One of the Dirtiest Pages... Sweet & Tangy Meatballs

This originally came from my Life's on Fire cookbook which is... well loved. The cover is falling off it's so well loved. The neat thing about her cookbooks is that she's incorporated a whole meal into the recipe so, at the end of it, you have the main, the sides, all of it. It's pretty cool because she's also flagged each of the components so that, if you're just wanting to make the main (as in this case), you can still do it.

So get a big pot of water to boiling. Once it's at a rolling boil, take 2 pounds of lean ground beef (I think the recipe calls for 1 1/2 pounds but I round up and enjoy the extra). Using your hands, break off small chunks of beef and roll them into tight balls, dropping them into the water as you finish each one. Once you drop the last one in, set your kitchen timer to 7 minutes (she's a huge fan of cooking by kitchen timer and most of her stuff is ready in under 20 minutes prep). When the timer goes off, drain the meatballs in a colander then return them to the pot.

Mix 1 cup ketchup, 1/2 c brown sugar, 1 T Worcestershire Sauce, 1 small, finely chopped onion and about 1/4 c water (this is a bit less than her original recipe but I like a thicker sauce, if you like a thinner sauce, by all means go for the 3/4 c water that Sandy originally called for). Pour it over the meatballs and stir to coat. Bring it to a boil and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Tasty, tasty. This page in the cookbook is covered with ketchup stains and dashes of Worcestershire. That's how you know it's good.

Soy-Braised Beef

I'm having serious difficulties with Blogger's image upload function so bear with me. I took this photo with my cell phone because I absolutely love this crockpot. This is a faux wood-paneled lovely from the church kitchen. If you are having difficulty in reading it, it's the "Canadianna [sic] Crockery Cooker by... (drumroll please) K-mart"!. I thought I would put up a recipe that has probably never been made in this gem.

3 lb cross rib or blade roast
4 each carrots and green onions
2 whole star anise or 6 whole cloves
2 pieces dried tangerine peel or peel from 1 tangerine, mandarin or clementine (or, if you're doing this in a crockpot, use grated orange rind)
1 tsp peppercorns
1 piece (2") cinnamon stick, broken
1 piece (1 1/2") ginger, sliced
3 cloves garlic
1/2 c dark soy sauce
2 T rice wine or dry sherry
1 t sugar
28 oz can tomatoes, undrained and coarsely chopped
1 T Chinese black vinegar or balsamic vinegar

Cut beef and carrots into 2" chunks. Thinly slice whites of onions and chop greens into 1/2" lengths. Set aside seperately.

Cut cheesecloth into 7" square and tie up star anise, tangerine peel, peppercorns, cinnamon and ginger.

In shallow Dutch oven, combine all (except onion greens and vinegar) with 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer until meat is tender (about 1 1/2 hours). Discard the spice bag, stir in the vinegar and onion greens and simmer till the onions are wilted, about 5 minutes.

For crockpot: combine all but vinegar and onion greens in the crock with 1/4 c water(note the reduction of the water, please, you will regret adding a cup of water unnecessarily to a crockpot). Add the spice bag and cook covered for 5-6 hours on low. Whisk together 1 T cornstarch with 1/4 c water and whisk into slow cooker. Increase heat to high and cook covered for about 10 minutes before adding onion greens, orange rind and vinegar.

The best part of this recipe was getting to use my star anise. It feeds something like 6-8 people but freezes wicked well because there's no starch in it really. It was really good over steamed rice.

Beef & Orange Stir Fry

Out of the Epicure catalog. Next time I would add some red pepper strips as well. I'd also cut the beef myself because this was pre-cut "stir fry beef" and the pieces were enormous! Also, not all of them were cut properly with respect to the grain of the meat.

3 oranges (zest and juice removed from one)
2 T soya sauce
1 T VE Oriental Stir Fry Seasoning
1 lb bonelss sirloin steak, cut into 1/2" strips
1 T cornstarch
2 T vegetable oil
4 green onions, sliced

Stir together orange zest, juice of 1 orange with soya sauce and VE seasoning. Peel remaining oranges, cut in half and then slice into half-moon shapes. (I got to do that really cool thing that I've seen on all of the cooking shows where I slice off the skin and cut out each little section so I had these perfectly peeled little pieces of orange. It was wicked easy and it was on my 100 list.)

Toss beef with cornstarch and brown in vegetable oil over medium-high heat (I used my electric wok). Transfer cooked meat out onto a plate.

Pour stir-fry sauce into hot pan and reduce by about 1/3 until it's slightly thickened. Return beef and orange slices to pan (I added the green onion now too). Stir until coated. Serve over rice or noodles (RICE!)

It was a little too orange-y for me but I think that the peppers would probably help with that. It was still really orange to orange-yellow in taste. I would probably make it again, it was wickedly filling too.

Roast Beef

OK, so I did a roast beef (inside round I think) and did the S&P pan fried in olive oil and a bit of butter then rubbed it down with some VE 3 onion dip mix - put it in at @300 until it was 163 on the meat thermometer.

EXTREMLY GOOD!!

then cut up potatoes and carrots roasty style and tossed them with olive oil, 3 onion dip, paprika, celery salt, oregano, basil, s&p, marjoram and thyme. into the oven with you fellows and nummy it was (Katie made me say the last bit! ;P )

Think the herbs provincial (or whatever) that I bought tonight will be good on veg too.