Fifty-fourth Post ~ Easy Sirloin Steak with Mushrooms and Fingerling Potatoes

Maybe it's the fact that I'm halfway through the week. Maybe it's the sunshine. Whatever the reason, today just feels like a day that should be celebrated. And I like to celebrate with a good dinner.

I ran to Wegmans after class and picked up two organic sirloin steaks, a bag of fingerlings, and a package of pre-washed and sliced baby bellas mushrooms, for a change of pace from the buttons.

Home I went. Given that it was already pushing 10:30, I needed to get this dinner in order and on the table post haste. Here's what you'll need to make tonight's dinner, and here's how you can get it all on the table within a half hour or under:

~ One small sirloin steak (I've never bought organic steak before, but these were mismarked, I think, and therefore within the realm of what I like to pay for a small steak: $3 a pop)

~ Ground salt

~ Herb of choice for use on the whole meal (I relied heavily on thyme, 'cause that's what I have a bag of in my fridge, but I also had a little rosemary left, so I used some of that, too)

~ White wine

~ One clove garlic

~ Olive oil

~ Mushrooms

~ Fingerling potatoes

As soon as you walk in the door (after greeting a puppy, if applicable) start your toaster oven on conventional bake 350. Wash and pierce the fingerlings. Rub some olive oil on them and place them on a piece of foil on the same pan you plan to cook the steak on later on. Scatter some thyme and grind ample salt over them. Pop 'em in the oven.

In a pan, start some olive oil and white wine simmering. Add the mushrooms as soon as you get the package open, grind some sea salt over them, crush a clove of garlic into the mix, and add some thyme (assuming that's the fresh herb you're using) and add more wine and oil as it boils down.

As soon as the mushrooms are going, salt the steak and add some olive oil over the top. Place a sprig of rosemary on the top of it and place it next to the potatoes in your toaster oven. I usually go by the rule of 5 minutes on one side, 8 on the other. This was a bit smaller of a steak, so I went less.

Serve the steak topped with the mushrooms alongside your yummy fingerling potatoes (after about 30 minutes, they're perfect!). I enjoyed tonight's mid-week celebration meal with my last glass of Sangre de Toro Tempranillo. I cannot say enough good things about this wine. I think it will be one of those wines that I'll just always plan on having in my wine rack. Besides being really affordable, it's smooth and earthy with bright overtones of cherry and blackberry that deepen over time. It's a perfect match for a dinner like this!

Yours in the love of good food and wine,
AL

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The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.

Forty-sixth Post ~ Savory Pot Roast

This is a pretty simple meal to put together in the middle of the day, then forget about until your day is done and you're ready for dinner.

Bear in mind that I'm cooking for one and my leftovers are designed to be relatively small - as good as pot roast is, no one wants to eat it for five dinners in a row. So realize that the picture above is practically a miniature potroast - a chuck eye that is a little under a pound, baby carrots, pearl mushrooms and fingerling potatos.

Here's what you'll need to prepare tonight's meal in whatever size you desire!

~ Chuck eye roast

~ Fingerling potatoes

~ Slices of a small cooking onion

~ Baby carrots

~ Baby pearl mushrooms

~ Beef boulion cubes to taste, dissolved in about 2 cups of water

~ Splash of whatever red wine you have laying around

~ Salt

~ Sprig each of rosemary and savory

The directions are pretty simple: wash and pierce your potatoes and add them to the slow cooker, add carrots and mushrooms, then the meat topped with two slices of onion, salt to taste, and a sprig of each of the herbs. Pour in your two cups of liquid into which you've dissolved the boullion, a splash of red, and you're good to go! Slap the lid on, get to class, and when you return (presumably between 4-6 hours later, depending on the size of the roast), heavenly aromas of a home-cooked meal await you!

The herbs added a nice fragrance to this meat. I put everything out on a plate once it was cooked and mixed the juice with a little dissolved corn starch on the stove to make a fast and flavorful gravy. Overall, it was a nice "mom's cooking" kind of meal, and went beautifully with a Sangre de Toros red table wine. The earthy old-world reds are SO good with roast beef!

