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Whipped this up in under an hour (mostly simmering time) using nothing but pantry items. Alternate name would be “Simple Weeknight Chili”.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 14oz can kidney beans
• 1 28oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 tbsp butter
• Medium white or yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp chili powder (the Penzeys stuff is really good)
• Pinch dried oregano
• Salt + pepper to taste

Method

1. Brown ground beef over medium heat in a medium stockpot, drain and rinse. Drain and rinse beans. Put empty pot back on the heat, add butter, onions, and garlic. Saute for 5-6 mins. Toss in chili powder, oregano, salt + pepper and continue frying for a couple of minutes. Stuff will stick to the bottom a bit, but that’s ok — it will come off later.
2. Add browned meat, beans, and tomatoes (including juices). Stir and heat until simmering. Turn down the heat to low and simmer for 25-35 minutes (or longer if you want — the longer you simmer, the more the tomatoes will break down). Done.

Serve with crusty bread and a beer.

A while ago I decided that I wanted to learn how to make bread. I have a love-hate relationship with bread, you see — I love good, chewy, fresh, crispy bread, but I hate most of the stuff you can buy at the grocery store or market. The market bread was disappointing, honestly — I was expecting great things from that and it was just boring, weak, and flavourless. Boo.

Anyhow, after asking David Humphries for a book recommendation, I picked up Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible (Amazon.ca, Amazon.com). It is an excellent book. After pouring over the introductory essays for a few days, I skipped ahead to the “Basic Hearth Bread” recipe, and gave it a shot. It worked beautifully. I made my third loaf of it yesterday, and I took pictures of the process that are over on my flickr account. Check out the set here: making bread.

Ingredients

• 1 kg stewing beef, in 1″ cubes
• 2 tbsp oil (canola, vegetable, whatever)
• 2 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 3 tbsp curry powder
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 c water or stock

Method

1. In a medium pot (with lid), brown the beef in the oil in three batches, and remove to a bowl.
2. Toss garlic and ginger into the empty pot where you browned the beef. Saute over med heat for a minute or two. Toss in the lemon juice and curry powder and cook for a few minutes (3-4). At this point the bottom of the pot is covered with browned bits of beef, ginger, garlic, and curry powder — don’t worry about that, it’ll all come off after you add the water and simmer the beef. It’s tasty, honest.
3. Return beef to the pot and stir well so the curry goop coats the beef. Add tomato paste. Cook like that for a minute or two.
4. Add water, bring to a boil, then turn heat to low. Cover and simmer for 1.5-2 hours.
5. 15 mins before serving, remove lid and turn heat up to med-high. Cook, stirring, until sauce thickens slightly.
6. Serve with rice and/or naan, and some sort of vegetable (I did garlicky-ginger sauted spinach).

Done! Yum. The curry powder is not hot at all. If you want spicy-hot curry, add as much cayenne pepper to the curry powder as you want.

I made this up the other night. I have no idea whether it’s remotely like authentic arrabiata sauce, but it’s yummy and easy.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 cloves fresh garlic, finely minced
• 2-3 tsp hot red pepper flakes
• 1 shallot, finely diced
• 1 med yellow onion, diced
• 1 28oz tin diced tomatoes
• 1 14oz tin crushed tomatoes
• 1 tsp salt, give or take - to taste
• Fresh ground black pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp decent balsamic vinegar

Method

1. Set a decent sized sauce pot on med-low heat and add oil. Toss in garlic and let warm up for a bit, then turn heat up to medium.
2. Throw in red pepper flakes, shallot, and onion, and saute for 3-4 mins until the onions are translucent and getting soft.
3. Turn heat up to med-high and add diced tomatoes, including all the juice from the tin. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 4-5 mins then add the crushed tomatoes. Add some salt and pepper, stir well, turn down to med-low or low, and let simmer for a while until it’s a nice saucy consistency and the tomatoes taste cooked.
4. Stir in balsamic vinegar, simmer for a couple more minutes, and serve.

You might want to start with less than 2 tsp of hot pepper flakes and adjust the recipe to suit. We like some pretty spicy arrabiata, and tend to serve this with sliced chunks of hot italian sausage, red onion, and yellow peppers over fusilli. It’s also great with straight up spaghetti and meatballs.

Update: Rob thinks it could have used a hit of sugar (1/2 tsp or so). This is possibly true.

For those of you who might be interested in this sort of thing, I’ve started a new project to organize all my collected online recipes in a single place (currently they’re scattered all over the place). It’s all a work in progress, of course, and you can find it over here: Dria’s Recipes. There’s also an RSS feed if that’s how you roll.

I haven’t made the majority of those yet, of course — I just collect interesting-sounding recipes to rifle through for inspiration later on.