A Lovely Prime Rib Dinner

Hello everyone! I've got another good recipe for you all! This one includes a perfectly juicy, tender prime rib roast, cooked slowly over an afternoon, roasted asparagus with a lemon butter, and tasty mashed potatoes with gravy. Mmm!

I'd never "slow cooked" a roast before, but after trying it, I will never crank the oven up to 350-400 ever again for a beef roast!

I started off this dinner by seasoning the bejesus out of the roast with plain old salt and pepper in preparation for a good ol' sear in the frying pan. Oh yeah, and always start with meat that has been out of the fridge for a little while and is room temperature!

Heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a large frying pan until it is almost smoking, then throw in your roast and sear it up until nicely browned on all sides.

If you've got a nice roast with the bones in, place it bone side down in the roasting pan you've got out. The bones act as a roasting rack! Also, the fattiest side is usually opposite of the bones, so during the cooking the fat will drip down over the entire roast making it delectably juicy.

Heat your oven to just 200 degrees F, and season your roast how you like it. I used an army of fresh rosemary, which i pounded with the back of my knife to release the flavour and then finely chopped, and loads of fresh garlic (and even more salt and pepper).

It smelt soo good already before it had even entered the oven!

Then, roast away! Put the lid on your roasting pan, pop it in the oven, and forget about it! For a couple of hours, at least... I put mine in at 2:30 in the afternoon and it was a perfect medium rare at about 6:30 just in time for dinner. It came out beautiful!

For the asparagus I put them in the oven for about 30 minutes at the low 200 temperature, and they were a bit crunchy, but I like them like that for some reason. I topped them with butter I had melted on the stove top combined with the juice of half a lemon. Yum!

To make the gravy I combined the drippings from the roast with flour and water on a hot stovetop, and then added in the bits of roasted garlic that had escaped from the sides and top of the roast. This little touch was soo delicious!

And there you are! The perfect directions for a perfect roast. Enjoy!

xoxo

Mariel

Saturday Night Cooking w/ 1hundo

Hello everyone! So I guess 1hundo and I have gotten into a little routine of cooking dinner together on Saturday nights when he's off work... Here's a little shot of the finished product from this past weekend! I have to admit, this week, Patrick did most of the cooking, and whipped up some mean burgers. I could barely fit those bad boys in my mouth! Makin' me proud, that boy is.

For the wonderfully written up recipe (yes, he even did that too this week), and beautiful shots of our meal (as always), check out:

http://1hundo.ca

I am such a lucky girl!

xoxo

Mariel

Shepherd's Pie and Paddy Whisky

Hello lovely people! So it's been over a week since I posted last...and I figured there's probably no better day to get back into the rhythm of things than the holy day for Flanagan's itself, St. Patrick's Day! I'll skip all the small talk and get down and dirty and into the recipe for the slightly Irish dinner I cooked up tonight, shepherd's pie. Okay...I know it's an English dish, but it's only an Irish sea away, and that's close enough in my books!

Traditional Shepherd's Pie

5-6 large russet potatoes

1-2 pounds lean ground beef

4 medium sized carrots

1 onion

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter 

 1 tablespoon of canola oil

worcestershire sauce, to taste

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 cup frozen baby peas

3/4 cup beef stock

2 tablespoons flour

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Peel and dice the potatoes, and bring them up to a boil in a large pot of water until soft.

Meanwhile, dice up the carrots and onion, and cook them in a large pan with 1/4 cup of the butter and the bit of canola oil until fairly done.

Then add the ground beef to the onions and carrots, and cook until the pinkness is gone from the beef.

Add the worcestershire sauce, thyme, peas and beef stock to the pan and simmer until most of the liquid is gone.

Add in the flour and stir well, and season the mix with salt and pep.

Drain the potatoes when they are finished cooking and mash using the remaining butter.

Pour the beef mixture into a large enough baking dish, and top it off with the mashed potatoes. Use a fork to make little ridges/peaks so the potatoes get extra crispy in the oven.

Pop the dish into the oven until the potatoes are nice and golden and the pie is bubbling!

I have to say - I love Shepherd's Pie! It is the ultimate comfort meal for me... And while I'm saying things, here's the reason I even made dinner tonight!

You see, it was actually Dad's turn to make dinner tonight...but he let his ancestry get ahold of him and got a little carried away with the "Paddy's". That's okay though...we are Flanagans!

With the shepherd's pie we just had a nice, simple green salad in an attempt to off-set all the starch on our plates!

Ahh it feels good to post again...I cannot let this much time go in between posts again!

xoxo

Mariel

Mariel's Noms X 1hundo

Hello everyone! So here is that good Noms X 1hundo collaboration post that I promised to make up for the lacking past couple of posts! Friday night Patrick and I whipped up a little dinner, and he of course took the pictures! Here's the results:

We ended up making a beautiful, simple pasta bursting with fresh flavour. It turned out soo yummy.