The leftovers will provide about 2 meals for me, which is a perfectly desireable amount!

Yours in the love of good food and wine (and eating well, even as a singleton),

AL

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The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.

Fortieth Post (Yay!) ~ Rustic Beef Stew

This stew is very easy, and it fit the bill the other night when I wanted to throw something together that would cook itself while I worked. Here's what you'll need for this stew, which is good to have on hand during stormy winter weather!

~ One package stew beef

~ Carrots (about two handfuls)

~ 2-3 slices from small onion

~ Mushrooms (I used pre-washed criminis and thew them in whole)

~ 5 or so small red potatoes cut into wedges

~ 2 cups water with 5 beef boulion dissolved

~ A splash of red wine

~ Herbs (I used fresh thyme and tarragon. While I recommend the thyme, the tarragon gave the stew a distinctive "sausage" taste and aroma, since, come to find out, it's one of the key herbs used in sausage. So if you like that taste, go for it, if not, find a different herb!)

Here's the tough part - get your crock-pot out of storage and dust it off. Then dump everything in it, slap the lid on, put it on high, and stir every so often. It takes a few hours, but the resulting aroma and taste are worth it! Plus, prep doesn't get much easier than this!

I paired this stew with Sangre del Toro's tempranillo, since that's what I splashed into it to give it a nice balanced taste. It helped diffuse some of the stronger herb taste (ahem ) and its earthiness brought out the flavors in the beef. A good pairing, and a good stew for lunches and dinners to come!

Yours in the love of good food and wine,

AL

Thirty-ninth Post ~ Duck with Tempranillo Reduction

I realize that this is my second post in a row featuring duck. I don't really see that as a bad thing. I bought a package of duck breasts the last time I was at Wegmans, so I guess you should prepare yourselves for at least two more duck entries before the winter is up!

Tonight's dinner was inspired by the fact that I had a Tempranillo on hand and it was just too darn nasty out for me to spare an extra trip to the store. I decided that I could do something creative with the duck to make it red-wine worthy.

So here's what you'll need for tonight's dinner:

~ Duck breast, skin off

~ Red wine

~ Balsamic vinegar

~ Olive oil

~ Garlic

~ Onion

~ Fresh (or dried) thyme

~ Fruit preserves (I favor apricot)

~ Potatoes

~ Salt/Butter

~ Grated parm

In a pan, start the olive oil, and tiny amount of garlic and onion sauteeing with a little less than a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. After it starts hopping around a bit, add some red wine, about two tablespoons of apricot jam, thyme, salt and pepper. Get it really simmering nicely.

In the mean time, boil some sliced red potatoes with some salt, the stalk from the thyme you used for the reduction, and a little olive oil.

After your reduction is starting to meld, add the duck cut into strips. I do this for two reasons: 1) It's faster to cook and 2) There's more surface area to cover in the yummy reduction sauce as it cooks.

As the duck is starting to seem done, move it out to the edges of the pan or take it out completely. You want to cook the sauce down so that it is a true reduction - that is to say, mostly sugar. View the close-up to the left so you can see the texture with all of its sugary goodness.

After the potatoes become "forkable," drain them, butter them, and top with grated parm and a bit of parsley, if you wish. Transfer the duck to the plate and top with a generous amount of sauce.

I served tonight's meal with the same red I used to make the reduction: Sangre del Toro's Tempranillo, direct from Spain. As it is an old-world wine, it is more earthy than fruity, which made a nice complement to the "wild" taste of the duck. This reduction turned out sugary, yet still a bit on the tart side, so if you're cooking with an old-world wine such as this one, you may wish to add a touch of sugar to the reduction. New world wine, with their fruit-forward nature, might not need the extra sugar.

In the end, I thought meal came together nicely, and served to warm me from the inside out against the howling winter storm rattling at my windowpanes!

Yours in the love of good food and wine,
AL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.