Causing a stir (fry) October 21, 2012

I don’t enjoy eating red meat. I think I have mentioned this a time or two, but it bears repeating because it makes things hard on a gal who cooks for a family of red meat lovers (incidentally, asking Google what it’s called when you eat red meat only to make a snarky comment results only in a barrage of articles telling me how I am damaging my family bite by bite. Thanks, Google). I could happily eat chicken or seafood or veggies only, but “that’s boring,” so here is this week’s invention to change things up.

I’ve never made stir fry and the advice of several folks was to just throw it in with veggies, salt and pepper. That sounded boring and super, um, meaty. So I decided to marinade it overnight first. Which turned out to be an inspired idea because my pickiest eater in the house not only asked for it again this week, but wanted to take it to school for lunch. Mom score.

Beef Stir Fry

1-2 lbs. beef roast of any kind
1/4 c. red wine vinegar (could use balsamic)
1/4 c. soy sauce
1 tbsp. brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, grated
Handful of chives, cut in
Olive oil, salt, & pepper
Fresh broccoli, “trees” only (I peeled the stalk and ate it raw as my cooking snack. Yum)
2-3 carrots, thinly sliced (diagonally was pretty)

Combine and whisk the oil, vinegar, soy, sugar, garlic, chives, and seasonings in a container with a lid. I’ll be honest and say that I only used red wine vinegar because I ran out of balsamic. Literally. I think there were five drops left in the bottle. So technically, this recipe also included five drops of balsamic vinegar. But red wine vinegar tasted great, so I’m gonna stick to it. Thinly (and I mean thinly) slice the roast and add it to the marinade. Refrigerate overnight. Cutting thinly and long marinating make any type of roast ok. If you don’t have the time, you’ll need the more expensive cut of meat. The upside of the overnight wait is a pre-made dinner the next day. Because I cut up the veggies the night before, too, and stored them separately. Cheer Dad was actually the chef here. He started by sautéing the broccoli and carrots with a little olive oil and salt/pepper. After they softened a bit, he added the meat to the same pan. It’s thin, y’all, so don’t over cook it and make it tough. Yuck. It needs like 3 minutes max on medium high heat. The marinade kind of makes a sauce. It was great. We meant to make rice with it and totally forgot. Oops. Guess we’ll have to have it again this week.

Crunch, crunch, crunch September 6, 2012

M has been taking her lunch to school all week. To put a finer point on it, she’s been making salad. Tonight, she decided that she wanted to make the croutons she been talking about making all week. Because I forgot to buy them, natch. M is my mini-me and loves to cook just as much.

M’s Croutons

4 slices of bread, crusts removed and diced
2 Tbsps butter
10-15 basil leaves
2-3 stems of rosemary
Pinch salt
Couple dashes pepper

Melt one tablespoon of butter in a medium skillet on medium heat, add bread and seasonings (different herbs if it suits your fancy) and stir. Wait a minute and then add the other tablespoon of butter. Stir occasionally until bread is crisp and brown. Yum, croutons.

After she made the first batch and we all “taste tested” (read: ate the whole batch), Cheer Bro decided the second time she should include garlic. I did not like it…direct medium heat is a bit much for fresh garlic. But he liked it. To each his own.