Beef and Mushroom Tart

So keeping with the lower carb meals tonight I present something mildly experimental.  I got this recipe from my mom a long time ago.  It's actually an hors d'oeuvre that we make for parties, but tonight I thought I'd try a bigger version and just make it into a meat pie/tart type of thing.  I think it turned out pretty well. 

Since I'm trying to keep the carbohydrate count low so I can pass this next 3 hour gtt I had to make a few changes to the recipe.  I don't actually know where she got the recipe for this, so hopefully it's okay that I'm posting a modified version. 

In the original recipe if you were going to make these as  hors d'oeuvres for a party you would smash slices of bread into muffin cups to use as tart shells and use a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup along with the other ingredients in the filling. 

For tonight's recipe I made my own whole wheat pie crust (so that'd be about 10-12 grams of carbs for 1/8 of the pie).  I didn't use the cream of mushroom soup, but used real mushrooms and thickened up some milk with some parsley and a bit of added garlic powder and onion powder instead.  If I had used the cream of mushroom soup 2 things would have happened:

1.  It would have tasted better.

2.  It would have had 6.75 more grams of carbs per slice (assuming you had 1/8th) of pie. 

Since I was planning on eating more than 1/8th of the pie I decided to skip the soup.  If you're not so worried about carbs I'd definitely say use the condensed soup (get the organic kind without msg!!). 

Otherwise, on it's own this was pretty good!  I had the flavor of the hors d'oeuvres in my head, so this pie wasn't as amazing as those, but not too shabby for a low carb, weekday meal. 

Here's the recipe if you want to make it!


Beef and Mushroom Tart

Ingredients
(Pie Crust)
1 1/3c whole wheat flour
1/2c butter cubed
1/2 tsp salt
3tbsp cold water

(filling)

1lb ground beef

1cup mushrooms diced

1/2 green pepper diced

1 small onion diced

3large cloves of garlic minced

1tbsp butter

1cup milk

1tbsp flour

1tbsp parsley

salt and pepper to taste

garlic powder and onion powder to taste

1/3cup cheddar cheese grated

For the filling:

1.  Brown the ground beef. If you're not using lean meat drain off some fat.

2.  Add the mushrooms, green pepper, onion, garlic and butter and saute on medium heat until the onions are translucent and the green peppers are soft. 

3.  Sprinkle the flour over the beef and veggie mixture and stir it in. 

4.  Add the milk and bring everything to a boil over medium heat.  Allow the sauce to get thick and bubbly.

5.  Add the parsley, salt and pepper, and garlic powder and onion powder if you think it needs a bit more kick.  Stir everything to combine well.

6.  Take the mixture off the heat and cool down a bit.

For the crust:

1.  Combine the flour and salt in a food processor.  Just pulse it a couple times.

2.  Add the cubes of butter slowly while pulsing. 

3.  When the flour and butter look like coarse crumbs add the cold water slowly.

4.  When it comes together into a ball it's ready to roll out.

5.  Roll out the dough on a floured board until it's larger than the pie plate. 

6.  Carefully place your dough in the pie plate.  Roll the edges over and if you want to be fancy flute the edges. 

7.  Prick the bottom of the crust and bake in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes.

Bringing it together.

1.  When the pie comes out fill it with your beef and mushroom mixture and top with cheddar cheese.

2.  Bake in a 350 oven for 20 minutes!



Before it went in the oven!





The finished product.



 Hope you enjoy it!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for the Christmas Season and all of the joy that comes with celebrating your son's birth.  As we begin this New Year help us all to remember the gift you have given us in your son and the gift of our lives.  Help us to remember not to squander what we've been given and appreciate it and cultivate it every day.  Amen.

Cranberry-Orange Pie with Cornmeal Streusel Topping

Hi Blog universe.  I'm sorry I've been away so long.  I got sick around thanksgiving and got out of the blogging swing and to be honest I just haven't been making anything original lately.  Well, nothing I make is really original, but I keep making repeats.  Roast chicken, spaghetti, enchiladas, pizza (lots of pizza, this baby loves pizza), salmon, chili, etc.  Same ol' same ol. 


I have to apologize, I might not be able to post pictures of the fantastic things I'm blogging about for a while.  You might have to make due with the pictures from the links I post.  Our computer is going on the fritz and has contracted some virus that my hubby is trying to get sorted out.  Lucky for us he happens to have another OS that is workable on the same computer (yeah I don't get it, I just use it).  So I can blog, but I can't load pictures on this OS because the program is in the other virus attacked one.  Lame. 

In other news.....
I did make this FANTASTIC pie for Thanksgiving.  I made it exactly as the recipe states

HERE from Simple Bites

except that I used my Mother in Law's pie crust recipe.  Mostly because I have it memorized and because we love it.  I don't actually know if I'm allowed to divulge the recipe for that here, so you'll have to make due with your own favorite pie recipe or the one from the link.

I honestly wasn't sure about how this was going to turn out.  It looked good in the pictures and sounded decent.  I was just so unsure about the streusel topping.  Now don't get me wrong, I love a good streusel topping on a muffin or coffee cake, but on pie?  On cranberries?  Cranberries and orange?  I wasn't sure.  But since the pumpkin pie was spoken for by my sister in law, and the apple pie was being made by my mother in law, I decided to go off the deep end and bring an experiment to Thanksgiving dinner.

