Stroganoff-Style Leftover Beef

Classic flavor with roast or braised beef

Cooler temperatures are on the way in our part of the world. Cue Beef Stroganoff – it’s a hearty comfort dish that always tastes best in cold weather.

And you don’t even need to cook the meat, because you already have some leftovers on hand, right?

You can make the dish ahead of time, too. Just reheat it when you’re ready to serve for a no-fuss dinner-party treat.

Gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, doesn’t it?

Asian-Spiced Chicken Noodle Soup

Rev up this traditional favorite with ginger, garlic, and jalapeño

We’re trudging through cold-and-flu season in our part of the world. Time for chicken noodle soup (a/k/a liquid penicillin).

You could buy canned soup, of course (and the leading brand’s logo is museum quality when painted by Andy Warhol). But homemade is so much better, especially when you add an Asian angle.

This soup is so good you may look forward to getting sick. And creating your own work of art.

Homemade Spätzle

Central European Comfort Food

Spätzle is a dumpling made from flour, eggs, and a liquid (such as milk, or sometimes water).  The name is Swabian (High) German, and translates as ”little sparrow” (someone must have thought the shape looked sparrow like). You can find virtually the same dumpling throughout Central Europe, although it may be called by a different name. For example, in Hungary it’s Galuska. In Switzerland, Chnöpfli or Knöpfle.

These plump little dumplings combine perfectly with hearty stews. Or you can serve them as a starch to accompany meat or seafood. They’re easy to make, and you can prepare them ahead of time (just reheat with a quick simmer or sauté right before serving). So they’re perfect for company, since they require no complicated last-minute preparation.

And the flavor of spätzle is satisfying and comforting. Just like the adulation you’ll get for making these little gems.

Singapore Noodles

This Restaurant Favorite is Easy to Make

You’ll find Singapore Noodles at Chinese restaurants around the world.  This dish offers a spicy blend of noodles and curry, along with veggies and often shrimp, pork, and chicken.  I can never resist ordering it when I see it on a menu.

If you’re like many of us in the US, though, you’d never dream of making Singapore Noodles (or any other Chinese dish) at home.  The ingredients may seem unfamiliar, and some of the cooking techniques can be terra incognita.  But there’s really no mystery to it — after all, millions of Chinese folks cook at home every day!  

Chinese New Year is just a few weeks away.  (It begins on Sunday, February 10.  We’ll be entering the year of the snake).  So isn’t it time to learn a dish or two, and celebrate in style? 

Almost everyone likes Singapore Noodles — we’re talking pasta, after all.  And it’s a fairly easy dish to make (less complicated than spaghetti and meat balls).  Best of all, the ingredients will already be familiar to you. 

Chinese lore says having a snake in the house is a good omen — it means your family will never starve.  I’m not sure about that, but I do know this:  Learn to make Singapore Noodles, and you’ll never need to eat from those little white cartons again.

Hungarian Noodles and Cabbage with Bacon

This Traditional Hungarian/Polish Dish Delivers Rich, Satisfying Flavor

This dish is popular in many countries.  Particularly in Hungary, where it’s called Káposztás  Kocka.  And in Poland, where it’s known as Kluski z Kapusta.  In some US ethnic communities, it’s called Haluski.  Same recipe, different names. 

When a dish is so widely loved, you know it has to be tasty.  And this one is.  The cooked cabbage becomes tender and sweet, melting into the noodles.  It delivers the sort of Old World flavor that you pay a chef big bucks to create.  But why go to a restaurant when it’s so easy to make at home?

You may have leftover cabbage (cooked or uncooked) from St. Pat’s.  If not, cabbage is currently plentiful and inexpensive in many supermarkets.  So now is the time to make this charmer!

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Corn Flakes Top this 1950s Classic

Many home cooks in the 1950s were mad for the new convenience foods — canned this or powdered that.  Although many of these items had become available earlier in the 20th century, they reached their zenith of popularity in the 50s. 

The 1950s were also the decade of casseroles.  “One-pot” recipes of the casserole persuasion have been around since mankind first invented cooking utensils, but people rediscovered them in the 1930s.  And eventually people realized that many of those swell convenience foods — condensed soup in particular — worked well in casserole assembly. 

Tuna Noodle Casserole was the quintessential 50s dish.  It required boxed noodles!  Canned soup!  Canned tuna!  Canned peas!  And a topping of boxed cereal!  How wonderful— you could make it without any fresh ingredients!  Convenient, no?

And amazingly enough, it was also a pretty good dish. 

Homemade Pasta and Noodles

Machines Make Homemade Pasta Easier

Homemade pasta and noodles are incredibly tasty — and relatively easy to make if you use a food processor and a pasta machine. 

Some will argue that mixing the dough and rolling it out by hand produces a more toothsome result.  And they may be right.  But unless you’re ready to make a batch of pasta every day for weeks on end to acquire the skill and muscle memory you need for this exercise, well, using machines in your kitchen is the way to go.