Rancher's Pie

Like Shepherd's Pie, but with beef instead of lamb!

2 1/2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cubed for boiling
1 stick butter (yeah, 1 stick)
1/2 cup whole milk

Boil the potatoes in well-salted water for about 15 - 20 minutes. They should be fork tender. The time varies a lot depending on how small you cut the potatoes. Drain and mash with the milk and butter. Or you can use instant if you want to make the baby Jesus cry.

1T olive oil
1T butter
1/2 bag frozen pearl onions, thawed
5 peeled, chopped carrots
4 ribs celery, chopped
1 pkg whole button mushrooms
3 cloves minced garlic
1 1/2 lbs beef stew meat
1 package beef gravy mix
1/2 cup red wine
1 drained can diced tomatoes
1 cup frozen peas


In the Olive Oil and butter with a ginormous pan, sautee the onions, carrots, and celery for a few minutes, maybe 7? The carrots will be pretty firm still, but add the mushrooms. Quite a bit of water will come out of the vegetables. At this point, I pretty much dumped in everything else and about 1/2 cup water. I simmered it for about 15 -20 minutes. Once the meat was cooked through, I turned off the heat and let it stop bubbling. Then I MEANT to stir the peas in. But I forgot. I slid the potatoes on top but couldn't really spread it around because there was a lot of liquid still. I think at this point if I had dotted a bit more butter on top of the potatoes and broiled it all, that would have been delicious. We were not that patient.

I ended up sprinkling a few peas in the bottom of each bowl as I served it. And then in the bottoms of the plastic leftover containers as I put that away.

The Return of Disposable Income

When I realized I had written the last check for summer daycare I felt a great wave of relief that was practically a religious experience. Then I realized-- I could eat food that other people cooked and which was not handed to me through the window of my car.

I may have gone overboard however, here is where we've been in the last week and a half:

Hiro. Hiro is my hands down favorite sushi in Omaha. I don't like a lot of ornamentation with my sushi (like one local place that served or order with a foggy cup of DRY ICE). They presentation is simple. We started with sweet potato fries and miso soup. Normally, there is a sesame-soy-chili-mayo sort of dip, it was a little less spicy than usual on Friday. The miso soup had those adorable enoki mushrooms. Where can I find these in Omaha? They are so delicate in texture and flavor-- really the perfect mushroom for miso.

I drank Purple Kimono which was delicious. I almost ordered the ridiculously named Zentini, but the waiter recommended against it. He brought a sample of it out and he is right, it was not delicious. In fact, it tasted like lemon dish soap. Of course I've tasted lemon dishsoap. I'm a pottymouth vulgarian. Duh.

For sushi, we had spicy tuna roll, tuna sashimi, an inside out California roll, which has that teeny orange roe on the outside, a Naked California roll-- which is wrapped in cucumber instead of rice and seaweed, a couple of pieces of toro. As always, the sushi was delicious and fresh and served promptly.

Last Sunday I felt like a dog's dinner so I was not going to cook. I went to Amsterdam Felafel and Kebab in Dundee. (Really bad web design. I hate click through. Also the most important feature of your website is YOUR MENU, not your history or your friends. Feature the food for God's Sake.) The felafel is served in a hard roll, and I really prefer a flatbread sort of arrangment. The felafel patties were a little more coarsely ground than I would have preferred. Inside the bun was a mixture of shredded cabbage and chickpeas. I wish I could remember the name of the place that used to be on south 72nd. So delicious. With our curry fries we had a side of hummus. Overkill on the ButtBean. (You know they are shaped like a butt, don't pretend you haven't noticed.) I have this mental image of a giant truck driving up to the back of the place and hooking up a large pump to the back window. Then the kitchen is pumped full of garbanzo beans. The food was just ok, but there are not a lot of options for felafel besides this place and McFoster's. Unless my googling is somehow faulty. I cannot be arsed to make felafel myself. Frying food makes me feel like I'm covered in a revolting film. And the house smells for days.

Monday, after open house for school we went to La Mesa on Maple Street. I love the chicken nachos there. I just need to remember that they are GINORMOUS and enough for Jason and I together. The timing was all off and we were served one by one by one by one. That was not typical of our dining experiences there. I will say that they have some fantastic guacamole. The mango margarita is also delicious.

Lettuce Wraps

In her book Forever Summer, Nigella has a recipe for Thai Ground Beef. Friday night I used that as a jumping off for lettuce wraps.

1T toasted sesame oil
A few dried chilis of unknown origin (about the size of the tip of my pinky finger)

heat the oil and let the chilis infuse it. I should have used more of them, or infused them longer because this lacked the heat I wanted.

