Beef steak with Leek and Mushroom Sauce

With the goal of continuing our healthy dinner meals for the week, I thought a simple steak would be perfect but just wanted to add a tasty sauce to brighten it up a bit.

Ingredients:

• Two steaks of your choice
• Olive oil
• 1 leek, trimmed, washed, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup beef stock
• 1/2 cup light cream
• 1/2 cup fresh sage leaves

Method:

Add oil and leek to frying pan. Cook, stirring often, for 3 minutes or until soft. Add stock and cook for 2 minutes or until slightly reduced. Reduce heat to low. Add cream and sage. Season with salt and pepper. Stir to combine.
Serve steak with steamed vegetables – we used broccoli and baby carrots (seasoned with cumin and coriander mix – see below).  Spoon sauce over steak and vegetables.
Enjoy!

Cumin and Coriander Baby Carrots – mix together the ingredients below and after steaming carrots, pour over and mix until covered.

• 1 tbs chopped fresh continental parsley
• 1 tbs chopped fresh coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 tbs red wine vinegar
• 1 tbs orange juice

Beef and Potato Curry

It was my turn to cook dinner one night last week.  I got home to an almost-empty fridge with the only main ingredients left being beef and potato.  I thought this would be a good time to try one of the many recipes I’ve looked at online and went back to this one: http://bakingatmidnight.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/beef-potato-curry.html
I would usually have added capsicum, broccoli or some other type of colourful vegetable to add a bit of variety, but on this occasion, I had to work with what I had.  It turned out pretty nice… A few extra vegetables would have made it perfect but my husband also enjoyed it and we both had it for lunch as leftovers the next day.

Thanks “Tramie’s Kitchen” for the recipe!

Beef Stir-Fry with Rice Noodles

I was feeling really uninspired at work today while thinking of what to cook for dinner… In between my hectic periods of actually working of course! 😉
A very handy site that I love looking through is taste.com.au.  It seriously has thousands of recipes of every type of meal.  There’s even handy recipe collections which allow you to select a type of meal, for example, curries or stir-fries, and then it brings up all the different types of meals in that category.
I was feeling like a healthy stir-fry as we had a massive eating weekend celebrating our anniversary.  Lots of delicious, very special food… and we definitely ate alot!

This is the stir-fry I made tonight and it was so good!  My lovely husband was very impressed and kept on saying how much he loved the flavour.  We both agreed that this would be added to our favourite meals as it was also very cheap to buy all the ingredients!  Highly recommended!  The photos just don’t do it justice as it looks bland and colourless here… it looked very bright in real life with the vegetables and noodles providing lots of colour!
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/5688/beef+stir+fry+with+rice+noodles
Also, make sure you check all the ingredients properly if you’re celiac, but I’m pretty sure this is also gluten free!  Instead of soy sauce they used Tamari sauce.  Otherwise, soy sauce works perfectly.

(Please excuse the photos – the quality is pretty shocking as my good camera had run out of battery!)

Beef Stroganoff (As seen on MasterChef Australia)

Puppet had his night of creative cooking last week and decided, after watching Masterchef, that he would attempt the Beef Stronganoff.  I had the job of getting the beef stock, brandy and sauce mixture ready.  When we first added it to the meat, it was tasted so strong of alcohol that we thought we’d wasted the crazy amount of money we had spent on buying 1.5 kg of beef eye fillet.  Thankfully, after a few minutes of simmering away, the strong alcohol flavour disappeared and once the cream and some more tomato paste had been added, it was just delicious!
Of course, as we had 1.5kg, we had to triple the recipe from Masterchef as they has only used 500g.  We also served with rice instead of pasta. 

We had my family over for dinner and I have to say that there wasn’t much conversation happening while eating – except the constant praise for how wonderful it tasted!  I’ll definitely be trying more of these types of recipes throughout winter!

For the Masterchef recipe: http://www.masterchef.com.au/beef-stroganoff-with-parsley-and-black-pepper-fettuccine.htm

Eye Fillet on bed of Potato Mash with Broccolini & Baby Carrots

Eye Fillet on bed of Potato Mash with Broccolini and Baby Carrots
Served with homemade Mushroom Sauce

With only a little time to cook before racing off to see How to Train your Dragon at the movies, we quickly worked together to create something easy but that would also satisfy both of our cravings for some good protein!
Although it would have been pretty easy just to eat somewhere before the movie, unless you’re going to a more refined restaurant (where you don’t want to be rushing), it’s pretty hard to find a decent steak.  Plus, we were more than happy to have a delicious home-cooked meal (for probably half the price too!)

There’ll be no recipe to go along with this meal as it’s all very simple.  Make the mash, steam the broccolini and baby carrots (or however you want to cook them), make the mushroom sauce, cook the meat to your preference and serve!

