Tag: cognac

For almost a year, I've been looking for a way to cook tip roast that doesn't end up overly chewy- for some reason, it seems even a long bath in the crock-pot is too much for one's round tip roast. Tonight, I was determined to come up with a solution, and I am disturbingly pleased by the result.

It started with a small round tip roast, which I tried to murder horribly with a fork before dredging in flour, onion powder, and garlic powder. Then, I heated a 10-inch calphalon pan with a small amount of canola and added a pinch of cumin seed and three cloves of garlic. I browned the tip roast quickly, then just as quickly burned off a shot of cognac.

After this, I added one can of chicken broth, a pound of celery hearts (halved), and a can of tomato sauce; one dash of hot sauce and a pinch of freshly ground chiles and it was ready to go in the oven at 350 degrees.

An hour later, I pulled out the roast and celery and covered them with foil; added a little more flour to thicken as well as a shot of soy sauce and a dash of worcestershire. I whisked this down, mounted the sauce with half a stick of butter (for shine), and then served it over the sliced roast and the celery.

It turned out pretty fantastic. I used a very small roast, so there was an overabundance of sauce this time around; I think I'll make a little more next time.

I was seriously in need of some sour cream yesterday, so I browsed the internet for a couple beef stroganoff recipes and generated something that turned out to be pretty darn fantastic.

After slicing a half-pound sirloin steak into small strips, I dredged them in flour, garlic salt, and pepper, then sauteed them in butter along with a quarter onion (diced). I added a couple dashes of Worcestershire and soy sauce (that combo is my secret weapon for meat dishes). After the onion was transparent, I added some sliced mushrooms, a shot of apple cognac (any brandy would be fine), and half a can of chicken broth. Once the whole mixture thickened, I added half a cup of sour cream, reduced the heat to medium, and let the sauce thicken.

Over buttered egg noodles, this one was pretty fantastic. There was just a hint of the apple flavor from the cognac. If I do this again, I will wait to add the steak until after the onions are done; it certainly wasn't overcooked, but I would have liked it to be a little less cooked anyways.

So yet again the EU crew chose a food category that I really have no experience with. Baklava and eating at the Mad Greek in Baker, CA once is the extent of my Greek food influence. So, I immediately began searching out desserts... this is my specialty, after all. I had about five different ones that I was tempted to try, but I narrowed it down to three. I chose two cookies and one milk pie. Let's start with the first cookie that I tackled: on Friday, with 4 kids running around, I began the process of making powdered sugar dome cookies, otherwise known as Kourabiethes.

These cookies were super easy to make. A little expensive, if you don't have a cognac drinker in the house as a bottle of Hennessy is $24 and you only need 1 1/2 tablespoons. As luck has it, Tele likes to drink a little Hennessy on occasion, so it all worked out. Now, it seems to me that most Greek recipes were designed to feed an entire army, so I had to halve this recipe. If I knew how to split an egg in half I would have sized it down further, but since I don't have a laser egg yolk/white splitter, I stuck to just half the recipe, which still produced 30 large Kourabiethes.

Apart from sizing the recipe down I did not make any other changes to the recipe except omitting the rose water as it was optional anyhow.

Now a photo journey of the process of making Kourabiethes.

Creamed butter and sugar.

1 1/2 tablespoons Hennessy.

Here is the Hennessy after the baking powder was added.

I had sliced almonds in the fridge so I just chopped them up and roasted them in the oven on 350 degrees until they just started to darken in color.

The almonds have been added into the creamed butter and sugar along with the cognac/baking powder mixture, eggs and vanilla.

The dough after about 1/2 of the flour has been mixed in and another bit has been added.

One more addition of flour to go.

The dough is now ready to be formed into little domes.

Start by scooping out a small mound of dough, such as this.

Then begin pressing the dough together into a ball.

Now use your palm to form the top into a dome shape and flatten the bottom of the cookie.

I found that for me the base of the cookie need to be about the size of the middle of my palm.

And that 2 of my fingers was about 3/4 of an inch tall so I used my fingers as a guide to get the proper dome height.

The cookies waiting to go into the oven.

Now that the cookies have come out of the oven, it is time to start coating them in powdered sugar. Up till this point the kids have only helped me out by being my photographer (and they did a great job of that, if I do say so myself), but now they are ready to get busy.

LittleRoq is the first one to jump on the chair and start the sugar coating process (this was of course after he thoroughly washed his hands. I am quite a stickler about this important kitchen rule. CLEAN HANDS always!).

Now it was time for JoieGirl to get in on the action. She ended up putting the first coating of powdered sugar on almost all the cookies. Such great cooking assistants!

And finally we have all 30 cookies coated in powdered sugar twice and put away in a container waiting for Greek Night.

Hi all,

Usually, we here at EU are pretty religion agnostic when it comes to our articles. Mainly I think because we don't want to offend anyone or misrepresent anyones holidays. However, I figure I'd touch a bit on Slava, since it has so much to do with food.

Basically, Slava is a feast that's held for the patron saint of the family in Orthodox Christian homes.

When I say feast, I mean FEAST.

The wife and I went the other day to some of our Serbian friends' Slava. With the exception of eating until I thought I was going to die, it was pretty cool.

First, there's soup. Then, stuffed cabbage. Then, sliced Pork loin, Chicken, Lamb, country ham, and salami. And cheese. and then there's dessert. Baklava, cakes, cookies, something I can't remember.

Did I mention there was drinking? Oh probably not.

At the hosts request, we drank. alot. I drank 5 heinekens, and 2 glasses of cognac, along with 3 shots of plum brandy. I was smashed.

Plum brandy is good.

I digress. There should be plenty more holidays where you eat until gluttony no longer applies and it turns into some new word that hasn't been made up yet.