After the break

OK followers! I am officially in town for the next 3 weeks so I will be continuously blogging.  We just finished the 2nd to last of our trips for the summer so nothing until the end of September, when I will be missing for a week due to a trip to Vegas and three Cubs games.

So before we left for Cali on Thurs, I made dinner Wednesday night.  I got the recipe out of Food and Wine magazine...which is the first time I've ever taken a recipe out of a magazine that I purchased!  The recipe was for a beef stew but with a twist.  I don't remember the exact name of it and I'm apparently too lazy to get up and find the magazine.  However, here are the ingredients!

I changed some things to the recipe to use things I had on hand such as whole onions instead of pearl, baby carrots instead of whole, and adding mushrooms to the mix.  

To begin, I cut the beef into pieces, chopped garlic and peppers.

Next, I heated some olive oil in my dutch oven and once it was hot, browned the beef on all sides.  I did this in batches to not crowd the pot.  Once they were browned on the outside, I put them in a bowl and set it aside.  

The peppers and garlic were added next into the dutch oven and cooked  for a couple of minutes until fragrant but before they browned.  The chicken stock was then poured on top and with a wooden spoon, I scraped up the brown bits from the bottom of the pot.

The beef was then added back to the pot and once the liquid came to a boil, the heat was turned down and it was left to simmer until the beef was cooked through.

At this point, the rest of the ingredients were added except for the coconut milk.  The mix cooked until the veggies were almost cooked through and the coconut milk was added.

Once this came to a boil, the heat was lowered and it simmered with the lid on until the veggies were cooked through.

They had ciabatta on sale at Whole Foods so I picked up a half loaf and it only cost me $1!! I didn't want to make rice and I had just made quinoa so I wanted to do something different to soak up the liquid.

So this meal was good.  It'll be great in the winter.  The serranos had a good amount of heat without overpowering but I would've been ok with a bit more heat.  It ended up just tasting like beef green curry instead of a beef stew but I guess that was expected with the coconut milk.  We ended up having a lot leftover and since we were leaving the next day we just put them in the fridge and they're still good after the weekend.  I think the best thing about making this recipe is that I can make this again when I want green curry without needing green curry paste.