19 posts tagged “food”

I had too much fun making this one tonight not to show you!

Long Handle, Deep Dish

It's rainy and raw outside so I decided to do something with the ground beef that had been sitting patiently in my fridge the last few days. My friend Rosie and I talked burgers, but by the time I got downstairs I was more in a mood for a beef-based casserole of some kind. Then I remembered an old cookbook I scrounged from my parents' house in the late 1970s, called "One Pot Cookbook." One of my favorite traditional throw-togethers is a recipe called "Ella Williams' Beef and Rice." I don't know who Ella Williams is or was, but I do thank her for this lovely dish. Now that I've got the book out again, I'll have to try a few more recipes in there. They look quite good and seem quite easy. Now, that's the ticket - at least for a week night!

• 1 1/2 lbs ground beef


• 1/2 cup rice


• 1 cup water


• 1 medium onion, diced


• 1 small green pepper, diced


• 1 small celery stick, diced


• 1/4 lb fresh mushrooms, diced


• 1 one-pound can of tomatoes


• 1 1/2 tsp salt


• 1/4 tsp pepper

1. Brown the beef in its own fat in a skillet. Add the rice, water, onions, green pepper, celery, mushrooms, tomatoes (with liquid), salt and pepper. Stir to mix and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally and add small amounts of water if mixture seems to be drying out.

Every so often I'll post this query, just to get a sense of what everyone's up to in their kitchen.

Tonight was simple and fast. I don't get home until 7:00 pm during the week and the last thing I want to do is start a cooking project. So I made a curry using a prepared Indian simmer sauce made by Patak's. This one was a butter chicken sauce, although I substituted chick peas for the chicken.

I took an onion, a green pepper, a medium tomato and a handful or two of spinach. I sauteed the onion and pepper, then added the tomato and cooked it down a bit. In went the simmer sauce with a little water to wash out the jar. Then I tossed in the spinach, stirred it up, and simmered it for about 25 minutes.

Yum! Served it over brown rice. Easy and very tasty.

So, what about you? What did you have for dinner tonight?

Because a picture is worth a thousand words!

I'll be Julia Child-ski at this rate!

I've made a version of this sauce since the 1970s, when I lived in a vegetarian household. Back then there were more veggies, but it was just as good. A few years later, when I left, I decided to add ground beef. There's no "recipe" per se for this lovely sauce. It just came together. Whatever I did, it worked!

I need another blog like I need a hole in the head, but I've become so fascinated with the cooking videos I've been making with that I decided to put them all in one place. I love to cook and I love to feed people. I guess I also like showing people what I'm doing with the food I'll eventually be serving them.

The blog is in its early stages, with some finishing up to do, but I thought I'd give you an early peek:

http://cookingwithmargy.wordpress.com/

I've completed a few more videos. I still have to finish some of them, so fresh materials will be at hand - and soon!