Mah friends

...contains chuck roast, dried porcini mushrooms, salt pork, carrots, onions, fresh thyme, anchovies, kalamata olives (shoulda been nicoise), tomatoes, orange zest, chicken broth and an entire bottle of red wine. It's Provencal-style Beef Stew from Cook's Illustrated!

It takes almost three hours in the oven, so be sure to only make it on a weekend or a day off! I usually don't like beef stew at all. I'm not a huge fan of red meat; in particular, chuck roast is way too fatty. But this stew is something special. We've made it once before, and it even froze wonderfully. I hardly ever see a whole chuck roast on sale in the grocery store. Most of the recipes we have for stew call for blade steaks, but cutting up a chuck roast yourself works much better. At $2.99 a pound, who could complain?

If I were to change one thing about it for next time, I would add more carrots. You can either serve it over mashed potatoes or egg noodles. I think egg noodles work much better. You can't really do huge portions with this dish (unless you're a big eater)because it's very rich. It's very, very good, though.

I promise to post about something other than cooking soon! I think meals are the only projects I actually finish. ^__^;

Exploding with delight! I never thought this day would come... but Alchemic Labo in partnership with Crescent Shop are staging an all you can eat preorder for the Chibi Unoa released in extreme limitation earlier this year.

Note: You need to set up an account with Crescent Shop to place a preorder with them.

Tonight we made Pan-fried Crabcakes from Cook's Illustrated's American Classics. They're made of super lump crabmeat with hardly any filler--they're like an awesome wall of pure crab! This is probably the fifth time we made these. I usually squirt lemon juice on top but occasionally I like to sprinkle them with Chipotle Chile Tabasco Sauce. XD

The side dishes were both frozen. The potatoes were some Birds Eye steam-in-the-bag thing and the veggies are Trader Joe's Brittany Mix. I had wanted to try my hand at smashed potatoes but there was no time! The crab cakes fry up in under 10 minutes and they have to be served immediately. =_=

The crabmeat is like $20 for four people but we always get it on sale. In our neck of the woods, sushi costs $35 for two people, so it makes crab cakes seem quite affordable.

Note to self: invest in better plates.