Category: Main Dishes

Marinated Beef and Sweet Potato Stir Fry

Once upon a time many years ago, I had the opportunity to enjoy Lake Superior from the deck of a thirty-seven foot sailboat built by Gene Newhouse in Ashland, Wisconsin. I was introduced to Gene by my fishing partner Earl who was an experienced sailor. Gene was always looking for people to help crew the boat, and he decided that I could be taught enough to be of some help.

We had some wonderful adventures. I remember almost continuous lightning and high waves one night off the shore of the Upper Peninsula and an afternoon, nearly becalmed, when the thermometer registered ninety degrees just off Outer Island.

My memory of one weekend sail involves food. Usually there were just two or three of us on the boat, but Gene took pity on a couple of students trying to hitch a ride when the young woman said that she was a good cook. The boat had a cranky alcohol stove which worked best for making coffee and tea to accompany steaks cooked on the charcoal grill hung over the rail, so we were happy to hand off the job to someone else.

She took one of the three steaks we planned to cook if the wind was light enough to let us grill, sliced it into thin pieces, chopped an onion, a pepper, some potatoes and apples, made a sauce with whatever she found in the galley and wowed us with a stir fry. It was probably the first stir fry made on board Gene’s boat, and it was certainly the first stir fry I ate that included apples in the mixture.

I was thinking about that stir fry one evening while I pondered what to cook for dinner. A sweet potato that I had bought on impulse a week or two earlier caught my eye and I found a piece of round steak in the freezer. My previous attempts at stir frying round steak were not entirely successful, mainly because I have trouble cutting the meat into really thin slices.

I wondered if marinating the meat and cooking it in the marinade before I added the vegetables would help. Chopping the sweet potato into a larger dice might help too, since they could be cooked a little longer than typical stir fry vegetables without getting mushy. I added other vegetables that we enjoy in stir fries, and the result was excellent.

INGREDIENTS:

For the stir fry:
1/2 – 3/4 lb. lean beef
1 T teriyaki sauce
1 tsp. soy sauce
2 T stir fry sauce
3 T vegetable oil, divided
1/4 cup dry red wine
1 tsp. minced ginger
1 large or two medium carrots (1/2-3/4 cup chopped)
1 small sweet potato (about 1 cup chopped)
1 sweet banana pepper
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/3 cup chopped onion
Cooking spray
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp. chicken bouillon
1 1/2 T corn starch in 1 1/2 T cold water

For the rice:
1 cup long grain white rice
2 cups water
1/2 tsp. salt

PROCEDURE:

Cut the beef into eighth-inch slices about one and one-half inches long and put them into a quart bowl. Make a marinade by adding the teriyaki, soy and stir fry sauces to the bowl along with two tablespoons of oil and the wine. Mince the ginger and add it to the bowl. Stir everything together so the meat is covered with the marinade. Set the bowl aside and stir the meat occasionally.

The meat should marinate for about a half hour. That’s enough time to enjoy a small glass of wine before you prepare the vegetables.

Scrape or peel the carrots and chop them into quarter-inch rounds. If it’s a large carrot, slice it in half lengthwise before chopping it. Put the chopped carrot into a small mixing bowl.

Peel the sweet potato, cut it into quarter-inch thick slices and chop the slices into pieces about an inch long and a quarter-inch wide. Add the sweet potato to the bowl with the carrot.

This is about when I start cooking the rice. Rinse a cup of long grain white rice and put it into a one quart saucepan. Add two cups water and a half teaspoon of salt and bring the pan to a boil. Reduce the heat to a low simmer and let the rice finish cooking for about twenty minutes while you finish preparing the vegetables. Check after sixteen minutes to see if all the water has been absorbed. Remove the pan from the heat if it has, and fluff the rice with a fork before serving. If not, continue cooking for another couple of minutes.

Wash and slice the banana pepper lengthwise into quarters. Remove and discard the white membrane and seeds. Chop the pepper into half-inch pieces and set them aside in a mixing bowl. Clean and chop the green and red bell peppers into similar-sized pieces and add them to the banana pepper. Remove and discard the outer skin from the onion, chop it into a quarter-inch dice and add it to the peppers.

If at least thirty minutes have passed, it is time to start stir frying. If not, have another sip of wine or just lean back and relax until the meat has finished marinating.

Coat the inside of a large skillet with cooking spray, put it over moderate heat and dump in the meat and marinade mixture. Use a wooden spoon to stir the meat so that it does not stick or burn. Cook for three to four minutes, then add the carrots and sweet potato. Continue stirring and cooking for another six or seven minutes.

