system.  I stopped shopping there when Pavilions had a much better points redemption strategy.  Ralphs doesn't get me free products, but their prices are usually lower and they generously discount items days before their Sell By dates.

It was time to start a new section, to reflect that I'm not only cooking budget meals right now.  Granted, the day after I made this choice, Ralphs had excellent meat sales and I spent just shy of $27 refilling the freezer.  I had just pulled my last pack of chicken thighs and was down to a turkey carcass and a brisket that I might cook up for one of the work pot lucks.  With today's prices, I'm pretty impressed that I got a whole chicken, 10 thighs, 2 lbs of chuck roast, and a one-pound tuna steak for less than $30.  I may not have to buy meat for the rest of the year, even for holiday parties.  And maybe January.

A lot of the recipes I have planned can be multiplied for parties, served as appetizers, taken to pot lucks, put into dessert gift baskets, or generally enjoyed as a special meal.  Not everything will be expensive or difficult to make.  Some of it is dump-and-go slow cooker.  A lot of making a meal special is presentation and the spirit in which it is served.