Summertime And The Living's Easy

You know how there's the phrase, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?"  That's how I've felt about my food lately.  I managed to botch salmon in my brand new Weber charcoal grill, that horrible bread pudding in a not great round two version, and brown rice.  Plain. Brown. Rice.  It's like I started off with a bang followed by a steady stream of disappointment since--the void has been filled with take out and frozen pizza.  But I'm back on the wagon now and think I may have graduated out of my funk.

Hear ye, hear ye, I had another dinner guest tonight so the stakes were high!  Although my dinner party wasn't quite like this; god forbid we used a small piece of bread to push food onto our forks and I defied Emily Post by using my vegetables to mop up the extra sauce but all in all, it was successful.

This morning as I was trying to figure out what to have, I got a craving for a real American type dinner, maybe since I've just returned from DC where a whole lot of Americana was shoved in my face at every opportunity--the Sarah Palin Embarrass-Mints were hilarious and I totally should have bought them.  Because I didn't have time to look last night, I resorted to the Internet as my go-to recipe finder as opposed to a cookbook and boy did the possibilities open up.  I want to be a neighbor sandwiched between Paula Deen and the Neelys.

I settled for the scrumptious sounding Grilled New York Strip Steak with Beer and Molasses Steak Sauce and the Cheese-Stuffed Baked Potato with steamed vegetables on the side to give some semblance of healthy-ish eating.  How could you go wrong with these two things right??  AND I DIDN'T!

The first component I made was the beer and molasses steak sauce, which according to the reviews, could be bottled and put on pretty much everything.  I started with sauteing the onions and garlic in butter and then adding pretty much anything under the sun.  And I have a confession to make: I used ketchup.  Little known fact about Angela--I don't do ketchup.  Never have, never will was my attitude until tonight.  What goes on fries? Mustard.  What goes on burgers? Mayo.  What goes on hot dogs? Mustard.  There isn't one single food item on which I use ketchup.  But tonight, I caved and used *gasp!* 2 cups!  But you know what gave it the greatest taste of all?  The reason I didn't mind the ketchup?  Cayenne Pepper and lots of it.  Quite possibly more than the recipe called for but shhhh...

Once all that yummy goodness was boiling together, I set it on simmer for a half hour.

While that was cooking, I got my oven cranking for the baked potato (plain for now, just poked several times for...ventilation...I'm not really sure) and the steaks.  In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have put the steaks in until the potatoes were nearly done but you live and learn right?

Not sure what was up with my pan but clearly it was trying to raise the roof or something.

Since the steaks didn't take long to cook but the potatoes did, we settled down for a couple of beers on the deck and came back to these beauties just waiting to be scooped out and mashed.

I've never cooked baked potatoes like this where you basically hollow out the inside, mash up the potato with sour cream, cheese, and butter (can we all say "yum" together now?) and then re-stuff it, putting it in the oven for an additional 20 minutes.  Side bar: Check out the weird portion size of my foot which I accidentally caught in the picture and the potato.  It's like the great pumpkin or something!

Twenty minutes later I opened the oven door to find these delicious twins staring back at me...

I mean seriously!?  Would anything else look this good at 7:30 in the evening after a long day at work?  If this was the only thing I had to eat for the rest of my life, I think I'd be okay.  In fact, I'd be more than okay.  I've be over the blue moon!

The final product looked pret-ty darn good and tasted even better and the beer and molasses sauce over the steak was hot enough that I didn't need to add anything extra.  Do you hear that Paula?  You might want to take some notes from the Neelys.

I even got the compliment that it was the best baked potato ever eaten.  And to class it up, the onions in the sauce were a little crispy, which added a nice touch.  Oh you fancy, huh?

Cha-ching!  Chef Angela is baaaack!

Enjoy the evening you sublime beings.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Okay, I PROMISE I'll get better at posting...the holiday threw me off my cooking schedule, as did staying at my parents' place.  There's no place like your own kitchen.  Something about that space you know like the back of your hand; you easily fly through the cabinets, drawers, refrigerator, with the ease of knowing that you put an item in a spot just so, and when you open the door, it will still be right there.  None of that "Where'd you hide the spoon now!?" or "What, we're keeping the mustard shoved in the back so it's NOT VISIBLE are we?"

