Monday, June 7, 2010

#67 - aka What? I can cook?

When creating my 101 in 1001 I threw on Prepare a fancy five course meal. Why? I don't know. I was hoping I would become a culinary genius. I just started obsessively watching The Food Network a month or so ago. When watching a Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, Steak Edition I was determined that even I could cook a steak. With a few extra moments this week I started contemplating what 5 courses I could plan around trying out cooking a filet. I started putting together a menu and a shopping list.

I had Friday afternoon off, so I started prepping food right away. First item of business, dessert of course! I would be baking Caramel-Apple Bread Pudding.

Up next was prep for the salad course. I made a Waldorf Salad, so I had lots of fruits and veggies to chop up. The dressing was super easy, so I just saved that until we got to the salad course to whip that up and add in.
and Wilbur figured out where to stand to catch the falling fruit from the counter...

Once Tony got home it was time to get him cleaned up and start putting out some food!!!

First course: Appetizers - Made a quick Spinach and Herb dip from Tastefully Simple and served on toasted french bread. Also put out some shrimp cocktail cause I love it so much!!!


Second course: Soup - Tomato and Basil. Used Progresso Chunky Tomato and added fresh basil on top. Definitely my easy out, but I love that soup and the basil was delish!(Sorry no pic)

Third course: Salad - Waldorf Salad. This could have been an awesome salad, if I had read the instructions for the dressing correctly. In my haste to whip it up mid meal I put in an entire teaspoon of Ginger instead of a 1/4 teaspoon. HUGE mistake and after a couple bites we threw the whole thing out. Sad, but I will try again next time!

Fourth course - Entree` - Filet Mignon with Sweet Potato Fries. Let me say, this was amazing! I managed to mess this one up too though, but will try to redeem myself tonight. I used EVOO instead of vegetable oil and when using a cast iron skillet, it gets WAY too hot for the EVOO. Vegetable oil can take much higher temps and will probably set off the smoke alarm fewer times. Despite the smoke filled house, the steaks were AMAZING, better than some I've had in restaurants. The sweet potato fries were amazing despite not quite being as crisp as I had wanted, but I rushed those out of the oven to make room for filets. I could have REALLY used a double oven for this meal and will certainly value that feature in our future home!

Fifth course - Dessert!!! Caramel-Apple Bread Pudding. YUM YUM YUM. It smelled like apple pie and was amazing. We had to let our big dinner settle for a while, but once we got to dessert it was well worth the wait!!!

Overall, it was really fun planning the menu and making everything. It was a fun stay in date night for hubs and I. I definitely would feel comfortable cooking for more people in the future and having a fancy dinner party at our house. Now if only we had a big enough house....

1 comment:

  1. Wow, that sounds pretty impressive! I don't know if I have ever done a five course meal for hubs....hmmmm I am going to have to try this!

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