We started off by making our own meat balls, we kind of just threw the ingredients all together, but I'll give you the approximate amounts of everything we used.

1 pound ground beef

1 egg

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon dried oregano

2 teaspoons italian seasoning

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix all the ingredients together (yes, use your hands)

Form into whatever sized balls you'd like!

Bake until brown and cut with a fork to check the insides!

Super easy.

They turned out pretty tasty, too!

After the meatballs were all formed up and in the oven we started on the sauce and boiling up the water for the pasta. We started with the basics, cuttin' up half an onion and chopping up two cloves of garlic.

Patrick practically deep fried the garlic in olive oil before caramelizing the onions, which was bizarre, but absolutely delish...

Then we tossed a whole can of whole San Marzano tomatoes and their juice into the mix and broke those puppies down with a wooden spoon, and let em' stew for a bit.

Later on, Patrick added a bit of tomato paste to thicken up the sauce, and a hefty dose of salt and pep.

Then towards the end of this sauce's stay in the saucepan, we threw in a good handful chopped fresh basil, frozen peas (we tried to do the whole fresh pea thing, but upon opening up the sugar snap peas we realized there really weren't any peas inside...) and the meatballs.

We used a bizarre little pasta. I'm not quite sure what it was called...but it cooked up super quick and was done in about five minutes!

When the pasta was cooked, we loaded up our bowls and spooned the sauce and meatballs over top, finishing them off with a bit more peppery, delicious basil.

So there you go! A tasty, quick little pasta recipe that is great when you are starving, AND great on the wallet too...

I found myself staring at the cutest little thing (Molly) all dinner! She wanted some pasta too...

Love her!

Such gorgeous pictures of a gorgeous little meal! I am thinking that you should be able to look forward to more collaboration posts in the future! I sure hope that there are more...I love these pictures!

xoxo

Mariel

Best Recipe of the Weekend

Hello everyone! So the weekend has come and gone, again. I hope you all had fun! Mine was fairly low key this week, and I loved it. 

Food wise, I didn't do (or make) a lot, however I did consume some very delicious meals. 

Earlier in the weekend I was treated to some incredible late night snacks and bizarre beer at Sugarbowl (one of my favorite spots, ever). On top of the great food, I didn't even have to blog about it! That job was done impeccably by Patrick on his blog, 1hundo.

Later in the weekend I got to enjoy one of the best comfort food meals that have been served in this household for a while. It was so simple, yet so perfect and delicious. The meal consisted of: a beef stew type of thing, mashed potatoes (oozing with melted butter) and caesar salad (home-made dressing, of course).

Mmm, so good.

The beef we used was probably one of the cheapest roast cuts you could buy, however the cooking method made this beef melt in your mouth. It was honestly the most incredible thing I have ever tasted, you could compare the texture of the beef to soft, white bread (that's how tender it was)!

Beef Stewed in Beer with Gravy

1/2 kilo inside round roast, cut into bite size pieces

olive oil

salt and pepper 

garlic

1 can of beer (we used Heineken)

1/4 cup butter

all purpose white flour

Brown the beef stove-top in a large sauce pan or skillet with enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan.

Add in the salt and pepper, and garlic.

Once the beef is nicely browned, pour in your can of beer.

Pop a lid on the pan or saucepan, and let the beef simmer for 2 hours on low to medium low heat.

After 2 hours, make a gravy by melting butter in a separate, small saucepan.

To the melted butter, slowly whisk in flour until you have a nicely thickened sauce (the consistency is up to you and how you like your gravies).

Next, spoon some of the hot cooking liquid from the saucepan containing the beef, into the butter/flour mixture.

Then, when you have a smooth gravy, slowly pour this into the center of the pan containing the beef, stirring quickly.

Only add enough of your gravy mixture as you'd like.

Enjoy!

For the mashed potatoes, a good trick to keep from obtaining "gluey" potatoes is to heat up your milk, butter, cream (or whatever you are adding to your potatoes) before you add it to the potatoes. It really works! You will never have gluey mashed potatoes again.

Real Caesar Salad Dressing

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

3 teaspoons lemon juice

dash of Worcestershire sauce

2 cups olive oil

2 tablespoons warm water, if necessary

1 cup parmesan

Place egg yolks, mustard, anchovies, garlic, vinegar, lemon juice and worcestershire sauce into a bowl or food processor (or magic bullet, in our case).

Mix with a whisk, or blend the ingredients together.

Slowly in a slow pouring stream, add the olive oil until fully incorporated.

If the dressing gets too thick, add warm water and then continue until all the oil is added.

Add parmesan and continue to mix.

Makes 1 1/2 cups of dressing.

The chef was quite pleased with herself about this meal, not a scrape of food was left!

Well, now it's time to get back to working on 1 of my 3 essays due very, very shortly! Enjoy the rest of your Sundays!

xoxo

Mariel