Creamed Beef With Mushrooms

Creamed beef with mushrooms

The tedious spinning class I had today just had me hankering for a satiating plate of good food. And ‘good’ meant embracing all the requirements to make tonight’s dinner  gastronomic:

1. Relatively healthy  (So I’d be guiltless after the gobble up).

2. ‘Beef related’ (Hey, I spinned hard! I deserved a good serving of protein!)

3. Labor unintensive (Tamad eh! Lol)

4. Nice to plate! (Yeah, for the blog, hee).

Okay, so the cooking began. I defrosted a pack of beef brisket that I would make into creamed beef with mushrooms. From the pantry cabinet, I dislodged a can of mushrooms and a pack of all purpose cream.

Zero transfat and  50% reduced cholesterol — reading the nutrition facts on the newly relaunched Magnolia all purpose cream got me sold in using it for tonight’s dinner of creamed beef with mushrooms.

For this dish you will need:

1/2 kilo beef brisket, thinly sliced

1 carton all purpose cream

1/2 cup butter

1 cup button mushrooms, drained and sliced

4 cloves of garlic

4 tbsps flour dissolved in 1/2 cup water

1 onion

salt and pepper to taste

oil

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Season meat with salt and pepper.

In a skillet, saute onion and garlic. Add beef. Pour water and bring to a boil. Cook until beef becomes tender and water is reduced to half the original amount.

Add butter and flour mixture. Add mushrooms and cream. Stir until desired thickness is achieved. Serve hot.

Paella

Fresh greens lavishly laid on the makeshift shelves, fishes all wriggly from the recent catch (btw, they sell seabass at Suki like it was the most ordinary fish on Earth!), pinkish-bright red meats, quality seafood finds, ready made dishes packed away and very beautiful, ohhh– what a sight to behold! I can live in this wet market twice a week! Lol.

Anyway, I scoured the market for prawns and squid for the paella. All three went straight to my basket. After I’ve accomplished the marketing, I slipped into my apron and started work:)

Well, not really ‘work’. FUN should be it.

Paella for 30 people. Let’s party!

Happy 1st birthday, Athena! And, Yani, please do know that Ninang loves you:)

Paella

8 cups arborio rice

10 pcs chicken thighs, chopped

7 pcs prawns

1/2 kilo pacific white clams or halaan

4 sticks chorizo, sliced

19 cups chicken stock

1/4 kilo squid rings, ink and sword removed.

3 red bell pepper, julienned

1 and 1/2 cups green peas

1 head  of garlic, minced

2 onions, minced

10 spears of asparagus, blanched

olive oil

5 tbsps turmeric powder

salt and pepper to taste

10 threads saffron

8 pcs lemon wedges

1 tsp chopped parsley

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In  a paellera, brown chicken until half cooked. Remove chicken and set aside. Using the same oil, fry prawns until they turn pink. Set aside as well.

In the same pan, saute garlic, onion, bell pepper, green peas, squid, clams and chorizos. Add chicken and rice. Throw in turmeric and saffron.

Mix well until rice is well coated. Add stock. Cover loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil. Simmer until rice is cooked. Remove foil.

Garnish with lemon wedges, prawns, blanched asparagus and parsley.

Chicken, Garlic And Tomato Roasts

The wet market I recently swung by down east had me shamelessly hoarding a coupla kilos of some red, juicy and plump tomatoes. Why, they sold for a measly P20 per kilo! Especially now that the Yrastorza household is slowly taking the ‘healthy-food-only’  route, I thought these tomatoes would be excellent for oven baking, stewing and the like.

Over at my kitchen, I slid my baking casserole onto the counter to toss over the tomatoes for some oven-dried tomatoes for bottling. Lately, I’ve developed a penchant for any food/ingredient that is  homemade, organic and artificial processing- free. And yeah, nothing beats having your homemade tomato sauce which you can conveniently pull out from your ref when your recipe calls for it.

But the oven was too big for the few pieces of tomatoes I was to bake. So in the pan, I threw in 2 whole heads of garlic for roasting (top slightly chopped off, leaving the flesh exposed!). What do you do with it? I spread it on toasts, I put in on my mashed potatoes or I just make it as siding for a fave dish like a pasta fare or sweet and spicy tapa! Okay, there goes my 2nd dish.

3rd dish was the two chicken quarters that I turned into baked chicken in sinigang rub. All three dishes had some about two rounds of drizzles of olive oil. Time, energy and space saving for my oven, I was totally starving right after everything got cooked.

Okay, kumbaga sa bus, naunang bumaba ang mga bawang, tapos ang mga kamatis at sumunod ang mga manok galing sa oven. (Please see links for exact directions for recipes of each of the fares).

Oh, btw, the chicken was the perfect topping for the Japchae I made the day before. Can I just say, the noodles got yummier as the sauce completely got absorbed by the noodles. Yum!