This was another fun item to make… okay, I know say that in every post. I can’t help it, I just love to cook!

I made this for our November Saturday Open House dinner as part of our Mediterranean theme (in this case Greece), so I doubled this recipe.

I made up the meatballs on Friday and then cooked them on Saturday – easy and delicious. The only thing you need to keep in mind for this one is the additional time required for thickening the yogurt – you’ll need to add in at least 1 hour for this.

The following recipe is not the doubled version; it should make about 40 meatballs. It’s adapted from The Olive and The Caper, by Suzanne Hoffman.

Belle’s note: This was the first dish to disappear during our November open house; everyone loved it. It smells delicious while it’s cooking, too. The sauce is a tangy tomato-y sauce that has a beautiful red colour.

Beef and Rice Meatballs in Yogurt-Tomato Sauce (Youvarelakia Yogurt Sauce)

For the Meatballs
1 lb ground beef (don’t use lean or extra lean, you need the fat for good tasting meatballs)
1 cup cooked rice, at room temperature
1 onion, finely chopped
1 large clove of garlic, pressed
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 tbsp fresh mint leaves, chopped
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 large free-range egg
2 + tbsp olive oil for browning the meatballs

For the Youvarelakia Yogurt Sauce
1/3 cup olive oil
796 ml (28 fl oz) can of San Marzano type tomatoes, chopped
3 large cloves, peeled and finely sliced
1 tsp fresh rosemary needles, finely chopped
1/3 cup capers, drained and rinsed
1 tbsp organic lemon zest, chopped
3/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup thickened yogurt*

Youvarelakia Yogurt Sauce

1. Heat oil over medium-high heat.
2. Add tomatoes and garlic and stir for about 1 minute.
3. Add the rosemary, capers, lemon, wine and salt.
4. Cook until the tomatoes are soft, about 2-3 minutes.
5. Stir in the thickened yogurt*.
6. Place in small serving bowls or ramekins, or in one larger bowl with a ladle for everyone to spoon sauce over their meatballs.

* Directions for thickened yogurt: Use 3 cups full fat yogurt

1. Place a double layer of cheesecloth over a fine mesh sieve.
2. Pour yogurt into sieve and let drain at least 1 hour.
3. Squeeze out any extra moisture form yogurt and retain the yogurt.

Meatballs

1. Mix all the ingredients except the oil in a large bowl. (Use your hands, it’s the only way to really mix and get involved in the food).
2. Roll together tablespoon-sized balls and place on a baking sheet or large platter.
3. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
4. Add the meatballs, but don’t overcrowd or the oil temperature will drop.
5. Cook in batches for 8-10 minutes each.
6. Serve the meatballs with the Youvarelakia Yogurt sauce on the side.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it. ]]> http://museinthekitchen.com/beef/beef-and-rice-meatballs-in-yogurt-tomato-sauce-youvarelakia-yogurt-sauce/feed/ 5 http://museinthekitchen.com/beef/shabu-shabu/ http://museinthekitchen.com/beef/shabu-shabu/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:50:00 +0000 Ward http://museinthekitchen.com/?p=610

This is a wonderful way for family dining. We first experienced it when we went to Japan and then subsequently at a large Asian marketplace just north of us.

When we decided to try this at home, I bought a separate burner I could put on the table (an electric one, as Belle didn’t want to use propane indoors). I found a few Shabu Shabu recipes in some Japanese cookbooks but they all had different suggestions, so I used a few of them as a template but then added my own ideas.

Usually we eat at the dining room table, but it’s much better if the burner is within reach of everyone, and as there were only three of us at this meal, I decided it would be better to eat at the smaller kitchen table.

Shabu Shabu means swish swish in Japanese, and it get its name from the sound of swishing the kombu around in the stock. It’s fun and very filling, as it’s a full three course meal, with meat (beef, shrimp) and for the vegetarians (tofu), vegetables and noodles. What could be more perfect then that?

