Italian Garlic Beef

Oh goodness, how exciting to finally be starting this blog!

One of my hobbies is medieval reenactment. I love the food from the era. It's so fresh and simple. There are so many flavors, and they come without loads of spices.

The epitome of this simple, natural flavor is in the recipe I'm making tonight, and I can't wait for you to enjoy it. My husband is fighting in a big tournament tomorrow, one where the best of the best goes up against everyone hoping to take his title, and he isn't allowed to win. The thing is, the one who currently holds the title gets a huge advantage, so he basically gets to choose who wins. Rumors have been going around and he's been hinting that it'll be my husband. Though this is merely a game to most, I'm extremely excited.

So, on to the food!

I offered to cook for the group and wanted to choose something that would be easy to make a LOT of, since it needs to feed 8-10 big fighters. I'm splitting it into two batches, so you'll only see the first.

For this dish, you need a lot of beef. The original 15th century Italian recipe calls for tenderloin, which does work out pretty good, but I usually use Eye of Round steaks. You can get a lot of it pretty inexpensively at just about any grocer. They come in big packages with 2 lbs, like this:

If they don't come in that large of packages, just get 2 lbs worth of eye of round steaks or any other simple and inexpensive steak you want. We've also tried this with pork and chicken, and while they were good, it wasn't quite the same. Now, you can trim the fat off if you like. I usually remove at least the bigger chunks.

You'll also need some sherry. You can get cooking sherry at the grocery store for about $2-3. While I usually prefer to keep a proper bottle for each type of wine I use, I use so much sherry that it would be ridiculous. This stuff works out fine.

You'll also need about a tablespoon of butter, a bulb of garlic, and a pinch of salt.

First, you need to peel the cloves of garlic. Leave them whole. You do want to do this before you get your meat cut so that the garlic has time to release its flavor.

Chop the beef into bite-size pieces, about an inch wide and across. It will take a little longer to cook, which is good, and I'll get to why later... You don't have to worry about the shape. This meat can be weird to cut and there's no need to waste - unless you're showing off :)

What a pile of meat!

Now, you may want to take this opportunity to tie your hair back if you have enough to, go to the bathroom, and prepare a glass of wine or a fresh juice for your cooking, because you won't get any more downtime until it's done.

When you're ready, melt butter in the pan with the garlic.

Once the butter's melted, turn the pan down to medium, and throw in the meat!

While this is cooking, if you want something to eat it with, our favorite thing to do is to slice up bell peppers and fry them with a little olive oil while this is going. I'd also like to suggest a french bread or biscuits - something to sop up all the juices you'll have! This is a medieval dish, after all. Since I'm preparing this for a lunch tomorrow, I'm not doing that now, but they're fantastic complements.

Now to why you want the meat to take a while to cook... The garlic cloves. If you give these time to absorb all the juices and flavors of the meat, they're wonderful to eat by themselves, whole. I never would have considered it before this recipe, but they turn out so soft and all of the intensity that makes them unpalatable is cooked right out. It's one of my favorite things to eat now!

You want to cook the meat until it's actually frying and starting to get brown markings, when most of the liquid has boiled down. You may see a lot of liquid when it looks like the meat is done, but don't panic! All that liquid just has to boil out more, so it condenses into the meat and garlic.

That steam looks delicious! But do you see how much liquid is still there? That's okay.

Once you've got the liquid condensed, it'll look almost thick and syrupy, like this horribly blurry representation.

That's when it's finally done!

Pull the meat off, sprinkle it with salt right away, and deglaze the pan with some sherry. If you don't know, deglaze just means to pull up all of the drippings and bits of meat still remaining. You can use any liquid to deglaze, but this recipe calls for sherry!

See that box in the corner of the shot? That's because we're still unpacking. It's hard to do when we don't have our garage key! I'll stop yelling at my new landlord in my head now... ooh, and see that splatter on the stove? Every time I make this dish, a piece of meat inevitably escapes. It's terrible. That's why the cat hangs out and "helps me cook".

Here's your deglaze...

Once that's stirred up well, pour it over the meat in almost gluttonous joy.

Then get your fork and enjoy!

Now, for the nutritional facts for those maintaining lovely figures (and don't try to say it's not, you're beautiful!)

Assuming you eat a quarter lb of the beef with a clove of garlic to yourself, it's 258 calories total. 12.8 grams of fat, 1g carbs, 32.1 grams of protein.

If you add about half a cup of bell peppers, that changes to 351 calories, 21.7 grams of fat, 5.6 grams of carbs, and 32.8 grams of protein. 

For those on Weight Watchers, the Points Plus value is 6.

Well, I sure hope you like it, and I hope you come back for more! Feel free to leave me a 'morsel' to let me know how it went for you!