Beef Provencale

When I was a kid, my mom was always getting these 'join our recipe club!' packages in the mail. With the invitations they would include a sample of the recipe cards. Mom never joined the clubs, but always kept the free cards. I have mostly inherited these cards since Mom doesn't really cook that much anymore. This recipe was from one of these sets. The set is called 'Simply Delicious'.

We decided to make this recipe during Thanksgiving week, since Chris and I both had off. We were going to go out on a 'date' but decided that we would probably have more fun and have better food if we just stayed home and cooked together. We also spent about half of what we would have for dinner.

The recipe is easy, but a little pricey. You take a beef tenderloin (go to the butcher, not the supermarket!), brown it in some butter on all sides and season with salt and pepper. Cover and let it cook over low heat for about 10 minutes. Remove it from the pan, cover it with foil and let it rest for about 30 minutes. Slice it into 1/2 inches slices, put it in a dish and spread with some garlic butter (6 Tbl softened butter, 2 cloves minced garlic, 3 Tbls finely chopped flat leaf parsley, mix together until smooth) and put into a 425° oven for 8 minutes.

Now you may notice the potatoes in the picture above. You should ignore them. They were part of the recipe that was annoying and should have been called 'Simply Bland'. I would serve this with a good gratin or mashed potato and some steamed veggies.

Now, this dinner (minus potatoes) was delicious. This is a very, very good cut of meat (1 1/2 lbs filet tenderloin cost us $35.00). It was tender and practically melted in your mouth.

The next day we decided to make lunch with the leftovers. Now dinner was good. We had fun making it. What Chris did with the leftovers was just simply the best sandwich I have ever eaten in my whole life.


He cut up the beef, mixed it with the garlic butter and basically made a grilled muenster cheese and beef sandwich out of it. The kicker? He toasted garlic in the pan before adding the bread. I know it sounds so simple but really it could not have been better. There was not one thing that either of us said 'oh next time we should....'

Yum!

Chicken Soup - Grandma Katie Style

Growing up, Mom always made chicken soup. She says the smell reminds her of her Grandma Katie. I don't remember Grandma Katie, so the smell of chicken soup reminds me of Mom. I feel like I've known how to make this my whole life. I remember watching Mom boil the chicken and then letting it cool overnight, skimming the fat, cleaning the chicken off the bones and then heating everything up again.

Recently, Chris and I made Roasted Chicken. I decided (before we even cooked it) that we would make chicken soup out of the leftovers. So on Thursday night, after work, we set out to make chicken soup. A lot of the work was done for us already. I had saved the gibblies from the chicken, along with the juice that collected in the bottom of my roasting pan, the bones of the chicken and some of the pieces that we didn't eat (wings, some breast meat).


First, we started a pot with water and the juices that were saved, which I skimmed the fat off of before adding to the pot. I cleaned all of the meat that I could off of the bones, separating the good meat, the bones and the sinew. The sinew goes in the trash, the meat goes in the pot and the bones get tied up in cheese cloth and then go in the pot. Gibblies get tied up in a separate cheesecloth and thrown in too.

We added about a half of a large bag of baby carrots, an entire package of celery, chopped, and an onion, also choppped.

Next are the spices. We added some oregano, thyme, sage, salt, pepper and 6 cloves of garlic, minced. I used these spices because that was what I made my chicken rub with.


We simmered it for about an hour, until the veggies were tender and the gibblies were cooked through. Just lift out the cheesecloth bundles, let them drain, and throw them out.

I don't like to put rice or pasta into my soup and let it sit there. I like it much better if you make the rice or pasta separately and then add it to each individual bowl before adding the soup. That way it doesn't break down too much and get soggy. We made rice this time.

We served the soup with a crusty bread and some apple cider (thanks for the idea, Vina!).

It was so delicious. Perfect for a cool night and worth the time we put into it on a work night (we didn't get to eat until almost 9pm since I got home from work around 7:30ish).

The best part was lunch on Friday. If possible (Chris and I agree 100% that it is), it was even better the next day.

Our pot was big enough for us to make dinner, lunch the next day and put a huge container in the freezer for another day.

Renée's Roasted Chicken and Potatoes

Whole chicken was on sale and I was sick so I decided to make a roasted chicken and then turn the leftovers into chicken soup. This is the roasted chicken part of the plan. Unfortunately, my camera battery was dead from the French Toast Experiment so there are not too many pictures for you here. I will narrate to the best of my storytelling abilities.

