My Dad's Chili Recipe

I made this chili a while back and it was really, really yummy. It's my dad's recipe and it turns out very slightly acidic due to all the tomato products, but serving it with bread remedies that. You could also add a small can of beans or omit a little bit of the tomato product.

You will need the following things for this recipe:

- 2 Tbsp oil
- 1 cup chopped onion
- 3 cloves crushed garlic
- 2 lbs ground beef
- 1 Tbsp cumin
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 Tbsp chili powder
- 2 beef bouillon cubes
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp oregano
- ½ tsp crushed red pepper
- 28 oz crushed tomatoes
- 15 oz diced tomatoes
- 5.5 oz v8 or tomato juice
- 2 cups water
- 3 bay leaves
- 2 cups frozen corn
-1 chopped green pepper

Heat oil and sautée onions and garlic a few minutes. Add in the beef and brown.

Okay, this recipe is just ridiculously simple.

Transfer the beef mixture with a slotted spoon (or otherwise in a manner that drains the far and oil) to a slow cooker.

Add in all the rest of the ingredients.

Set slow cooker to whichever setting you prefer, depending on how far in the future you plan on eating this delicious concoction, and just wait. The beef is ground and bathing in three varieties of tomato, so it's not as though you need to worry about it getting dry.

Enjoy!

THIS RECIPE IS:

Iftar Ideas: Lebanese Kafta

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Aby, who just had a baby on August 6th! Congratulations, habibti, and here is your long-awaited kafta recipe!

I don't know what it is about kafta, but pretty much every culture has their own version of it! I actually found the Wikipedia article about kafta very interesting. Call me crazy, but...

Anyhow, so here is my recipe for the Lebanese version of kafta. One of my favourite things to eat!

You will need the following ingredients for this recipe:

-1kg (approximately 2¼lbs) ground beef and/or lamb
-2 medium onions
-1 bunch parsley
-salt and pepper
-pinch ground cloves

We're going to start by talking about your ground beef. I used beef for this recipe because I don't generally care for the taste of ground lamb. So.

If you want this to work well, it's going to have to be minced. So, lay out your beef on a cutting board, take your trusty santoku knife (or something similar, but a santoku knife is the best), and mince up that meat. It will take a good few minutes, but it's worth it in the end.

Next step is to clean your santoku knife. Why? Because it is definitely the best knife to use to mince your onions and garlic. Maybe it's because I'm a slight person without much strength, or maybe it's because it's actually hard, but I worked up a sweat mincing the onions and parsley! Mince it up as small as you can without turning it into a mush.

Season the beef with your salt, pepper and pinch of cloves and then dump it onto the beef. Remember, this is an entire kilo of meet, so be generous!

Next, take your minced onion and parsley and dump it onto the seasoned mean and mix it up. Sorry to the squeemish - this has to be done by hand.

Perfectly minced and mixed ball of meat!

Okay, next you'll need some shish kebab sticks. This recipe will not be cooked over an open flame, so there's no need to soak them.

Take a large handful of the meat and roll it into a ball and skewer it with the shish kebab stick.
Then take it and roll it out into a large sausage shape. Once you have rolled all the meat into this shape, cook them a few at a time on a barbecue plate or a tawa.
Turn them regularly. You may need the help of a spatula so they don't fall apart. Don't overcook - they should be cooked through, but still moist on the inside. This goes great with thoom (Arab garlic sauce - recipe coming soon!).

My husband and I had leftovers the day after we ate this. We had a kafta rolled up in pita bread with thoom, hummus and tomatoes.

The night we ate this, however, we just served it with a salad, thoom and tomatoes. Very, very good, either way.

Enjoy!

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Thai Beef Salad

My Thai beef salad recipe is super yummy and adapted from this recipe, with one big change to the recipe and with specifications to the salad. Also, I always double the recipe.

In order to make this recipe you will need the following ingredients:



For marinating:

-1lb lean beef
-2Tbsp soy sauce
-1 clove crushed garlic

For the dressing:

-1tsp garlic
-1tsp chili
-1tsp ginger
-4Tbsp lime juice
-4Tbsp sweet chili sauce
-4tsp soy sauce
-2tsp sugar
-4Tbsp chopped cilantro (coriander)

For the salad:

-1 small head red lettuce
-2 small, ripe tomatoes
-2/3 to 3/4cups uncooked rice


I prefer to chop up the beef into about 1-inch chunks. It makes it easier and it makes the marinade more effective.

Marinate the beef in the garlic and soy sauce for at least three hours. At least three hours is better and gives a better flavour, but if you forget, as long as you can get will be good.

This recipe is all about the salad dressing. It it what makes this recipe delicious. The best thing is that it's ridiculously easy. Just combine all ingredients and mix it up. The garlic, chili and ginger can be fresh, jarred, or dry. It's delicious, no matter what.

