The end of Oktoberfest meals

Well, I made all of 2 German dinners.  It didn't occur to me when I started this German once a week thing for Oktoberfest last week that it would only last 2 weeks.  I guess that's a good start to have never made German food though.  I'd make more next week but we've got Cubs games Tues-Thurs so that kinda takes out most of my cooking days.  Maybe we'll just eat some brats and kraut.

Anyway! So this meal actually began on Monday.  It apparently has to marinade for 72 hours so I bought the roast on monday and it sat in my fridge for 3 days.  Last night's meal was Sauerbraten with Hot German Potato Salad.

Sauerbraten went a little like this:

juniper berries

whole cloves

mustard powder

red wine vinegar

apple cider vinegar

bay leaves

peppercorns

salt

oil

carrots

onions

I didn't take pics of the marinade making process b/c all I did was take the carrots and onions and let them cook a bit and then added all the remaining ingredients and cooked until it boiled then simmered for about 10 min or so.

The marinade had to cool to room temperature.  So while waiting for that,  I coated the roast in oil and salted it.  Then browned it on all sides in a pan.

Once it was browned and marinade was cool, I put it in a dutch oven with the marinade.

 This sat for 3 days in the fridge...

3 days later...

The dutch oven went into the oven for 4 hours.  While this was happening, I made the potatoes.  The ingredients were:

flour

sugar

salt

pepper

potatoes

vinegar

celery seed

water

bacon

onion

To start, I boiled the potatoes for about 20-25 minutes and let them cool.  Once cool enough to handle, I sliced them thinly.  

Next, I worked on the sauce.  

To start, I cooked the bacon.  Once they were done, I crumbled it up and set it aside.  The chopped onions then went into the same pan with the bacon fat. 

Once these browned, I added the flour/celery seed/salt/pepper mixture and stirred it until incorporated.  Then removed from heat and added the vinegar and water.  Turned the heat back on and let it come to a boil, constantly stirring. 

Once the sauce is thickened, the potatoes and bacon are added.  I added them in batches so I could make sure to coat each potato with sauce.  You've gotta kinda be careful b/c the potatoes are mushy and you don't want them to fall apart and become mashed.

So once they potatoes are done, I worked on finishing the beef.

I removed the beef from the marinade and put it in the microwave to keep warm.

To make the sauce, the marinade was strained to remove the junk (carrots, onions, bay leaves, etc).  The liquid was then added back to the pot and about 5 oz of crushed gingersnaps were added to the liquid.

 

This mixture is continuously whisked until it thickens.  I didn't think it was ever gonna happen but eventually it does.  It gets pretty thick actually so be careful not to overdo it.

So 3 days later....we have sauerbraten!

 It doesn't look that appealing but it was pretty good! It's kinda just like sour roast beef...the potatoes were kinda awesome and even better cold this morning hehe.  The meat was cooked well and very tender which is good.  I always worry about cooking beef for long periods of time just b/c it seems to dry out but luckily, I haven't run into that problem yet ;)  The good thing about this meat is that even though it takes 3 days, it's really easy since most of the time it's just sitting in the fridge.  Once the marinade is made, you just have to let it sit and then put it in the oven.

Best of both worlds

One of Eric's favorites is chicken and rice.  Every week I buy a chicken from Whole Foods.  I had some leftover and thought that it would be good to use it before we left for our trip to Vegas.  I decided to make chicken and rice but not like everyday chicken and rice.  I wanted to steer away from the cream of chicken/mushroom soups.  We also try to cut down our carb intake so I substituted quinoa for rice.  I also had some veggies laying around the house so I added those to the dish.  In the end, my "chicken and rice" ended up more like chicken and quinoa pot pie minus the crust.  

The ingredients were:

quinoa

chicken stock

flour

salt

pepper

onions

peas

mushrooms

carrots

chicken

butter

milk

thyme

So to start, I premade the quinoa in chicken stock.  While that was cooking, I started on the veggies and the sauce.  

I heated up some olive oil and added the onions to the pan and let them cook for a couple of minutes.  I'm not sure what's going on with my pics but for some reason I can't rotate them so they're gonna be horizontal today =/

Next, I added the carrots and let those cook for a bit with the onions

After the carrots, the mushrooms were thrown in and also allowed to cook for a bit, and finally the peas were added and heated through. 

These were removed and set aside into a bowl with the quinoa 

In the quinoa pot, I melted the butter.  Once melted, I added the flour and thyme and let that cook together, stirring consistently. 

Once it was all incorporated, I added milk and chicken stock to the mix and whisked until thickened a bit. 

Once the sauce thickened, I added everything together including the chicken, and mixed it together and put it in a baking dish. 

The casserole was topped with parmesan and breadcrumbs with dallops of butter throughout. 

