Another St. Pat's recipe, Guinness beef stew

Found this on the livejournal community what a crock. I am having Chris pick up some Guinness tonight for the corned beef, will have to try this one in a few weeks to use up some more Guinness (if he doesn't drink it all).

This beef stew is supposed to be close to one from Dublin at the Guinness brewery, St James Gate.

Stew:
2 pounds bottom round chuck, cut into bite-size chunks
2 medium Russet potatoes
2 carrots
Half of a large sweet onion
2 teaspoons brown sugar
Flour to coat beef
Salt & pepper to taste
1 bottle of Guinness Extra Stout

Dumplings:
1 cup self-rising flour
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup milk
Salt & pepper to taste

1. Coat beef chunks in flour and place in a large crock pot.
2. Chop vegetables into smaller chunks and add to crock.
3. Combine Guinness and brown sugar, then pour over beef and vegetables.
4. Cook on Low for about 6 hours.
5. Towards the end of cooking time, combine dumpling ingredients to form a soft (not sticky) dough. May need to adjust milk and/or flour amounts.
6. Form dough into small (approx 1 oz) balls and add to stew.
7. Cook on High for 30 minutes.

time for an experiment... or 3

I have some strawberries headed south, so I think I'm going to make little coffee cake muffins using this recipe as a base. Mmm cream cheese involved? :) I will dice the strawberries and add right to the batter rather than use jam.

post baking notes: The strawberries in the batter made it a big too moist, I over filled my jumbo cups (made 6, should've at least made 8), I subbed sour cream for yogurt (its what I had), and I added 1 tsp vanilla and 1/4 tsp cinnamon to the batter. Great flavor though :) May try just a few slices of strawberry or Jam under the cream cheese layer next time.

My Mom hated corned beef and cabbage but would make it for my Grandpa when he was alive because he was pretty much 100% Irish and loved it. So, since she hated it and I also think it reminded her of Grandpa, she never made it. Ever. So I was walking thru Meijer today with Chris and he talked me into agreeing to make corned beef this year. I said sure but no cabbage because he won't eat that ;) So I am going to make this one (and do the recommendation of adding the seasoning packet with the brown sugar) and this soda bread. Will probably do the corned beef in the crock with 1 can Guinness and 1 can's worth of water, since I'm not a HUGE Guinness fan. Also will throw potatoes and carrots in with it towards the end. Was going to make beef stew for St. Pat's but NO ;) I don't recall even really eating corned beef except as lunch meat. Dad has a meat slicer so we can slice the leftovers and they can enjoy it again ;)

Will let you know how my experiments turn out. *evil laughter*

edited to add: I wasn't a fan of the corned beef, but I am not a huge fan of Guinness so that could be why ;) my husband liked it. I put carrots, potatoes, and onion diced up on the bottom, then the corned beef with brown sugar and the seasoning packed sprinkled on it, then 2 bottles of Guinness in my crock and let it cook about 9 hours. The Soda bread turned out pretty good, even with a cup of wheat flour in it since I ran out of AP flour. ;)

honey wheat crescents

Making these tonight, the rolls I often made at Mom's required dry milk which I don't have on hand, and my daughter is in no mood to run to the store today. Hopefully they turn out good! I plan to use my upright mixer with dough hook rather than my Cuisinart... easier to clean!

Honey Wheat Crescent Rolls
from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook

1 cup warm (105-115 F) water
2 tablespoons honey
1 package active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

In a 2-cup measuring cup, combine the water and honey; sprinkle in the yeast and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

In a food processor, combine the all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour and salt. With the machine running, pour the yeast mixture through the feed tube; pulse until the dough forms a ball, about 1 minute. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times until smooth.

Spray a large bowl with nonstick spray and put the dough in the bowl. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in volume, about 35 minutes.

Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray. Punch down the dough. Sprinkle a work surface lightly with flour. Turn the dough onto the surface; cut in half. Roll each half into a 10-inch circle. Cut each circle into 6 wedges. Roll each wedge, from the wide side, and form into a crescent. Place, pointed-end down, on the baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough, arranging the rolls 1 inch apart. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until they double in size, about 35 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Bake the rolls until they are golden brown and sound hollow when lightly tapped, about 15 minutes. Remove the rolls from the baking sheet and cool on a rack.

Makes 12 rolls.

***after dinner edit: These were pretty good, not over-done with wheat (not in your face wheat). One word of warning is they don't brown as much as white rolls do so the bottoms were nice and brown and the tops not as brown in comparison.

skinless twice bakes?

