International night – Ireland

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve updated this site, but I wanted to get caught back up with posting our international night recipes. When we started doing international night, I began with it on a Thursday night. That worked out pretty good for us until the week of Oct. 22. That Thursday night I had parent teacher conferences until 6:30 p.m., leaving no time to prepare an international meal after I got home. However, I came up with the solution to the problem by preparing Irish stew in the crock pot and serving it up to my bunch when I got home.

When I started researching Irish stew, I found that it’s one of those meals that everybody prepares to their own taste, but there are some common ingredients such as beef (or lamb), potatoes, carrots and onions. Stew is one of those great peasant meals that has become a comfort food staple for many people all over the world. I love a good stew, and the fact that Irish stew is traditionally served over another great comfort food, mashed potatoes, made it even more appealing to me.

I recipes that used just stew beef, beef mince (ground beef) and a combination of the two. I ended up going with one that had stew beef and meatballs made from ground beef. It was good, but I didn’t really get the point of going to the trouble of making meatballs, so I probably wouldn’t do that again.

A lot of recipes had Guinness beer added in, but after researching I discovered that traditionally Irish stew did not contain beer, so I left it out.

Here is the recipe for Irish stew that I used, but feel free to come up with your own version.

1 lb. beef stew meat

1 lb. ground beef

4 carrots, chopped

4 medium potatoes, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 large onion, chopped

1/2 T. dried thyme

1/2 T. dried parsley

1 bay leaf

1 qt. beef stock

3 c. water

salt and pepper to taste

mashed potatoes

Brown stew beef and form ground beef into meatballs and brown. Combine all ingredients except mashed potatoes in a crock pot and cook on high for 3 hours or low for 8 hours until vegetables are tender. Remove bay leaf before serving. Serve over mashed potatoes.

International Night – France

I’m home with a sick 12 year-old today, so I can finally take the time to post last week’s International Night fare. At the suggestion of my son, we chose French cuisine. Although there are many more elaborate and well known French dishes, I chose to prepare steak frites largely due to time constraints.

We will probably revisit the food of France on a week when I’m not working because most of the recipes I found required lots of preparation and cooking time. With only about two hours after we get home in the afternoons to prepare our dinner, I’m a bit limited as to the complexity of the dishes I can select.

Steak frites, which is essentially a steak and fries, is apparently very popular in France and Belgium. Growing up steak and fries was a weekly meal in our house, but I had no idea we were being European chic!

There were a couple of unique things about the way the French prepare their steak and fries, though. First of all, they cook the steak in a skillet instead of grilling or broiling it. I don’t remember this, but several of my friends say they recall my mom preparing steaks in a skillet when they would stay over at our house. I do this occasionally when I don’t want to heat up the oven or grill, and it’s usually pretty good.

It appears the French use a variety of sauces to serve with the steak, but the most common seems to be a red wine and shallot sauce. I couldn’t find shallots, so I just used yellow onions. The sauce was excellent, though.

The other interesting thing in the preparation was the way the fries are cooked. They make homemade fries and cook them in medium hot oil for a few minutes and then remove them to drain on paper towels. Then the oil is heated to a higher temperature, and the fries are cooked until golden brown. They were very crispy, and I guess the frying method is the reason.

There were tons of recipes online for steak frites, but I used one from Rachael Ray just because it had the easiest to find ingredients. She called for strip steaks, but I found ribeyes on sale, so I used those. Most of the other recipes I found online used ribeyes or sirloins as well. I also didn’t cut my fries as thin as the French normally do just because I was in a hurry.

3 medium russet potatoes, scrubbed and dried

1 T.  extra-virgin olive oil

4 NY strip steaks or ribeye steaks

Salt and pepper

3 T. butter, divided

1 large shallot or small yellow onion, finely chopped

2 T. all-purpose flour

1 c. dry red wine

Heat 1 1/2 to 2 inches oil in a deep frying pan over medium heat to 325 F degrees or use a deep fryer set to 325 degrees. Cut potatoes into thin slices lengthwise. Cut each slice into thin shoestring strips. Place cut potatoes on paper towels. Place two generous handfuls of potatoes at a time into hot oil, in two batches. Par cook the potatoes 2-3 minutes and transfer to a towel lined plate. Raise heat to medium high up to 375 degrees F. When oil is heated to 375, return potatoes to oil in two batches to crisp them, cooking them to a deep, golden brown color, another 2 to 3 minutes per batch. Remove potatoes from oil to clean towels to drain. Season with salt and serve.

For steaks, heat a large nonstick skillet over high heat. Add a little oil to the pan, one turn. Season steaks with salt and pepper. Place steaks in skillet and sear 2 minutes on each side. Reduce heat to medium and cook steaks 6 minutes longer for medium rare, 8 for medium to medium well. Remove steaks to a warm plate to rest. Add 2 tablespoons butter and the shallots to the pan. Cook shallots 2 or 3 minutes, add flour to the pan and cook a minute longer. Whisk wine into pan and lift pan drippings up. Add the last tablespoon of butter and remove the pan from the heat. Spoon wine and shallot sauce over the steaks and serve with hot, shoestring potatoes.