The prep is easy and everyone does their own cooking, so that each item is prepared just the way everyone likes it. When it comes to the beef, this is particularly important, as I like my beef rare, Belle likes hers more rare then me and our older son likes his beef blue!

This would work as a dinner party as well as long as everyone has their own dipping sauces.

Feel free to add whatever vegetables are in season in your area, and whatever type of meat you prefer (you can also use pork or chicken) and the type of noodles you like.

I have had Shabu Shabu with venison, pork, chicken and beef and with all sorts of vegetables. If you can’t find gai lan (Chinese broccoli) you can use rappini or even spinach. For the gai lan, oyster sauce for dipping  is also very popular in Chinese cuisine. I like using baby bok choy because they are smaller and more tender, but regular bok choy would work just as well – just cut them a little smaller.

Belle’s note: I just love Shabu Shabu – it’s always guaranteed to be a meal where everyone lingers around the table, chatting and eating up every scrap of food. The sesame dipping sauce is lovely; I also like to have a small bowl of Japanese soy sauce with a splash of sesame oil.

Shabu Shabu

Stock:
2  4″ square sheets of kombu seaweed, wiped clean of excess salt and soaked in water for 30 minutes
7 cups of water

The Food:
1 lb flank steak, thinly sliced against the grain
1 lb tiger shrimps, peeled & deveined
1 box silken extra-firm tofu, cut into 3/4″ cubes
5 baby bok choy, cut lengthwise in quarters
8 gai lan cut lengthwise in half
3-4 cups bean sprouts
6 scallions sliced into 1″ pieces on the bias
6 cups frozen udon noodles
1 cup sesame dipping sauce (recipe follows)
3/4 cup ponzu sauce
3/4 cup soy sauce
splash of pure sesame oil, to taste

Special equipment: Portable burner that can be used on your table.

Sesame Dipping Sauce
6 tbsp sesame paste
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar (not aged)
1 tbsp superfine sugar
1 tsp granulated chicken stock dissolved in 1/4 cup hot water

Sauce

1. Whisk together all the ingredients in a bowl.
2. Reserve.

Shabu Shabu

1. Place the 7 cups of water into a large pot and put on the burner on your table. Drain the kombu and add to the water on the burner. Bring to a boil. Swish the kombu around in the water with chopsticks.
2. Once the water and kombu are boiling, everyone can begin eating. Using chopsticks, have each person dip some beef or shrimp in the stock. Cook as long as you like, then dip in one of the sauces and eat.
3. Continue this procedure with the rest of the beef, shrimp and tofu – you might want to place the tofu pieces into a big ladle first, so you don’t lose the pieces, which break up easily, in the stock.
4. When the first batches of the beef, shrimp or tofu are cooked and everyone’s busy eating, add some of the vegetables. Bring back to the boil and let cook a few minutes.
5. Eat the vegetables the same way with the dipping sauces. Continue cooking and eating the remainder of the beef, shrimp and tofu, adding more vegetables as the cooked vegetables get eaten.
6. Once most of the beef, shrimp, tofu and vegetables have been cooked, you can add individual servings of udon noodles to the stock, which should now have a more broth-like taste to it. Use a ladle to immerse a small serving of noodles, or else remove the noodles using chopsticks or a slotted spoon.
7. Place the serving of udon noodles into a small bowl and continue with the feast.

It was just Belle and I for dinner the other night, and she asked for steak. We had some striploin in the freezer and lots of recipes in our collection of cookbooks.

Belle opted for this Latin-style steak and it was great. Belle loves her steak rare and I am more of a medium-rare steak eater, but somehow, following the cooking times in the recipe, we ended up with more medium-well then rare.

Luckily, this didn’t effect the flavour. We were both very surprised that the steak tasted so good, even though it was technically over-cooked by our standards. I did this on the stove top instead of the barbeque, which might have been a mistake. I am usually more attentive to steaks if they are over flames rather then in a pan. It might also have been because of the thickness of the steak, but I’ll definitely watch the cooking time more closely in the future.

