Salt Beef Dinner aka Jigg's Dinner

I love salt beef, maybe more than most people. I don't soak or pre boil my salt beef or cut any of the fat off, I love the fat. This is probably one of the most unhealthy meals I eat, because I eat the fat and it's filled with so much sodium...and well, I really can't help myself, I find the biggest plate I can and fill it up! This is another traditional Newfoundland meal, however, the salt beef is usually cooked as a side meat with another roasted meat as the main meat. Some people make it with pease pudding as well, I don't. I have never had a salt beef meal I didn't enjoy, although, I have to say I do like mine the best, nobody seems to make it as salty as I do. It's so simple to do, it does take alot of time to cook but it's worth it!

Here is a plate that I had at Thanksgiving, so there was some turkey on the plate too. What you don't see is the homemade cranberry sauce and homemade mustard pickles that were eaten with this, I had to make some room on the plate before I could add them!

1 bucket of salt beef , here's the kind I use, I use a whole pail if I don't have any other meat cooked, if I have other meat I use 1/2 -3/4 of the bucket

7- 8 carrots, peeled

1 turnip (rutabaga) peeled and cut into big chunks

1 cabbage, cut into wedges

8-10 potato

The night before, if you want, soak your salt beef in cold water, in the fridge. If not, cut your beef into chunks and add to a big stock pot filled about halfway with water. Some people pre boil their beef, if you want to do that, bring it to a boil, then drain the water and refill it half way with water again. 

Boil the beef, covered,for about 1.5 hours. Then add the carrot, turnip and cabbage to the pot. Cover again, boil for about another 45 minutes. Put the potato in and boil for 30 minutes.

Take it off the heat, pour as much water as you can out. I use some of the liquid for my gravy. Separate all the vegetables. Mash the turnip with little bit of pepper and butter. 

My mom makes doughboys with our dinner, I can never get them right so I don't have a recipe for them.

I also make dressing, also known as stuffing, with my dinner. It is super easy to make.

1 loaf of french bread

2 tbsp dried savory

1/2 small onion diced

1/2 cup liquid from the salt beef

2 tbsp of butter, cubed

Make bread crumbs out of the bread. I use a mix of chunks and crumbs. Then mix everything in a large bowl. Place in a casserole dish and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Here's my turkey

Leek and Potato Soup with Pancetta

In my food box last week I was given leeks and potatoes, well and lots of other stuff, but as soon as I saw these two things, I knew leek and potato soup had to be on the menu this week. I made the soup on a day where I work a little later than usual, and was starving. It is a quick soup to make, when it was done, my chicken was done baking in the oven. I didn't take any pictures, I was way to hungry to worry about pictures and could only hold the kids off from eating other things for so long. So here's the recipe

3 leeks, cleaned well and sliced thin

6 medium to large Yukon potato, peeled and diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

150 g chopped pancetta

2 cartons of reduced sodium chicken stock, or homemade if you have it

2 tbsp olive oil

1 cup of milk

salt and pepper to taste

optional: sour cream, shredded cheese, green onion or chives

Heat the oil in a pot over medium heat. Add the pancetta, cook it for a few minutes to give the oil some flavour. Use a slotted spoon to take it out, keep as much oil as you can in the pot. Let the oil from the pancetta drain on a paper towel. Add the leeks and garlic to the pot, season with about 1/4 tsp each of salt and pepper. Saute the leeks and garlic for a few minutes or until the leeks start to soften a bit. Add the chicken stock a little bit at first to deglaze the pot. Scrape up all the little bits, then pour in the rest of the stock. Add the potatoes. Cover and boil until the potatoes are soft. At this point you can either blend the soup, a little bit at a time in a blender or use an immersion blender to blend it. Keep it chunky or make it smooth. When your done blending, add in your milk. Stir. Taste, add more salt and pepper if needed. Add the pancetta back to the soup. You can top it off with any of the optional ingredients and you can easily use bacon instead of pancetta.

Fish and Brewis

Every now and then I get a huge craving for traditional Newfoundland food. This is one of them. It doesn't look the prettiest and it's very bland looking but it is delicious. The salt fat pork is not as easy to get these days as it was. I have asked in stores and they have directed me to slabs of bacon. That isn't what it is, there is no meat on it, just the fat. This is one of those meals that take me back to my childhood. I never ate the brewis then, but I love it now.

Ingredients
1 fillet of boned salt cod
7 potatoes peeled
1 cake of hard bread for each person

Scrunchions
1 slab of salt fat pork
1/2 onion diced
1/2 cup oil, I used extra virgin olive oil

The night before:
You need 2 large bowls. Put the hard bread in 1 bowl and the salt fish in a another bowl. Cover them each with cold water and cover the bowls. I placed a plate and a bowl on top of the salt fish bowl to keep the fish submerged. Soak overnight.