To celebrate the first cooking night back in my place, which is currently in mild shambles since I'm having a hole in my ceiling repaired, I rounded up a new cookbook that I haven't used yet.  The Marshall Field's Cookbook was my first grab and after delighting in the fact that Marcus Samuelsson was on the back cover with some other "important" chefs as well, I got down to picking out a recipe.  I totally rooted for him on Top Chef Masters. Plus I love his accent.  I started pretty much at the beginning of the book and flipped around until I stumbled upon page 62 and their Asiago-Crusted Chicken with Mustard-Glazed Carrots.  To be honest, the reason this caught my eye was because I love Panera's Asiago cheese bagels.  Love them.  As in I could eat about 5 in one sitting.  I was over the moon when we'd get bagels for the monthly communication meeting in the MCO--I'd race up once they arrived and make sure I was in line to get me some of that.  Plain cream cheese--nothing too fancy.

Let me start by saying that the end result of dinner looked like a distant, "we don't talk about that side of the family" cousin to the picture in the book but I thought it was pretty tasty, which should be all that matters; the house was only slightly filled with a film of cooking smoke (but the windows were open!) at the end.

As the Von Trapp family would say, "Let's start at the very beginning.  A very good place to start."  I made the carrots first, heating them in a mixture of water, butter, olive oil, brown sugar, and mustard.  This is good for about a pound of baby carrots and it was super easy--just let it simmer for about 8-12 minutes.  The instructions said that the water would evaporate and the carrots would be coated in a glaze.  I can tell you this much, that didn't really happen...at all.  I had those suckers simmering for like 25 minutes and I swear all the liquid I started with was still around at the end.  

Next, I made the chicken.  To do so, I put the asiago cheese and bread crumbs into a bowl and mixed it together.  Technically it called for them to be put into a food processor and "pulsed to combine".  This, I thought, was semi-ridiculous.  You're telling me that a spoon can't do the same work?  I stirred in the parsley after that and set it aside. (Upon reflection, this might be part 1 of how the DNA got messed up from the glamor shot food picture).

In another bowl, I whisked, yes, whisked the egg and water together.  Lastly, I put a 1/2 cup of flour onto a plate and was ready to bread the chicken.

Step one: "liberally season the chicken breasts on both sides with salt and pepper."  Check.

Step two: "dredge in the flour and shake off any excess.  Dip in the egg wash..."  They used the word "dredge"!!!  In a cookbook!!!

Step three: "coat on all sides with the Asiago breadcrumbs".  Yeah, this doesn't look quite right.

At this moment, I had the chicken going, the carrots simmering, and the sauce boiling.  To make the Pommery Mustard Sauce, all I did was bring 1.5 cups of heavy cream with 1/4 cup whole grain mustard (yes, there is such a thing--at least I think I bought the right thing), salt and pepper to a boil and the let simmer for about 15 minutes.  

Apparently, I also got a seal of approval.  I dodged the thumbs up in another picture but my "quick as a cat" reflexes were no match for this one.

At this point, my dinner guest and I had a friendly (read:competitive) disagreement on how we felt Marshall Field's Cookbook should have had us bread the chicken since the first of the three pieces (the practice round) didn't turn out too well--there's no picture of that disappointment.  One of us opted for the "by the book, no alterations" way, and the other opted for "my way is better even though I don't have much cooking experience."  The second way involved first putting the chicken in the egg/water mixture, THEN putting flour on it, and ONLY THEN, do you add the cheese to the top after it's cooked for a while so it melts in.

Additionally, option number two called for the microwave since by now, it was around 7:30 and both of us were starving.  Side bar, we also had differing opinions on how the sauce should cover the chicken.

I'll let you be the judge of which meal presentation you'd rather eat:  

Here's "by the book, no alterations":

And here's "my way is better even though I don't have much cooking experience":

I'll leave you with a synopsis of this evening's dinner.  Pretty good, would have gone with thinner pieces of chicken if I were to do it all over again, but gosh darn it, that Pommery Mustard Sauce was muy bien. I saved the rest in order to put it on, well, everything.