Recipes From Chef Stephen

From time to time, I'll post recipes here so you can find them in one place instead of having to chase them down on the various monthly main page entries. Because the vast majority of my cooking is on the fly experimentation, the recipes here are all, so far, written from memory. If you decide to try one and it doesn't work out, please let me know so we can consult over any corrections. I'll also be more than happy to post any recipes here you want to send me, and I'll give you credit for them as the source. Just don't send me anything that includes boiled eggs, pickles, or olives - I'll "File 13" it the second I see the ingredients list.

Ged's Shepherd's Pie
Shepherd's Pie, a favorite comfort food of many British, is a delicious mix of spicy ground beef and vegetables topped by a fluffy layer of mashed potatoes. This recipe is from one of my best friends here in Moscow, an Englishman named Ged, who is one of the best cooks I've ever had the pleasure of dining with, and with whom I have raised many a pint of beer. Oh yeah, and I've also never won a game of pool off the bastard!

Preheat oven to 400^oF.

Beef/Vegetable Mix
Heat the vegetable oil in a large frypan or saucepan. Peel and chop the onion finely, add to oil and cook for 2 minutes, then add the sliced mushrooms and continue cooking until the onions are opaque. Add flour and cook for a couple of minutes more. Take the onion/mushroom mixture out and set aside.

Put the ground beef in the pan and saute using a wooden spoon break it up so it's nice and fine. Crumble the beef bouillon cube over the beef. When the beef is browned, strain off any fat and add the tomato sauce/ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, herbs and the onion/mushroom mix. Stir thoroughly to combine. Add the red wine, reduce heat and cover, then simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. The mixture should be quite thick.

Mashed Potatoes
Peel the potatoes, chop into quarters and place in a medium saucepan with cold water just covering the potatoes. Add a little salt to the water and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. When the potatoes are cooked, drain and place back on heat for a few seconds to let any extra water evaporate. Mash the potatoes with butter and cream until the potato is very creamy. Add salt and pepper to taste.

And Now For The Home Stretch
Spoon the beef/vegetable mixture into a pie dish, then spoon the mashed potato over the mix. Fluff up "waves" in the potato layer - these will ‘catch’ and burn slightly. Fleck some butter on top of the potato. Bake until the potato is golden and the pie bubbling up around the edges. Serve with a dry red wine (bet you're surprised to hear me say that!) or iced tea.

Variation: add 1 cup diced carrots, squash, red pepper, or eggplant when you're cooking the onions.

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Disaster
1 baby, preferably able to crawl and grasp objects at will
1 diaper, full
1 diaper, empty (fresh)
1 lot of assorted creams, potions, and nostrums
2 parents, prone to hilarity

Feed baby, then allow baby to crawl around the floor while you try to eat your own already lukewarm dinner. Hear baby cry, pick baby up, give sniff test to indicate dirty (poopy) diaper. Carry baby to nursery, lay on bed. Collect fresh diaper and assorted creams, potions, and nostrums and set them in what you believe is a handy pile in an easily-accessible proximity to baby. Remove dirty diaper and set aside with one hand while you use the other to hold the baby down. Drop the poop-laden diaper on the freshly washed bedspread when you lose your concentration because the baby has managed to wriggle out from under your other apparently useless hand. Completely forget about the baby and rush to pick up the diaper before any poop gets on the coverlet. Gag at the smell and wonder what, exactly, you fed this kid which would make her crap smell just like doggie-poo.

At this point, look up to see that the baby, butt encrusted with errant bits of poop, has managed to crawl from one end of the bed to the other, leaving a disturbingly dark and smelly trail. Look back at the dirty diaper, wondering what possessed you to worry about it in the first place. Balance your revulsion at the idea of having to touch poop with the need to capture this little heathen before she covers the entire bedspread with her own feces. Wish you had added 'gloves' and 'respirator' to the recipe's ingredients list.

You may add other parent to the operation at any time, particularly when she walks in and sees you with one hand over your eyes and the other holding your nose, and the baby sitting in the middle of the poop-covered bed laughing at both of you. Give up all semblance of maturity and give in to the primal force that makes almost anything involving poop funny, and collapse with your spouse and child in paroxysms of laughter.

Assume joint cleanup operations immediately thereafter and call it a lesson learned.

Source: Me changing Maria's diaper the first few times after she learned to crawl, and being reminded last night that complacency and inattention have no place in diaper operations.

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Fried Liver and Onions
Yippee, another liver recipe, plus the added joy of cholesterol. What the hey, ya' either love it or ya' hate it, and we're all big boys and girls here and can make our own choices as to what methods we'll use to clog up our arteries!

¹/4 cup vegetable oil
1¹/2 lb liver (can be any beast, as long as you can cut them into proper slices)
2 large Vidalia onions
¹/2 cup all-purpose flour
garlic salt to taste
dried parsley flakes
dried dill

Heat oil on medium flame. Slice onions into 1¹/8 inch slices, but don't break out into rings. Place into heated oil, cook 2 minutes on each side, or until slightly browned. Set aside on paper towel. Rinse the liver and cut into thin slices. Dredge in flour, set aside on plate. When onions are all cooked, lay floured liver slices into same oil, cook approximately 2¹/2 minutes on each side. Set aside each cooked batch on paper towel. Break out fried onions into rings, arrange on serving plate, and sprinkle with dill. Top with cooked liver slices, sprinkle them with garlic salt and parsley flakes.