First you unwrap your lovely lady (the chicken, not your girlfriend) and give her a lukewarm shower in the sink (make sure your sink is clean on the bottom). Rinse out all cavities and crevices, also remove the bag that has the gibblies in it and put it in the fridge for later use in chicken soup making. (I call them gibblies, you got a problem with that?)

Now this part is a little bit hard but you can do it. Put your girl on a cutting board and get a small, sharp knife. Starting by the neck end, you are going to pull the skin up in one solid piece, cutting underneath at the stringy parts that make it stick to the chicken until you have a big skin flap that you can see the whole naked lady under (if you are really good you should be able to get the legs uncovered too, but that takes practice and if you can't do it the first time, its ok). Do not cut it completely free of the chicken! it should still be attached at the opposite side.

Now wash your hands. If you are smart you have made your spice rub ahead of time and can just start applying, but I always forget and have to make it after the de-skinning step. I just mix whatever I feel like in a little bowl. This time I used about a tablespoon of each of the following: sea salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, rosemary and sage. Mix them together well.

If you want at this step you can use your meat tenderizer or a fork to poke some holes in your chicken. I recommend NOT going through the skin, but hold it up instead and work underneath it.

Now the fun part. You are going to give your lovely chicky a nice rub down. Get some of that yummy spice rub and rub it under the skin of the chicken. Make a nice coating under there. Now you are going to stretch the skin back in place (don't worry it will stay). If you have left over spice rub, put it on the outside of the skin.

I baked my chicken in a clay baker (with lid on!) at 350° for 20 min/lb. You will be tempted to take the lid off and look - DON'T! Just let it bake and all the juices and steam will collect on the bottom. After its done you can take the lid off for a few minutes and let the skin get crispy if you want to. You want to keep that juice and bones and leftover meat for the chicken soup.

On to potatoes!

This part is super easy. Wash and quarter about 2lbs of baby potatoes (I prefer red, but white is good too, this time I used both). Put them in a large bowl, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle on some dried rosemary. Enough so that every potato will get some. Add about 1/4c of Olive Oil and toss until evenly coated. Then turn out onto a baking sheet.
Make sure that one of the cut sides is facing down. Bake at 400° for about 35-45 min. (If you want you can bake them with the chicken at 350°, but they will take around an hour or so)

Sorry for the bad plate picture but the lighting was bad and the flash reflected off the plate and then the camera died and I was hungry and didn't want to wait until it charged to eat. Yum! Perfect moist chicken and yummy crisp but tender potatoes. Don't mind the icky pile of green stuff. That was our adventure in frozen artichoke hearts. All I can say is, 'DON'T.'

Renée & Chris Try Danny's Diner Style Cinnamon French Toast

Today, Chris and I tried to make Danny's Diner Style Cinnamon French Toast. It was pretty easy and came out really good. Chris likes his a little darker than Danny suggests so that's why the plate on the left is different than the plate on the right (mine).

All of our ingredients:

Soaking our bread for 15 seconds:

In the pan with some butter:

All stacked up:


We found another brand of sparkling lemonade at the store last night. It's by Simply Enjoy. I'm not sure but I think it may be the store's new quality-type brand (generic but fancy). It was in our regular supermarket, Stop & Shop, and says that it is also from France, just like the other brand we tried, Lorina. This one was really good, just not quite as good as the Lorina, however it is half the price of the Lorina brand. I would definately buy it again.

Experiment: Herb Oil

I had some left over fresh Thyme and Basil so I decided to make use of the cool sparkling lemonade bottles we have to make some herb oil. It's basically fresh herbs and olive oil sealed in a bottle. The book that I bought this spring to help me with my herb garden, Your Backyard Herb Garden by Miranda Smith, has a section on using herbs in oil, how to store them properly and how to minimize bacteria growth. Since I just made the oil this morning, I am going to let it steep a bit before I use it. I'll let you know how it comes out.

Two Ways With Poached Eggs

Ever since Chris and I went to California to visit Danny and Tiffany in the summer of 2005, I have been ordering my eggs poached (in a cup!) when we go out to breakfast. This is because Danny let me have a bite of his Eggs Benedict one morning and explained that poached eggs were just like over easy eggs but without the butter used to fry them. Until this summer, when Danny came to visit us in NY, I had never attempted to make poached eggs at home. There was an episode of Good Eats on our dvr in which Alton Brown makes everything from poached eggs to poached fish and there are explicit instructions in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. So one morning, I jumped in with both feet and made some for Danny and myself. They came out great. Here I have two different breakfast choices that I've made recently. The first was made on 8.28.08 and the second was made on 8.31.08.

