Witchy Kitchen

Tag: beef

  • Violet Beauregarde-inspired Three Course Dinner

    #FFDahlicious is a month for tasty eats inspired by Roald Dahl hosted by Katarina @ Pretty Cake Machine. Check the hashtag or the link up for lots of Dahl-inspired dishes.

    Violet Beauregarde, the gum-smacking, slang-slinging, disobedient daughter of a car salesman, is the second child to meet her demise in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but not before enjoying a lovely three course meal in the form of gum. 

    Before she’s rolled away to be juiced, she enjoys tomato soup, roast beef with a baked potato, and then the cause of her downfall: blueberry pie. 

    Without Willy Wonka’s assistance, I was unable to create this gum exactly as it was described (probably a good thing), but I did create the meal that inspired it! This tomato soup was completely simple, yet fabulous thanks to the slow roasted tomatoes, it had become my go-to recipe. The roast beef was nicely cooked with a red wine gravy. And the blueberry pies were miniature with an almond crust, a sweet bite at the end of a lovely meal. Don’t feel bad for Violet, all in all it’s not a bad way to go.

    Violet Beauregarde’s Three Course Dinner


    Tomato Soup

    • 2 pounds roma tomatoes, cut into thick slices
    • 1 head garlic
    • 1/2 an onion, sliced
    • olive oil, salt & pepper
    • 5 cups chicken broth (homemade and flavorful if possible, I made mine from the bones of an Arabic style roast chicken)
    • cream to garnish
    Heat oven to 350°. Toss tomatoes with a good amount of olive oil, salt and pepper, and spread in a single layer on a baking sheet (or two if you don’t have a very large one). In another baking dish, toss the onions with olive oil, salt and pepper. Cut the top off a head of garlic and wrap it in foil, drizzled with a little olive oil. Put everything in the oven. Bake, flipping the tomatoes every half hour and stirring the onions once in awhile, until tomatoes are cooked and caramelizing and onion is golden (tomatoes will take about an hour and a half, onions probably only a half hour – check and make sure not to burn). Leave garlic in until roasted and soft, an hour to an hour and a half. Puree tomatoes, onions, and garlic in a blender with a little chicken broth, then pour into a pot. Stir in the rest of the chicken broth, adjusting seasoning if necessary, and gently heat, slowly simmering for 15 minutes or so. Serve hot with a little cream for garnish.

    Roast Beef

    I shall direct you to Simply Recipes, whose detailed method I followed pretty much exactly, including making the red wine gravy.

    (Mini) Blueberry Pie (with almond crust)

    For the crust
    • 2 cups almond flour
    • 2 tablespoons butter
    • 1 egg
    • good pinch salt
    Blitz together almond flour and butter in a food processor, then blitz in egg and salt. Press into a prepared mini muffin tin and bake (before filling) at 350° for 8 minutes. For the filling I made this lightly sweetened, still very tart. You can increase the amount of honey to 1/2 cup if you’d like.
    • 1 pint blueberries
    • 1/4 cup honey
    • pinch salt
    • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
    In a small saucepan, heat half the blueberries with honey and salt. Mix cornstarch in 1/4 cup of water and add to the saucepan, stirring until blueberries are broken down and mixture is thick. Remove from heat, and stir remaining blueberries into the mixture. Spoon into the crusts in the mini muffin tin and bake at 350° for 20 minutes. Cool in the muffin tin before removing.

    Recipe for Fiction Kitchen Episode 21: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in which Carrie and Diana talk the book and movies, including awful and/or bland children, mint sugar grass production techniques, wistful buttercup sipping, questionable treatment of animals and small humans, a little chocolate and a lot of vegetables.

  • Emergency Sausage Rolls

    Emergency Sausage Rolls

    Have you ever been so busy torturing your husband with a glue gun that you just didn’t have time to prepare your dish for the neighborhood potluck? Well in such an occasion these are great to have in the freezer. (I didn’t actually try freezing these, but I bet they’d do ok).

    These savory homemade sausages are fragrant and sweet from the fall flavors of apple, caramelized onion, sage and warm spices, and are wrapped in puff pastry, the harried housewife’s best friend. They’re fantastic with mustard, and were a hit with our household if you don’t count the two year old who thinks he’s a fruitarian.


    Illustration by Helene. Also, I am such an Alison.

