Tag Archives: recipes

Broccoli Beef with Pappardelle

This broccoli beef recipe is one of my favorites, as it tastes just like something you’d get in a restaurant. The broccoli beef part of the recipe comes to me from a Chinese cooking class I took in Scottsdale, AZ, where I lived briefly after I returned from living in Taiwan. Tom added his own touch to this recipe by suggesting we serve it over pappardelle, which was absolutely delicious.

There are a few key things to getting this recipe right. One, you need access to thinly sliced beef, preferably ribeye. Luckily, in Philadelphia, thanks to cheesesteak culture, this isn’t actually that hard to find. We got ours at the Fitler Square farmers’ market via Jennings Farm, which has all grass-fed beef.

Another key to this recipe is the technique of marinating the meat known as “silking” or “velveting.” It is a great way to get tender meat when you stir fry, and works well for chicken, beef, and pork. This normally involves cornstarch, but lately we’ve been substituting powdered cashew nuts for cornstarch, which is a technique we borrowed from Indian curry recipes. It’s not as silky as cornstarch and certainly adds a nutty flavor, but we like it.

While I have been making a cornstarch substitute, one thing I don’t like to substitute is the Shaoxing rice wine. The recipe says you can use sherry (real sherry, not cooking sherry and not sherry vinegar), but I prefer the flavor from the rice wine. I was able to get it for about $2.00 at a local Asian market.

Along with the beef from Jennings Farm, we also had some lovely broccoli from Highland Orchards, also via the Fitler Square farmers’ market.

Broccoli Beef Recipe:

1 lb. thinly sliced beef
2 tbsp. cornstarch (I substitute powdered cashew nuts)
2 tbsp. sherry or Chinese rice wine (Shaoxing)
1 tbsp. soy sauce

1 clove garlic, minced
1 lb. broccoli, cut into flowers, stalks peeled and sliced
1 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. oyster sauce
2 tsp. sugar
1 to 2 tbsp. water

1. Marinate the beef in cornstarch (or substitute powdered cashews), wine, and soy sauce for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

2. Heat your wok and add 2 tbsp. cooking oil. Stir fry the garlic briefly (you can also add minced ginger at this step; the recipe doesn’t call for it specifically, but it’s such a staple of Chinese stir fry that I often add it anyway out of habit), then add the broccoli. Stir fry approx. 2 minutes while adding splashes of water if desired to produce steam. Sprinkle with salt, mix, and remove to bowl.

3. Heat another 2 tbsp. cooking oil and stir fry the meat mixture until the color of the meat turns brown (if especially juicy, you may want to drain the meat before adding the sauce). Mix in the oyster sauce, sugar, and the cooked broccoli and mix well. Add 1 to 2 tbsp. water if the sauce is too thick.

(Adapted from original recipe by Chau Liaw, Best of Basic Chinese, The House of Rice Store)

This same basic recipe works with other kinds of meat, too; one time we made it with bison meat, which was wonderful. Normally I would serve this with rice, but I thought Tom’s pappardelle suggestion worked wonderfully.

I’m looking forward to the next time Jennings Farm comes back to the Fitler Square farmers’ market so we can get some more beef and have this again!

Smoky Yam Soup and Variation

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This is a great recipe for using up yams and other root vegetables, especially in winter when they are in abundance. What really makes it work is the smoked paprika, giving the whole soup a warm, smoky flavor. The recipe was originally conceived as a clever way to use up Thanksgiving leftovers. I learned about it thanks to my former vegetable delivery service, Beachgreens.

Smoky Yam Soup

Smoked paprika – it’s a must!

Variation

We decided to make this recipe the other night since we were in the mood for a hearty soup and had most of the ingredients already. A few different bounties from the Rittenhouse and Fitler Square farmers’ markets went into the making of this, including carrots from Z Food Farm (pictured below), butternut squash and sweet potatoes from Beechwood Orchards, parsnips from Rineer Farms, and celery root, fennel, red bell pepper, and leeks from Highland Orchards.