The trick is to not boil the water. I use a 10 inch sauté pan and heat it over medium high flame until the bottom is covered in little bubbles. Like this:


Both Alton and Julia talked on the use of vinegar if your eggs are not super fresh as a means of holding the whites together. In the first experiment, (which are all of the pictures in the pan) I did use vinegar to see how well this theory works. Another choice would be to crack the egg into a ladle held in the hot water and dipping it a bit to allow some water to come in. Once the eggs has set a little bit you can slip it out into the pan. I prefer to crack the eggs right into the pan, but it must be done slowly and with full attention.

I usually use my slotted spoon to flip the eggs over once in the water. I have no idea if this does anything or not to effect cooking, but it makes sure that they don't stick to the bottom of the pan.

Once the eggs are cooked (which only takes about 2-3 minutes) you can lift them out with your slotted spoon, wait a few seconds for them to drain and then plate. If you used vinegar, you want to rinse the eggs before serving to get off the vinegar. Usually what I do is set everything up first. I take out the toaster, put the bread in (but I don't turn it on yet), if there is any meat to be cooked or anything like that I do that first while the water is heating up. Once I am ready to cook the eggs, I put the toast on, crack the eggs into the water, stand there and watch them, flip them once and then take them out. By then the toast has popped, I grab it, throw it on the plate and top it with the eggs. If I have other ingredients to construct on top of the toast, I put the eggs into a bowl with enough room so that they aren't on top of each other.


The first plate is a buttered English muffin with poached eggs on top and sprinkled with cracked pepper. The eggs did hold together very nicely with the addition of the vinegar, however, I either didn't rinse them enough or I just didn't like the taste of the whites because of the vinegar.

The second plate is an Arnold Sandwich Thin (I really love those) topped with a slice of swiss cheese, ham that was heated for about 30 seconds in a pan, poached eggs with cracked pepper and a side of Potatoes O'Brien. You can find Potatoes O'Brien in the frozen french fry section of the supermarket. It is basically home fries with onions and peppers. I add a little black pepper and thyme to mine for some flavor. This is the batch that I didn't use the vinegar with and the eggs were definately more tasty, although they were smaller.

Baked Pork Chops with Apples

This was an idea I had based off of some stuffed pork chops I made last winter. Those are a little tedious to make and I didn't feel like spending a lot of time in the kitchen after a long day at work. So this is what I came up with.

First, we tenderized the meat with our new totally awesome Jaccard meat tenderizer (now with even more blades!). (This was our first time using our new toy, thanks Danny and Tiffany!)


The I sautéed half of an onion with one cubed Granny Smith apple in 1 Tbls of butter and a little olive oil. After they cooked for about two minutes I added some dried Thyme and a pinch of salt.

Next, I made some room in the bottom of the pan and added the pork chops. I browned them for about 20 seconds on each side. Then I put the whole pan, covered, into a 350° oven for about 20 minutes. (picture is before they went in the oven)


We made some baked potatoes and corn to go with and dinner was served! It was very good. Chris really loved it. I think next time I would add a little liquid to the pan before putting it in the oven, maybe some chicken stock or white wine. The chops got a tiny bit dried out. Also, I think I would brown them for just a little longer. They tasted fine and you can't really tell in the pictures but they were a little washed out and pale when they came out of the oven. A little more golden crust would make them looked even yummier. Lastly, I would peel the apples next time.

Definitely a great quick dinner.

Chicken with White Cream Sauce

Tonight I made Chicken with White Cream Sauce from the Julia Child cookbook because we were having our friend Anthony over for dinner. I've made it once before and I think it came out better last time. This time we had a few things that didn't work out quite like I wanted.

1) I didn't realize that the bottle white wine I had in the fridge didn't have very much in it, so I ended up using less wine and more vermouth.

2) I didn't check how much Arborio rice we had left and had to send Chris and our friend Anthony to the store to get more when I had already put the chicken in the oven and started the onions for the risotto. The chicken was out of the oven for more than 20 minutes before we ate.

3) My camera battery died in the middle of me cooking so there are not a lot of 'in progress' pictures. This is a picture of the chicken breasts once I cleaned them, rubbed them with lemon juice and salt and peppered them.

This is the cream sauce bubbling after I added the heavy cream

The final product on a bed of risotto (also from the Julia Child cookbook).

The chicken came out a little drier this time (probably from being kept in the pan for too long while they ran to the store) but it was still really yummy. The risotto was perfect, in spite of me having to throw out the first batch of onions and start over once the new container of rice arrived. All served with a side of steamed broccoli.

