Layered Enchilada Bake and a Special Delivery

I had mentioned in last night's post, that Monday night we had dinner at my grandmom's.  We had such a delicious dinner, and I just had to share the recipe with all of you!  It was a recipe she got from a Kraft magazine. 

Layered Enchilada Bake
Yields 8 servings


Ingredients 
1 pound lean ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 cups chunky salsa
1 can (15 ounces) black beans, drained, rinsed
1/4 cup zesty Italian dressing
2 tbsp taco seasoning mix
6 flour tortillas
1 cup sour cream
1 package (8 ounces) Mexican style four cheese

To Prepare the Enchilada Bake
1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Brown meat with onions in large skillet on medium-high heat, and then drain off the liquid.
3. Stir in the salsa, beans, dressing, and seasoning mix.
4. Arrange 3 tortillas on the bottom or a 13x9 inch baking dish.
5. Cover the tortillas with layers of half the meat mixture, half of the sour cream, and half of the cheese. Repeat this step with the remaining ingredients and cover with foil.
6. Bake for 30 minutes and then cook uncovered for 10 minutes or until the casserole is heated through and the cheese is melted.

My grandmom served ours with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, guacamole, and jalapenos for topping our slice of casserole!

The official photo from the Kraft magazine...it looked this great at Grandmom's, too!

Late yesterday afternoon, I also got a special package in the mail from Panera Bread - yes, my book and gift card arrived after mucho waiting and impatience!  I am super excited to treat my family to dinner at Panera over the weekend!  The book I won is beautiful and I cannot wait to start working my way through all of the delicious recipes!  It is Artisan Bread by Eric W. Kastel.  The instructions are well written and the photos are beautiful!  My salivary glands go nuts whenever I thumb through the book!  I am CERTAIN I will have lots of bread pictures for all of you guys in the coming months! 

Individual Sized Beef Pot Pies

Well, I don't know about the weather wherever you may be reading this, but it is FUH-REEZING here!  What this means to me, though, is nice pipping hot and hearty meals that leave everyone feeling warm and fuzzy (and more importantly...full)!  Tonight was beef pot pie.  I have been itching to make this for a while now and finally put my foot down...tonight was the night!  My mom had bought mini casserole dishes a few years ago, and tonight was only the second time I managed to find an excuse to use them.  I really should pull them out of the cabinets more often!  Anywho, the pot pie was a hit all around, and pretty easy to make!  Enjoy!

Individual Sized Beef Pot Pie
Yields 4 hearty servings

To Prepare the Pot Pie
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour a 1/2 cup of flour,  1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of black pepper onto a plate, and mix it together. 

3. Begin to heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over low heat in a frying pan. 
4. Dredge approximately 1 pound of stir fry cut beef through the flour, and place it in the pan once the oil it is hot. Don't stir it until it starts to brown and juice!

5. Cut 2 large potatoes, or a hand full of small potatoes into approximately 1 inch by 1 inch pieces, and also 1/3 pound of carrots cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick rounds.  Tonight I used purple, red, and white potatoes that I found at the grocery store. 
6. Boil the potatoes and carrots while you continue to prepare the pot pie. 

7. Prepare your casserole dish with pie crust.  I admittedly do not make my own pie dough...I am horrible at making it!  I cheat and use the pre-made and rolled dough from the grocery store.  I bought 2 packs of the dough, which gave me 4 individual pie crusts.  Press the dough into the casserole dishes, making sure that it is flush with the bottom of the dish first, and then the sides.  Pinch and press to patch any holes that may have happened while maneuvering the dough! KEEP THE EXCESS DOUGH...you will need it later in the recipe!  If you don't have or don't want to use individual casserole dishes, you can use a pie plate, large casserole, or even a loaf pan! 

8. Place your dough filled casseroles in the oven.  If you are using individual size, put them on a baking sheet so they are easy to fish out of the oven later (I learned this the hard way tonight).  They will need to cook a little bit to prevent the dough from being soggy! 
9. By now your meat should be browned and ready, so you can go ahead and take it off of the heat! 
10. Drain the water out of your boiling veggies, and pour the veggies into the meat. 
11. Drain 1 can of corn and 1 can of green beans and add them to the mix!  Normally I would encourage you to use fresh corn kernels and green beans, but I was in a rush tonight!

