Pot Roast

It's week two of vintage month on Cooking with B.S.! And we're featuring the most the oldest recipe ever, cooked meat. There is something appealing about simplicity. Maybe it's having fewer dishes to clean up after the meal is cooked or perhaps it's when you don't muddle the meat with every spice under the sun its true flavor comes out. Or perhaps these vintage recipes remind us of a simpler time, a better time, a time before quinoa.

Pot Roast

• 1 lbs. Beef Roast
• 2 Carrots
• 5 Celery Stalks
• 1/2 Medium Yellow Onion
• 3 Potatoes
• Salt and Pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 375°
2. Coarsely chop all the vegetables except the potatoes. 
3. Place the roast in a pan or in a "pot" and add a dash of salt and pepper. Place the chopped vegetables around the roast.  Add another dash of salt and pepper to everything in the pot. Put the lid on the pot and place the pot in the oven. 
4. Bake for 15 minutes. Stir all the vegetables around and turn the roast over. Cook for another 15 minutes.
5. Coarsely cut up the potatoes and add to the pot. Continue cooking for another 30 minutes.
6. Slice and serve. 

Photos by Katy Weaver

Classy Joes (Sloppy Joes)

If you're a regular visitor of this blog you know that I tend to make recipes that are a little more on the creative side. This has never been and never will be a Pinterest baking blog filled with quinoa and Oreo filled recipes. Instead of appealing to the masses I would rather move the culinary arts forward and present my reimagining of a school cafeteria staple, the Classy Joe. Sure the Classy Joe seems like a twisted pipe dream of a hairy lunch lady with aspirations of getting a Michelin Star.

Fun fact! When fried purple potatoes turn brown!

Gettin' saucy!

Classy Joes (Sloppy Joes)

• Challah Bread cubed 2x2 in
• 1/2 lbs Tri Tip Steak
• 1/2 cup Onion minced
• 1/2 cup Green Bell Pepper minced
• 1 Egg
• 1/3 cup Milk

Sauce

• 1/2 cup Ketchup
• 2 teaspoons Mustard Seed ground
• 2 tablespoons Worcester Sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
• 1 teaspoon Garlic Salt
• 2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Brown Sugar

1. Mix all the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl. 
2. Be sure all the prep work gets done, like cutting the bread and mincing the vegetables, to ensure the dish gets created properly.
3. Make a egg and milk bath in a shallow small bowl. 
4. Cook the steak over medium high heat, one minute on the first side then one minute on the other side. Or just cook the steak to your liking.
5. Coat the bread cubes in the egg bath then sort of press the vegetables into the moist cube. Cook in a skillet over medium heat until goldenish brown (the cubes will be green thanks to the bell peppers.
6. Once you have a few cubes cooked then you plate how you wish. I made a column with my meat and bread topped with a slice of black radish and green onion. I also served it with some purple fingerling potato fries, that sort of turned brown after I fried them. 

As always Photos by Katy Weaver!

Miso Crusted Pork Chops

Fun fact of the day: encrusting anything in miso makes it taste 100 times better. There's no question that adding it to a pork chop would make it that much more delicious. Not to mention the fact that it makes a perfect centerpiece for a dinner dish. Served amongst baked eggplant and asparagus with apple ginger chutney it makes any dinner the best dinner of your life.

There's something funny about posting to this blog every week. It's easy to get caught up in it and just accept it and not take account for anything else. For example I now expect everything I eat to be as delicious as all the food I make. I also expect it to look as beautiful as Katy's photos make it look. Naturally that's sort of an unrealistic expectation. But why should it be?

It's a new year and that means new starts. Sure boxed mac and cheese is fine when you're tired and don't feel like cooking, but there's no substitute for a perfectly cooked pork chop when you're in the mood for it. In my personal opinion there's been too much accepting the status quo in this country. What happened to the greatest country on Earth? I personally blame congress and the banking industry. But to get back on track, this is not a year to go with the flow. This is a year of getting better. Doing this blog every week reminds me that settling for anything less than the best isn't an option.

Baked Eggplant and Asparagus

• 1 Eggplant chopped
• 1/2 pound Asparagus julienned
• 1 tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1 tablespoon Sesame Seeds
• 2 teaspoons Garlic Salt

1. Preheat your oven to 375°
2. In a large mixing bowl toss the Eggplant, Asparagus, Olive Oil, Sesame Seeds and Garlic Salt together.
3. Fill a small casserole pan with the vegetables and bake for 15 minutes. Stir halfway through baking.

