St. Patrick's Day

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, and even though neither one of us has any connection to Ireland I couldn't resist trying out two recipes with an Irish feel. Both had Guinness stout in them, but since the store didn't have any Guinness I went with Murphy's instead - it's basically the same thing (if any Irish people are reading this you are welcome to disagree in comments).

Let's get to the sweet stuff first - Guinness chocolate cupcakes with Bailey's cream cheese frosting, found over at Nook & Pantry. That I just had to make - I mean, cakes with chocolate and Guinness (or, in my case, Murphy's) covered with a mixture of Bailey's, cream cheese and butter?! I will tell you that they are as good as they sound, even though my cupcakes became very low because I misread the recipe and used baking powder instead of baking soda. D'oh! Apart from that non-intentional alteration, I followed the recipe without changes, so head on over to Nook & Pantry to get all the details. My little mistake didn't seem to impact the taste though because, yum! I can also imagine the frosting would be good with Grand Marnier or some other kind of citrus liqueur. Or with Jameson's. Yeah, maybe an Irish coffee frosting, with coffee and whisky and brown sugar. Good thing I ended up with quite a few cupcakes in the freezer - that means I get to try those out!



Now, the maincourse, a beef and Guinness pie that I found at Epicurious. For this I made a few changes, the biggest one being covering the stew with mashed potatoes in shepherd's pie style rather than with puff pastry. The original had brined green peppercorns in it, but that was impossible for me to find. I meant to pop in a few regular green peppercorns instead but I forgot about it. If you have green peppercorns, brined or not, do add them because I think that would give a little punch that this dish was lacking. If you like cooked carrots that would also work with this, either in the stew or on the side, boiled and with some butter and parsley on top. I'm tucking the photo of this down at the bottom because this dish is not too pretty. We ran out of mashed potatoes so that's why there's a hole in the middle, in case you are wondering. Anyhoo, here's the recipe:

Beef and Guinness pie, Shepherd's style
(adopted from Epicurious.com)

Makes enough for a dish 30*25 cm

1 kg beef, cut in 2*2 cm pieces
3 tbsp flour
Salt and black pepper
2-3 tbsp butter
1 large onion, coarsly chopped
3 tbsp water
½ tbsp concentrated game stock dissolved in 1 cup water
1½ cup Guinness or other stout
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
5 fresh thyme sprigs
100 g forest mushrooms, quartered
Mashed potatoes for topping (use your favorite recipe, mine has potatoes, butter, cream, nutmeg, salt and pepper).

Set the oven to 175 degrees C. Mix flour, salt and pepper in a shallow dish. Pat the beef dry. Turn the pieces around in the flour to coat them, shaking off excess flour. Heat most of the butter in a large pan, preferably oven-proof. Brown the beef in batches, and transfer the done pieces to a bowl. When all the beef is browned, add the rest of the butter to the pan and then the onions and water. Cook until the onions are soft. Then return the beef to the pan (make sure to get all the juices that may have accumulated in the bowl), and also add dissolved stock, beer, Worcestershire sauce and thyme. Bring to a simmer. If your pot isn't oven-proof, transfer all the meat and liquid to a large oven-poof pan (I used a rectangular Le Creuset dish, about 30*25 cm.). Cover with a lid or with foil and braise in the oven for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the beef is tender. Take the pan out, add the quartered mushrooms and braise for another 15-20 minutes, now without lid/foil. You can prepare this far (it would hold up well in the fridge overnight).
Increase the oven temperature to 225 degrees C. Make your mashed potatoes, and place them on top of the dish. If you want a pretty look, you could pipe them out (we didn't). Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until the mashed potatoes are turning golden brown.

Asian beef salad

This was a dinner last week, on one of the few days I've been at home lately - I have been very busy. We got bok choy (pak choy/pak soi - this Chinese vegetable has a lot of spellings) in our organic produce box last week. While I really wanted to attempt to make char sui (Cantonese BBQ pork) served with rice and bok choy - one of our Hong Kong favorites - I had neither the energy nor the time to run around looking for all the required ingredients. Uppsala lacks a Chinatown...

So instead, I made a beef and rice vermicelli salad. It incorporates a lot of flavors used in various Asian kitchens, but is in no way authentic. It's like Jamie Oliver once said: it's got a little Asian fusion thingie going!

I'm not giving you any amounts this time cause I have no idea how much I used. But this is what went into the salad

Thin rice noodles (vermicelli)
Thinly sliced beef ("lövbiff" in Swedish)
Salt and black pepper for seasoning the meat
Mango
Alfalfa sprouts
Bok choy
Peanuts
Fresh cilantro
Freshly squeezed lime juice

Cook the rice noodles as directed on your package*. Cut the beef into bite sized pieces if needed. Fry the beef quickly in a hot pan with some butter - do not overcook cause then it will get dry and stringy. Season with salt and pepper. Cut off the hard stems of the bok choy and toss it around in a hot pan with some butter until it gets soft. Dice the mango and chop the peanuts coarsely. Mix all the ingredients into a salad and pour the lime juice over it. We ate this with chopsticks (to maintain our skill level) and I'm happy to report that I can still pick up peanuts with chopsticks!

*Does anyone have a tip on how to prevent the noodles from sticking together in a big lump once they're cooked? I really want to make a Vietnamese salad based on cold vermicelli, but I don't want it to be a cold lump of vermicelli...

Sailor's beef

When I shopped for this dish today I felt kind of old. You see, this is the kind of food that my grandmother would make: traditional Swedish food, no weird ingredients, just meat and potatoes in a big pot on the stove, slowly cooking away and filling the house with a warm, comfortable smell. According to the cookbook there should be carrot slices in there too so add that if you want, but I'm not a fan of cooked carrots, so we ate them raw on the side instead. You could sprinkle the dish with some finely chopped parsley before serving (I didn't have any, so I didn't). We ate it with some black currant jelly, but pickled cucumbers would also work.

PS. No, I have no idea how this dish got its name.

Sailor's beef (Sjömansbiff)

serves 2 and leaves plenty extra for lunch boxes

500 grams beef in thin slices
1 yellow onion
10 potatoes.
2-3 tbsp butter
1 33 cl bottle of beer (preferably dark, I used the Swedish "Carnegie Porter")
3 dl water
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper

Peel and slice the onion thinly. Fry it very very slowly (it should not get any color) in some of the butter. Put the onions aside, pour half of the water into the pan, whisk around and save the sauce for later.
Peel and slice the potatoes.
Add butter to the pan and brown the meat in batches. Season with salt and pepper. When all the meat is browned, put the meat aside, pour the remaining half of the water into the pan, whisk around and pour it, through a strainer, into the onion sauce.
Now get out a big pot, preferably oven proof. Layer the beef, onions and potatoes in the pot, with a layer of potatoes in the bottom and at the top. Season with salt and pepper in between the layers. Put the bay leaf in the pot, and pour in the bottle of beer and the juice from the meat and the onions.
Now, you can either boil it very slowly under a lid on the stove top for about an hour. Or (if your pot is oven proof), put it in the oven - lid on - and forget about it for one hour or so on 200 degrees celsius. I like the top layer of potatoes to be a bit crispy, so I took the lid of for the last ten minutes.