(no subject)

[zdashamber]

Last Thursday I actually cooked something that worked. I mean, well. I mean, I sort of threw together a couple recipes and some random thoughts and it actually really worked.

See, this is unusual. Ususally I invent a recipe and it's edible, but perhaps less good than the non-recipe version of the meal would have been.

Anyway, I'm so pleased with myself after eating the leftovers tonight that I'm actually going to put it up here for y'all to marvel at. ;)

So, the week before I'd gone by the farmer's market on Saturday and picked up a pound of kumquats. I love kumquats, but apparently I can't take down a pound in 4 days, and by Thursday I was kind of desperately wondering how I could eat them all without giving myself another ulcer. "They must," I decided, "be cooked into something."

I looked into the freezer to see what the meat options were. The best I saw was stew beef. Armed with these ingredients, I went to the internet, home of all things bright and beautiful. Allrecipes ingredient search gave me nothing in Beef for "kumquat", but there were a handful of options for "orange" and "lemon." Of these, the best-looking was something called "Portugese Beef - Cacoila". It called for orange juice and white wine and vegetable oil and overnight marination, but whatever... Taking a few ideas from something called "Belgian Beef Stew" I went forwards!

This is what I ended up with:

Dump into crockpot:

1.25 cup water
0.5 cup red wine
0.25 cup lemon juice
0.25 cup soy sauce
2 tsp honey
1 tsp crushed hot pepper flakes
1 tsp paprika
3 dried bay leaves
0.5 tsp ground black pepper

Mix. Dump in:

1.2 lbs stew beef, cut into ~1" chunks
~1 cup kumquats, halved
3 carrots, cut into ~1 cm-thick coins (~1.25 cups)
1.5 onions, cut into >1" chunks (~2 cups)
1 tsp salt

Cook in crock pot on high for 3 hours, stirring ~every half hour. Serve over rice.

Turned out with a kick ass blend of flavors. The crushed dried peppers rock my world. The red wine is a great underlay. The bay leaves are beautiful. And onions, or course, make everything better...

Things I'll do differently next time:

• I think I'll leave out the kumquats. ;) I mean, they look really cool (oh, and this recipe looks cool, it's not just how it tastes), but stewing them seems to bring to the forefront a slight bitterness that's ususally masked. I think next time I'll go out back, grab a lemon off the tree, and chop it up. And I'll use orange juice instead of lemon juice to make sure the lemon isn't overpoweringly sour. Hm. Or maybe I should just swap out an orange for the kumquats. Thing is, I know lemon skin is tasty and edible, but orange skin is kind of bitter. But on the other hand, I ususally don't have orange juice, but I always have lemon juice, because lemon juice keeps. Maybe I'll do it all lemon and just add some sugar.
  
  
• I'm going to try it leaving out the honey. The honey, I think, just made the sauce a bit heavier and stickier. I don't really know if that's a good thing.
  
  
• I'm going to cut the soy sauce down by half. I think it would be better just to back up the stong meaty red wine, but at .25 cup, you can taste a bit of it.
  
  
• Oh, I'm out of the red wine. This was to use up some crappy stuff that had been sitting the fridge for months. So I suppose next time it's sherry or beer. Probably beer. Pity. Maybe I should open another bottle of red wine just for this recipe. Maybe it won't suck as much as the last. Hm.
  
  
• I may cook it longer. 3 hours left the carrots still a bit hard, which was neat, but the meat was also a bit stiff. I don't know if stewed beef will get unstiff if I leave it there longer... I suspect it will. I'll have to see if this messes up the carrots too much, though.
  
  
• I think it could use some green thing when it comes to making a dinner meal out of it. Like, rice, this, and maybe green beans or something.
  
  
• .25 cup less water. I added the last .25 cup when everything was sitting in the crock pot and most of it was sitting above the liquid line, but after an hour or so everything shrunk down to the level of the liquid. And it was pretty liquidy at the end, so maybe with less water it would some of it boil away and thinken. On the other hand, the crockpot lid kept most of the steam in; that could be the problem. Oh, this smells really good as it cooks.
  
  
• Oh, and garlic. I forgot to add garlic. I bet this could use at least 3 cloves of chopped garlic. Maybe it's better without, but who knows?

Stuff I'm glad I decided not to add: oil, ginger, and vinegar.

Anyway, this was quick, and simple, and made with stuff I had lying around, and makes great leftovers, and requires very little washing up after. I think it's spiffy.