So, yeah, I haven't cooked in awhile. I've been down with a broken leg. For a year. *looks shifty*

Anyway, now that I'm done living off the chip aisle and the frozen-food aisle, here's some actual food that is currently cooking in my oven and smelling up the house all yummy.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to find the pastry cutter we used last year on the fruit cobbler, because you're going to want it. You will also need a basting brush, a whisk, a mixing bowl, a cookie sheet, a large skillet and a saucepan.

Beef and Mushroom Roll

MEAT MIX INGREDIENTS:

• 1 lb ground meat (beef or turkey)
  
• 1 small onion, chopped
  
• 1 4-oz can of mushroom stems and pieces, drained
• 1/4 cup dill pickle relish
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground mustard
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup water

PASTRY INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning
• 1/4 cup shortening or butter
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 Tbsp. milk (separate from above)

GRAVY INGREDIENTS:

• 2 Tbsp. butter
• 3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 2 cups milk

Okay! Are you intimidated yet? Don't be! This was actually very easy to make, despite the fact that we literally screwed it up THREE DIFFERENT WAYS, and it was still delicious.

To begin, preheat your oven to 425. Now put your meat and your chopped onion into the skillet and cook them on medium heat until the meat is no longer pink. Add the mushrooms, relish, salt, mustard and pepper.

Combine the flour and water until smooth - I used a shaker thingummy with a lid for this - and then stir it into the beef mixture. Turn up the heat just a smidge and keep stirring for a couple of minutes; when it starts to get kind of thick, take it off the fire and set it aside.

Now for the pastry! Put the 2 cups of flour, the baking powder, the salt and the poultry seasoning into the mixing bowl and give it a stir. Using your pastry cutter (or a couple of knives if you haven't got one), cut the shortening into the pastry until it's kinda coarse and crumbly in texture. Stir in the 3/4 cup of milk, and stir good, to make the dough.

Now, you want to mind when you're doing this; you might even want to get in there and mix it good with your hands, because this makes a very dry dough and if you aren't careful, you'll have bits of crumb all over the counter... because that's where this is going.

Flour your counter a bit so the dough won't stick to it, and then dump the dough onto the counter. Make sure it's good and squished together, and then start flattening it out. The original recipe I used calls for you to make a 12" by 9" rectangle with the dough. Me, I don't keep a ruler in my kitchen (heck, I barely keep food there). Just check out the picture below, you want to make a big oblong, and you want the dough itself to be not-too-thick-but-not-too-thin. Maybe 1/4" or so, if you are the type with a ruler in your kitchen.

Anyway. Meat mix goes on dough now. You want to keep back about 1/4 cup or so of the mix, but spread the rest of it all across the dough, leaving yourself about an inch clear at all the edges, because the next thing is to roll it up and pinch the edges together.

Cover your cookie sheet with aluminum foil or spray it with cooking spray, and then put the roll on the sheet seam-side-down. Take that extra 2 tablespoons of milk and brush it all over the roll with the basting brush. Pop that sucker in the oven and set your timer for about 10 minutes.

Go have a cigarette and check your Twitter stream.

When the timer goes off, it's time to make the gravy. Melt your butter in the saucepan over mediumish heat. Be careful not to scorch it. Take it off the heat and whisk in the flour, salt and pepper (it'll lump up quick), and then slowly mix in the milk. Whisk this until it's smooth, then put it back on the heat and turn it up a smidge.

This part is pretty crucial. You have to keep stirring pretty fast the whole time the gravy is cooking or it will burn to the bottom of the pan quick-like. You want to get that gravy up to a boil and let it get to a good, thick gravy-like (heh, see what I did there?) consistency, and then you take it off the heat and stir in the last of the meat mix that you set aside earlier. Warm that for a second.

By now, your roll should be done. Check and make sure the crust is nicely browned, and when it is, pull it out. Slice it and stick it on a plate and put some gravy on it. Seriously, this is good stuff.

Ingredients (in HUGE PICTURES NOW because I'm using Photobucket):

Meat mix:



Pastry:



Gravy:



Meat mix after adding flour-and-water:


(the meat is white because it's turkey)

Spread-out dough with meat mix in:



Giant slug:



Mmm, gravy:



Deliciousness on a chicken plate:

So I got this recipe out of the Taste of Home cookbook, and tweaked it a little to my personal preferences. These are really good, and fairly easy to make, too. (Especially compared to the empanadas, LOL.) Also, on the plus side, there's no oven required for this recipe.