For dessert I made Chocolate Guinness Cake with Bailey's Buttercream and Chocolate Ganache. Yuuuummmy. It was so good. Check out my baking blog for details on that.

Edit on 8.28.08 to answer Danny's questions:

For the chicken I used white wine (chardonnay) and vermouth because that is what I had in the kitchen. Also, I used chicken stock since I was making chicken (didn't make sense to me to use beef stock). I'm trying to remember but I'm pretty sure I read the recipe wrong. I thought it said a 1/4 c of vermouth and a 1/4 c of white wine, but looking at it now it seems to only say 1/4 of vermouth. Oh well, it was still yummy.

Next time I make this I am going to follow the variation recipe on page 269 for Chicken Breasts with Mushrooms and Cream, because that just sounds delicious.

For the risotto, I again used chicken stock because I was serving it with chicken. I don't know that I would change that if I were cooking beef only because beef stock can have an overbearing flavor and this risotto has such a delicate flavor.

Chris & Renée's Sausage & Peppers

Monday night Chris and I made Sausage & Peppers for dinner. It is really easy to make and very yummy. First, you gather the ingredients. You will need:



Some Italian sausage (we got ours from the butcher but we also like the Premio brand)

Veggies, we like to use some red and yellow bell peppers, onion and garlic.


And some rice, we used Spanish style rice last night, but normally we use Jasmine rice.


We also cut up some cantaloupe for after dinner. It was so sweet and ripe, one of the best melons I've ever had. mmmm.


Start your rice first because that will take the longest.


Then grill and slice the sausages.


Cook the veggies in a little olive oil until tender but still a little crunchy. Then just mix the sausage in with the veggies. We simmered ours, covered, for about 5 minutes to let the juices come together and to make sure the sausage was cooked all the way through. Then, serve over the rice. Easy, fast and delicious.

Chris' Homemade Pancakes

This morning Chris woke up and said 'I'm going to make pancakes and eggs for breakfast! How does that sound?' For me, any morning where I don't have to make the pancakes but I get to eat the pancakes, is a good morning. I convinced him that pancakes were enough and we didn't need eggs as well, which made it that much easier on him. So he found a recipe online, modified it to what he thought sounded good and viola! pancakes!




I happened to pick up this bottle of sparkling French Berry Lemonade at Scotto's Pork Store the other day, and we just went to get some fruit yesterday. Top that all off with, I had to go to the store to get Cleo's breakfast since we ran out (you know 'cause she'll just waste away without it!) so I picked up some sausages.




Last night at The Guys' House, we started watching Season 1 of House, MD. Our friends literally all gasped in unison when we told them that we didn't watch the show. They put it on immediately. Next thing we know, its 2am we watched 8 episodes and we are totally addicted. Our awesome friend Anthony gave us a copy of Season 1 because his mom gave him one for his birthday and he already had it and didn't want to hurt her feelings by saying he already had it. So we had a short debate about whether to watch House or Firefly over breakfast and quickly decided that House is too gory to watch while eating. Put it all together and it looks like this:


Did I mention the hot syrup? MMMmmmmmm.........

Elsie Eggplant

Renée spotted this eggplant and had to buy it! She dressed it up to be the mascot for the BBQ Chris catered back on the 9th of August. You might think that nose looks like something else but you'd be *wrong* (Elsie is a girl)!

Renée's Birthday Cake for Mom

This is the chocolate and custard cake Renée made for her mom on her birthday.


The cakes were made the night before, and now it's time to put together the chocolate icing and custard filling.


Mmmmm melted chocolate! (for the frosting)


After leveling the tops of the layers by slicing off the tops, Renée places the the first layer on parchment paper that she's cut into triangles. The triangles are arranged in a star so they can be easily pulled out later. She covers the cake with a very thin layer of apricot preserves (which she's pushed through a mesh strainer) to create a seal between the exposed cake and the custard she's about to pour on top of it. This keeps the cake from getting soggy and also has such a mild flavor that most people won't notice it's presence.


Not only did she get cherries, she got cherries that were already soaking in chocolate. Renée cut off the very bottoms of the cherries so they'd sit on the cake better without rolling over (since the icing is so thin and won't hold them up).


Notice the way the frosting is pooling around the bottom of the cake. When Renée pulls out those paper triangles, we'll be able to remove that and make the cake look perfect around the bottom.


Check out that nice thick layer of custard! It was delicious!


Holy Crap! Look at all those dishes! But more importantly, check out that Hot Lil Pepper mug!! That's so totally awesome! (I made it, you can get one too if you want.)

I'm glad I was visiting when she made this one!
~Danny