Seventy-first Post ~ Herb Marinated Sirloin with Goat Cheese and Sage Mashed Potatoes

I don't know what I was thinking when I bought this sirloin. It was one of those "looks smaller in the store" moments, I think. It's enormous.

In any case, I decided to slice and marinate it for three reasons: 1.) slicing it up would enable me to easily eat some and store the rest of it, 2.) marinade would infuse slices far easier than a whole sirloin which means more flavor and 3.) I had some thinking to do, and nothing relaxes me like the aromatic process of carefully chopping fresh herbs.

So here's what you'll need for the marinade, which you'll want to prepare ahead of time:

~ Splash of whatever wine you have laying around (I had an Italian red)

~ Bit of olive oil

~ Ground sea salt

~ Fresh herbs (I chose rosemary, sage and thyme)

So this afternoon I poured a little olive oil and a splash of red wine into a bowl and chopped up some sage and rosemary and then added a few sprigs of thyme to the mix. Something about the scent of these fragrant plants coupled with the methodical motion of chopping is very relaxing. My paper was finished in no time following this task.

Mix the chopped herbs with the wine and oil. Slice the sirloin and then dip each side into the marinade, finally layering each slice in the bowl so it's well-coated. Seal tightly and refrigerate until you're ready for dinner.

I decided to use some more of the fresh sage I had by making some mashed potatoes, because I had fingerlings on hand and mashed potatoes is something I frequently crave but seldom make or order.

Here's what you'll need to satisfy this craving:

~ Six or so fingerlings, thinly sliced

~ Ground sea salt

~ Fresh (or dried) sage

~ Heavy cream

~ Butter

~ Goat cheese

Boil some salted water, slice the potatoes, and boil them until fork-tender. Mash them in a bowl with some cream, salt, a dash of butter, good amount of goat cheese (okay, now I'm seeing why it's a good idea for me to not make these too regularly...) and chopped sage. Cover them with plastic wrap so you can heat them up once in the microwave before serving them.

Coat a pan with some butter then start it heating (see this post to read about the sneaky ways I give in to my English heritage and butter my steak) and set the steak slices in the pan. They'll cook fast, so if you like your steak on the border between rare and medium-rare like I do, you'll be turning them quickly. When you turn them, pour on the rest of the marinade. Revel in the marinade's aroma as it hits the pan and remind yourself that this is why you adore buying bunches of fresh herbs and chopping them up when you need to de-stress.

Heat up the potatoes and garnish them with an optional sprig of rosemary and some pepper. Serve a few slices of the steak and save the rest for later (lunch, atop buttered toast? Perhaps...). I enjoyed this meal with some Bella Rosa, a lumbrusco-style red from New York State's Merritt Estate Winery. I normally would have anticipated wanting a fuller-bodied red for this meal, what with the goat cheese, herbs and red meat and all, but the fruitiness of this slightly sweet red made the herbal notes sparkle and mellowed out the richness at the same time. In my opinion, a wonderful pairing, and a satisfying dinner!

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.

Seventieth Post ~ Goat Cheese Canapés

I was in the mood for a munchie this afternoon before grading, and so I made these, which were so simple I really wondered if it was worth blogging about them. But then I thought - simple is good! So here we are.

I was first introduced to the word (and concept) of canapés on board my first Celebrity cruise. My mom and I jokingly mispronounce them as "cuh-NAP-ees" because they always arrive in the cabin around nap time.

Well, today's "nap time" is going to be in the form of a cup of Starbuck's French roast, so I thought canapés would be fitting.

Here's what you'll need for these bite-sized snacks:

~ Baguette slices

~ Goat cheese

~ Fruit preserve (I chose apricot)

~ Fresh herb (thyme is my favorite!)

Preheat the toaster oven. Slice the baguette and dab a little goat cheese on each slice. Drop about a table knife-tip's worth of preserves on top, and scatter a little thyme over the whole deal. Bake for about as long as it takes for your 4-cup coffee maker to brew 2 cups.

Enjoy! Then back to work!

Yours in the love of good food and its re-energizing properties,

AL

First Post: Mediterranean Supper

So this is my first ever blog, and my first ever post, so I guess I could say I'm new at this. I don't think that a decade-plus of "lurking" makes me any kind of expert, but here goes.

I've decided to start a blog for anyone who is interested, and my topic is food and wine. I'm a novice, by the way - hence the name "Accidental Chef" - but I am taking both cooking and wine as a serious set of hobbies, ones that I can say I thoroughly enjoy researching and studying!

Up until about a year ago, I thought that gourmet cooking was a sort of witchcraft that took place over double boilers and open flames, with incantations muttered in French, and thoroughly secretive to the outside world.

Then I discovered my own magic spell. Repeat after me: GOOGLE.

Right. I take the viable ingredients in my fridge (as a 20-something singleton, that can vary greatly) and Google them. I see what other people have done with the ingredients, and then I "make it my own." And by that I mean substitute anything that I don't have on hand, and muddle up the methods, and basically create my own dish out of a semblance of order that some might call a recipe.

Take tonight for instance. It's nearing 11:00, I haven't had dinner yet, I'm two-thirds of the way though analysing Stevenson & Greenberg, and I decide that I need to use up the Wegman's cheese flight in my fridge. (For those of you who don't know, Wegmans offers a "Cheese Flight" of small servings of 3-4 cheeses for singletons with a taste for dairy to enjoy). I quickly learned (via Google) that goat cheese, red peppers, eggs and oregano can be combined. So I do the following:

Heat olive oil in a small pan.
Sprinkle oregano into oil.
Throw some sliced veggies (anything from a previous meal or take out would do) into the oil. I had sliced bell peppers and yellow squash on hand, so I started that sizzlin'.
In a bowl, beat three eggs with a little milk.
Pepper the veggies in the pan, 'cause that seems like a good thing to do
Assuming that you're a slow egg-beating-person, your veggies are sizzling merrily by now. Pour the egg mixture into the pan.
Let sizzle for a bit, then crumble Wegman's herbed goat cheese on top. Use as much as you like. Lick your fingers off when you're done.

~PAUSE~

Here's the thing. This was supposed to be a special dish that was like an omelet, minus the pesky flipping part. It was served on an ocean liner in the 1940s and was said to be rather glamourous. Here's where things went wrong.

Know this, brave reader: I have a history of miscommunicating with eggs. My over-easies tend to turn out over-violent. This was supposed to turn into a flat, sizzling, Mediterranean specialty. Mine turned into a perfect version of that, but with a frustratingly undercooking middle. So I attempted the pesky omlet flip. The whole thing split down the seam. So I decided that the eggs were attempting to communicate to me that they wanted to be scrambled, so I decided to listen.

~UNPAUSE~

Scramble the eggs. It's what they want.
Hack them up a bit in the pan. Savor the smell of the cheese, oregano and peppers.

When it looks like it's cooked (it is by now, trust me) transfer the whole thing into a bowl. Instead of a Mediterannean specialty served on a plate with a garnish of parsley, you have a bowl full of Mediterranean goodness.

I paired this meal with a glass of Catawba and Concord Rose (Vetter Vineyards makes Cracker Ridge Rose - I'm a long-time fan). It's what I had on hand, and I thought the salt from the goat cheese would complement it. It did. The herbs and salt brought out the fruity sweetness of the wine, making it jammy, but not cloyingly sweet. Think strawberry jam on toast, mopping up egg yolk.

All in all, it was a good dinner. Not the prettiest in terms of presentation, but hey - it sure was delicious. And it gave me the energy and motivation to decide to start this blog. Hope you enjoy it, and that the posts to come bring you culinary enjoyment.

Yours in the love of 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.