Recipe: Spanish/Mexican/Dirty Rice Goulash Thingy

[seventhe]

Alright, so I've been thinking all day that I should post something, and I've decided to start with the tastiness that we made for dinner last night. This was seriously one of the best things we've made yet, and so I want to post it here, even if it's just for my own records so I don't lose the recipe!

I can't even think of a name for it. It started out like a "dirty rice" or a spanish rice type thing, but it quickly went beyond that in fanciness and in things-we-added-ness. If you've ever seen one of our recipes before (justira can attest to this!) there's a lot of, uh, room for improvisation, if you'd like!


Spanish/Mexican/Dirty Rice
Serves: Well, it'll serve 2 people at least twice. I'd estimate 5 full servings out of it. 4 if you are a pig.

Part 1: Rice

- 1.5 cups brown rice (makes 3 cups cooked)
- 1.5 cups chicken broth, low sodium / low fat
- 1.5 cups water
- Seasonings: Cajun/Louisiana Bayou (a good healthy shake), Cilantro (sprinkle), black pepper (go heavy!)

Set the rice to cooking in the rice cooker (or on the stove, if you must). Keep in mind brown rice takes 35-45 min to cook, so you should do this first.

Part 2: Meat!

- 1-1.5 lb ground beef*

Brown the meat on the stove, and then drain it before using. Because meat grease is nasty!

Part 3: Veggies
To be added into the Cuisinart for fine chopping:

- 1 medium-sized yellow onion
- 2 good-sized peppers; we used red and orange
- 1-2 jalapenos**

Run in Cuisinart until finely chopped (small pieces, almost a "mush".)

Sautee the above in a skillet with:

- ~1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 cloves fresh garlic
- Season: more Cajun, black pepper, fresh cilantro

...until all veggies are soft and simmering tastily.

Add to Cuisinart:

- 2-3 large tomatoes
- 5-8 Roma/plum tomatoes

Pulse in Cuisinart until tasty-looking tomato pulp/mush appears. Add 1/2 of tomatoes into the skillet for cooking. Save the other half.

Part 4: Goulash time!

Add the beef, and mix. Let simmer until the rice is done, then add the rice as well.

To this mixture, add:

- 1 can spicy chili beans
- 1 can corn (no salt added), drained
- remaining 1/2 of tomato pulp
- ~1/2 can black olives, sliced if you wish (we recommend eating the other 1/2 can. In fact, we would've added the whole can, but we ate them instead.)

Mix together and serve!



*Chicketarians (or former chicketarians) like myself can easily substitute ground turkey, or even cooked chicken breast.
**OK, the jalapenos are a must for this recipe. We used 3, and they were from our garden, so our rice was super extra spicy. We would've been fine with 2. I recommend at least 1, however, to get that New Orleans spice to it. Normal people should be able to handle at least 1 jalapeno, no problem; store bought ones really aren't that killer.



I'm in the process of looking up the nutrition information on NutritionData.com, which actually lets you make recipes and then split them up into servings to determine just how much you ate. I'm kind of dreading it, but oh well. I'll edit this when I get the results!

Comments

[jennyclarinet.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you had given up being a chicketarian! That's probably good though-I'm eating meat very infrequently now, and it's making me fat. :(

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

It's Jeff's fault. He gets really tasty meat, and makes it all delicious, and then guilts me into eating it! ;)

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Dang, I knew I forgot something and typing up about sauce bechamel in my journal reminded me. recipe exchange!

Okay, first tip: I have no idea what this is called in english, but in German it's a popular pepper to eat picked, and it's called 'peperoni'. It has nothing to do with meat. It's almost like a jalapeno pepper, but not, because Germans hate spice, and though this is a little tangy it's not something to set your mouth on fire, even if you eat two or three of 'em straight outta the pickling jar. Here is a picture of what these peppers look like:


Anyway. If you find these babies jarred or canned (best place to start looking if they're not common in the US is a greek store), throwing them into anything not cream-based adds a really nice almost-spicy flavour to your sauce. I usually find that 3 are enough to heat the sauce comfortably without making it spicy, and I think the flavour result is a combination of the pepper spiciness and the vinegar it's been pickeled in. Just cut off the tips, dice 'em up, and throw them in with the rest of your vegetables while you're cooking. I've had success so far with throwing them in fried rice, hungarian goulasch, and chicken soup.

Recipe #2 - sauce bechamel (since I'm thinking of it)
You'd think this would be really unhealthy, but when you get down to it, it's not, really, unless you make massive quantities of it and eat it daily or something. bechamel sauce is basically base white sauce that you can throw almost anything into to flavor it. If you just need plain white sauce (to throw over chicken or leeks or whatnot), then just flavor it with salt, white pepper, and a bit of dried mustard before you use it. You can also use it as a white base to almost anything. I've used it to simulate a cream base for mushroom sauce before, or melted various kinds of cheese into it to make a pasta sauce. The best think about this white sauce is that it tastes great but there's no cream involved, just milk, flour and butter. AFAIK you have to use real butter though, I don't know if the flour cooks well with margarine. Least, I never tried.

bechamel:
melt 2 tbsp butter in a small pot on your stove over low-to-medium heat

add 1 - 2 tbsp flour to the melted, sizzling butter. The more flour you add, the thicker your sauce.

stir the flour and butter with a wire whisk over low-to-medium heat until it starts to bubble a little and smell nice. that's about 1-2 minutes on my stove, at least. be sure you whisk it constantly so it doesn't burn.

now here's the fun part that no recipe ever tells you and has the french chefs rolling in their graves. supposedly next, you put 1 cup of milk into it and then spend a couple of hours in front of the stove whisking over low heat to make the sauce thick.

this is where enkida said 'screw that', so here is what you really do:

add 1 c of milk (can be skim, yes) to your flour-butter mixture, and whisk away. Now, constantly whisking, put your stove on med high to highest heat, and get that milk to boil. should happen in under 5 minutes, really. the most important thing is to keep whisking so the flour and butter don't separate from the milk. As soon as it starts to bubble, turn your heat back down to low and throw in things like salt, pepper and other seasonings. keep it on the heat until it's the thickness you want. if it's too thick, just pour more milk in until it thins out to a consistency you like. when it's no longer in a danger of burning (which you can force by removing it from the stove, if you like), then you can also add whatever else you might want to flavour it, like mushrooms or cheese.

that's like fast food except it's french gourmet. fun stuff !

I will think up more recipes for you later if ya want, I think I still owe you a fried rice and a pesto one.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

You know, I've seen those peppers before; in our grocery store, they're seriously in a divided bin labelled "PEPPERS, 3.99/LB" which contains those, jalapenos, habaneros, cherry reds, and other stuff I don't know the name of.

And OK, yeah, that sauce sounds awesome and we will be making that next week.

There's no hurry, either. I'm still planning on posting more - we've got a chili recipe that's awesome, and a fried rice one that's also highly delicious. XD

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Re reading this, I can only say, God Damn It, but I have never seen fresh Cilantro anywhere in Germany. Whole or crushed coriander is everywhere, but the leaves? Just. Not. Here. Ever. Arg!

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

NOW THAT IS A CRIME. We put cilantro in almost everything. I think Jeff might eat it raw if I didn't watch him.

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