Dishes with a few ingredients and a little fuss to make that offer a lot of taste are always welcome in my kitchen. This simple dish is one my mom made many times. She’s a very good cook: making exceptional meals, many of which are not the easiest to tackle. But even she needs a few dishes to fall back on when she wants to spend more time out of the kitchen than in it.
Wagyu Beef Pilaf
I started by sautéing an onion in butter in my cast-iron skillet. I then added my ground Wagyu beef, a dash of salt, a generous amount of pepper, and let the beef brown.
Once the Wagyu beef was brown, I added two cans of stewed tomatoes. The tomatoes were rather large pieces, so I used my kitchen sheers to cut them into smaller bites.
And here’s where I had to deviate a bit. This dish calls for mushrooms, something my husband does not care for, not one bit. But I adore them. To rectify this conundrum, I split the mixture in half: his half, sans mushrooms and mine with. In the still simmering second half of the dish I added fresh mushrooms, letting them simmer until they were a bit soft.
My Wagyu beef pilaf is ready to be served, with or without the mushrooms, over rice, later this week: when I’m too hot and tired to cook after work.
A Little Experiment
I reserved a small bowl of the Wagyu beef pilaf with mushrooms for my dinner: my husband was out with friends so I was dining solo.
A bit of cream cheese was still in the fridge, sure to spoil as I never have bagels on hand, so I added a dollop to my Wagyu beef pilaf.
Isn’t everything better with a little cream cheese? In this case, yes, it was.
With only about 30 minutes in the kitchen I had a meal ready for later this week, surely enough leftover for one of my lunches, and a warm, creamy, flavorful dinner for myself tonight.