Cauliflower Soup and Beef & Cashew Stir-fry

Puppet’s Creative Cooking – Monday Night

Entrée

Cauliflower Soup

 
Main

Beef & Cashew Stirfry

 

 

 

Mouth-watering Eye Fillet with Red Wine Risotto

Poppit’s Creative Cooking – Wednesday Night

Main

Roasted Eye Fillet with Red Wine Risotto

 

 

Ingredients:
– 500g piece of beef eye fillet
– 1 tbs olive oil
– 1 tsp pepper
– 1/4 cup red wine (dry or suitable for cooking)
– 1/2 cup beef stock 

– 3 cups vegetable stock
– 40g butter
– 1 medium brown onion, chopped finely
– 1 cup arborio rice
– 1 cup dry red wine
– 1/4 cup finely grated parmesan
– 3 green onions, sliced thinly (extra left long for garnish – optional)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180°C fan-forced (200°C)
2. Trim excess fat off meat and place in lightly oiled baking dish.
3. Brush over with oil, sprinkle with pepper.
4. Roast, uncovered for about 20 minutes or until cooked as desired.
5. In the meantime, make the risotto – bring stock to boil in saucepan then simmer, covered.
6. Heat half of butter in large saucepan, cook brown onion, stirring until softening.
7. Add rice and stir to coat in the butter mixture.
8. Add wine and bring to boil. 
9. Reduce heat, simmer and stir for 2 minutes.
10. Stir in 1/2 cup of simmering stock and cook while stirring over low heat until stock is absorbed.  Continue with this process, adding 1/2 cup mixture each time until all stock is added and rice is tender.  Can take up to 30 minutes.
11.  Add cheese, remaining butter and green onion, stir until butter melts and all is combined.
12. Remove beef from dish and stand for 10 minutes.
13. Place baking dish over low heat, add wine and simmer – stirring for about 2 minutes until mixture halves.
14. Add stock and bring to the boil while stirring.
15.  Stain mixture into a small jug.
16.  Serve beef on bed of risotto, pour sauce over top and garnish with extra green onion.

 

 

Chilli Con Carne

Poppit’s Creative Cooking – Wednesday Night

Poppit – I was trying to think of something that was different from pasta, chicken or curry… my top three things to cook.
 A mexican theme sprung to mind and I ended up cooking a delicious meal of Chilli Con Carne.
I had the original recipe in the Women’s Weekly “Cook” recipe book but it used chuck steak.  As this didn’t look too appealing to me in the supermarket due to the large amount of fat still left on the meat, I opted for the heart-smart minced meat which I love eating anyway!
I also looked up the net to see what recipes used minced meat and found one by Jamie Oliver.  So, mixing a bit of the ingredients from both and adding a few of my own, I have up with this delicious meal!
Now, in the photos, what appears to be oil around the mince is just an excess of water.  The recipe asked for extra water to be added but I don’t think I would do that next time – at least not so much (and I only used about 1/2 cup, if that!).
I also served with corn fajitas which I rolled and placed on the side of the plate.

Chilli Con Carne

 

Ingredients:

• 2 medium onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 medium carrots
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 red capsicums (red pepper)
• olive oil
• 1 heaped teaspoon chilli powder
• 1 heaped teaspoon
• ground cumin
• 1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 heaped teaspoon ground coriander leaves
• 1 heaped teaspoon curry powder
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 x 400g tin of chickpeas
• 1 x 400g tin of red kidney beans
• 2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
• 500g good-quality minced beef
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Method:

1.  Peel and finely chop the onions, garlic, carrots, celery and capsicum.
2.  Add oil to large saucepan and cook all vegetables until just soft.
3.  Add the chilli powder, cumin, crushed coriander leaves and cinnamon with a good pinch of salt and pepper.
4.  Stir every 30 seconds for around 7 minutes until softened and lightly coloured.
5.  Add the drained chickpeas, drained kidney beans and the tinned tomatoes.
6.  Add the minced beef, breaking any larger chunks.
7.  You can add a bit of extra water by filling one of the empty tomato tins and pouring into saucepan.
8.  Add the balsamic vinegar and season with a good pinch of salt and pepper. 
9.  Bring to the boil and turn the heat down to a simmer with a lid slightly askew for about an hour, stirring every now and again to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Quick Beef Curry

It was planned that Monday night would be Puppet’s new recipe night to cook something from one of the many recipe books on the shelf, one that they had never had before.
Poppit arrived home after a big day, looked in the fridge to have a sneak peek at what could be on the surprise menu… but there were no new ingredients in sight!  It seemed that Puppet had put his priorities into one of his hobbies for the afternoon and hadn’t got around to thinking about his exciting, new meal.

Well, as there were already lots of fresh veggies and meat in the fridge, it was decided that Puppet’s night for cooking would be pushed forward another night and they could make-do with the ingredients they had planned to use on other nights.  So, there’s nothing new and exciting on the menu tonight but instead an old-time, simple favourite, Beef Curry. 

As our method for making it is rather random, we don’t actually have a recipe for this one.  The main ingredients are beef, onion, beans, capsicum, potato, curry powder and water.  Extra spices, veggies and herbs can be added depending on how you like it.  We also like it with rice and a hot chilli on the side to nibble on as we go!

(We really need to learn the art of taking photos of our cooking – any tips would be greatly appreciated!)