Life is A Journey...Come Follow Our's

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

DELISH!

And the good food keeps coming over here in The Pope House! 3 more good recipes to share including the Guinness Beef Stew I served for St. Paddy's Day, Shiitake Angel Hair Pasta, and my first attempt at making homemade bread - Cinnamon Raisin Bread.

For St. Paddy's Day, I decided there was no way I could bring myself to make corned beef and cabbage. Since smells are sometimes bothering me now-a-days, I didn't trust how I'd do with a house smelling like cooked cabbage (first and foremost) and then the smell of the aftermath (if you catch my drift) of 3 people dining on cabbage together, I opted to try my hand at Guiness Beef Stew (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Special-Irish-Beef-Stew/Detail.aspx). I'm not much of a dark beer drinker, okay, I'm not much of a beer drinker, but ever since making this stew, I've been craving Guinness. The stew was delicious (especially for Irish food). I doubled the meat but otherwise kept the recipe as written. It was very thick and was served very well with mashed potatos. This might just become a March 17th tradition.



Last week, one of Brad's co-workers brought in bags of shiitake mushrooms. Did you realize they sell for $10.99 a pound at the natural food stores? Incredible! I don't plan on buying any anytime soon, but it was fun to try to find recipes that include them. Last night I tried our luck with Shiitake Angel Hair Pasta (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Shiitake-Angel-Hair-Pasta/Detail.aspx?prop31=3). It seemed like a pretty safe bet - mushrooms and cream sauce...how can you go too wrong, right? Brad and I learned a couple things about shiitake mushrooms. 1) You have to really trim down the stems or else they are super chewy like overcooked calamari or octopus, and 2) they're not our favorite kind of mushroom...or maybe we just haven't developed a taste for their woody flavor yet. The sauce for this dish was very very good. In fact, I'm planning on keeping it as part of my reportoire and will use it for a primavera base in the future. Super simple and very flavorful. As for the shiitakes, we'll leave them out next time, but I will try at least one more recipe with the ones I have left in the fridge.



The most exciting recipe I tried this week was just this morning. Throughout the past month or two, I've been having a really hard time staying asleep. I guess it worked out to my benefit this morning because by 4am, I had started the process of making Cinnamon Raisin Bread (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cinnamon-Raisin-Bread-I/Detail.aspx)- my first attempt at making homemade bread. End result...DELISH! I baked it for 35 minutes and ended up with 1-9x5 inch loaf and 3-8x4 inch loaves. Next on the bread agenda...Challah...hopefully later this week!



Stay tuned...the challah might be worth making for Easter...the Cinnamon Raisin Bread definitely is!

1 Comments:

  • At March 28, 2010 at 7:49 PM , Blogger Unknown said...

    M- It has been a while since I read your blog - forgot all about it - I love the cooking entries (second of course to Quinn). You know I love to cook as well-so many good sounding recipes-Great job staying on track with your 52 in 2010. Love it!

     

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home