Seafood stew on a cold, rainy day

Today was cold, rainy, and the best sort of weather for staying indoors with a good book or video game, and it just so happens to be the day slated to try out Seafood Stew. When I first decided to cook through the list of Tales of Symphonia recipes, I just looked up the names of the recipes on Google. Most of the recipes came from allrecipes.com, as is the case for Seafood Stew, which is a thick, American-style stew. Here is the recipe, courtesy of allrecipes.com:

Seafood Stew

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups chicken broth 1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice 2 teaspoons chili powder 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained 3/4 cup julienned green pepper

3/4 cup julienned sweet red or yellow pepper 1/2 cup thinly sliced onion 8 ounces orange roughy or red snapper fillets, cut into 1-inch pieces 4 ounces uncooked medium shrimp, peeled and deveined 3/4 cup orange juice concentrate

Directions:

1.

In a saucepan, bring broth to a boil. Add the rice, chili powder and garlic; return to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until rice is tender. Add the tomatoes, peppers and onion. Cover and cook over medium heat until vegetables are tender. Add fish, shrimp and orange juice concentrate. Cover and simmer for 2-4 minutes or until the fish flakes easily with a fork and the shrimp turn pink. I also included dried seaweed (like the stuff that goes around sushi) to replace the kelp that the game requires, some lemon juice (no scurvy for us!) and some black pepper because, as I think I've mentioned, I put black pepper on almost everything. We're having this flavorful stew with a side of cornbread, courtesy of a Jiffy cornbread mix. :-)  And the verdict is.... It's... different. Not quite what I was expecting. If you like citrus and fish, you'll probably like this stew. And that's all I have to say about that.

Hamburger steak, twice-baked potatoes, and green beans -- a meal fit for a queen! Or maybe an empress. Or maybe just us.

One of the recipes in Tales of Symphonia is steak with onions. I had a pound of hamburger meat thawed, and time to work on a Tales recipe, so I decided on that Southern classic: hamburger steak. At least, I think of it as Southern because my grandmother makes it pretty often, and I tend to see it in home-cooking restaurants in my home state of Mississippi. So, what did I do first on that Sunday that I decided to make hamburger steak for the first time? I called my grandmother, of course. In any case, here’s Granny’s recipe for hamburger steak:

Ingredients:

1 lb. hamburger meat

Some oatmeal (the real stuff, not the instant)

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 Tbsp steak sauce

1 egg

Salt & pepper to taste

3 Tbsp chopped onion

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together. Make into patties.

2. Cook slowly in a frying pan until they are done.

3. Pour off some of the grease, chop onion, and add a little flour to remaining grease to make gravy, or simply slice onion and bell pepper and sautee in remaining grease instead. In either case, cook until the onions are translucent.

And here’s how I actually did it (and then wondered why hers tastes so much better!)

Ingredients:

1 lb. hamburger meat

1 Tbsp of extra thick Worcestershire sauce

Salt & pepper & garlic powder to taste

3 Tbsp chopped onion

the rest of half of an onion, chopped

1/2 red bell pepper, sliced

1 Tbsp flour

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together. Make into patties.

2. Cook slowly in a frying pan until they are done.

3. There wasn't much grease left, so I just added a tablespoon of flour and the rest of the chopped onion I had... yeah, turns out I don't really know how to make gravy ... so I added about a tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and kept using my wooden spatula to scrape up the thin roux (I think that's what it's called) that tried to stick to the bottom of the pan, and proceeded to cook chopped onions and bell pepper slices. 

 

Next time, I think I'll make brown gravy from a mix and sautee some sliced mushrooms and pour that over the top. My favorite hamburger steak (from a restaurant) is at the White Star Cafe in Water Valley, MS. Yum... brown gravy, mushrooms, and lots of black pepper. That's the trouble with moving to a new state. You have to find new favorite restaurants that don't break your budget. :-) 

On the side with the hamburger steak, we had twice baked potatoes and green beans. Here are the recipes: 

Twice-Baked Potatoes for Two 

2 medium russet potatoes 

1 tablespoon light ranch salad dressing 

shredded cheese (We like the "Mexican" blend that we get at the Hy Vee, which is similar to Wal-Mart's "fiesta" blend.)

1 chopped fresh Roma tomato 

cooked and chopped bacon would be good, but I thought of that one too late to add.

1. Scrub potatoes and then poke holes in them with a fork. Cook in microwave until they've softened a bit. It took about 5 minutes total in my microwave. 

2. Cut open potatoes and scrape out most of the insides. Mix the inside of the potato with salad dressing and a little shredded cheese. Here's where you would also add chopped cooked bacon if you thought ahead.

3. Spoon filling back into potatoes and top with shredded cheese. 

4. Place potatoes on a cookie sheet and bake until the cheese is melted at 350 degrees F. 

5. Put potatoes on plates, and sprinkle chopped tomato on top.

6. Enjoy!

I'll be honest, I'm about the pickiest person on the planet when it comes to how canned green beans are prepared. I like the way my grandmother makes them (complete with bacon fat), and I like the way I make them. 

Green Beans

1 can French-style green beans

black pepper

garlic powder 

1. Open the can, drain the green beans, and then rinse them at least three times to get rid of the taste of the can. Double Luck brand green beans are the best, but I don't even know where to begin finding that brand now that I no longer live in the South. 

2. Pour in half a can of water with the green beans and cook over medium heat until the water has evaporated. Sprinkle garlic powder and black pepper to taste. Personally, I love black pepper and garlic powder, so you may see a trend in this blog. :-) 

Enjoy the Southern classic, blogged far from home.

Dwarven Vow #2: Never abandon someone in need.

In spite of a brief hiatus in the world of blogging, my wonderful husband has been helping cook even further. It was a long work week and I hurt my back, but he definitely gets the whole "Never abandon someone in need." At least, where I'm concerned.  He took care of two recipes at once: omelet and fried rice.

Omelets are really quite simple, so long as you don't overload them with ingredients. At least, that's what he tells me. The Tales crew always puts rice in their omelets, so he tried to do the same. He took brown rice, cooked and cooled in the refrigerator overnight and stir fried it in a little olive oil and soy sauce with salt, pepper, chopped carrots, and bell pepper. That was the fried rice part. He beat 2-3 eggs in a separate cup with herbs and spices that he liked (he tends to cook by smell; he did mention that he used Greek seasoning), and then fluffed the eggs with chopsticks and poured it over the whole thing and let it cook until it was firm on the bottom before trying to turn or fold it. He added cheese before it was done to make sure it was melted.

 

 Hm, could have sworn that picture was turned sideways when I uploaded it.... Oh well. And we were supposed to add tomatoes to it... the game would probably say we failed to cook it, but we leveled up, anyway. :-) One nice thing about this dish is that it's pretty cheap to make.