Before the final closure... a roast.

A beef roast, to be precise. This is what I've been cooking today:

Beef Roast w/ veggies

Delicious cut of beef rump seasoned with salt, pepper, soy, garlic and a bit of brown sugar. Tiny red potatoes, diced onions, carrots and sliced mushrooms. A bit of fruit juice to keep things moist in the first hour before the drippings come out.

Meatsauce and shell pasta

I was lazy, so I bought a chunky vegetable marinara sauce at the supermarket. Augmented it with browned ground beef, mushrooms and seasoning and served it atop some shell-shaped pasta. Just had a bite of this -- really tasty.

Chicken and mushroom alfredo

Nothing too special here -- again, I was lazy and didn't do the alfredo myself. Don't have the patience to babysit a cream sauce today (I save that for impressing women -- apparently grating parmesan confers a bonus to your badass score). Sauteed some chicken and mushrooms until lightly browned and tossed that in with the sauce and bowtie pasta.

Best meatloaf evar

How to make the best meatloaf evar? The secret lies in potatoes and mushrooms. Shred some gold potatoes -- enough to balance your ground beef one-to-one. Add mushrooms, sliced, and your usual meatloaf fare: breadcrumbs, an egg, tomato sauce, garlic, salt, pepper. Get some small foil loaf pans and load those fuckers up. Make a special crust on top by spreading ketchup, shredded cheese and shredded potato along the top of the filled loaf pan. You also want to perforate the loaf pans so grease can escape. Bake these on a pan that'll catch the drip, obviously.



Yeah, I'm pretty worn out from all that.

you cooked this all today??? do you freeze it in meal size portions for the rest of the week?

Exactly. Well, assuming three meals a week (I intend to eat these as lunch at work when I don't have time to leave the office) this should last me three or four weeks. The roast alone is worth about six individual meals.

The best meatloaf "evar" is made by not making it. Because meatloaf is, at its intrinsic core, the sux.

Yeah... no. I don't know whose shitty meatloaf you've been eating.

LOL, this is so true.

Yo momma's. OH SNAP!

Oh, well, there you have it, then. I confess her meatloaf is fairly sub-par. I didn't learn from her, obviously.

It really is. I remember a boyfriend from waaaayyyy back in the day, first time he ever made dinner for me, he made a cream sauce. I distinctly remember him telling me at the time that the cream sauce is what separates the men from the boys..... Frighteningly enough, I do seem to remember being suitably impressed

Did you ever make that Lillian Hellman roast I finally dug out of my office and posted on the forums for you?

coco

When was this? Link, please.

Wow, that's a wild orgy of flavor. I'll have to give that a whack. Thanks!

I don't mind admitting, I'm a little turned on just reading that.

Phht, if that got your clock rockin', you should have a bite of this roast -- I'm nearly orgasmic at the moment. The texture of the meat might be most readily compared to that of softened butter, while the vegetables have absorbed an uncanny amount of juice and flavor throughout the exercise. Each bite is a pyrotechnic explosion of hearty flavor, soaking every receptive cell in the user's mouth until, the pleasure heightening to a point of exquisite torture, the treat is finally swallowed in bittersweet cessation of stimulus.

Whereupon the journey to culinary climax begins again.

And again.

Again...

And... ohhhh, god...

When will Chez Enabran be opening?

And how hard will it be to get a table?

As soon as my bribes to the health department kick in.

As to the tables, I'm trying something new: Reservations can be challenged by walk-in parties who wish to duel using patio umbrellas from the outdoor seating.

Food porn. <3

Enabran, this wasn't nearly as racy as your last meatcapade.

Italian Peasant Bread Soup

Ingredients:
2 pounds (roughly) skinned tomatoes (nice big tin is fine)
1 loaf of stale oven baked bread (Italian peasant bread prefered but not mandatory, stale is good here)
3 cloves of garlic
2 red chili's
1 tbsp fresh basil (5-8 leaves, ripped up)
extra virgin olive oil (don't skimp, the good stuff)
salt/pepper

1) dice and sautee the garlic and peppers in just enough oil to coat the bottom of the pot till the garlic changes color to a light tan
2) add the tomatos and shredded basil and stir frequely till they kinda 'fall apart' (5-10 minutes)
3) rip apart the bread into small pieces and toss into pot, and keep stirring them in until color visibly lightens.
4) cook for 5-10 minutes till bread 'dissolves'
5) taste, and add salt and pepper as needed (remember to stir between each pinch)
6) serve topped with another light drizzle of olive oil and crusts of any remaining bread.

Yeah, I was pretty tuckered out when I sat down to write it.

Moved to Sandbox.

Wow! My mother who was French used to make this all the time. The French part of our family was right on the Italian border, so now I know where it came from. I have never seen or heard of this anywhere else. I thought it was some secret family recipe.

It comes from the northern italy area which is pretty close to southeastern france so that does make sense. In general in the last 10 years or so there has been a real rekindling of interest in 'peasant' or 'home' food from ages past... Not that 'gourmet' is totally passe' but there has been a real resurgance of the notion food should *taste* good, and be decently easy to make...

And several thousand years of 'unnatural selection' at people's hearths and fires did a pretty good job of working that out.

Hopefully more and more books will replace the 'gelatinized' casseroles of the 50's and 60's with these simpler, healthier, and far far tastier old world meals.

ooh and as an addendum... if you need your soup to be a little 'meatier' you can add in 3-5 anchovies (which will completely melt away, don't worry) one or two links of italian sausage, diced fine, or one or two slices prosciutto, again diced fine...

Just remember all those are fairly salty, and you will have to lower the actual salt you use at the end correspondingly (but you should be doing that to 'taste' anyway, aka actually tasting it first)