Beef and Root Vegetables Salad (Russian Salad Variation) | You've Got Meal!

This dish is a version of a mayonnaise-folded salad that is extremely popular in Eastern-Europe and in post-soviet countries. It is usually prepared during the winter, for special occasions like Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve. It is  a great recipe for winter because it uses meat, potatoes, root vegetables and pickles, so all ingredients were and are easy to find during winter. This version is most similar to the Romanian version, that has a fancy, French name "salata de boeuf", although the inspiration is not French, but Russian, from Salad Olivier  or Russian Salad. As popular as it is, everybody seems to have their own version. Some use chicken breast, some beef, some don't even use meat, some add peas, some are totally against peas...Being such a simple salad, it is delicious in any way.

I think is that delicious because it has everything it needs: the meat, the neutral taste (potatoes), the sweet (carrots and parsnip) and the sour (pickled cucumbers). It can be useless to give exact measurements, it all comes down to preferences, but usually you will need relatively equal quantities for the four components above.  All that topped with delicious home made mayonnaise.

 Ingredients:

• 400 g beef meat
• 5 potatoes
• 3 carrots
• 1 parsnip
• 4-5 pickled cucumbers
• home made mayonnaise made from 1 yolk
• salt

1.  Boil the meat and the boiled vegetables separately. 
2. Dice the meat and the vegetables. Dice small the pickled cucumbers and squeeze the pickles to remove some of their juice, or the salad will be too watery.
3. In a bowl, place all the diced ingredients, add salt to taste and  mix them.
4. Add mayonnaise to the diced ingredients and toss and mix well. Always taste, you might not need to add all the mayo.
5. By now, you can traditionally place the salad in a pretty bowl and cover with another layer of mayonnaise (optional). It can also be decorated with hard-boiled eggs or vegetables.
6. Decorated or not, it is delicious served chilled as a spread, as an appetizer on crusty bread or salad leaves, or even as a side dish for fried or grilled meats.

Enjoy,

Simple Homemade Mayonnaise- How to | You've Got Meal!

Ingredients:

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp mustard
• 250 ml vegetable oil
• about 1 tbsp lemon juice
• salt to taste

Method:

1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk and salt with the mustard and stir it or whisk it  until well combined. Adding the mustard from the beginning prevents the mayo to split. Make sure the egg is room temperature, it is easier to work with it.
2. Start adding drops of the oil and keep mixing. Add the oil slowly, that is really the only secret. 
3. Once you have added have of the oil, the mayo should be thicker and you can add the rest of the oil faster, even in a slow, thin stream. Now the mayo should start changing its color and become really thick.
4. Add the lemon juice, more salt if necessary, incorporate them and keep the mayonnaise in the fridge covered. Never let it sit to much at room temperature.
5. If the mayonnaise is too thick, you can thin it with a little bit of water. If it is to thin, add some more oil and incorporate it as before.

Enjoy,

Halloumi, Tomatoes and Zucchini Skewers- Easy Appetizer | You've Got Meal!

Maybe we should have started our posts in 2014 with this one. We had this appetizer for our New Year’s dinner and it was great. It can hold its own at parties, breakfasts or brunches and it can bring some Mediterranean kick to your menu. 

Like any appetizer should be, this dish is dead easy. You’re going to need:

•  some diced Halloumi cheese, 
• cherry tomatoes, 
• diced zucchini, 
• thin bacon strips, 
• olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, mustard, lemon juice.

1. If using wooden skewers, place them in water for half an hour before cooking so they don’t burn. 
2. The only preparation before cooking is to cover each zucchini piece in a thin strip of bacon. 
3. Skew the veggies and cheese in any order you want. 
4. Lightly drizzle the skewers with a dressing made of 1 tsp. of hot mustard, some olive oil, lemon juice from half a lemon, pepper. 
5. You can make this on an ultra hot grill or in the oven – we opted for the second way, mainly because we didn’t feel like smoking our house. Be warned that in the oven the veggies- especially the tomatoes will leave some juice that could use removing – keep an eye for that. It takes around 15-20 minutes, 170 Celsius, or until the bacon in done.
6. Serve with some more of that mustard dressing on top and (optional) some freshly chopped basil.

Enjoy,

Rabbit Beer Stew | You've Got Meal!

Happy New Year, Internet! Enjoy 2014 and try to clean yourself up after that New Year’s party. The winter holidays tend to be a period of culinary excess for a lot of people, so we thought we try and take things light for our 1^st post this year and rabbit does the trick.

The beer stew is still a hearty, full of flavor dish that can comfort you in the cold January, but the meat is light enough not to remind you that you ate all that meat at that Christmas table. Yeah, Internet, we know, we know….

Leaving shameful secrets aside, let’s crack down the ingredients: 

• 1 rabbit carcass cut into 7 parts (the lower legs, the front legs, and the body cut into 3 parts), 
• 1 large onion, 
• 2 carrots, 
• 3-4 cloves of garlic,
• 2 tsp chili jam, 
• bay leaves, 
• thyme, rosemary, 
• 2 cups beer (we used some light Belgian), 
• 2 cups chicken stock, 
• salt, pepper, olive oil, 
• white flour.

1. Start of by covering the meat with flour. Dust off any excess and fry the meat in a good splash of olive oil, o high heat, until the meat gets a golden color on all sides (it takes about 2 minutes on each side, depending on the size of your Bugs Bunny- yeah, you’re eating Bugs, get over it). 
2. Remove the meat from the pan and place it in a warm plate, cover it with some tin foil. 
3. Next, sauté the diced onion, diced carrots, chili jam and finely sliced garlic for 3-4 minutes on medium heat, scraping the bottom of the pan to let loose those delicious tiny brown bites. 
4. Add the herbs, either finely cut or whole so you can remove them later (we used 2 bay leaves, 2 fresh thyme twigs and 1 small rosemary twig). 
5. Next, add the beer and bring to a simmer on medium heat. 
6. Add the stock and bring to another boil. Pop in the meat, reduce the heat to a medium low and cover the pan. 
7. Cook for around 50 -60 minutes or until the meat is tender enough. 
8. Remove the rabbit from the stew and increase the heat to high in order to reduce the liquid to half. Meanwhile what we did was to remove the meat from the body parts and flaked it. The reason we did this was because those parts had some tiny bones that could get pretty nasty and because it adds richness to the stew. Add the flaked meat and the 4 legs in the reduced stew.

As a side dish we served some oven roasted carrots with cumin and orange juice. You can find the recipe in a previous post, you can check it out here. 

I mean, eating rabbit meat with carrot side dish sounds a bit ironic (insert light giggle here), but the stew needs some starch so feel free to use some wild rice or oven roasted spuds or some crusty dark bread. Serve with your choice of beer and enjoy this light, yet very comforting, dinner to celebrate 2014. 

Enjoy,