Skillet Enchiladas

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 lb. ground meat (beef or turkey)
• 1 medium onion (finely chopped)
• 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can enchilada sauce
• 1/3 cup milk
• Canola oil
• 8 corn tortillas
• 2 1/2 cups shredded cheddar or mexican-style cheese

OPTIONAL INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 cup chopped olives
• 1 to 2 tbsp. finely chopped green chili peppers
• jalapenos (if you like it spicy)

PREPARATION:

You're going to need two skillets for this, a large one and a small one. Start with the large one; cook the meat and onion together over medium heat until the meat is nicely browned. Drain off the grease. Stir in the soup, enchilada sauce, milk, and the peppers if you want peppers. Cover and simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes, occasionally stirring to make sure it doesn't cook to the bottom of the pan.

At about the ten-minute mark, put just enough canola oil in the little skillet to cover a tortilla shell, and get it good and hot. Cook each tortilla one at a time for about three seconds, or just until it goes limp. BE CAREFUL because if you cook it too long, it'll go tough. Also be careful taking them out of the oil; use a spatula or something flat like that, because tongs will just tear up a soft tortilla and you need them whole. As you take them out of the oil, set them out flat on a paper towel to drain.

When the meat mix is finished cooking, scoop out a little less than half of it into a bowl. Then put about a quarter cup of cheese (or so) on each tortilla, along with olives if you want them or peppers or whatever. Then roll them up like burritos and lay them in the skillet on top of the meat mix. Once they're all in there, pour the rest of the meat mix back in on top of them, cover, and cook for just a few minutes. Now take the rest of your cheese and sprinkle all over the top of everything, cover again and cook for a couple more minutes just to get the cheese melted. Yummy!

Ingredients


Mixing the soup, sauce and milk into the browned meat/onions.


Laying the cheese-filled tortillas into the meat mix


Sprinkling the cheese over the cooked tortillas-and-meat


The finished product! It looks a little messy, but it's really good.

It's unprecedented - two posts in one day from me! But our internet/cable went out earlier due to the storming here in middle Tennessee, so I had nothing to do but cook.

Before we begin, don't start this recipe unless you have a lot of time and maybe a masseuse; by the time I was done with this, my back was killing me from standing over the counter. BUT it was worth it - these things are really good. These would make really good finger foods at the next potluck you get stuck going to, or at a Christmas party or something.

Sour Cream Empanadas

PASTRY INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups flour (sifted)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup Crisco
  
• 1 cup (8 oz) sour cream
• 1 egg yolk

FILLING INGREDIENTS:

• 3/4 lb ground meat (beef or turkey, thawed)
• 1 large onion, chopped finely
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp water

You're going to make your pastry first. Now, if you were with me for the fruit cobbler, you already have a pastry blender, a rolling pin and a flour sifter. If you weren't, well, you're going to need one of each.

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl, and add the sugar and the 1 tsp of salt. Use the pastry blender to "cut" the Crisco into this mixture, just until it's kind of crumbly. Now, this won't get as crumbly as the pastry we made for the cobbler, so don't freak. Once the Crisco's all blended in, stir in the cup of sour cream and the egg yolk. Stir this all up and form the pastry into a ball (you'll want to make sure all the pastry is mixed up while you're doing this; I did the last of my mixing with my hands). Put the pastry back in the bowl, cover it with Saran wrap or something like that, and stick it in the fridge for at least two hours.

Once you're ready to begin, put your ground meat and onions in a skillet and brown them together. Then drain off the grease and stir in the 1/2 cup of sour cream, the 1/2 tsp of salt and the oregano. Set this to the side. At this point, preheat your oven to 450.

On a floured surface (just like we did for the cobbler) you want to roll out your pastry to about 1/8 inch thick. You don't want it too thin, but you don't want it too thick either. Cut out 3 inch circles from your pastry, scrunch the leftovers together, roll them out, rinse, lather, repeat until you run out of pastry.

Now, here's where things can get sticky if you aren't careful. You only want to do these a few at a time; I learned with my first batch. You're going to take a spoonful of meat and put on a pastry circle, then fold the pastry over to make a little clamshell. Squish the edges together, and use a floured fork to squinch down the edges a little more. Make a note - if you put meat on too many pastries at once, the pastry will get wet and stick to the counter. You don't want that.

Put the folded empanadas on a greased cookie sheet. Take the last egg and the 2 tsp water and beat them together in a bowl, and then, using a basting brush, brush the tops of the pastries with this mixture. Pop them in the oven and bake them for about 12 minutes. These are very good, and also very filling.

Everything laid out to get started


Mixed up nicely with the pastry blender. Not very crumbly, but crumbly enough.


Adding sour cream, egg, etc.


Ball of pastry, ready to go into the fridge.

Laid out on the pastry circles; some of them folded up.


Ready to go in the oven


Finished product!

This one's another favorite at our house, 1) because it tastes really good and 2) because it works really well for leftovers. Mom serves this over rice, but I'm not a huge fan of rice so often I just eat the meatballs by themselves or with whatever side dish.