I let this bake for about 25 minutes and then it was done!

The best thing about casseroles, I think, is that it's a whole meal in one pan.  

This is such a hearty meal without having tons of calories.  It's great to remove the sodium added from the cream of chicken soup and it tasted great.  It was so easy and took no time at all to make.  I wish it had been a little cooler last night but it didn't keep the meal from being good.  It definitely tasted more like chicken pot pie than chicken and rice but it was still good either way.

Fall is here!

The nights here have officially gotten cooler.  We open our windows all day and don't need AC which is great for my electric bill.  It officially feels like fall weather, which is my favorite.  To kick it off, I decided to make a fall dinner.  This included pork, acorn squash, and roasted veggies.  I've never had acorn squash before so this was completely new to me.

For the pork, I made a marinade and let it sit in the fridge for about 7 hours.  Whole Foods had a sale on boneless butterflied pork chops so I grabbed a few of those.  The marinade consisted of:

honey

brown sugar

lime juice

salt

pepper

cayenne pepper

cumin

olive oil

garlic

dijon mustard

To make it, I just put everything into a bowl and whisked it together 

Since the pork was butterflied, I went ahead and cut them in half to make half chops so I ended up with 6 separate pieces.  

The chops went into a ziplock bag with the marinade and it was turned a couple of times to coat before going into the fridge.  

When it was time for dinner, I started with the roasted veggies and the acorn squash since they would take longer to cook.  For veggies, I used zucchini, yellow squash, onions, and bell pepper. I cut them up and put them in a baking dish, sprinkled salt and pepper and drizzled olive oil. 

I originally wanted to add the acorn squash to the mix but instead, I decided to roast it on its own.  I cut the squash in half and took the seeds out.  First, I sprinkled kosher salt on the squash.  Then, in the cavity, of each half, I added some butter and topped it with brown sugar.  I thought it'd be a nice touch to sprinkle some pumpkin pie spice over the tops as well to add extra spice. 

These went in the oven with the roasted veggies.  They cooked for about an hour.

While the veggies were cooking, I grilled the pork chops.  I cooked them for about 15 minutes total and then let them sit for about 10 minutes. They came out about medium which is how we usually eat our pork.  For some reason my grill marks never come out when I make pork.  I don't turn the meat a lot..but they always just brown, which I guess is ok as long as they taste good.

This past weekend on our way back from the mountains, we stopped at Tommyknockers Brewery and got a Pumpkin Ale.  They gave the beer a brown sugar, pumpkin spice rim which was delicious with the beer.  We are a big fan of pumpkin anything and bought a 6 pack of the beer and brought it home with us.  In honor of fall and everything, Eric decided to recreate that rim and paired dinner with the pumpkin beer.

The melted butter/sugar mixture in the acorn squash so kind of amazing.  I ended up making "mashed squash" and mashing everything together with the melted butter.  The brown sugar went really well with the sweetness of the pork.  I think the pork had a little too much cumin for me so I think next time I'll use a little less of that but overall it was great.  You can't really ever go wrong with roasted veggies and I think they went really well with everything since there were so many sweet flavors in the pork and squash, they calmed everything down a bit.  The beer was great and the sugar rim was delicious and also paired well with the brown sugar/spiced theme of the meal.

I must say, I'm pretty excited for fall weather so I can make fall meals.

How the French do it

I'm a big fan of mussels but have never made them.  We would get them at brunch when we went to a French place and we got them last week at the Kitchen.  They're always good and I always love eating them but for some reason I can never make them a whole meal b/c I feel like they just wouldn't be enough.  Yesterday was cold and gray and something warm sounded good.  I didn't want to make chili b/c it's not THAT cold and for some reason I'm weird about making soup.  Sooo mussels seemed to be the best option. It was cheap, easy, and served with some sourdough.

The ingredients were:

mussels

chopped tomatoes

onions

garlic

butter

olive oil

salt

pepper

white wine

crushed red pepper

thyme

To start, I purged the mussels in water and flour for about 30 minutes.  This caused them to release their "beards" which I then removed.  

 Once this was ready, I started up the mussels.  To begin, I melted the butter with the olive oil in a pot and then added the onions.  They cooked for about 5 minutes and then the garlic was added.  I let both of these cook together until the onion was translucent.

Next, the other stuff was added.  Everything except for the mussels.

 Once it came to a boil, the mussels were added.  I rinsed them a couple of times to get rid of the flour.  The heat was turned down to about medium to let it simmer.  I was worried they were overcrowded and wouldn't open b/c apparently that can be a problem but about 10 minutes later I looked in and they were done!  I made sure to toss them every few minutes just to get the juices flowing.  I did this by holding the pot with the lid on and shaking it up and down.  I didn't want to open the lid b/c then it would release heat.