The next day you can dump the water for the salt fish and replace it with new cold fresh water if you don't want your fish too salty. When your ready to cook peel your potatoes and cover with water. Start boiling them.Cut up your fat pork into small cubes and place in a pan with the oil. Cook the fat pork for about 5 minutes. Dice and onion and put that in the oil as well.  Drain your fish, put it in another pot and bring to a boil, watch this pot carefully, it will more than likely boil over. Turn the fat pork fat off when it gets brown. Boil the fish for about 10 minutes, then turn the burner off. When the potatoes are cooked, drain off some of the water. Drain the hard bread, Put the hard bread on top of the potatoes. Cover and steam the hard bread for about5 minutes, or until it's soft. Drain the potatoes and brewis and drain the fish. Top it all off with scrunchions.

Beef and Moose Barley Soup

I ate moose when I was young and hated it. Well, it was more like I hated any kind of meat my Mom cooked. I still don't eat much of what she cooks now. An Aunt of mine was visiting from  Newfoundland not that long ago. She was cooking a big salt beef dinner and moose. After a lot of going back in forth in my mind, I decided to try it. I loved it! I was able to get my hands on some moose recently but it was a variety of steaks and minced moose. There was no way I was putting a strip loin or tenderloin in my slow cooker, but I had one inside moose steak. So I bought some eye of round steaks and made some soup for my lunch. I prep my food for the week almost every weekend. I've blogged about some of the stuff I've made here, here, here and here. Soup is so easy for me to put in a thermos and have a hot lunch when I get tired of cold lunches. You could easily make this with all moose or all beef.

 12 oz eye of round

10 oz inside moose steak

2 backs of beef bouillon

10 cups of water

1 sweet potato

2 medium yukon gold potatoes

4 small carrot

2 turnips

2 red pepper

Couple sprigs of thyme

S&P

1 tomato

1 green onion

¼ cup barley, rinsed

 Cut the meat in 1 inch cubes. Cut the vegetables about the same size. Brown you meat in a pan, then put it in the slow cooker. Throw everything else in. Cook for 12 hours on medium.

This made enough for 2 weeks, I froze half of it. I was also thinking about how great it would be with some salt beef in it! Yum!

Chicken Ezekiel Wrap

Almost every Sunday I make food for myself for the week. My job takes me all over the place, I don't have an office space, so that means no fridge or means to heat anything up. I don't have a lunch break, I eat whenever I can, which is usually at lunch time. Sometimes I pullover and eat on the side of the road, in a cafe, while I'm waiting for an appointment with someone or sometimes at our community kitchen where I work. This wrap was perfect for the week!

Ingredients

1 pack of Ezekiel wraps (6 in a pack)

Shredded rotisserie chicken

1 yellow, 1 orange pepper sauteed

1 onion sauteed

Hot pepper jelly 1 tbsp per wrap

1 avocado, divided into 6

1/8 cup of daiya mozzarella per wrap

Pickled jalapeno (optional)

Heat a pan over medium heat. Spread the hot pepper jelly over the wrap, put all the other ingredients in. Roll it up. Place in the pan and brown on both sides. I placed a heavier plate on top of the wrap to flatten it a bit.

Simple Slow Cooker Beef Soup

What is better on a rainy day than a hot bowl of soup? Nothing really! It was a looking ahead at what I was going to make and decided beef soup was probably the best option. It was a Friday, and I was going to be in a workshop all afternoon. Who wants to come home on a Friday at 5 and cook, I don't. So beef soup it is.

Here's what you need

5 eye of round steaks

4 carrots

1 onions

4 medium sized potatoes

1 box of beef stock

1 bottle of beer

1/4 cup of flour

a couple sprigs of thyme

salt and pepper

2.5 tbsp olive oil

Cut your steak into 1inch ish cubes, not need to be exact. Toss them in flour. Cut up the carrot and potato to be about equal size as the beef. Slice the onion thin. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a pan. Brown the beef . I did it in two batches so I used 1 tbsp of oil per batch.Transfer to a slow cooker. Put 1/2 tbsp of oil in the pan, cook the onion until it gets some colour. Pour a bit of stock in with the onion once they are a bit brown to deglaze the pan. Pour it all in the slow cooker. Pour the rest of the stock and beer in the slow cooker. Season with salt and pepper and add a couple sprigs of thyme. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.

Canning and Preserving

So it's been quite a while since I've written anything. I have been spending so much time canning and preserving over the past month I haven't had time to do much else.

This is my first year canning and I have to say, I think it may be a new addiction. Here is how it all started. I picked some strawberries in the summer and made a small batch of delicious strawberry jam. That was in July. At the beginning of September, a friend of mine posted a picture of salsa she made on Facebook. Then I wanted to make salsa. So I went out and bought what I needed. Then she continued to post pictures of jam that she made. So naturally I went out and bought 25lbs each of pears and peaches, a bushel of pickling cucumbers, beets, tomatoes and green beans. I spent the entire weekend canning. I was exhausted. Two weeks later, I went out to buy more beets, because they were so delicious. I also bought hot peppers, a giant bag of onions and more pickling cucumbers.

I have a Pinterest board just for everything I've made and one for what I want to make.

Here they are

What I want to make

What I made

I have been sharing and trading and looking forward to making so much more.

Here's my canned stuff, there is quite a bit missing from here!