Tag: spices

Tomatillo-beef stew

It’s tomatillo season at my local farmer’s market, so when the latest Milk Street magazine had a *super* easy tomatillo stew recipe, we jumped on it. You can eat it both as a stew, but also as fillings for tacos, as you see in the picture above. Both are good options.

2.5 lbs boneless beef chuck, trimmed & cut into 2″ chunks
1 yellow onion, diced
5 medium garlic cloves, smashed & peeled
2 jalapeños, 1 stemmed, seeded, roughly chopped, 1 stemmed & sliced into rounds
3 bay leaves
1t dried oregano
0.5t ground cumin
salt & pepper
1lb Yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1.5″ chunks
12oz tomatillos, husked, cored, and roughly chopped
pumpkin seeds, toasted, for serving
roughly chopped cilantro, for serving

  1. Heat the oven to 325F. In a dutch oven. toss together beef, onion, garlic, chopped jalapeño, bay, oregano, cumin, 1.5t salt, and 1t pepper. Cover, transfer to oven and cook for two hours.
  2. Remove pot from oven, stir in potatoes and tomatillos. Cover, return to oven and cook until potatoes are tender and a knife inserted into the beef meets no resistance, another 1-1.5 hours.
  3. Remove and discard the bay, taste, and season with further salt & pepper. Serve sprinkled with pumpkin seeds, sliced jalapeño, and cilantro.

Tapas? This might be a tapas dish

This gem of a weeknight dish is known around our house as “pork bites” and often gets paired with some sort of potatoes (roasted, french fries, probably even tater tots once) for an easy-ish weeknight meal. It has the added bonus of being way more delicious than it should be.

1.5t coriander
1.5t cumin
1.5t smoked paprika
0.75t each of salt & pepper
1lb pork tenderloin, cut into 1″ squares
1T lemon juice, plus wedges for serving
1T honey
1 garlic clove, minced
2T olive oil
1T chopped fresh oregano

Mix spices together, add pork and toss to coat evenly until no more spices remain in the bowl (that is, they’re all stuck to the meat and not sitting in the bottom of the bowl). Let the pork sit for 30-60 minutes at room temperature. In another bowl, mix the lemon juice, honey, and garlic.

Heat 1T olive oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add the meat in a single layer and cook without moving until deeply brown on one side (~3min). Then flip pork until cooked through and browned all over, another 2-3 minutes.  Off the heat, toss with the lemon-garlic mixture until evenly coated. Move to serving platter, sprinkle the oregano and drizzle the last 1T olive oil.

Enjoy!

Adapted from Milk Street Magazine, a cooking magazine I’d HIGHLY recommend, if for no other reason than their Tuesday night section where they give you about a week’s worth of delicious recipes that truly only take 30 minutes to make.

Tacos are messy

Beef Tacos

 

Tacos have long been a weeknight staple in our house. This particular recipe is from an old Cook’s Illustrated – I ended up taping that issue back together because there were so many good recipes in it that we used just infrequently enough that I didn’t memorize them. But I memorized this one. Easily.

Beef Tacos
1T veg oil
1 small onion chopped
2 minced cloves of garlic
2T chili powder
1t cumin
1t coriander
0.5t salt
0.5t mexican oregano
0.25t cayenne pepper
1lb ground beef
0.5c chicken stock
0.5c tomato sauce
2t brown sugar
1t apple cider vinegar

toppings:
taco shells
refried beans
cheese
lettuce
salsa
sour cream
diced avocado

Saute the onion in the vegetable oil. Add all the spices, stir till fragrant. Add beef, breaking up into pieces until it’s no longer pink. Then add stock, sauce, sugar, and vinegar. Bring to boil, then simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve with whichever toppings you want.