Beef

What I Made: Oven Baked Ribs with Beets and Potatoes

/ CSA in the City / 1 Comment

This post has no recipes.  Astonishing, right?  It’s only because all of the components to this meal are so simple, no recipes are needed, only patience.

I originally found instructions for these oven roasted ribs from Recipe Girl. Start with your rack of beef ribs.  Remove any membrane and rub both sides well with your favorite dry rub.  Put onto a couple of sheets of foil, put a few more sheets on top and crimp edges to create a nice foil packet. Put that on a baking sheet and pop it in a 275 degree oven for 4 to 4.5 hours.

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The red potatoes couldn’t have been easier, but they were incredibly tasty.  They were creamy, not too starchy, and all I did was wash and boil them!  Serve with some butter and salt and pepper.

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For the beets, trim greens down to about an inch above the beet root.  Apparently this keeps them from losing all the juices as they cook.  Put them in a steamer and steam until easily pierced by a fork.

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All good until this point, but the beets are still not edible.  The quickest way to learn how to peel a beet?  Google, obviously.  I came across this YouTube video.

That’s it! Once the beets are cool, just rub them with a paper towel.  Besides making your kitchen look like a crime scene, this is also a super effective technique!

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Some butter, salt, and pepper, and the beets are ready as well.

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What I Made: Stuffed Green Peppers

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Ready for a break from zucchini?  I have to admit, even though the recipes make it seem like I’m in zucchini overload this week, the variety of the recipes keep me from getting sick of the squash.

That being said, it’s always nice to try something different. I hesitate to call these TexMex stuffed peppers, but that was my “flavor inspiration”, as corny as it sounds. Prefer Mediterranean flavors? Cajun flavors? The base ingredients (peppers, rice ground beef) would go well with a whole range of different seasoning; swap in whatever you prefer!

Start by cooking 1 cup of rice. While that is going, cut the top off 4 green bell peppers and remove all the seeds and as much of the membrane as possible, reserving the meaty part of the top (i.e., not the stems).

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Hollowed out peppers, ready for stuffing!

Dice reserved pepper and cook until soft in a skillet with a diced onion.

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Add ground beef and brown.
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Meanwhile, parboil peppers for a couple of minutes.  My pot was small so I had to do one or two at a time.

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To the ground beef, add 2 tablespoons of your preferred seasoning. I used taco seasoning. StuffPepp5

Add rice to the ground beef and mix well so rice is distributed in the mixture.

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Fill peppers with meat and rice mixture and set upright in a baking dish. Add water to the dish so it comes about 1 inch up the side of the peppers. Bake at 350 F for 15-20 minutes.

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Take peppers out of the oven, top with cheese of your choice (I used a shredded Mexican blend), and return to bake 10 more minutes.

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In a hurry? Make the meat mixture ahead of time and bring to room temperature before stuffing the peppers!

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What I Made: Bok Choy Two Ways

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I used up my bok choy with two simple recipes this week.  The first was a spaghetti with bok choy, poached egg, and Italian cheese, adapted from this Vegetarian Times recipe.  I left the egg in the water for two long, and it was definitely not runny and delicious like I had hoped.  Turns out, I should have cut the heat from the water once I added the egg, then removed it to dry off after the cooking time was up.

 

The second recipe made for lots of delicious leftovers.  The beef is a Beef with Lemongrass recipe from a random Wok and Stir Fry cookbook that I found in a box.  (The best thing about living in the city is boxes that say “FREE BOOKS”.)

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The bok choy recipe is adapted from Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Roasted Peanuts from my new go-to CSA cookbook, The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I didn’t have peanuts or peanut oil, so I left out the nuts and substituted vegetable oil that I had on hand.  My adaptation is below:

2 tsp vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 1/2 pounds bok choy (stems sliced into 1 inch pieces and leaves roughly shredded)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
4 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
2 tablespoons reduced sodium soy sauce (note: this is plenty of salt for me, but the original recipe suggests adding more)
2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with 3 tablespoons water

Heat oil and stir fry garlic and ginger for 1 minute.  Add bok choy and stir fry until wilted.  Add soy sauce and cornstarch/water mixture and stir fry until bok choy looks glazed, about 1-2 minutes.

Please enjoy a blurry picture of my leftovers, below.

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A decidedly unfancy look at lunch: stir fried beef and bok choy.