Ingredients before...

Ingredients after!

For the salad, take the head of lettuce and chop it very thinly, almost as though it were shredded. Cut the tomatoes into very thin slices. Cook the rice. Remember: twice the amount of water to the amount of rice you have (so 1.5 cups water for 3/4cup rice). Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Now, cooking the beef is a little more tricky, at least for people who aren't very confident in cooking meat, such as myself.

If you prefer to have the meat more well-done, cook it to your desired temperature, but this recipe is best done with the beef just seared. For my Jewish friends, the beef is not salted before cooking, so to remove as much blood as possible, rinse and drain repeatedly after the beef is cut into smaller chunks. If marinating in soy sauce counts as salting, a Kosher alternative would be to skip marinating and add the soy sauce and garlic mixture after the beef is slightly browned on the outside and let it stir fry for a minute or two. There is no reason for my Jewish brothers and sisters to not experience this delicious recipe!

Now that we're all on the same page, heat up a frying pan (or wok for the Kosher alternative) to a medium-high heat. Do not add any oil or butter. Just put the meat on the pan, one piece at a time.


Now, once I finished adding the beef, I immediately went to the first piece I put on and turned it over, then went through them and turned each of the pieces over one by one.


Then I take them all out one by one, in the approximate order I turned them. The only thing is you want to make sure they're browned on all sides. If there are a few that aren't, just turn them on the offending side for about 30 seconds.

If you cooked the beef in a wok, just toss it, until sufficiently browned.

The beef should be very soft. Slice it into very thin slices and add to the salad. The beef should be very pink in the middle. I highly recommend snitching a few slices. They are very delicious.

Stir up the salad very well. You can either pour the dressing over it or mix it into the salad itself. Either way, it is extremely tasty.

Enjoy!

THIS RECIPE IS:

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Boring version of recipe instructions:

Marinate beef for at least three hours. Thinly slice lettuce and tomatoes, cook the rice and combine with lettuce and tomatoes. Mix. Combine all salad dressing ingredients. Set aside. Sear beef on all side over medium-high heat without oil or butter. Slice beef thinly. Add over salad. Mix salad well. Serve dressing over salad.

Easy Shish Kebabs

Shish kebabs are my absolute favourite summer dinner. Grilled onions are some of the best things I've ever tasted and... well, I like it all. And I have a recipe from my dad for you that makes shish kebabs easy to do on a busy day or on short notice.

You will need the following ingredients:


-1lb beef, cut into chunks
-1 yellow onion
-1 green bell pepper
-1 bottle Italian dressing (zesty, creamy, whatever your preference)
-Shish kebab sticks

Absolute FIRST THING you should do is, if you have wooden shish kebab sticks, soak them. If you don't they will burn while you are grilling. Just stick them in water and don't take them out until I tell you to.

On to business.

Italian dressing is no good on salads, in my opinion. I loved it when I was younger, but now I just think it is too salty and it covers the taste of the yummy veggies. However, due to its saltiness, it does make a pretty good marinade.

So, what you're going to do is lightly, lightly salt your beef chunks and marinate them in Italian dressing. You can do this for as little as fifteen minutes or as long as all day.

Now, I personally recommend marinating for around 3-5 hours. However, you might want to tweak that time depending on the size of your beef chunks and the amount of time you actually have to make this. We left it all day with relatively small beef chunks and my husband said he would have preferred a slightly milder flavour.

As for the vegetables, chop them into large chunks (and please feel free to grill whatever vegetables you want - onions and green peppers are just my personal favourites and I don't like grilled tomatoes at all).

I recommend marinating them for a shorter time than the beef because it's more about moistening then than anything else. If you grill dry veggies they get black and crispy, which to me equals burnt. We marinated the veggies for around a half hour and they were perfect.

Okay, photo credit for the next two photos goes to my husband. While I put the baby to sleep, he kindly impaled, grilled and photographed the shish kebabs.

So, as I put it, next you should impale the meat, onions and peppers on the shish kebab sticks (note: I believe the word "shish" or şiş means "stick" in Turkish). You can either put all one ingredient on one "shish" or alternate them. My husband chose to alternate:
They should take about 12-15 minutes to cook through (longer if you don't want any pink on the inside). Turn them once about halfway through.

My husband proposes the alternate "Iranian way" which is turning them constantly. While it is more work, he says that this way the juices don't fall off.

I recommend serving your shish kebabs over rice and with a light salad. If there are leftovers, you could try stir-frying them!

Enjoy!

THIS RECIPE IS:

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Boring version of recipe instructions:

Cut beef and vegetables into large chunks and marinate in Italian dressing for desired amount of time. Not forgetting to soak wooden shish kebab sticks beforehand, put veggies and meat on sticks. Grill 12-15 minutes, turning once.