Good side dish is either parsley buttered pasta or fried potato slices. Serve with red wine.

Source: This one's all me - another experiment that worked. Or didn't, if you're not a liver fan, heh heh heh....

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Friday Night Herring and Beer
Okay, so this isn't exactly a "recipe" in the truest sense, but I'm putting it here anyway because it's so damned good, especially, as the name suggests, when you get home on a Friday and want something quick and easy for dinner. Look for your salted herring in either the specialty section of your grocery or at a fish market. You might also try a Jewish deli, but you probably will find plain (unsalted) herring there. Of course, if you're reading this from here in Russia, moot point - just march your arse out the door to the nearest rynok and buy the "perfect" version there!

1/2 lb lightly salted herring filets
1 bermuda onion, medium-size
1 bunch green onions
3 potatoes, medium-size
Dried parsley flakes
Olive oil

Peel your potatoes, boil them until done, let them cool, then slice them into 1/2" slices. Rinse your herring filet, let dry, then slice it into 1 by 1/2-inch slivers. Slice your onion thinly and break out the rings. Lay the herring slivers out on the plate, cover with slices of raw onion, and drizzle with the olive oil. Lay your potatoe slices out, drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle lightly with parsley flakes.

Serve with your favorite beer, preferably a lager.

Source: For the most part, Mother Russia, though I've also had it at Mother-In-Law's and various restaurants over here.

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Fried Pumpkin
You wanna' know exactly what you can do with your leftover Halloween pumpkin on November 1st, assuming them crazy-assed teenagers didn't stomp it to bits the night before? Here's what...

You can just stick it up your a....er, sorry, got carried away as usual....ahem...
Remove the skin and cut the meat into 1x3 inch rectangles, approximately 1 inch thick. Dump a beer into a mixing bowl, add enough unbleached flour and whisk to make a thick batter. Heat a saucepan of vegetable oil on medium heat. Dip the individual pieces of pumpkin in the batter, coating evenly, then drop them into the hot oil. Fry on each side until just shy of golden brown, then remove and dry on a paper towel-covered plate.

Sprinkle with the spice of your choice - garlic salt if you're serving as a garnish to the main course, light powdered sugar if you want to have it as a desert. It's quite tasty either way, and remember, you heard it here first. I think.

Source: Me on Friday night, October 24 2003, responding to Vika bugging me to cook her some pumpkin.

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Chicken/Turkey/Rabbit Liver Stroganov
2 TBS vegetable oil
1 large Vidalia onion
1.5 lb chicken, turkey, or rabbit livers (rabbit preferable, since it's the most "gamey")
fettucine noodles - you decide how much you want!
sour cream - ditto
garlic salt - to taste

Prep
Boil water and start cooking the fettucine noodles. Pre-heat oil in large saucepan on low heat. Dice onion into fine chunks. Cut liver pieces into approximately 1/2 inch pieces (or smaller). Size is very important - any larger and outside will be overcooked while inside is raw - YUCK!

Cooking
Dump diced onion into heated oil and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are opaque but not brown. Remove onions from heat and let cool. Once the onions are cooled, return them to hight heat until you hear them begin to sizzle. Dump the liver chunks in with the onions and stir constantly for an even braising. Add garlic salt to taste, continue cooking until you see a bit of juice coming about in the saucepan. At this point, you may remove the pan from the heat and cover it - this will be enough to continue cooking the livers sufficiently. Drain your noodles (heh heh heh) and dole out equal, small-medium portions to each guest's plate. Top with liver/onion mixture and a drizzle of sour cream - let your guests add more if they wish, but you don't want to cloud the taste of the livers on purpose.

Serve with a semi-dry or semi-sweet red wine, perhaps a Shiraz (Australian and Italian are my preferences). If your guests don't line up to smooch your butt, I'll do it for you myself - I have that much faith in this dish!!!

Source: Me again, on yet another Friday night when I was in a serious mood for some manner of fried guts to go with the 4 bottles of Abkhazian semi-sweet red I bought on the way home from work. Sometimes I'm impressed by my own creativity, not that Stroganov of any type is really that innovative of a dish!

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Bottle-In-Ass Chicken
Also known as "coke-in-ass chicken" or any variation thereof. Vika's mom makes it this way, we've made it numerous times ourselves, and lemme' tell you - this shit is goooooood!!!

1 Whole chicken, 2.5 lbs
1 Bottle of beer, tall enough to hold your chicken upright
1 tsp olive oil
1 sprinkle table salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Dump out half the bottle of beer into a casserole dish, fill the bottle the rest of the way with water. Add enough water to the dish to make it nominally full. Rub olive oil all over chicken, then sprinkle salt evenly. Stick the bottle up that sumbitch's ass, then stand the whole mess upright in the casserole dish. Place the entire works into the oven, bake for approximately 1.5 hours. About halfway through your cooking time, scoop some juice from the casserole and dump it over the chicken. At the end, pull it out of the oven but leave the knife in the drawer, cuz' this sucker will fall right offa de bone, baby!

Source: My dad and Vika's mom...daddy gets props for telling me about "coke-in-ass chicken" and Vika's mom gets credit for cooking it for me first, except with beer instead of coke.

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