#stoganoff

From Gastroposter Tammy Best, via Instagram:

Spaghetti Squash Beef Stroganoff:

A bright, fresh and healthy, but equally as delicious, alternative to a traditionally heavy dish!

Ingredients:

1 Large spaghetti Squash

Drizzle of Olive Oil

1 Ib. Organic Grassfed Lean Ground Beef

2 Tablespoons of Unsalted Butter 

1 Ib. Crimini Mushrooms sliced

1/2 of 1 Yellow Onion sliced thinly

3 cloves of Minced Garlic

1/2 Cup Dry White Wine

1&1/2 cups Chicken Stock (beef would be great too I just used chicken because that was all I had)

1 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

3 Tablespoons of All Purpose Flour

1/2 Cup Light Sour Cream or Greek Yogurt

1 Tablespoon of Fresh Thyme lightly chopped

2 tablespoons of Herbed Chévre Goat Cheese

1/2 tablespoon Red Pepper Flaked

Salt and Pepper to taste 

Fresh Basil or Parsley roughly chopped

Instructions:

First things first we need to get that spaghetti squash cooking. Preheat your oven to 400. Make sure you have a stable cutting board and a sharp knife or meat cleaver. Raw squash is very tough. Cut both the top and bottom ends off of the squash. Cut the squash into 2 finger width wide rounds (they don’t need to be perfect by any means). I ended up with 8 rounds, for a large squash. Clean seeds and pulp out of each round and place them on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast until the squash easily pulls apart with a fork (about 20 minutes with this method). Once the squash is done cooking allow to cool, pull it apart, and set it aside                                                                 *cooking the squash with this method, as opposed to the more common way of simply cutting them in half lengthwise, produces much more spaghetti noodle type strands rather than a bunch of tiny little stringy pieces. It is also much faster to cook! 

In the meantime, while your squash is roasting away, saute the ground beef in a medium sized pot on medium heat. While the beef is cooking, whisk together the 1&1/2 cups of stock with 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and 3 tablespoons of flour. Set the broth mixture aside.  

Once the beef is just underdone add the 2 tablespoons of butter and allow it to melt.

Next add the sliced onion, sliced mushroom, and garlic to the ground beef and allow to cook until the onions and mushrooms are soft (about 5-10 minutes). 

At this stage we hope that there is a beautiful coating of brown, yummy, flavorful bits coated to the bottom of the pan. Pour in the 1/2 cup of dry white wine (it should sizzle immediately, if not turn up the heat) and scrape, scrape, scrape to get all of the brown flavor bits off of the pan and into your yummy sauce!  

Now its time for the broth mixture you made earlier. Pour that in with the beef mixture and allow to thicken stirring occasionally for about 5 minutes.

Add sour cream or Greek yogurt and stir to combine. Salt and pepper to taste.

Now traditionally the recipe would have ended with the previous step, but while I was making this it just tasted boring to me. So I consulted my mother and she agreed. I added the the red pepper flakes and fresh thyme hoping to brighten things up. It worked, but it still needed a little something more, so we added about 2 tablespoons of herbed chevre goat chese (this is simply a soft and creamy goats cheese with herbs added for flavoring). That was the right call it tasted perfect!

To finish, simply reheat the spaghetti squash if it is no longer warm and top with the stroganoff sauce and a sprinkle of fresh basil.

I've been insanely swamped with work, but last week I managed to conquer a big and pretty complicated meal. Recently having acquired the Vegan with a Vengeance book by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, I was desperate to make one of her recipes. I have never tackled seitan, so I knew I definitely wanted to try it. And since I LOVE mushrooms, the seitan-portobello stroganoff was an obvious choice. 

I have never had beef stroganoff before so I had no idea what to expect. Making seitan was a fun experience. I did it the night before and left it soaking in the fridge over night. It really did have a texture and taste close to what I remember beef having. The pasta mixed with the heavy mushroom sauce AND the seitan was definitely much heavier than I had expected, and it was hard to eat too much of it (we had leftovers for days), but it was tasty nonetheless. A very rich portobello flavor. 

The croquettes were awesome. I think next time I will keep them in the oven for less time, since they were just a little bit dry, but overall awesome. And a great way to get some nutritious quinoa in you!

Croquette recipe can he found here. Seitan Stroganoff can be found here.