We had roasted chayote with this, and that was really delicious, too. It would be great just as a snack during the day or late at night. It’s so simple and you can experiment with all sorts of seasonings on them – I’ll post the chayote recipe tomorrow!

Belle’s note: I was a little disappointed when we sat down to dinner and I saw that the striploin was quite well-done. But surprisingly, it had retained its tenderness, and the tequila-avocado sauce was just so lovely with it! Until Ward started cooking, I was never one to see the benefits of having a sauce for my steak, but now he’s definitely sold me on it.

Strip Steak with Tequila-Avocado Sauce
Adapted from The New Steak

2 striploin steaks
2 tsp kosher salt
olive oil
2 tbsp peanut oil
freshly ground black pepper

Tequila-Avocado Sauce
4 tomatillos (about 1/3 cup) I use canned tomatillos so no peeling or cooking is required – just core them
1/2 tsp hot sauce
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1/3 cup cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
1/2 Hass avocado
3 tbsp organic lime juice
2 tbsp tequila

Steaks and Sauce

1. Bring steaks to room temperature.
2. Place all the ingredients for the sauce in a food processor and blend until smooth.
3. Pour into a small pot and set aside until steaks are done.
4. Salt the steaks and rub with olive oil.
5. Heat the peanut oil in a pan until hot.
6. Sear all sides of each steak in the hot oil for about 1-1/2 minutes each side.
7. Turn the heat down to medium and continue to cook the steaks for 6 minutes, turning every couple of minutes. (This resulted in a medium-well steak. Next time I do this, I will change this to 2 minutes per side for a rarer steak, or use a thicker cut.)
8. Rest the steaks. Any juices that are released you can add to the sauce.
9. Put the sauce into a small pot and heat over high heat for 3 minutes to slightly reduce.
10. Plate the steaks and add some sauce to each one.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it. ]]> http://museinthekitchen.com/beef/strip-steak-with-tequila-avocado-sauce/feed/ 2 http://museinthekitchen.com/beef/churrascaria-marinated-steaks-with-chile-lime-sauce/ http://museinthekitchen.com/beef/churrascaria-marinated-steaks-with-chile-lime-sauce/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:58:15 +0000 Ward http://museinthekitchen.com/?p=378

Here is a recipe I adapted from the Best Barbecue on Earth. The original recipe is from Brazil (you will love this book – it is set out by countries and each and every recipe looks exquisite).

In my copy, just like my copy of The Barbecue! Bible, you can tell which recipes I have made, as the pages have oil or food stains. Okay, so that is virtually every page. What can I say? My short term memory has been … well it is gone so I have to constantly refer to the recipe and that means it comes in contact with my hands and food in the process of preparation all the time!

I am doing memory exercises on my iPhone, when and if Dylan ever lets me actually use my iPhone. He has more applications on it then I do, way more, and some of them I think he downloaded himself because I have no idea how they got there!

I was a little hesitant about making this dish as it uses jalapeño peppers and Belle is not a spicy food kind of person. However, lately she has fallen in love with a fish sauce and red Thai chile pepper sauce I made and uses it on everything, so I asked her if this sounded okay to her.

Yes! So off I went. It was a night when the two older children…um, I mean the teenagers, were out of the house for dinner or at least that was what I had thought. Hayley decided to stay home for dinner at the last minute, though, and that is why we also had the Spinach Tofu Salad with Spicy Miso Dressing, which I posted about yesterday.

Belle says: I really enjoyed this steak, and didn’t find the jalapeño peppers too spicy at all. Ward served this done to the perfect point of rareness for me, beautifully red-pink throughout. He thoughtfully left the chile-lime sauce in a small bowl to the side for me, so that I could adjust the amount of the spicy sauce to my liking – I discovered that I really enjoyed the sauce, which added a lot of flavor to the steak, and ended up slathering it on all of my steak!