12. Pour 1 jar (approximately 12 ounces) of beef gravy over the entire mixture and stir it all together!

13. Pull your casserole dishes out of the oven, and fill with the mixture. 
14. Roll out your extra dough and cut into 4 squares that will fit over your casseroles.  I pressed a round cookie cutter through each for the pot pie to vent while it cooked. 
15. Place a square over each pie and press down around the edges, and cut off any major excess pieces!  If you didn't press a cookie cutter through, make a few slits across the top for the steam to escape. 
16. Place them back in the oven and cook for approximately 15 - 20 minutes, or until the top crust is golden brown! 

Red Wine Beef Stew

When the weather really starts to turn cold, I always start to make more dishes that I like to refer to as "Belly Warmers".  These are the meals that are filling, and make you feel warm and cozy from the inside out!  Amongst our favorites are beef and chicken stews.  My mood while grocery shopping will determine whether or not is a thick stew, or more like a chunky soup.  This time around, I wanted a thicker stew with more of a gravy sauce.  Sick of the regular brown gravy, I decided to try a red wine gravy.  My family really enjoyed it and said that this was their favorite batch of the stew that I have ever made...which just proves that booze makes everything better!

Red Wine Beef Stew
Yields 8 servings

To Prepare the Stew 
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Using a pan that is both stove top and oven safe, heat 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat.  If you do not have a pan that is made for both on and in the oven, cook your meat in a frying pan on the stove top.
3. Sear approximately 1 pound of either stir fry cut beef or cubed stew meat in the olive oil.

4. While the beef is cooking, peel a small onion and cut it into approximately 8 wedges.
5. Add the onions to the beef and continue to cook everything until the beef had browned and the onions have turned translucent.

It's gettin' pretty steamy in there!

6. While the beef and onions cook, you can prepare your other vegetables!  Wash your potatoes and carrots, and peel them if you choose to.  If you are using fresh green beans, you will need to wash them and cut the ends off of them.  If you are using fresh corn, you will need to shuck it and rinse it with some cool water.  Remember to keep an eye on your beef and onions while you do this, and turn them off when they are done cooking!
7. Cut approximately 2 pounds of carrots into 1 inch lengths and add them to the beef and onions.  If you are using an oven safe and stove top safe dish, add the carrots directly to it.  If you are using something that is only oven safe, transfer the beef and onions over to that pan with the carrots! 
8. Add 1 pound of green beans, 1 pound of thawed frozen peas, and the kernels of 3 ears of corn (or approximately 1 pound of thawed frozen corn kernels).  If you are opting for canned veggies, use 2 drained cans of each veggie for the serving size above (8), or 1 can for 4 servings!

9. Cut 1 pound of potatoes lengthwise, and then cut them 3 to 4 times width wise, and add them to the pan.

10. Pour 1/4 a cup of red wine over the entire mixture, cover the pan with either a lid or foil and bake it in the oven for approximately 1 hour.  The culinary jury is out on what kind of wine to use.  Most professionals will tell you to only use a wine to cook if you would drink it on its own.  Personally, I have had pleasant experiences with cooking wines, and used one for this recipe.  I really like the Holland House brand (found at most grocery stores)!
11. To prepare the red wine gravy, heat 4 tablespoons of butter in a sauce pan with 2 level tablespoons of flour.  Heat and mix these two together until they become a bubbling paste! 
12. Add 1/2 a cup of red wine to the flour/butter mixture and heat it until it thickens.   Add salt and pepper to taste.

13. Pour the red wine gravy over the stew and mix it in so everything is coated. 
14. Cook for approximately a 1/2 hour longer, or until the potatoes are easily pierced with a fork. 