I'm SO glad I did!!  I think I will have to make this again for Christmas at my family's celebration.  It was so amazing.  My husband (who I usually have to pull comments from) even said it was great several times.  He even looked at me strangely when I let him have the last piece of it a few days later, like I should have been jealously guarding it for myself.  Ha ha! 

I'm telling you, you have to make this pie.  Go out and buy the ingredients now.  You won't regret it.

I know it's extremely late, but Happy Thanksgiving.  Happy Advent!

I will probably be posting more about baking adventures and mishaps in the next few weeks as I try to wrap my mind around how to make fudge without corn syrup or marshmallow creme and bake a billion gingerbread cookies for my kiddo's birthday party.  Stay tuned.  This Advent season is going to be a bake-a-palooza.



In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear God,
  we thank you for giving us time with our relatives, time to relax with our families and time to thank you.  Thank you for bodies that heal themselves and all of those things that we forget to thank you for.
Amen.

Beef Pastel




So I thought tonight would be another night I'd get to talk about some Filipino dish that has Spanish origins.  But try as I may, I couldn't find a single thing on Beef Pastel while searching the net.

Beef Pastel is like a Beef and Mushroom Pot Pie.  I did find a heck of a lot of articles on Filipino Pastel de Lengua while searching the net.  So naturally, I emailed mom to ask if there was some connection.  Low and behold, I discovered something that was glaringly obvious.... ha ha ha!  This is still so funny.

I guess my family just substituted regular stew meat for Ox tongue in the recipe for Pastel de Lengua.  So really what is supposed to be ox tongue meat pie, for us growing up was just a beef stew.  My mom never made the pie crust.  The funny thing is that I've had Pastel de Lengua quite a few times, but never noticed how....similar the taste was to Beef Pastel.  When I told Jon about this, he blamed the consistency of the lengua.  I guess that could throw you off.  Hah.  Well that gave me a little chuckle. 

Did any of that make sense to you guys? 

Well I don't think there's anything really Spanish about this dish or Pastel de Lengua except that the name of the dish is in Spanish.  That doesn't really mean too much since a while ago Spanish was one of the common languages spoken all over the Philippines.

Tonight's recipe is a bit of an anomaly in my repertoire because the recipe uses condensed soup!  I've definitely made it from scratch before, but that is a bit more time consuming and this tends to be a weeknight dish so I usually opt out of that.  Thank goodness someone finally made organic condensed cream of mushroom soup! 

Here's the recipe for the Beef Pastel.  If you want to get really authentic you can make it with boiled ox tongue and add green olives and chorizo de bilbao.  Yum.  I've got to ask my mom to make that sometime soon.  Oh yes, and put a pie crust on top of it!  I think Pastel means pie in Spanish or something, that's why the dish has that name.

Beef Pastel - Filipino Beef Stew (Pie)

(I think this is Lola's recipe too.)
Ingredients1lb        stew meat (Mom uses sirloin since she doesn't usually use the slow cooker)
1tbsp    butter or oil (grandma says use butter)
1/2 c    onions
1 can   condensed mushroom soup (if you're using organic it'll be a box of soup!)
2          potatoes
2         carrots
1c        peas
           mushrooms (as much as you like)

salt and pepper to taste



I doubled the recipe tonight with the hope that we would have enough leftovers for another night!



Method          
1.  Brown the beef lightly.  Drain meat and set aside. 

2.  Heat butter in pan, add onions and beef and saute until the beef is completely brown.  Add the can of mushroom soup (no water).  Simmer on low-medium heat until beef is almost
tender. 

3.  Add potatoes and carrots, cook until almost done. Add mushrooms and peas, cook until the peas are heated through and the potatoes and carrots are tender. 



4.  Season with  salt and pepper. 



I used the slow cooker tonight.  Not the best idea when you don't have much time.....



If you want, you can do it in the slow cooker to make the beef really, really tender.  Just add the vegetables (besides the onions) into the slow cooker an hour or two before you want it to finish. 

I was all wonky today and started late, yet for some reason I still decided to use the slow cooker.  Apparently I got mixed up and thought my slow cooker would act like a pressure cooker?  I don't know.  But after 2 hours in the slow cooker my meat was not as tender as I would have liked. 

Since Jon had a long day I decided to turn it on for another hour so it could cook more for when he got home.  I guess 1 more hour did the trick because he said that his beef was tender. 

So if you're going to use the slow cooker for this recipe, make sure that you have at least 3 hours for it to cook.

Ah yes, and if you cook it for a bit longer your sauce will reduce and be thicker too.  It's not supposed to look that thin.  Yikes, today was a kitchen disaster!



Give it a try!  My roomies in college seemed to like it well enough!

Oh yes, and today was the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel!!  Mikey's namesake day!  We unfortunately weren't able to make it to Mass because of Jon's long day and my inability to handle 2 loud toddlers at Mass solo.  I also tried to make a traditional French treat for the feast day, and while it tasted pretty good, it looked horrible and fell apart all over the place.  I'll spare you the ugly pictures.   If you have a pizzelle or gaufrette iron, you should try it.  If you have a regular waffle iron like me, steer clear!!  Next year I'll just make a goose like the English do.  Ha ha!


In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.
St. Michael the Archangel defend us in the day of battle
be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil
may God rebuke him we humbly pray
and do thou O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God
cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.