Apple Ginger Chutney

• 1 Fuji Apple diced
• 1 tablespoon Ginger freshly grated 
• 3 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
• 1 Yellow Onion diced
• 1 tablespoon Brown Sugar

1. Heat the Apple Cider Vinegar, Balsamic, Onion and Apple over high. Boil out most of the moisture. 
2. Add the Ginger and Brown Sugar. Stir and cover. Heat over medium-low heat for 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Blend if a smoother chutney is desired. 

Miso Crusted Pork Chops

• 3 Pork Chops
• 2 packs of Yellow Miso Soup Mix
• Olive Oil

1. Heat just enough Olive Oil in a skillet to cover the pan over medium heat.
2. Pour the packets of Miso Soup into a shallow dish. Place the Pork Chops in the dish, cover both sides of each chop with the miso. Message the mix into the meat.
3. Place each pork chop in the skillet. Evenly cook on both sides. Don't worry the miso will turn out a little black. Place the skillet in the oven to finish cooking if needed.
4. Serve with Apple Ginger Chutney, and Baked Eggplant and Asparagus. 

Go ahead and change things up for your meal tonight. Put a twist on an old favorite and make it something worth talking about instead of just filling the hole that is dinner.

Photos by the great and talented Katy Weaver

Chicken and Dumplings

"Winter is coming." Well screw you Ned Stark. I say winter doesn't need to be a cold barren wasteland of ice, snow and family gatherings. It can be so much better and warmer with Chicken and Dumplings, which is basically like a hug in a bowl. Just remember even if there's no one to keep you warm this winter at least there's this soup to keep you warm, and hell you can even bring it to your office's Holiday party! But don't let Tim hog all the dumplings.

I had never made Chicken and Dumplings until someone on the Cooking with B.S. Facebook page suggested I make it. I'm glad I did, because this is one delicious dish and perfect for any winter day. So I before I made this dish I did a little research on the dish. It turns out that this dish originated from the Chinese province of Hunan when a village came together one freezing winter day, each farmer giving up a piece of that year's crop to the soup that would feed the village and give the soldiers stationed at the village to fight off the invading Mongols. 

Well it turns out I was on the Sweet and Sour Chicken Wikipedia page and this dish actually originates from, I dunno the South? Maybe some place in Europe? If you really want to know, you're at a computer look it up yourself! I have a recipe to write! 

Big news coming from Grub NorthWest and their line of salts. We'll keep you posted!

Chicken and Dumplings

• 3 Chicken Breasts
• 1 cup Flour
• 1/2 cup Buttermilk
• 1 Egg beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon Paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
• Salt & Pepper
• 3 tablespoons Olive Oil
• 1 Leek sliced
• 1 Carrot stick sliced
• 3 stalks Celery chopped 
• 1/2 medium Onion diced
• 4 Chanterelle Mushrooms chopped
• 52 oz. Chicken Stock
• 3 Bay Leaves
• 1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon Cumin
• 1 cup water

Dumplings

• 1 cup Buttermilk
• 1/2 cup Butter
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 1/2 cup Flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1. Get out your Dutch oven, and no I don't mean that dutch oven. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the Dutch oven over medium heat. 
2. In two separate pie pans, create a buttermilk and egg bath, and a flour mixture of well flour, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper. 
3. Coat the chicken in the buttermilk bath then coat it in the flour and place in the dutch oven. Evenly cook all three breasts until the middle of each is fully cooked. Should take 10-15 minutes. 
4. Remove the chicken from the pan. DO NOT GET RID OF THE DRIPPIN's! 
5. Let the chicken cool enough to handle.
6. Add the onions, carrots, mushrooms, celery and leek to the pan. Sautee for a good 7 minutes. 
7. Then add the chicken stock, bay leaves, and other seasonings to the pot. Tear apart the chicken breast into small pieces, and dump into the pot. Continue cooking while you prepare the dumplings.
8. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt into a large mixing bowl. 
9. Melt the butter in a microwaveable safe bowl. Let the bowl cool down a skoch. Stir the buttermilk into the butter, which will solidify the butter. 
10. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture to create a dumpling mixture. Let's take a moment to thank this week's sponsor's mixtures.
11. Using two soup spoons make little dolops of dumpling mixtures, and drop them right into the soup! Be sure to spread them out in the pot as to avoid clumping. Make as many dumplings as possible with the dumpling mixture. 
12. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cover with the lid until you're ready to serve it up! Enjoy!

So, go start a fire and curl up with some chicken and dumplings this winter and you'll fight off the cold at least for awhile.

All phantastic photos by Katy Weaver. Give her a Like would ya!