15. Enjoy over rice, or on its own with a glass of red wine!

Hand Grenades

My great grandfather (on my mom's paternal side) was what I guess you could classify as a "character".  He always kept us guessing, watching out for his next prank or joke, and always had a quick comeback when ever we thought we were finally going to get the best of him.  You can only imagine my confused little kid face when he announced that we were eating hand grenades for dinner!  Now, at this point in my life, I had watched a few episodes of MASH, and I knew what a hand grenade did...let us just leave it at this dish gets its name because it...uhhh errr...has a similar effect on one's digestive tract.  As for the origins of this dish, there is some controversy, mainly because Europe, in its entirety, would like to take individual credit...Poland, Hungary, Germany, Sweeden...you get the point, and know what countries are in Europe!  In the end, my dad, sister, and brother wait for fall with baited breath, knowing that hand grenades will come out of the oven with in the first few cool weeks.  As irony would have it, it is miserably hot out, for fall, today and I type this as I sit in front of the air conditioner with the cat! 

Vinnie loves to help cook...especially if there are veggies involved!  Don't worry...his paws aren't in the food...he just likes to watch and try to steal veggies!

My great grandpa and my brother...circa 1991!

Hand Grenades
Yields 5 servings

To Prepare the Cabbage

1. Carefully peel whole leaves off of a savoy cabbage.  The leaves will break off at the stem with a little force! I like using savoy cabbage because, unlike the green cabbage, it does not need to be cooked before making the actual rolls.  This type of cabbage can be found at your local grocery store.  It is green, but has a more pliable leaf that has a lot of texture to it!

2. Wash the leaves and pat them dry with some papertowels.

To Prepare the Beef and Rice 
1. Make a large box of white quick rice.
2. While the rice is cooking, add 2 pounds of ground beef to a bowl.  If you do not want to use beef, ground pork and chicken work well with this recipe!
3. When the rice is done cooking, add 2 cups of it to the beef.

4. Mix the beef and rice together, carefully, as the rice is still hot!  I am not liable for burnt fingers hehe!

5. Leave the left over rice in the pot with the lid on, as it will be what the cabbage rolls are served on!

To Finish the Dish
1. Pour 1 jar of your favorite pasta sauce into a large casserole dish.

2. Lay out cabbage leaf so it resembles the shape of a bowl, with the veiny end closest to you.
3. Make a large meatball (2-3 inches in diameter).
4. Place the meatball in the stiff, veiny end of the cabbage and roll the cabbage over it until the cabbage is touching cabbage again.

5. Fold in both sides of the cabbage, and continue rolling it the rest of the way closed.

6. Place it in the casserole dish.  Continue with this process until you have run out of beef!  If you do not like cabbage, or have company that will be joining you for dinner that does not like cabbage, you can make regular sized meatballs out of the meat and rice mixture.  Our family calls these porcupine balls!

7. Once all of the rolls are in the casserole, cover them with another jar of sauce.

8. Bake them in the oven at 350 degrees.

When you are ready to eat, serve 2 or 3 rolls over some of the rice.  Be sure to get some of the sauce out of the pan and spoon more over the top!

Meatballs

One of the first foods I ever learned how to cook was meatballs.  I remember being in one of the first apartments my parents lived in, standing on my tippy toes and just clearing the top of the pot with my line of vision.  I carefully plopped in meatball after meatball as my mom handed them to me.  I stared, fascinated, into the pot as the sauce popped and bubbled around the meatballs.  It must have been the Italian in me finally finding its way out and onto a plate!

Later, I learned the story about the first time my mom made meatballs after she and my dad got married.  To this day it is one of my favorite stories about my mom!  My dad's mom is from Italy, and moved to the states at a VERY young age, so needless to say dinners at his house growing up were full of lots of authentic dishes.  When he and my mom married, my mom admittedly only knew how to cook eggs.  So, when my mom called my grandmom for advice, my grandmom told her what to put in them and then to just cook them.  This meant, to my mom, to boil them!  Without saying, they didn't turn out very well!

I eventually took the helm, and was left to my own devices when it came to cooking meatballs.  After some trial...and horrible error...I came up with a recipe that I stick to.  Some of the ingredients are not what you would expect, but trust me when I say it works!  I'll explain why it works down in the recipe, but let's just say that these are NOT your mom's meatballs!

Meatballs
Yields 24 large meatballs

To Prepare the Meatballs
1. Mince 1 small onion, and add it to a large bowl.