Farmers’ Market bounty from 11/3/12, including carrots from Z Food Farm

When you use yams as the recipe calls for, between the yams, carrots, and paprika you’ll get a lovely bright orange colored soup in the end (as with the photo at the top of this post, taken earlier this year). Our version from this week was less colorful, but just as tasty. Instead of yams, we used a mix of yellow sweet potatoes, butternut squash, parsnip, and celery root. We used fennel instead of celery, since that’s what we had on hand, and half a red bell pepper rather than lipstick peppers. We also used Oolong tea instead of turkey broth (using tea to substitute for broth is a trick we learned from our class at COOK with Alexis Siemons of Teaspoons & Petals, but we’ll blog more about that later).

Here are the leeks, carrots, peppers, and fennel:

And now with the mixed root vegetables added in:

Then mixed with the smoked paprika:

And now with broth:

After it was cooked, we blended it with a stick immersion blender:

And done!

We served our soup with a simple salad and some toasted Three Seed bread from Big Sky Bread. Delicious!

Kabocha squash for the win

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A few weeks ago at the Rittenhouse farmers’ market, we saw that Z Food Farm was selling orange kabocha squash. We picked one up, and now we are addicted! We find it sweeter and firmer than pumpkin, but much easier to deal with than butternut, since you don’t have to peel it (the skin is delicious). We enjoy the green kabochas, but the orange was even better.

We didn’t have any particular plans for the kabocha, but thanks to our friends Lisa and Will, two recipes fell into our lap that both turned out brilliantly. Since there are only two of us, we halved the squash and used part of it one day and saved the other part for later.

Kaddo Bowrani

Will and Lisa shared a wonderful recipe for kaddo bowrani (Afghani pumpkin). It was easy and straightforward: a base of garlicky yogurt, topped with cooked squash (roasted with cinnamon and sugar, to which we also added cardamom), and then covered in a tomato meat sauce. This dish was absolutely delicious, with a delightful contrast between the creaminess of the yogurt, the sweetness of the squash, and the savory goodness of the meat sauce.

Roasted kabocha squash

Kaddo bowrani

Since we’re all about local ingredients, in addition to the local kabocha squash, we used Pequea Valley Farm yogurt, made in Lancaster County from grass-fed Jersey cows. The garlic and onions were from the local farmers’ markets, and instead of ground beef, we used house-made chorizo sausage from Di Bruno Brothers.

Pasta with Squash, Roasted Garlic, and Sopressata

A few nights later, we decided we wanted to do something with the other half of the squash. Luckily, our friends Lisa and Will came through again by sharing with this recipe for Penne with Acorn Squash and Pancetta. Obviously, we used the Kabocha Squash instead of the Acorn. But we also used sopressata instead of the pancetta since that’s what we had on hand.

The recipe is pretty simple. We roasted the squash and a head of garlic. After chopping up the meat, we fried it and then removed it and deglazed the pan with some chicken broth. We added some fresh rosemary and the roasted garlic, smashing the garlic as we stirred. We chopped up the squash and added it to the pan along with some cooked ziti. Done and delicious.

We’re looking forward to getting another kabocha squash soon and doing this all over again!

Farro with sweet potatoes, chard, and goat cheese

Sausage stuffed squash

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Oh hey, it’s Autumn, which means it’s time to break out one of our favorite recipes: sausage-stuffed squash, courtesy of Gen-Y Foodie.

As usual, we don’t follow the recipe exactly, but we stick to the spirit of it, and substitute whichever winter squash we have around. My absolute favorite is kabocha squash. As for the other ingredients, we have varied the type of sausage (the best was goat sausage!), we’ve always used carrots and onions, but we’ve rarely used celery, and other than that we’ve just thrown in whatever vegetables we have around. We also rarely use breadcrumbs, but have sometimes substituted rice or quinoa or simply left the grains out. As far as cheese, we usually substitute pecorino, asiago, grana, or some other hard Italian cheese for parmesan.

This past weekend we used an acorn squash, with carrots, onions, garlic, pasilla pepper, piave cheese, parsley, and pork sausage: