The Fat Unlces Recipes Page!
Everything you could possibly want to eat, so long as your wants and desires are restricted to recipes actually listed on this page
Fat Uncle Mike's Transylvania Beef Stew! This is a great choice if you're looking for something
easy to cook on your day off, then divide into single servings and put into the fridge or freezer for the week.
Note that the following recipe is presented in its original great tasting but incredibly fattening form. To make
the recipe into something that delivers more of a value for the calories you're spending, choose organic grass fed beef or
buffalo, choose center cut bacon or any lean pork, and drop the olive oil or add a very limited amount for flavor after cooking.
Drop the Puliszka entirely, there's no way to make it a reasonable value for calories and still have it taste like Puliszka. If you
need a grain, use quinoa or brown rice, both of which go very well with stews and give you something for the calories.
You will need:
1/4 pound smoked slab bacon (I like beef bacon, myself)
1 pound of stewing beef, such as top round or flank steak
1 pound of cubed lamb or mutton for stewing
(If you cannot find chunks of lamb for stewing, you can use 2 lbs of beef alone.
Or, if you prefer lamb, use two pounds of lamb instead of beef.)
Five large yellow onions, finely chopped (About three or four cups)
Five cloves of garlic
"handfull" of fresh cilantro
three Bay Leaves
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of pureed tomato (Roma Tomato)
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup beef broth
1 tsp salt
1 tsp coarse ground black pepper
1/4 tsp marjoram
1 tsp hot paprika
1 tsp sweet paprika
First, cut the bacon into two inch by 1/4 inch strips, and make sure the beef and/or lamb is in one to two inch cubes.
fry bacon in skillet until golden, but not crisp. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a side dish. Fry the onions
in the same pan until they turn translucent, adding olive oil as/if necessary. Scrape everything into a large flame proof casserole or stovetop tureen.
heat the olive oil in the same pan, and start to brown the cubed beef and lamb. When the meat is browned, transfer it into the same pot as the onion.
After this, stir the white wine into the tomato puree, then add the dry powdered spices to the pan, stirring everything together, and simmer for two minutes.
When done, pour of the mixture over the beef and onion in the pot. Don't worry if the sauce is thick.
Place the pot over a low fire and start to cook slowly. Stir regularly, and press or crush in the garlic cloves. Chop the cilantro (it needn't be finely chopped)
and stir it into the pot. Add the bay leaves also.
Cover and slow cook over the next couple of hours, gradually stirring in the beef broth. The onions should break down into a thick gravy. So if the stew is
too thin, simmer it a bit longer until it thickens.
After a couple of hours, stir in the bacon (If you like). Simmer another half hour.
Ta-Dah! Serve with Puliszka! This is a very hearty and thick stew. So make sure you have your roughage that day as well.
Puliszka, or rather, Mammaliga. It's a kind of polenta. It's something of the Romanian national dish, and most Hungarians who live in Transylvania love it, too.
It's a nice compliment to many meat dishes. You would use it inplace of potatoes, whether boiled or mashed.
Here's how I make it:
Mix one cup of stone-ground yellow corn meal into one cup of milk with a whisk. Lightly whip until smooth.
Bring three cups of water to boil in a saucepan. When it begins to boil, stir in the cornmeal-milk mixture. Keep stirring until well mixed in, and lower the heat.
Add a teaspoon of salt, a half teaspoon of coarse-ground black pepper, and a half teaspoon of garlic powder.
Continue to stir, and add anything from 1/2 to one whole stick of butter. Stir until butter is melted in.
Once the butter has melted into the mix, take the puliszka off the fire and cover for a couple of minutes.
It serves about four, and you can alter the proportions to suit how thick you like it, or how creamy you like it.
Many Romanians will add cheese to it on their plates-- maybe feta or some pungent but mild cheese.
I recommend it as a side with meat heavy stews, or plain grilled steaks. A nice red wine goes well with it, too, and you can eat it on its own. Only takes ten minutes
to make, and very convenient.