Beef Stroganoff & Poppy Seed Noodles

So I chose another meal to try from The Cat Who... Cookbook: Beef Stroganoff & Poppy Seed Noodles.

This is a nice meal for when it's chilly out, as the meat simmers for an hour and a half. 

I think in the future, I'll add way more mushrooms to this dish, because I love mushrooms.

And I would probably let it cook down a little more, so there is less liquid.

The poppy seed noodles were a great side to serve with the stroganoff as an alternative to plain noodles.

 Be sure to see the TikTok for the completed dish: https://www.tiktok.com/@bunnykissd/video/7313586217944239402

Next Level Cookies

Every once in a while, I like to bake. I used to cook & bake a lot - I was once even in the paper with my Buffalo Chicken Pizza recipe before it was a staple at most pizza places - but some where along the way, I lost confidence in my abilities and stopped. I couldn't point to one thing and say, Ah yes, that's why, but nonetheless, I always feel like I've accomplished a miracle when I make something in the kitchen and it's good.

Today, I decided to make these Dark Chocolate Pistachio Tahini Cookies. We had all the ingredients in the house, except the pistachios, which we picked up when we last got groceries. We had come close to having none of some of the ingredients, because THANKSGIVING happened after the last time I checked, and the vanilla, chocolate, and brown sugar were almost out or completely out, but we had some other substitutes ready to go: I used about 7/8 teaspoon vanilla + 1/8 teaspoon almond + 1 teaspoon rum extract to make up the 2 teaspoons of vanilla, the brown sugar was *just* enough, and there are three different kinds of chocolate in these: the bigger dark chocolate chips, mini-semisweet chips, and a bunch of 80% cacao chocolate bars rough-chopped. Also, I could not find plain pistachios, only roasted and salted, so I left out the sea salt.

UH MUH GUH! They are soooooo good! The tahini and browned butter add an incredible depth of flavor, and combined with the dark chocolate and pistachios take your basic chocolate chip cookies to the next level! I highly recommend trying them out for yourself!

Seasonal Soup: Bowl o' Bones

About a month or so ago on Facebook, I was advertised a soup recipe that turned out not to be what it looked like, which made me want to make the soup I thought it was. So I pinned a few recipes and fiddled about with ideas, but never really got it together to put the stuff on the grocery list or anything like that. 

But when we were shopping last night I saw these Cheetos Mac'n Cheese Bold & Cheesy Box of Bones. And I'm a sucker for these. Once a year I need my Cheetos Bag of Bones, and this year I was having them with these made into a cheesy sausage soup.

I started by shredding two carrots and then nearly died trying to chop this onion. Seriously, my eyes were burning so bad, I had to have Jacqueline take over. And not shown here was a little bit of leftover celery, about two short stalks' worth. I cooked them all up in some oil until tender (yes, a mirepoix), and while they were cooking, I cut up some kielbasa and browned it.

When the veggies were softened, I melted in half a stick of butter, then added two tablespoons of flour (to make a roux with the butter) and some herbs and seasonings (salt, pepper, garlic powder, etc.).

Then it was time to add liquids! Two cups of milk, added one at a time, and mixed into the veggies thoroughly. Then the cheese powder from the two boxes of mac'n cheese, as shown below. (This powder was WAY more intensely neon orange than my camera picked up.) 

Now at this point, if you have someone who doesn't want small chunks of veggies in their soup, you could put the whole thing in a blender or food processer, or use an immersion blender, to make the soup smooth, but I love chunky soup, so I did not. I did however add an additional cup of shredded cheddar to the soup because I also like my soup cheesy.

Because I know this type of pasta tends to not cook evenly, I cooked the pasta separately, while letting the soup simmer. After the pasta was done al dente (seven minutes-ish), I added it and the kielbasa to the soup. Then I decided it needed more liquid to be more like soup, so I also added about a cup or so of beef broth made from bouillon.

The last step was adding heavy cream. I don't know why they always say to add it last, but that's what I did. Then I let it simmer for another 10 minutes and served with more cheesy bones! \^o^/ (And other assorted cheesy snacks...)