So I didn't take a picture of the bread b/c it's just a sliced half loaf of sourdough.

 They don't look that pretty in my pictures but they were so good!! I made a plate with olive oil, salt, pepper, and parmesan for dipping just in case the liquid wasn't enough but mixed together they were great! I was so pleased that they came out as well as they did.  They weren't overcooked and rubbery but delicious.  I bought 4 pounds and I think that was just enough.  The garlic, wine, and tomatoes all mixed so well together with flavor.  This dish was so easy and inexpensive to make.  I highly suggest it on a cold day.

Essen war sehr lecker!!

Due to Oktoberfest and in honor of Eric's heritage, I decided that once a week for the rest of September I'm gonna make something German.  This began last night!  Other than grilling some bratwursts and German coleslaw, I haven't really tackled German cuisine so I was a little nervous.  I looked up tons of recipes and finally decided on a couple for the month.  I also asked Eric for his opinion and took that into consideration.  After an hour or so of searching, I decided on making Beef Rouladen, Spaetzle, and Gurkensalat.  Here is how my journey with German went!

To start, I made the Gurkensalat.  This had to chill in the fridge so I made it a couple of hours before hand.  This is basically cucumber and onion salad in a sour cream/vinegar dressing.  The ingredients for this dish were:

Cucumbers

Onion

Sour Cream

Vinegar

Sugar

Salt

Dill

To start, I sliced the cucumbers and onion thinly.  Then put them in a bowl and tossed them with a little salt.  They sat for about 30 minutes while I whipped together the dressing.  The dressing was just sour cream, vinegar, dill, and sugar put into a bowl and whisked together.  

 After the 30 minutes, I folded the cucumbers in with the dressing and threw it all in the fridge until it was time to eat!

The next thing I worked on was the Beef Rouladen.  The ingredients for this were:

beef

dijon mustard

salt

pepper

onion

pickles

bacon

beef broth

sour cream

bay leaf

peppercorn

cornstarch

To start, I chopped the pickles and sliced the onion.  I salt and peppered both sides of the beef and coated both sides in dijon mustard.  Then placed 1 piece of bacon on each piece of beef and covered them with onions and pickles, dividing it among the 4.  The beef was then rolled up like a jelly roll and secured with toothpicks.  Some of the stuff fell out but that's ok, there was still plenty left still inside. 

So then, I heated some oil in a pan and once it was hot, put the rouladen in the pan to brown on all sides.  I probably left them in for about 2 minutes or so per side.  Once they were brown, I added beef broth, peppercorns, and a bay leaf.  This came to a simmer and was covered and left to cook for about 1.5 hours.  

While this was cooking, I began making the spaetzle.  The ingredients were:

all purpose flour

nutmeg

salt

pepper

sugar

eggs

milk

So I mixed all the dry in one bowl, and then all the wet in another.  Then, making a well in the dry, I added the wet. Then mixed it together and let it sit for about 15 minutes.  

There aren't a whole lot of pictures of this process b/c I had to use both hands and quickly.  Once the dough rested, I had a pot of simmering water and put a colander above it.  Then, using a spatula, I squeezed the dough through the holes so it fell into the liquid.

Ideally, the dough would have fallen in and the product after boiling would look like this:

However, I had some serious issues.  The dough started cooking to the bottom of the colander.  Eric thought he could take over and get some out but then it just got worse so we looked for other things with holes to push the dough through.  In the end, Eric came up with a martini shaker lid...You can only imagine how well that one worked too.  Our dough, that was supposed to make enough for 6 servings made maybe...o I'd say 1/2 serving.  It was a messy disaster! We did take the small amount we had though, and cooked in a pan with some butter.

Luckily, we still had noodles leftover from the night before so we just threw those in with the spaetzle and heated it up.

When the rouladen was done, I removed it from the pot and created the sauce.  To the sauce, I added a cornstarch slurry and the sour cream.  I didn't need to add salt or pepper b/c it was already pretty tasty.  Once the sour cream was melted in with the sauce, I added the rouladen back to the pot and let it cook for a couple of minutes per side.

Once we gave up on the spaetzle, the rouladen was done and we were ready to eat.  Eric had already eaten over half the gurkensalat at this point so we didn't eat it with our meal.

Unlike the spaetzle, the Rouladen was DELICIOUS!! It was so good Eric went back for another roll, which we had to split.  The sauce was great on the noodles and the beef.  The pickles gave a great hint of tartness.  I thought the beef was going to be a little tough and dry but it cut up beautifully.  Even though the spaetzle was a disaster, I will still say that my first attempt at German cooking was a success just b/c the rouladen and the sauce turned out so well.