Bourbon Marinated Beef Tenderloin with Braised Red Cabbage and Crab & Artichoke Appies

OK - this Sunday night dinner is simply too gorgeous and amazing, I could cry tears of joy! Wait until you also try the Grapefruit Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting I prepared for dessert, you will seriously think you've expired and gone to heaven. I wish I'd posted this earlier for your dinner tonight, but next week's good too! Here is our Sunday night dinner:

Crab and Artichoke Cakes: 1 cup of marinated and diced artichokes, 1 pound of imitation crab meat, 3/4 cup of panko bread crumbs, 1 tsp. finely chopped red onion, 1/2 tsp. of chopped fresh chives, 1/2 cup of Hellman's may. 1 egg yolk, plus one whole egg, 1 tsp. of Dijon mustard, 1 tsp. of Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 tsp. of Louisianna Hot Sauce, a little Fleur De Sel (or regular salt) and unsalted butter.

Chop up imitation crab and artichokes and combine with all of the above ingredients except butter. Melt unsalted butter in pan, shape crab cakes, bigger or smaller depending if it's for an appie or for dinner, and pan fry on each side until just nicely brown. You can serve right away or reheat a little latter. They are delish!!!!!

Bourbon or Whiskey Marinated Steak or Beef Tenderloin: 3/4 cup of brown sugar, 1 cup of Jack Daniel's, 1 cup of pineapple juice, 2/3 cup of low sodium soy sauce, and 4 cups of water.

Combine brown sugar and Jack in a bowl and stir until it's dissolved. Then add pineapple juice, soy sauce, water and stir. Place beef tenderloin steaks or the steaks of your choice in a deep dish and pour marinade all over and stick into the fridge for at least 6 hours but 24 if you can. Then grill over BBQ to your liking and devour.

Braised Red Cabbage: 1 cup of distilled white vinegar, 1 cup of sugar, or I use 1/2 cup of Brown or White Sugar substitute, a pinch or two of salt, 1 tsp. of caraway seed, pinch of ground cloves, and one head of red cabbage all nicely cut up or shredded.

Mix together all ingredients EXCEPT FOR CABBAGE, in a pot and stir together, and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce the heat to low, cov er, and simmer, stirring occasionally, 35 to 40 minutes until cabbage is very tender and most of the liquid has evaporated. You can store this dish in a glass jar for up to 6 weeks.

Dessert is next - check out the most delicious Grapefruit Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting!

This is a dinner to behold. Now take a bow. You've done all you need to do this week. Life is good!

Sunday Meat Sauce for Spaghetti

OK - this is too delicious and one of my absolute favourites!

Saute in a pot one chopped large onion in 1/4 cup of olive oil over medium heat until the onion is just clear. Then add 1 lb. of lean ground beef and 4 chopped cloves of garlic to the onion and olive oil and saute for about 5 or so minutes or at least until the meat is brown. Then add 6 chopped up tomatoes to the pot together with 2 tbsp. of tomato paste, 1 divine cup of red wine, 1 cup of beef broth (use a carton of already made), 2 bay leaves. Stir until all is well blended and cook, uncovered on a low heat for 1 hour, stirring frequently. Salt and pepper to taste then toss over tortellini or spaghetti and top with fresh Parmesan.

Succulent Slow Cooked Short Ribs

It's the perfect time of year to whip out your slow cooker.  You can even stick "frozen" meat in it, and it will come out gorgeously tender.  The broth I put in with the short ribs is unmeasured, but it was lovely and subtle In flavouring.  The ribs came out gloriously tender and were delish.  Normally I would have thrown some red wine or beer in the broth, but you know...kids.....I didn't want to possibly have to eat all those delicious short ribs by myself!  So the first thing you are going to do, is throw some flour into a bag with a little salt and pepper and drench the short ribs, a few at a time and put into a buttered pan and brown them.  Once nice and brown, put into the slow cooker.  For the broth I used what I had and improvised and I suggest you do too!  In a bowl mix together 3/4 a carton of chicken broth, and if you have it, use beef broth, though the chicken was really nice too.  Then mix in 1/4 cupish of ketchup, 1/4 cupish of brown sugar, about 5 tbsp. of balsamic vinegar, and about the same in soy sauce, and then 1 tbsp. of minced garlic.  Give it a little taste, then add whatever more you like, just as long as it's not too salty.  Here's the thing.  Slow Cookers are a la magic.  You can make so many succulent recipes in them.  My short ribs came out perfect.  I cooked them all day - put them in at 11 in the morning, and we ate about 7 at night.  Just check the ribs ever now and then and move them around so the sauce gets every inch of them.  Oh yes, I also enjoyed an entire bottle of 2008 Marechal Foch from Lang Vineyards.  So delish.  So divine!

Simply Delicious and Easy Beef Tenderloin

I wish my camera was downloading pictures, otherwise I would have had more pics here. Oh well. Last night I made my mom a simple dinner of beef tenderloin, green beans with pancetta, and baked potato. I may have mentioned it in the past, but I love the Europe's Best brand of white and green beans - they are frozen just so you know. Anyhoo, I picked up a small package of 4 small pieces of beef tenderloin and seasoned them with garlic, salt, and pepper. Then I heated up some olive oil in a pan and cooked the steaks 5 minutes per side for a total of 10 minutes. The steaks were about 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick. Then put the steaks in a 350 degree preheated oven for about 20 minutes. It was perfect. Now don't get rid of your pan that you cooked the steaks in. You're going to add about 4 cups of frozen green/white beans and once again cook over a medium heat stirring often. Then add 1/2 to 1 cup of chopped up pancetta and continue cooking until you have the beans how you like them. I cooked them for at least 10 minutes. The beans absorbed the juice and the seasoned oil from the pan - and I have to tell you the entire meal, as simple as it was, was absolute perfection.