Everyone had a bowl which I assume they enjoyed, because no one complained! Success!

Pasties

No, not that kind; you're saying it wrong. A pasty rhymes with nasty, not hasty, and is a type of hand pie, which it seems many restaurants served in The Cat Who... series.

So in The Cat Who... Cookbook, there are three recipes for pasties. Two of them are little more than ground beef and turnips, with a little onion, salt and pepper in a pie crust. The third has more actual seasonings, but no turnip. 

Part of me wanted to go rogue here and combine the three recipes to create something more palatable than the last two recipes I tried. However, I realize that wouldn't be true to the plan here, so I am going to just pick one and follow the recipe as written!

So we're going with the recipe for Foo Pasty! As you can see, super simple. The pastry crust was created in a way I never have before, and I didn't take any photos. They have you actually bring water, milk, and shortening to a boil, then mix it into the flour & salt until a smooth dough coalesces.

Then you mix together all the ingredients for the inside: turnip, onion, lean ground beef, salt and pepper. In hindsight, I would have minced my turnips, not just finely chopped them, and perhaps would have used some other vegetables to add to the flavor. Also this could have used more seasonings and a less lean ground beef. They were rather dry and bland in my opinion.

The crust was a mess, but tasted fine. I didn't do such a great job rolling them out "into circles," and I didn't form the meat mixture loaf/patty in quite the right place, so folding over and crimping created a lot of cracks and broken bits. They weren't very pretty but they held together like they were supposed to!

The egg yolk wash also added a nice color. We were worried that it wouldn't be enough food, but really it was more than enough for our small family of three, with enough leftovers for lunch the next two days!

Will I make them again? Probably not this exact recipe, but yes, with modifications, maybe next fall or winter, I'll try again!

P.S. Wanna see this as a TikTok? Go here: https://www.tiktok.com/@bunnykissd/video/7225330853277158699

Chicken in a Dark and Mysterious Sauce

For the next recipe, I chose Chicken in a Dark and Mysterious Sauce, which was one of the recipes I had been eager to try back when my mom first got the cookbook.

I halved the recipe, knowing full well that our daughter won't eat chicken and Jacqueline probably wouldn't like the dark & mysterious sauce. (She's not a fan of chocolate in sauces, like mole sauce.) I did accidentally add the full amount of cinnamon, but it was still so small an amount I don't think it mattered much.

Jacqueline and I think they maybe were trying to go for a Moroccan type dish, but they left all the SPICE out. None of the hot peppers, cumin, etc. that would normally be found in those dishes. We served it with rice and a California blend of vegetables. It was not a bad dish, but we probably won't make it again.

I think my favorite part of the dish was eating the leftovers. The raisins were all puffed up and looked like grapes again! LOL!

See more photos on my Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bunnykissd

New Project

I have a new project that's been brewing for a while now, but have finally put in motion. 

Many decades ago, there was a series of mystery books written by Lillian Jackson Braun called The Cat Who... series. It featured a reporter, James Qwilleran (Qwill to his friends), retired from the big city, who moves to the middle of nowhere, inherits a LOT of money, adopts two Siamese cats (in separate incidents), and gets involved in many mysterious developments. The way he is described -- brooding, but charming, with a luxuriant mustache -- I always imagine him looking like a more debonair Wilford Brimley:

Throughout the series, Qwill -- and his cats -- eat lots of delicious food, and a cookbook was eventually published.

My mother and I devoured the books in the late 80s, early 90s, and of course she purchased the cookbook. (Mrs. Cobb's Coconut Cake is a family favorite.) When the pandemic started, I returned to the series to re-read the ones I read so long ago and finish reading the later books in the series. Last spring, I decided I would cook up all the recipes in the book and makes TikToks about them. I have since reeled myself in a bit. No need to commit to doing ALL the recipes (IN ORDER!); just relax and do the recipes I want in whatever order I want whenever I feel like it! 

There are 29 books in all -- the 30th as yet unpublished since the death of the author in 2011. I'm up to book #28. The Cat Who... Cookbook covers through the 25th book, so I've added some recipes from the remaining books to try as well. There are almost 300 recipes in the cookbook, covering everything from main dishes and sides to beverages and desserts, so there's plenty to try, even if I don't make them all. 

