Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Chiftelute, take 2

Last night was chiftelute, take 2.  I spent about an hour online looking up different recipes and none of them looked quite right.  Thankfully, as I was just starting, A came home from work early and gave me some pointers.


This time he said I nailed it ♥

Chiftelute cu marinade

Ingredients:
~2 1/4 pounds ground meat (I used half pork and half beef)
1 egg
4T breadcrumbs (plain, unseasoned)
1T dill
1T parsley
2t salt
1t pepper
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, diced
Oil (my personal preference is sunflower)
Flour for dredging

Directions:
Heat oil in a pan.  Saute diced onion until translucent; add garlic and saute 1-2 minutes more, until it is fragrant.

In a large bowl, thoroughly mix the ground meat with the egg, breadcrumbs, spices and onion and garlic by hand.  Shape into balls and flatten into patties.  Dredge each patty in the flour, then fry in oil. Set aside to drain.

For sauce:
In the same pan, heat some more oil and saute another onion (diced) and 2-4 more cloves garlic (diced) as above.  Add to that 28 oz crushed tomatoes, 6 oz tomato paste, 10 oz water and salt and pepper to taste (I used 1t each).  Bring to a simmer and add meat.  Let simmer about half an hour.

Serve over mashed potatoes, and with picked cucumbers.

* Our pickles are homemade quick pickles - cut a cucumber in half, then quarter each half into spears.  Place in a container with equal parts water and vinegar, 1T garlic salt, 1T dill and pickling salt.  Cover and refrigerate.  I made these the night before and they were very strong the following night at dinner time.

The verdict?  Kenna loved it.  Holden ate the potatoes and said the meat was funny (although how he figured that I am not sure since he didn't taste it).  A said it was just right.  This goes into the dinner line up for sure.

Tonight? Romanian schnitzel.  A made it 2 weekends ago and the kids could not get enough of it.  Tonight, it's my turn to attempt it! 

No comments:

Post a Comment