So I am trying this Man-Lovin' Potato Casserole tonight for Dad's birthday dinner. I tried the mixture and it tastes like skinless twice bakes :) yum. The only changes I am making are 2Tbsp dried chives instead of red onion, cheddar instead of american (with a bit of mozz cheese too, I am running low on shredded cheese), and shredded parm instead of grated. I will update y'all if it turns out gross but I think we may have a winner.

***after dinner edit: I thought it was a bit salty, probably from the bacon, season salt, and mayo. I may scale back to use only 1/2 tsp season salt next time or omit all together. With the other seasonings I don't know that I'd miss it. I did use a little bit of "tastefully simple" bacon bacon because I didn't have quite enough bacon bits. That may have added some salt too.

The man's opinion was good, Chris loves salt so he thought they were great ;) Dad seemed to like them. Though he rarely says he doesn't like something.

Crunchy Curry Chicken Casserole

So you know when you have leftover chicken and you don't know what to do with it, but you're craving something that involves X, Y and Z? Well that's this casserole. We had KFC on Sunday and had 2 giant chicken breasts and 2 legs leftover. I was craving mayonnaise, water chestnuts, and curry. This was the result of my cravings and what was in my fridge/pantry and some consulting of about 8 recipes online.

It was actually pretty darn good :) You can change the veggies (I think asparagus, green onion, mushrooms, celery, or broccoli would be good additions in it but they are all "scary" to my husband). Curry isn't overpowering as is, if you like curry you can increase it to 1/3 or 1/2 tsp, if you hate curry feel free to omit :) it was a "what the hell I will throw some curry in" decision. We like curry, I put it in my chicken pot pie.

It wasn't *that* bad for me, I used low fat mayo and soup and was better than eating the chicken with the skin on smothered in leftover mashed taters and gravy :)

Crunchy Curry Chicken Casserole

2-3 cups shredded cooked/leftover chicken
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 can cream of chicken soup (celery or mushroom would also work)
1 cup matchstick carrots
1 8oz can water chestnuts, drained
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried chives
2 tsp dried minced onion
1/4 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 tsp soy sauce
1 bag of success brown rice, cooked and drained (I think 1 bag is about 2 cups cooked rice)

1/4 cup cashew pieces
1 cup chow mein noodles

Preheat oven to 350. Combine the first 12 ingredients in a bowl. Pour into a greased casserole dish (I think mine was an oval 2.5qt, a 7x11 pan or 9x13 would work too). Sprinkle cashew pieces and chow mein noodles over top. Bake @350 for about 30 minutes.

It's fairly thick as is, but I like it that way. If you think it's too thick you could add 1/2 cup of water or chicken broth.

Gadgets!

I'll be married 7 years so some of my kitchen gadgets have bit the dust, are MIA, or melted in the dishwasher (cheap plastic measuring spoons). So this last weekend I treated myself to some new gadgets :)

First stop was Williams Sonoma, the dangerous store. I was pretty good, but I couldn't resist these 3 things:
- Mechanical Pastry Bag I can have pretty cakes/cupcakes now! ;)
- I bought both the all clad measuring spoons & Odd Sizes measuring cups (wasn't a set with odd sized spoons). I was pretty excited about the odd sized measuring cups. 2/3 cup, 3/4 cup, and 1 1/2 cup. Yes I'm lazy but it will make my life a little easier while baking :) and no more melting the measuring spoons in the dishwasher, these babies are metal.

Then I wandered Macy's while my husband was in the Apple store. I had $20 on a gift card burning a hole in my pocket and they didn't have the Privos shoes I wanted in my size (AGAIN, I hate Macy's shoe dept). So I decided to see what kind of gadgets Martha had I couldn't live without. She had a few ;)
- pretty blue trivet, I never had gotten around to getting a non-holiday trivet.
- collapsible funnel, I killed my funnel awhile ago. I like that it squishes flat for storage :)
- a Martha batter bowl, which is apparently not online :-p (has a handle and a spout)
- martha's everything clips though mine are red I wish they were blue. I was sold because you can throw them in the freezer :) I've lost a few chip clips to the freezer.
and I got a set of little silicone coated wine stoppers, since we somehow lost our good one.

And my weird gadget that works recommendation is The Skurba potato glove not to be confused with those crazy peeling gloves. No, these just scrub your taters clean. Chris' aunt bought me some for Christmas in Sweden and I thought she was nucking futs. But they actually work really well ;) just have to keep the water not too cold if you are doing a lot of potatoes or your fingers get numb ;)