Two weekends ago, I started my first one! I chose to make the Hot-Mild Barbecued Beef from the À La Carte section of the recipes for The Cat Who Sang for the Birds. Its mention from the books says,

"When Qwilleran entered Chet's [Bar & Barbecue] for the first time, all the tables were filled, and the atmosphere was hazy with smoke. (In the late 80s, early 90s, smoking in public places was still allowed.) [His friend] signaled him from the bar...

"An overworked waitress interrupted. "Pork, beef, or turkey? Sandwich or platter? Hot-mild, hot-hot, or call 911?" In a matter of seconds she was back with plastic plates piled high, while two fluffy white rolls teetered on the summit."

This recipe starts with a 3-4 pound round bottom roast. I have never made any kind of a roast before. I've roasted a turkey breast and done pork tenderloins in the crock pot, but this was an adventure for me! I'm so grateful to have Jacqueline; she's a whiz in the kitchen, just *knows* things, and does most of her cooking by intuition! Still, this first recipe threw us some curveballs. 

Our first bump on the road came when we couldn't find a round bottom roast. If it was me alone, I probably would have given up right then & there. But Jacqueline reassured me, the *top* round roast, while significantly larger than 3-4 pounds, could be used interchangeably, and the extra meat could be frozen and used for another meal later. I tried not to balk too much at the price.

Our second bump on the road? The instructions seemed to have left some things out:

"Bake roast, covered, in a pan filled 1/4 full of water, approximately 4 hours or until fork tender."

What kind of pan? What temperature? They didn't specify! Again, #blessed! Jacqueline did some googling, and we decided to use the glass 9x13" pan, and filled it about 1/3 full of water (cuz I measured poorly! 😭 Jacqueline reassured me again that it's not so precise and it'll be fine), then cook the roast at 275°F for 4 hours and then see if it's fork tender or needs more. We also decided, it needed some seasoning -- salt & pepper at a minimum -- so I added that, tightly covered it with foil and popped it in the oven.

Meanwhile, with no sides offered other than the rolls mentioned in the book, I decided to make Southern-style Sweet & Sour Green Beans to go with dinner. You can find the recipe I followed at Allrecipes.com (https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/54073/sweet-and-sour-green-beans/). Since I was using the No-Salt-Added canned green beans that we were given at Christmas, I did add extra salt, but made no other modifications. We also had instant mashed potatoes, but could have had bread & butter.

After four hours of patiently waiting, we checked the roast. It was not fork tender yet. So we turned it over, added more salt & pepper, loosely covered it (there was a lot of liquid now!), and put it back in the oven, which we turned up to 350°F for another hour.

At this point, I started working on the sauce: sautéed onions get mixed with a slew of spices, 16 oz of tomato paste (yes, paste!), a little ketchup, molasses, vinegar & Worcestershire sauce, then simmered for 20-30 minutes. This "sauce" was a lot more like paste, so I added some of the liquid from the beef to thin it out some so it could actually simmer instead of just...burning. After that, the beef was added and simmered for another 30 minutes! We were all going insane because it smelled so good, but we did do a little taste test and decided it *really* needed more salt and probably more *other* seasonings, because it was pretty plain tasting.

After the final simmer for 30 minutes, we created our "platters" of barbecued beef with the sweet & sour green beans and instant mashed potatoes. My verdict? This was diner food. Not bad, but not great either. Canned green beans aren't the most flavorful, and these could have used more vinegar in my opinion. Jacqueline thought they needed more salt. I also thought the barbecued beef needed more vinegar, and brown sugar, and cayenne & black pepper, and any other seasonings! Jacqueline added a little liquid smoke and Montreal Steak Seasoning to her portion and thought it was pretty good that way. 

We had a lot of leftovers that were made into sandwiches, burritos, and topped some mac & cheese. This would also have been good on top of baked potatoes! Next time though, we'll season it more to our liking.

P.S. You can see the TikTok I made at https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRtMsAx3/

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