2. Mince 4 cloves of garlic and add it to a bowl.  If you are using pre-minced garlic, add 1 heaping tablespoon!
3. Add 1/2 a teaspoon of cinnamon to the bowl.  Cinnamon is normally reserved for sweeter dishes, but it does a great job of adding a little heat and spice to savory recipes!
4. Add 1 teaspoon of nutmeg to the bowl.  Again, nutmeg is normally added to sweets and pies, but it compliments red sauce and tomatoes EXTREMELY well!  Tonight I grated my own nutmeg (thanks to my brother bringing some whole nutmeg home a few months ago), but the jarred spice works just as nicely!  If you are going to grate your own nutmeg, simply run the whole spice down the smallest grater holes you have at your disposal.  Despite the nutmeg's tough exterior and texture, it actually grates very nicely!

A whole nutmeg!

What the inside looks like after a little grating!

5. Add 1 teaspoon of black pepper to the bowl.
6. Add 1 teaspoon of salt to the bowl.

7. Add 2 tablespoons of white truffle oil to the bowl.  This is definitely a splurge ingredient I normally do not keep around, but I had bought it a few weeks ago for a dinner party I was throwing.  The white truffle oil reminds me of an extremely garlic and parmesan smelling/tasting ingredient.  Truffles are actually a fungus that is widely found in Southern Europe.  Technically speaking, they are a mushroom!

Expensive...but delicious!

After all of the seasoning ingredients are added!

8. Mix in approximately 2 pounds of ground beef.  You can exchange the beef out for turkey or chicken! 
9. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
10. Make the meatballs by rolling them into 1 - 1 1/2 inch balls.  Place them on a cookie sheet or glass casserole dish.  Remember: your meatballs will shrink after cooking...so make them just a little bigger than you want the end result to be!

11. Bake them until they are brown and firm.  I like baking them so they lose a lot of their fat and oils!

12. Add them to the pasta sauce of your choosing! I like to let my meatballs simmer in sauce for a little bit so the flavors come together well.  They hold up very well in a crock pot of sauce!  Tonight I am serving mine over angel hair pasta, but they are great as a sandwich too!  As far as sauces go, I will only make my own on the weekends, so during the week I like to use Prego's Heart Smart Traditional. 

On a side note, I do NOT add egg to any of my ground meat dishes.  Egg, even though it helps bind ground meats together, will actually dry out your meatballs, meatloaf, etc!  In the end, your meat should bind well on its own...I'd rather eat a slightly broken meatball as opposed to a dry one!

Chili Con Carne with a Cornbread Crust

On of my favorite parts of fall is that the crock pot is in a state of constant use!  I wanted to find a way to liven up my crock pot chili, and found the perfect opportunity when I decided that I didn't want to make extra dishes by making corn muffins, but still wanted the muffins!  Because of the density of the chili, the heat of the chili, and the constant temperature (thanks to the crock pot lid), adding a crust to chili is nice and easy!  This recipe can be made the night before and heated throughout the day on low heat, but don't add the cornbread until 30 minutes before serving.  If you are making this for just a few people, you will have great left overs for a day or two for lunch or dinner too!

Chili Con Carne with Cornbread Crust 
Yields 6 generous servings

To Prepare the Chili
1. Brown 2 pounds of ground beef with a packet of McCormick's Hot Chili Seasoning.

2. While the beef is browning, add approximately 28 ounces of tomato sauce, a packet of McCormick's Mild Chili Seasoning, 1 drained can of black beans, 1 drained can of pink kidney beans, 1 drained can of red kidney beans, and 1 drained can of cannellini beans to a crock pot on medium heat (low heat if you are going to leave it on all day).

3. When the beef is browned add it to the crock pot and stir everything together.

4. The crock pot will come to a slow boil.  Be sure to stir it every now and then.
5. 30 minutes before serving, mix the cornbread mix and gently spoon it across the top of the chili and put the cover back on.  If you are not making your chili in a crock pot, you can still make a crust by finishing your chili in a casserole dish in the oven, or on very low heat on the stove top in a pan with a lid!

6. The cornbread is done when it puffs up and is firm to the touch!