Quick, Easy Dinner for Pre-Christmas Week

What with those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings when friends come to call, I know you're busy. Me too.  So I thought that a quick and easy Crock Pot dinner might be helpful.  This is mostly from the Food Network cookbook Making It Easy. It said to use brisket, but I used a  3 lb. boneless chuck steak and it worked just fine (plus I'm never quite sure what a brisket actually is...).  This took about 20 minutes to get into the Crock Pot, and then it cooked all day.  So there I was wrapping (not rapping--that would be a different sort of day), listening to Andy Williams croon that It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, basically getting lots of stuff done, and all the while, dinner simmered away, smelling delicious.

Southwestern Pulled Beef Sandwiches  serves 6

3 lbs. beef brisket (boneless chuck steak just fine)

Salt and pepper

2 Tbl. vegetable oil

5 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

1 yellow onion, halved and sliced thinly

1 Tbl. chili powder

2 tsp. ground coriander

2 tsp. cumin

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups water

3 Tbl. molasses

1 14 oz. can whole or chopped tomatoes, with their juices

2 whole canned chipotle chilies in adobo sauce

soft sandwich rolls

Season the beef generously with salt and pepper to taste. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat.  Add the oil and heat until almost smoking.  Add the meat and cook, turning once, until browned on both sides, about 10 minutes total.  Place meat in slow cooker.  Lower heat, and to the same skillet add garlic, onion, chili powder, coriander, and cumin to the drippings and heat until fragrant, about a minute. Add vinegar and boil until almost gone, scraping bottom of pan with wooden spoon.  Stir in the water and molasses and pour the mixture over the meat.  Crush the tomatoes, whether whole or chopped, through your fingers into the slow cooker.  Add the chipotles and the juice from the tomatoes.  Cover the cooker, cook on LOW for 8 hours (or, alternatively, you could cook on HIGH for one hour, then on LOW for 5-6 hours, which is what I did--however the timing works for you).  To serve, leave the meat in the slow cooker and use two forks to pull it apart into shreds.  Stir the meat evenly into the sauce, taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed.  Pile saucy meat onto sandwich buns and serve (quite delicious to first spread the cut side of the buns with butter, sprinkle with a little garlic powder, and broil til lightly toasted, then fill with the meat).  Muy tasty. Now off you go, go finish your wrapping (not rapping).

Cookbook Review: Food Network Magazine Great Easy Meals

I have what some may call an addiction to cookbooks.  I am somewhat powerless to resist them.  Making space for books is always important in our house, but at the same time, I don't want to feel that I'm drowning in them.  Too messy.  I am getting ready to purge my books of the regrettably purchased, seldom opened tomes lurking about my shelves so that the double stacking can stop.  It makes me crabby.  I go to the library and get cookbooks now, with the intent of copying the few recipes that I am interested in, rather than buying the whole book and thus losing shelf space to something mediocre.  Sometimes, though, I can't help myself.  If I have so many Post-its sticking out of the top of the book to mark pages I want to copy, I figure it is more cost effective (within reason) to go and buy the damned book instead of using up lots of ridiculously pricey printer ink.  The latest addition to be deemed worthy of purchase is Food Network Magazine Great Easy Meals. 

The Food Network website is a great resource for recipes and how-to information.  Their magazine is good too, although I do a fair amount of weeding out of the recipes published therein.  The cookbook, however, has done the weeding for me.  Everything I've tried so far has been very good, with minimal tweaking (but I always tweak recipes, so I don't count that as a strike against it). The nice thing, also, is that the recipes really are very easy.  When I sit down with several cookbooks and plan out my menus and shopping list for the week I often have delusions of grandeur.  "Why, yes, I think making my own pasta (or tortillas or pita bread or...) on a Wednesday night will be completely doable!"  And then Wednesday night rolls around and I've been at a child's sporting event until much later than expected, and so it's quesadillas on store-bought tortillas (which, don't get me wrong, are delicious).  So having these recipes that are quick and easy but also delicious (and made without a drop of cream of mushroom soup) is awfully helpful.  I even made the grilled Rosemary-Mustard Pork Tenderloin with Peaches for a special birthday dinner for company.  So easy, no stress, delicious.

It's good to have a go-to source that is reliable, and that gives me (and my family) a change of pace.  So far I've made the pork above twice, Spicy Chinese Beef, Chicken Korma, the roasted asparagus, and Pork Tenderloin with Eggplant Relish (which was spicy and made with Japanese eggplant, which I would never normally buy, and which even the anti-veggie delegation happily ate, although, to be fair, said delegation may not have known it was eggplant...).  Everything is very flavorful, it's on the table quickly, and ingredients are easily obtained.  The only quibble I have is the "kitchen tips from the stars" that are touted on the cover.  You'd think that meant some...uh...kitchen tips, just say, but not so much.  Melissa D'Arabian telling us how great it is to cook with kids, Ellie Krieger reminiscing about her daughter recognizing the smell of basil on a bus, Guy Fieri building a second kitchen at his house--I'm sorry, I don't care.  But really, that's a small complaint, and a very small part of the book.

I see no reason why the rest of the recipes in Food Network Magazine Great Easy Meals won't be every bit as delicious as the ones I've tried so far.  On Amazon.com it is less than $15, and it is well worth the money.