    Emergency Sausage Rolls

    Makes 40 rolls. You can easily half this recipe, or do what I did and make 20 rolls and just eat the leftover sausages by themselves for breakfasts

    • 1 pound ground beef (pork or lamb would also work)
      2-3 tablespoons flavorless oil, plus more for frying
    • 1 large onion, chopped
    • 2 cloves garlic, grated
    • 1/2 Granny Smith apple, peeled and finely chopped
    • 1 teaspoon garam masala, or mixture of spices such as cinnamon, cloves, allspice, cumin, black pepper, etc.
    • 1 packed tablespoon sage, finely chopped
    • 1 1/2 pieces bread, well toasted and crumbled into breadcrumbs
    • salt to taste, I used a teaspoon and then another good pinch
    • 4 sheets puff pastry, partially thawed
      small amount flour for rolling
    • 3-4 egg yolks, beaten
    • kalonji/nigella/onion/black seeds or sesame seeds for sprinkling

    Heat oil on medium high and fry onion until it is well caramelized completely golden, being careful not to burn. In a medium bowl, combine onion, garlic, apple, garam masala, sage, breadcrumbs and salt, then combine the mixture with the beef.

    Heat a small amount of oil on medium high. Take palmfuls of the meat, roll and shaped into long sausage shapes. Fry in batches, rolling over after a minute or two, until they are browned on all sides and cooked through. Drain on a paper towel-lined plate.

    At this point, preheat oven to 350°

    On a floured board or counter, roll out the puff pastry. Slice each sheet lengthwise. In each half, line sausages down the length of it and roll it all up, placing on a cutting board seam-side down. Brush with egg yolk, sprinkle with seeds, and cut into 1 1/2 inch rolls (about 5 small rolls from the long roll). Place on prepared baking sheets about an inch apart and bake for 25 minutes until golden brown.

    Serve warm with mustard.

    Recipe for Fiction Kitchen Episode 16: Orphan Black in which Diana and Carrie discuss amazingly talented Tatiana Maslany, emergency freezer food, powdered donuts, seestra babka, sardines, GMO’s and which clone are you?

  • Frankenweenies

    Frankenweenies

    Frankenweenie is one of those spooky Tim Burton stop motion animation features that I adore. The story is simple and sweet, a young Victor Frankenstein who uses Science! to bring his beloved dog Sparky back from an untimely end. It’s stylishly black and white, and draws heavily from vintage monster movies.

    It takes place in the charming town of New Holland, where each of the school children are hilariously creepy in their own way – my favorite is the weird blond girl who has a pretty Victorian bedroom and makes divinations from her cat’s litter box (“you’ll dream of me one day, won’t you kitty??”)

    There’s a good bit of food in the movie, including Mr. Frankenstein using fondue to make a point about compromise – aka no one getting what they want – and Mrs. Frankenstein has a classic housewife thing going and spends a lot of time in the kitchen making waffles and cookies and other homey foods. There’s even an actual recipe from a cookbook for Double Dutch Cherry Cupcakes (the town’s Dutch Day Festival is a fall carnival) which of course I’ll try at some point. There’s some good carnival food too that proves useful – salty popcorn is surprisingly effective for defeating reanimated sea monkeys.

    What made me really fall in love with it was the ending. (Beware, spoilers for Frankenweenie). Whereas I thought it was going to be a bland story of dealing with loss, instead the message is about using all your power to hold on to what you love. Maybe not the healthier of the two messages? But definitely the more interesting.

    For this recipe I cobbled together a few ingredients, electrified it with some savory seasonings, and served it up hotdog style – it’s aliiiive!

    Frankenweenies

    • 1 pound ground beef
    • 1 pound ground chicken
    • 2 slices bread
    • 2 tablespoons melted butter
    • 4 cloves garlic, grated
    • 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and finely chopped
    • good palmful sage, finely chopped
    • 2 teaspoons salt (and an extra pinch)
    • fresh cracked pepper
    • oil for frying

    Blitz the bread into soft crumbs in a food processor. In a large bowl, combine breadcrumbs, melted butter, garlic, apple, sage, salt and pepper. Add beef and chicken and mix well.

    In a frying pan, heat a small amount of oil. Shape the meat mixture into long sausage shapes and fry in batches, rolling to brown on all sides, adding more oil as necessary. Drain on a paper towel.

    Serve on potato hotdog buns with lots of dijon mustard!

    I’ve been listening to a lot of Bloody Good Horror podcasts lately; they did NOT like this movie. It’s worth a listen though, because what they say about it is not wrong – they dislike the super dry humor, the too dark imagery, and the muddied end message. I liked it for all the reasons they didn’t; at one point they ask, “who is this movie for??” to which I answer “for me!” It’s not going to be everyone’s dog biscuit, but it hits all the quadrants (spooky, stylish, quirky and sweet) of the things I love.