Mom's closing tonight (she works in a big home improvement box store) so I wasn't planning on cooking anything, but I got bored so I dug out this recipe because it's easy and (on the plus) doesn't require an oven. However, because I hadn't planned on cooking, the ground beef was frozen solid when I got started. Most new microwaves have a defrost setting for meat; if yours doesn't, try this tutorial at wiseGEEK to thaw the meat in the microwave. This should be a last resort; I always suggest that you plan ahead and thaw your meat overnight in the fridge... but if you're like me (lazy!) then the microwave can work well.

Mom's Island Meat Balls

NOTE: This recipe is just about enough for one person. We usually at least double it.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 cup chopped onion
  
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1 cup plain water
• 8 tbsp sugar
• 6 tbsp vinegar (I really recommend regular vinegar for this, not the apple-cider variety, but whatever pops your crank)
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Combine all the above ingredients in a bowl and set them aside.

• 1 lb. ground meat (beef or turkey)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg (beaten)
• 1/2 cup saltine cracker crumbs
• 1/2 tsp pepper (plain table pepper, not that white pepper)
• 1/4 cup milk

PREPARATION:

Combine the second set of ingredients in a large bowl. Mash them up really good with your hands. Form into small balls (about the size of one of those high-bounce balls we used to get out of the quarter machines when we were kids) and brown in canola or vegetable oil. (You can use olive oil, but it's more expensive and Mom doesn't like it; she says it makes the meat taste funny. I can't tell the difference, personally. Also, don't use a lot of oil; you're browning, not deep-frying.)

Once the meatballs are browned, drain off all the oil, then add the sauce and cook over low heat for about 45 minutes or until the sauce gets nice and thick. They taste very sweet, almost like pineapple or something. It's yummy.

Making the sauce


Meatballs cooking in the oil


Cooking in the sauce
A little bit of the finished product! My sauce didn't thicken up quite right, not sure why... Moooooooooooom!!!!!!!


Edit: Mom says the reason my sauce didn't thicken is because I cooked it with a lid on. *facepalm*

My mom makes this all the time. It's a little more complicated than what I like to do, but on a Saturday when you haven't really got much else to do, it's not bad to spend a little time doing it. Also, it's pretty yummy, and it makes a lot, so there's leftovers for Monday's lunch. For more than one person.

Spanish Rice

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 pound ground meat (beef or turkey)
  
• 2 cans of whole peeled tomatoes
  
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• coarsely chopped garlic cloves (amount depends on how much you like garlic)
• 1 1/2 - 2 cups rice
• water
• salt
  
• a frying pan with a lid
  

PREPARATION:

If your ground meat is frozen, it needs to be thawed mostly all the way before you get started. If you know you're going to make this, take your meat out of the freezer the night before and just stick it in the fridge (in a bowl so it doesn't melt all over).

Brown your ground meat in a big frying pan on medium heat (5-6 for electric stoves, medium flame for gas). While you are doing that, chop up your onion (use a chopper if you have one) pretty fine - you don't want big chunks. Also chop up your garlic cloves (make sure you peel them first!) fairly coarsely; you can have little chunks of that, because they'll cook up soft and you won't notice them much.

Once the ground meat is browned, put a strainer or collander in the sink and dump the meat into it to drain off all the grease. Then put the meat back into the skillet and put it back on the stove. Add your garlic and onion, and add your rice. Then open up your cans of tomatoes - this is where things get sticky.

Pour the tomato juice into the mess in the skillet, but catch the tomatoes and squish them up really hard in your hands. (Tip: Poke a hole in each one with your finger before squishing; it helps reduce the incidence of having juice squirt all over the stove/counter/you.) Then dump the squished remains of tomato into the skillet also. When you've done this for all the tomatoes, you want to fill each can with water (plain old tap water) and pour the water into the skillet as well. Sprinkle some salt in (to taste) and mix it up well.

Cover the skillet and cook it. You want to check it about every 20 minutes or so to make sure it hasn't run out of water (you need the water to cook the rice). You know it's done when your water is mostly gone out of it but the rice is cooked nice and tender. It's something you kind of have to eyeball.

Serves 8 easily.

My dad used to love to eat this stuffed inside a Bell pepper. Just core the pepper and boil it for about 3 minutes. Then fill it with this rice mix, and bake it in the oven on a cookie sheet at 350 for about half an hour or so, until the pepper is tender. Mom and I don't like peppers, though, so we just eat the junk plain out of a bowl.

You can serve a green salad with this, and some hot bread. In fact, I have a really scrumptious recipe for garlic toast that I think I may have to share tomorrow. Today, though, we're having it with buttered saltine crackers. Yum!

Getting set up (we keep our rice in the Karmelcorn bucket because it's airtight and fits well in the freezer)
Everything in but the tomatoes
Cooking!

What it looks like when it's finished