Stroganoff time

Firefly is away, which means it's time to break out the dairy and the mushrooms (he's intolerant of the first and is given eebie-jeebies by the latter). So in true decadent, time to cook fashion, I put on my 4" purple wedges (7 quid from Peacocks thank you very much) and pour myself a glass of wine (2005 Cab Merlot from McHenry Hohnen Vintners in Margaret River, good with goats cheese, a bit hard to drink entirely on its own). I also pull out my Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, basically just to see just how far I deviate from the proper recipe. Oh right, and I put on some tunes, today I'm trying out the Copeland album, You are my sunshine.

I consider stroganoff to be a braisy-stewy kind of dish, so I definitely vary from USLC, but then I'm also using frying steak, not something as nice as sirloin. I also think the onions and mushrooms are very important, so I tend to minimize the amount of steak relative to those other two. I sort of happened upon stroganoff eight or so years ago when I had mushrooms, beef and onions in a pot. I sniffed them and thought "stroganoff!!!" and ever since, it's been in my repertoire. Despite my using a bastardized recipe that is all about it smelling right, not so much about exact measures.

So, you definitely need lots of onions, I used three tennis ball sized ones, .4 kilos (a pound) of steak, and 350 g of mushrooms. That will get you to something that smells right. I also add about a couple tbspn of oil, a teaspoon of pepper, 1-2 garlic cloves, 1/3 cup white wine, and once it's all cooked some soured cream (you could add cream or yoghurt instead, I've done both). If you're a salt fiend, add some salt as well. Maybe even more pepper if you're me, I'm a pepper fiend.

I add the onions, oil and meat together for a few minutes on medium for 5 minutes, you should start to see a grey sauce forming from the onion and beef juices, then I add the mushrooms, pepper and garlic and then it gets very juicy. Keep it on medium until the juices reduce by half, then add the dry white wine. Again wait for it to reduce a whole lot, some juices remaining, but once you add the sour cream it will get saucy in a good way, not too runny. Take off the heat, stir in the soured cream to taste, about a cup, but this step is done to taste. Check the seasoning and adjust if necessary. I have to note that this time my cream sort of curdled, so went into little white bits (looks a lot like I sprinkled parmesean into the sauce). I think I could have fixed this by adding some flour first, or even after it happened. However, since stroganoff was never exactly a pretty dish, I was not bothered and ate it anyway.

Serve atop boiled potatoes or egg noodles (not the chinese egg noodles, something more like fafarelle). Yum! If you have any questions about this recipe, feel free to email me.

Quick Meal: Tex-Mex Burritos

A burrito is a quick dinner or lunch, great for take-away meals and since you can modify the ingredients to what you happen to have in the kitchen, pretty darn helpful when your cupboard is almost bare.

I think your first burrito experience shapes your expectations of a tasty burrito. I had my first burrito in Texas, so it was served up without rice inside. This certainly is advantageous in London, as I can only find the smaller-sized flour tortillas (dinner-plate size). You can buy the Old El Paso or Discovery brand, or you can probably find some in your local corner shop (my Turkish corner shop sells Turkish tortillas). The slightly weird fact about tortillas here is that they are shelf-stable for months, and I am not going to think too hard about what is enabling that. So pick up a pack and keep it in your cupboard for dinner emergencies. (Once open use them in several days)

Frankly, I guess the only real requirement for a burrito is the tortilla. But my absolutely comfort food favorite is: beans, cheese and maybe some salsa. Wrap it up, then put it in a frying pan on med-low until it's brown on both sides and the cheese has melted (10 minutes tops).

The key to making an easy-to-eat burrito is to be careful on your filling of the burrito. It doesn't take that much before your burrito is full. You want your filling to be about the size of a Picnic chocolate bar. Fold up the ends of the tortilla over the filling, then wrap the right side over the filling, finally fold the left-side over. Place in the frying pan with the folded side down. It won't unfold once it's browned and toasty.

Try to mange the wetness of your burrito ingredients, so either drain your beans very well or use refried beans (one tin of beans makes 3-4 burritos). Cream cheese would be fine, but it gets rather runny when heated. A cheddar usually works well (see, in Tex-Mex we use cheddar). If you have a really runny salsa, use a fork to scoop it up, so that the juices can run out first. Or I guess, if you have runny ingredients, you could, possibly, use a bit of cooked rice (but just a bit) to soak up the juices.

A cheat for salsa that I often use is fresh or tinned tomatoes, sprinkled with some chili flakes or hot sauce. Sprinkle some fresh coriander on if you like it. Some ingredients that do not hold up well if you grill your burrito: sour cream, lettuce, guacamole.

Edited: Now with photos of my own stellar burrito creation.