Churrascaria Marinated steaks with Chile-Lime Sauce
Adapted from Best Barbecue on Earth by Rick Browne

4 jalapeño peppers, seeded and chopped
2 tsp kosher salt, divided
2 yellow onions, chopped, divided
14 cloves garlic chopped, divided
2 strip-loin steaks
1/2 cup organic lime juice
1/3 cup dry red wine
2 tsp dried oregano
2 fresh bay leaves
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 cup Italian parsley, chopped

1. In a food processor place the jalapeño peppers, 1 tsp salt, half the onions and 5 cloves of the garlic. and process until you have a smooth paste. Place in the fridge until ready to use.
2. Place the remaining 9 garlic cloves and the remaining half of the onions in a large bowl. Whisk in the lime juice, red wine, oregano, bay leaves and 1 tsp salt and pepper.
3. Put the steaks in a re-sealable freezer bag and add the garlic, onion, lime juice and red wine mixture. Refrigerate for 4-6 hours.
4. Pre-heat the BBQ to 450 degrees F (make sure you clean and oil the grill as well). Remove the steaks from the bag (wipe off the marinade) and remove the jalapeño pepper sauce from the fridge. Let both come to room temperature.
5. Cook the steaks for 4-5 minutes per side for rare, longer if you prefer your steak more well-done. Remove from grill and tent with foil for 5 minutes. Serve with the jalapeño pepper sauce and garnish with the parsley.

So I used the ingredients in that recipe to make a marinade instead of a glaze. I marinate the steak 4 –24 hours, cook it rare on the grill or frying pan, slice it against the grain and serve. It is a big hit around here.

I have since seen many recipes for flank steak using virtually the same ingredients so this is a very common combination.

Because of the soy sauce and red peppers I did not need to salt or pepper the meat but guests may like it so have it on hand when you serve the steak.

Asian Marinated Flank Steak

1/4 cup organic soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp rice vinegar (not aged)
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tbsp sunflower oil, divided
1 flank steak
Maldon salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Combine the first 6 ingredients and 1 tbsp oil in a bowl.
2. Cut the flank steak in half, across the grain.
3. Place flank steak in a re-sealable bag and pour in marinade. Refrigerate for from 4 to 24 hours.
4. Remove the  bag from the fridge and let come to room temperature.
5. Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add the remaining oil (add more depending on the size of the flank steak).
6. Fry for about 3 minutes on one side, flip with tongs and continue to fry for another 4-5 minutes. The length of time will vary based on the thickness of your flank steak and how rare you like it. We like it quite rare.
7. Remove the flank steak to a cutting board and let rest (about 5-10 minutes)
8. Slice the steak against the grain and arrange on serving platter.

Like magic:

This is what he whipped up for lunch: Tataki-style beef with Mentsuyu dipping sauce. We didn’t have daikon on hand – it’s the traditional vegetable to use in a Japanese salad – so he used radishes instead and they were the perfect substitute.

Since this dish is very rare, we’ve found it’s best to use a good cut of beef; here we’ve used two tenderloin steaks.

Season the meat with salt, pepper and crushed garlic, then sear it on all sides in a very hot pan. Remove from the pan and wrap in foil to continue cooking on its own while you put together the dressing/dipping sauce and cut up your desired vegetables – here Ward used radishes, romaine lettuce and scallions.

Thinly slice the beef, arrange with your vegetables, and drizzle over with Mentsuyu sauce (recipe below). Serve the remaining sauce in small individually-sized dipping bowls. We didn’t use wasabi this time, but it’s great with wasabi, too, if you have some on hand.

This following recipe for Mentsuyu dipping sauce is adapted from Harumi’s Japanese Cooking:

MENTSUYU DRESSING/DIPPING SAUCE

Ingredients:

1 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup mirin
3 tbsp superfine or fruit sugar
1 cup water
2-1/2 tbsp dried bonito flakes or other fish flakes

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together in a microwave-safe bowl. Do not cover. Microwave at medium power for 3 minutes. Cool and strain. You can refrigerate it until you need it.