Then add:
1 small onion, diced finely
1 can water chestnuts, diced finely
1.2 lbs ground chuck, 85% lean
1T ground ginger
2T crushed garlic

When the pink is gone from the meat add the following and cook till moisture evaporated:
2T fish sauce
2T soy sauce
3T hoisin sauce

Remove from heat and add:
juice of 1 - 2 limes
1/4 cup each chopped cilantro and parsley

Serve with romaine or butter lettuce, slices of cucumber or other small amounts of crunchy vegetables may also accompany.

This served Jason and I with enough left for me to have lunch the following day. It was delicious, but again, needed a smidge more heat for my liking, quite a lot more for Jason's.

Chilled Reds

This settles it, I am chucking the Pinot Noir I have into the fridge for a bit. My A/C is out and my day sucked big-time.

I Scream, You Scream

Edy's Spumoni is curious. The chocolate stripe is great-- velvety texture, slightly bitter. The other two stripes are fair to middling. There is a lack of chunkies in them and the artificial color is over the top. Blue Bunny makes a better overall Spumoni, but it is available only at Christmas. Hey, Blue Bunny, I'm Italian ALL DAMN YEAR. GIMME BACK THE SPUMONI!

You Are What You Eat

I made deer jerky. It was delicious. I wish I could post a proper recipe, but I didn't weigh or measure anything. About 2lbs venison, sliced about 1/4 inch. around 1/4 cup each of lawry's, pickling salt, and brown sugar. A few shakes of liquid smoke and worcestershire. Red, White, and Black Pepper. Garlic Powder. I put it all in a ziplock and mooshed it around. Then I put it in the fridge for about a day, with periodic mooshing around. At bedtime, I put it in the oven on 175 degrees Farenheit. It was done when I got up. In retrospect, it was insufficiently garlicky. I am thinking that not much harm could come of using fresh instead of powdered. I am also thinking of trying to make some sort of salmon jerky.

Cooking At Work

Ok, the crickets can stop chirping now.

Seems like I've been doing my best cooking at work lately. I have a quesadilla press in my desk. No Lie. We had quesadillas on the last food day and I never took it home.

Monday, someone we'll call Schoonie brought in a metric buttload of apples (same as 2.2 avoir dupois buttloads). I made stewed apples in the microwave. And you can too! If you have spices, butter and honey at work. Just cut a couple of apples up, toss with a little penzey's baking spice, a small pat of butter and a spoonful of honey. Nuke it for 2 to 4 minutes.

I just made a little Caprese salad for my peeps after another coworker brought in basil and tomatoes from her family's gardens, a ball of fresh mozzarella, and balsamic vinegar.

So, keep a knife in your desk, but don't tell HR.

LOST Correction

Well, nuts. I put the wrong link in my post regarding the LOST season finale. Here is the most awesome summary on the internet. And I say that as a long time fan of Television Without Pity.

LOST Lolcap

Ratatouille

Ratatouille is one of those "Man Goes On a Journey" stories. Only there are 2 men. And one of them is a rat. Actually, there are a lot of rats in this movie. If you were made motion-sick by Cars, you might get freaked out by the rattiness of all the rats in the rat-crowd scenes. The other warning about this movie is that it may make you crave cheese. Or is that just me?

Unlike other animated offerings, the character voices were stellar-- seamless and opaque without the intrusion of the performing celebrities. I actually had to watch the credits to identify them all. I cannot say that this is the best part of the movie, because the story and the animation were also great and I would not want to disparage either aspect.

The story begins in the country, where we can see the humble beginnings of our twitchy hero, Remy. Remy's foodie gifts are being wasted as he sniffs food for the colony to make sure they don't eat poison. Well, Remy is quite lucky to have a bumbling brother who gets him tossed down a sewer so that he can float to Paris. The initial Paris scene is dazzlingly animated. It looks like they filmed the scene instead of rendering it.

So, Remy strolls into the eponymous restaurant of his idol, Auguste Gusteau after having a few conversations with the spirit of Gusteau that lives in his ratty little head. No mumbo jumbo like ghosts in this flick! Just a rat who talks and eventually controls the restaurant's hopeless garbage boy, Alfredo Linguini, by hair pulling.

Alfredo's sudden transformation from garbage boy to soup genius soon attracts the attention of the whole kitchen, and makes him dangerous enemies. There are two good villains to root against-- Skinner, the executive chef since the passing of Gusteau and Anton Ego-- a critic. Skinner is motivated by profit, profit, and more profit. Ego is simply a cynical food snob-- made rail thin by his refusal to swallow anything he doesn't love.

Speaking of LOOOOOOVE, no movie set in Paris is complete without a little romance. Colette is Alfredo's human mentor and love interest, voiced by Janeane Garafolo.

There were so many great foodie moments in Ratatouille, but I don't want to spoil it. It's worth seeing, but smuggle in your own movie snacks-- cheese and fruit would do nicely.