Category: Meat

Bread and Batter, Meat, South American/Mexican

Burritos? Tex-Mex Wrap Thingy

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I’m so tired but I refuse to let go of this blog. Ha ha. I don’t vet my writing when I update posts so bear with me with the countless typos and inconsistent grammar or vocabulary use.

Chop chop. Sunday, I had my trusty minced beef. Browned them in a pot, added one can of peeled Italian tomatoes and ready to mix Chilli Seasoning. I added in a can on kidney beans. I thought I’d make tacos you see. Rushed over to the NTUC only to discover, like duh, they didn’t have a Mexican section like the bigger supermarkets. Luckily for me, I found a packet of wraps.

In a frying pan, I put in one wrap. Spread the meat sauce over. Top that with shredded mozzarella. Sprinkled thin slices of yellow capsicum. Turned the wrap in half till toasty.Plated it. Spooned Greek yogurt over and a dash of Jalapeno Tabasco. The Hubster loved it. Fast to cook, messy to eat, delicious in the tummy.

 

Meat, Noodles and Pasta

Lasagne

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This is getting to be very bad. Again for lunch this weekend, something creamy and fattening. What is wrong with me?

Anyway, this is how I made my lasagne this time round. The basic meat sauce is like how I always do – sautee garlic in olive oil, add meat, add bottled tomato sauce (I used the half that I had left over from last week’s cottage pie). I also added to small tins of tomato puree (not paste) and, this is the killer difference, chipotle peppers. Remember I used chipotle peppers to make my sweet potato mash? I had leftovers and this is the perfect time to make use of it (read: get rid of leftovers!) I did not make a bechamel sauce for my lasagne. In fact, a lot of recipes for lasagne do not use bechamel sauce. They call for layering of cheese, pasta and meatballs. So … I got rid of the mozzarella cheese and extra tasty cheddar cheese that were close to the expiration date. The end result of ‘want not and waste not’ motto I’m trying to live by? Tasty, creamy, cheesy lunch special at home!

Chop some chipotle peppers. Chipotle peppers are simply smoked dried jalapeno peppers so they aren't spicy at all. However, they have loads of smoky flavour.
Make the meat sauce. Make sure it's very saucy - lots of tomato sauce because you do not want a dry lasagne.
Grate cheeses.
Soften pasta sheets. They don't have to be thoroughly cooked. If you read at the back of the boxes, they always always say not to boil them. Hah! I tried many times raw and my pasta were always not properly cooked. Especially the edges. So this time round, no way am I going to bite into undercooked pasta. Boil them in boiling water till they are just pliable.
Cheese and meat sauce for the first layer.
First layer is cheese and meat sauce.

 

And then the pasta sheets.
Do as may layers as you can. I only always do two. And then top with sauce and cheese. Make sure to tuck in any defiant pasta sheets back into the sauce.
Bake till golden and bubbly.
Enjoy!
Meat

Cottage Pie

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I only recently learnt that one of my favourite satisfying dishes which is essentially just meat and potatoes is not called shephard’s pie (unless the meat part is made of lamb) but cottage pie. Seriously, almost everybody likes potatoes, especially when pulverised into a creamy consistency, and I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like meat in tomato sauce.

With this knowledge, and the fact that I have minced beef in the freezer waiting for me to get an inspiration to cook it, I made cottage pie last Saturday. For the potatoes part, I boiled them till tender and then mashed them with cream, salt, black pepper. The meat part, I used my handy bottled pasta tomato sauce, added mixed vegetables (for the childrens’ sake) and when the meat sauce is cooked, poured them into a baking dish and topped that with my creamy potatoes. Oh, I forgot to mention that when I boiled the potatoes in salted water, I also added two bay leaves for flavour. ;p My key word when I’m cooking now is ‘flavour’. Anyway, before putting the dish into the oven, I laced the dish with breadcrumbs first.

Creamy, mashed potatoes
Meat Sauce
Before its browned in the oven
After its fifteen minutes tan in the oven
My simple delicious weekend lunch
Bread and Batter, Meat

Beef Roll

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What do you do when you have extra beef? You put it in a roll, add some cheese and toast them. Mmmm… OR, you can make an open-faced sandwich using a panini bun, slather some pesto sauce and pesto, you get a lovely quick fix! At Melvados, I bought a tub of ready-made pesto. Not bad, at all. Convenient and tasty.

I love the smoked jalapeno sauce over the melted cheese. YUMMY.
Malay, Meat, Sides, Singapore

Singaporean-style Samosas

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I love samosas and I only know how to eat this version. Then when I was in my very late teens, I realised that when you order samosas in an Indian restaurant or hawker, it does not come in the manner I was used to. The real, actual samosas are not made from egg roll pastry, but from real dough/flour! Duh. And they were so hearty and delicious and I suspect healthier?

Anyway, I like the usual local version of samosas too. The Arabic version uses only minced meat. I wanted to learn to make samosas – the folding part- from The Helper, but decided that going to the mall was much more pressing. Ahem.

But I was in time to see her do the folding. The filling is easy. Minced meat fried in onions (in my case, pulverised to itsy bitsy bits that The Hubby’s naked eyes cannot detect), garlic, powdered cumin and fennel. Some people like to add green chillies (most encouraged, just that I didn’t have any today) and a small potato finely diced. You can add mint leaves or coriander leaves too. Don’t forget to season.

More minced meat to potatoes please. Let filling cool.

She makes it look so easy! She finished making one in like ten seconds. And she fried 8, the rest I told her to keep in the freezer but guess what? I didn’t even get to taste one. They all got walloped by The Hubby and The Girl. The ones in the freezer are mine!