Quick Dinner: Steak Sandwich

Oh my GOODNESS it’s been too long since I’ve posted! I’ve been a very slack food blogger this year, haven’t I? The Three Cheeses has celebrated its second birthday and I was nowhere around for it. Bummer. All I can say is that life has been busy, and I’ve actually been letting my roommates cook. Gasp, shock, horror, I know! The good news is that I have still been scribbling down recipes and taking photos, so prepare to see a few new things up soon.

To start off with, I thought I’d share this great recipe for a steak sandwich because it’s so darn easy and tasty. This is loosely based off of a Jamie Oliver recipe from 30 Minute Meals, but like any sandwich is so flexible that you don’t really need a recipe, you just need to know that it can be done.

I love this sandwich for several reasons. 1 – It makes one large steak feed four people. Alternately, it makes a few smaller leftover steaks (which are never that good the next day, honestly) into a delicious meal. 2 – It satisfies as well as the best pub food, for a fraction of the cost. 3 – It’s probably a million times healthier than aforementioned pub food, too!

Be flexible and creative with your ingredients, and you’re bound to love this steak sandwich too!

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Edited: February 1st, 2012

Luke’s Spaghetti Bolognese

Um, hi. It’s been too long, hasn’t it? So long in fact that my browser has actually forgotten my login information for the blog. Insert awkward laugh here. This should not be possible! My food blog is my baby! Anyway, life happens. C’est la vie, as they say. I’m happy to be back, and in some way it feels like that now we’ve passed the winter solstice here in Australia, I’ll have more opportunities for natural light food photos, which makes me quite the happy girl.

I have a fact to establish, in case you don’t already know: I cook for three boys. Two of them have never learned to cook, while the third (fortunately) is my fiancé and actually does very well in the kitchen. However, in my endeavours to get the other two comfortable doing things other than pouring sauce from a jar and ordering pizza, the fiancé really doesn’t get enough time in the kitchen—which is why it’s taken this long to share his beloved spaghetti bolognese recipe.

This is a family recipe, and one that holds much esteem with anyone who’s ever eaten at the Freeman house (which, trust me, is a heck of a large portion of Sydney’s north!). It’s a great go-to for feeding a horde of hungry…. um, anyones! Kids, teenagers, athletes, foreigners, colleagues, in laws, you name it. This spaghetti bolognese is great to roll out on any occasion (and it may have won me over way back in the day… just sayin’!).

Trust me on this one; when it comes to simple dinners, this one’s fantastic. Bring on the spaghetti!

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Edited: June 26th, 2011

Healthy Beef Lettuce Cups – Quick Dinners

Can I just gripe for a second about the lack of variety of recipes on the internet when it comes to ground beef? It’s a staple in my freezer, but let’s be honest, it rarely gets used for much beyond tacos, chili, and pasta dishes. The internet seems to have the same lack of inspiration. I was pretty happy to stumble across this little gem of a recipe after ambling around on my iPhone for ideas.

This quick weeknight dinner takes about twenty minutes to make, and is made extra-healthy with the addition of quinoa. You won’t even know it’s in there! The quinoa adds lovely body to the beef, and also makes the dish stretch a lot further than your 500 g / 1 lb of beef would otherwise. I have to admit too that I love serving up dishes in lettuce cups. They add such crunch and juiciness! Plus, they’re guilt-free which is always a bonus. This dish is somewhat reminiscent of the Chinese restaurant favourite San Choy Bau, but the spices I’ve used are almost Moroccan in flavour. Get ready for a new weeknight fave!

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Edited: January 26th, 2011

Baked Beef Stew

Right now is probably one of the few times of the year when weather in the northern and southern hemispheres is roughly the same. Cool, but with the occasional gloriously sunny day. And the occasional stretch of really cold rainy days where all one craves is a wonderful, thick stew. I don’t have a solution for the rain, but this baked beef stew recipe will at least help you out in the “What’s for dinner?” category.

This was my first-ever baked stew attempt, and probably the first time I’d ever eaten a baked stew, too. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a few places—a desire for Julia Child’s beef bourguignon, a find of some particularly cheap cuts of beef, and an attempt to not use a slow cooker. Slow cookers are so convenient, but I realize that not everyone has one. Hopefully almost everyone has an oven, however!

This baked beef stew is quite simple to make, and while it requires a few hours in the oven, it’s well worth the wait. The long baking period ensures that all the vegetables are soft and succulent, while the beef becomes tender and juicy. Probably my favourite part of this recipe was the roasted garlic cloves—sweet little gems of flavour that studded the stew (and without the garlicky after-breath). This recipe is especially good if you have some fresh herbs to use, such as sprigs of thyme, rosemary, parsley, basil, or really anything!

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Edited: September 13th, 2010