Add a tablespoon of oil with the peppers and onions to the skillet at this point and mix them with the other ingredients. Cook for about three minutes over moderate heat.

Dissolve the bouillon in the water and stir it into the meat and vegetables. Mix the cornstarch with the cold water and stir it into the skillet. Cook and stir the mixture until the sauce bubbles and turns clear.

Serve over the rice accompanied by bread and salad. Offer soy sauce in case guests want more salt.

NOTES: You can make your own sauce, as I sometimes do, but we almost always have soy, teriyaki and stir fry sauces in our refrigerator. The stir fry sauce I have been using recently is called Saigon Sizzle. It is spicier than some, so I thought it would accent the teriyaki sauce. If you make your own sauce, just remember to include the major taste groups: Salty, Sweet, and Spicy.

Do not omit the wine, as it adds flavor and helps tenderize the meat. The alcohol disappears during cooking.

Paccheri With Mushroom Sauce

I sometimes attribute my fondness for mushrooms to the fact that my father claimed not to like them, a teenage rebellion that I never outgrew. My mother did not always respect his opinion, especially when it came to using cream of mushroom soup in her noodle casserole. He would sit down at the table, mutter something about poisonous mushrooms and dig in with the rest of us.

Mom’s Tuna Noodle Casserole was a popular dish with us kids. It was also one of her favorites, because it was easy to make, and even Dad approved of it, since it was a cheap way of filling up growing kids.

However, none of us would have thought of cooking Paccheri with Mushroom Sauce. We had never heard of paccheri, Mom never cooked with wine and would not have risked a battle with Dad by making a sauce of ground-up and sliced mushrooms that did not come in a can.

If you like pasta, you will probably enjoy Paccheri. They are large tubes cut in inch-long sections. There are many recipes for stuffed paccheri that I am tempted to try sometime, but this recipe for paccheri with a mushroom sauce is a quick and simple way to put a tasty dish on the table to please anyone who likes mushrooms.

As you can tell from the photo, it is not a particularly colorful dish. Most edible mushrooms are white or various shades of brown and gray, and once they are cooked and puréed the result unfortunately looks like fresh concrete.

But the flavor!! If you enjoy mushrooms, I can promise you that you will not be disappointed. You can use white button mushrooms, but I think that crimini (baby bella) mushrooms have more flavor, and you can combine mushrooms if you wish. A good combination is a half and half mixture of crimini and shitake mushrooms.

The basic recipe comes from Ciao Italia, the longest running television cooking program on PBS. I changed it a little to suit our tastes. Here is what I did and what I recommend.

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 lb. mushrooms, divided
4 T unsalted butter
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/3 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 and 1/4 tsp. salt, divided
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
12 oz. package of paccheri
Water for cooking the pasta
Parsley for garnish

PROCEDURE:

Put two or three quarts of water in a large saucepan over moderate heat.

Wash and slice the mushrooms. Melt the butter in a nine-inch skillet or saucepan over moderate heat. Add a cup of the mushrooms and the pine nuts and cook them for five or six minutes until the mushrooms are soft. Transfer the mixture to a blender cup or food processor and make a nice gray purée.

Mince the garlic while the mushrooms and pine nuts are cooking.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over low heat, add the garlic and cook for about two minutes. Do not brown the garlic. Put the remaining mushrooms into the pan, raise the heat to moderate and cook for about four minutes, stirring often.

The pasta cooking water should be boiling by about this time. Add a teaspoon of salt and the paccheri and cook to al dente, about sixteen minutes.

Stir a quarter teaspoon of salt and a half cup of wine into the mushrooms and garlic in the skillet. Reduce the heat when the mixture comes to a simmer, stir in the purée and keep the sauce warm while the pasta finishes cooking.

Test the paccheri for doneness. Drain the pasta, reserving a half cup of the cooking water.

Add the paccheri and the half cup of cooking water to the sauce in the skillet. Sprinkle a quarter cup of Parmesan cheese and grind about an eighth teaspoon of black pepper over the mixture. Mix thoroughly, taste and adjust the seasoning.

Serve with a garden salad, bread and the same wine used for the sauce. Garnish with parsley and pass the remaining grated cheese.

NOTES: I tend to use sauvignon blanc or Chardonnay wine when a recipe calls for dry white wine, but there are lots of good Italian wines such as Soave that an Italian might prefer.