French Onion Prime Rib Soup

Oh what to do with the ever best left over Prime Rib Roast. I spent $60 on a Prime Rib the other night fully knowing that it was too big for our family. But what's a girl to do? I couldn't leave it behind! I'd already started dreaming about the possibilities and of course the sheer soulful joy it would bring to a Saturday night dinner. And it did. We've tried other roasts in the past, and nothing compares. Well a sirloin isn't so bad. To date we've turned our Saturday night dinner into a roster of left overs. We've had the carmelized onion prime rib sandwhiches and even tossed it in a salad with blue cheese. Tonight though, on this overwhelmingly chilly evening in Vancouver, soup will do. But my God, French Onion Prime Rib Soup will really do.

Chop up lots of onion - I chopped up, or I should say sliced up 6 medium sized onions. Put about 1/4 cup of butter into a big pot and sauteed until the onion is soft. Then add mushrooms, as many as you like. I opened two cans of mushrooms and threw them in the pot and some red wine about 3/4 a cup. I had left over bottles still here from Christmas so I just poured them all in. Then slice off as much meat as you can from the Prime Rib Beef Bones and toss the bones in the pot and simmer until all the liquid from the wine is thoroughly reduced to just a little liquid. Remove the bones and set aside. Chop up all the left over roast and toss into the pot. Add about 5 tbsp. of beef bouillon to the pot with water (do proper measurements of water to bouillon which is about 1 tbsp. of bouillon to 1 cup of water). So what spices would you like to use? I added some chopped garlic, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg for the spicy warmth, and tarragon for sweetness. Now simmer. And then from time to time, taste your soup art and add a little of this and a little of that. I'm going to serve tonight's soup with some grilled cheese sandwhiches. Happy New Year by the way!

Blue Cheese Beef Dip

Oh yes, there are times I have wisps of inspiration in between laundry, dishes, and picking the kids up from school, when I just manage, without much thought, to know what to do with some left over sirloin roast beef. Pick out whatever bun you like to dip your beef sandwich into. I made garlic bread, but a nice baguette would be fantastic, sourdough would be nuts, or even a hot dog bun or hamburger bun would be fine with a little seasoning. Also, I like to pick up, every grocery trip, packages of dried fettuccine mixes, gravy mixes, and in this case, a la Au jus. So follow the directions on the package and set aside on a low heat. In another frying pan, combine the following:

Saute mushrooms in a pan with butter over medium high heat, until just soft and cooked, take out of the pan, and saute an onion in a couple of tbsp. of butter, and when soft and glisteny, add a tbsp. of sugar to caramelize, and mix up. Add the mushrooms to the pan, and turn the heat down to low, and add 1/4 cup of soft blue cheese, and then add 2 diced strawberries and stir up the entire mixture. You can then add the left over sliced roast beef to the pan to warm through. Once done assemble the blue cheese/mushroom/onion/roast beef into a sandwich and begin dipping! Serve with a nice green salad. Yummy!

Perhaps another - though knee weekening Moussaka

Oh my. My knees gave out tonight. God I looked completely stupid lying on the floor with hamburger all over my face. Nevertheless, I found a little recipe for Low Carb Moussaka and altered it only because I was too lazy to read the rest of the recipe:

1 lb. of hamburger layered in an 8 by 8 casserole. Add chopped onion. You can saute, but I actually perfered a little crunch. Bake an entire eggplant, sliced and swipped with a little olive oil. Layer and bake for 30 minutes. Put over top of the hamburger casserole and onion, then add 1/4 cup of tomato sauce, 1 cup of cream, 1/4 cup of parmesan, and three eggs, 1 tsp. of cinnamon, 1 tsp. of nutmeg, pepper, salt, and what else? How bout a glass of something? Cheers.

Sirloin Roast Beef Dinner

Wow! For the longest time I thought that only Prime Rib would do; but last night I cooked an inexpensive gargantuous hunk of meat for my husband's company party and it turned out amazing. I highly recommend finding out exactly the best way to cook different types of roast. The sirloin is a leaner cut of beef and must be cooked fat side up at 300 degrees. I had a 12.65 lb. beef and needed to first do some kg to pound conversion. Being from Canada I still need help converting the kg into the pound thing. I found a great website: www.metric-conversions.org/weight/pound-conversion.htm

I then found another website called: www.ochef.com that really helped me cook this meat to perfection. "A sirloin roast of 8- to 12-lbs will take 16-20 minutes for rare, 20-22 for medium rare, 23-25 for medium, and 26-30 for well done. A boneless top round, by contrast, will take 28-30 minutes for rare, 30-33 for medium rare, 34-38 for medium, and 40-45 for well done." We took the roast out for medium rare. Beef will continue cooking for a little while when you take it out.

Beef is such a low maintenance food. I simply mixed together olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, and poured it over the roast. I added a nice Greek herb/spice mixture to it as well and popped big daddy into the oven at 300 degrees. My roast cooked for exactly 3 hours and was pleasantly succulent and flavorful.