Dinner For Six

We finally hosted our first dinner party. Noel and I haven't had an apartment large enough to fit the two of us, let alone have six friends over for dinner. Finally we have an apartment large enough. Our friend Jen has been trying to get us to set up a dinner party for a few months now. About two weeks ago I was drinking port and thought how fun it would be to cook with it. I Googled port sauce and found a recipe that screamed dinner party from www.epicurious.com. Next was finding four friends that would like to come over and enjoy the meal. That wasn't hard at all, the first four people I told about the party, RSVP right away. We got our suburb friends Jon and Lucie to brave the big, bad city. Jen had to come because she is the one that put it in my head to have a party and that would have been real shitty to not invite her to our first dinner party. My friend Meg was a no brainier, not only is she a huge foodie but she is a wine rep. and has great taste in wine. She even brought the wine that I enjoyed with the dinner.

Coming up with the menu was the best part. I knew that I wanted to make the recipe that I found the night I was drinking port, Roast Beef Tenderloin with Port Sauce. I also knew that I wanted to make a blue cheese, bacon, potato souffle that Noel and I had made a few months ago. For a veggie I made a quick stir-fry of asparagus, ginger and garlic and I made a quick beets, feta salad with and oil and honey dressing. Jon helped out with the appetizers. A panko, fried green bean dish that we get at The British Beer Company in Framingham, and a duck and fig flat bread that was to die for. The flat bread was so easy to make. I cut in half 15 figs and roasted duck legs that I had bought at the Boston Wine Expo so the meat fell off the bone. I sauteed the figs in about 50 ml (aka a nip, aka an airplane bottle) of bourbon. After the figs soaked up the bourbon I added the duck and sauteed for a few more minutes. Jon then took the naan flat bread and covered it in Gorgonzola and Bel Gioioso cheese and the figs and duck. Then he quickly caramelised some onions and put them on top of the bread before sticking in the oven for about 15 minutes at 400F.

The beef tenderloin came out so much better that I had even thought it could be. The recipe calls for a dry brine to be done 24-36 hours before cooking the meat. To do this you have to salt the hell out of the meat and leave it uncovered in the fridge. You would think the salt would just dry out the meat, but instead of drying out the meat it makes it juicy and tender! The recipe says it only takes 30 minutes in the oven at 450F but I used a meat thermometer and it took 45 minutes to get up to 130F. The port sauce I made the night before. I love making sauces, they add so much to a meal, look really fancy, yet are soooo freaking easy to make. The only thing I would have done different is instead of using three cups of beef broth, I would use two. Also I used a tawny port and I may use a ruby next time. Although I DO LOVE TAWNY PORT!!!!!! This was the best meat I have ever cooked. It came out so tender and juicy, and cooked perfectly medium rare (More like medium medium rare. I would have liked it more pink but the friends I was with told me before cooking they like their meat more medium. So I compromised instead of cooking to 120F I went to 135F.). Perfectly cooked, good cuts of meat is the meaning of life!!!! 

As I said my friend Meg came to the dinner. She too is a wine distributor in Massachusetts, so she too LOVES good wine!! When She walked in the door she took out of her bag a few bottles of wine that she had been pouring at a wine tasting earlier in the day. She told me try the Rioja first. Valsacro is a high end Rioja that danced on my tongue. Dark, full bodied with dark cherries and olives. It was a great treat as I finished cooking the meal. With dinner she told me she brought a wine that was from her private stock, something she bought a few years ago, while she was a wine buyer at Whole Foods. Florestra Apalta a Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 from Santa Rita in Chile. I LOVE CHILE'S WINES!!! Chile is my second favorite wine country, right after France. The climate is perfect, and the quality, and value of the wines are incredible! These Cabernets in my opinion are better than anything Napa can throw at you, and usually at half the price. Full bodied, cigar box, black fruits, cassis, black currants, and nice tannins. This bottle was no different. Plus the perfect amount of age helped soften the wine just a touch. This was the perfect bottle of wine to go with my first dinner party. Thanks Meg for helping me take it up a notch!!!!! 

Every Day Pork Chops Get a Flavor Boost

Everyday, one of the many recipe websites that I've joined sends me a recipe that sounds great. I love these sites, its makes the question, "What's for dinner?," easier to answer. The problem is, many times, I don't have the ingredients at the ready and I forget to get stuff the next shopping trip. Thursday, I got a recipe sent to me from FineCooking.com. I especially love this website!! You can pick by recipe, by ingredients, and so much more. It's like the Joy of Cooking (the ultimate food bible) on steroids!! A lot of the recipes on this site are from people like you and me. You get fancy home cooked meals.

Friday I had some pork chops that needed to be cooked. At first I was just going to make real simple, salt and pepper, pan seared chops. Then I opened the email. "Everyday pork chops get a flavor boost." I thought, "how cool is that? I was going to make pork chops that night anyway." The recipe was Pork chops with cider-dijon pan sauce. The second I saw the words "pan sauce," I was hooked!!! Over the holidays I got really good at making gravies and sauces. I love making a sauce with the meal. It's so fancy and so easy to do!! The best part about this recipe is that I had everything but an apple and apple cider. I had to go to whole foods anyway to grab cat food, so I also grabbed the apple, but could not find cider. They had apple juice, but no apple cider. Being a wine rep. I am in and out of liquor stores all day, so I just grabbed a 22oz Magners cider. They taste the same as regular cider and you get an easy drink pairing for dinner. Plus, by the time you're done cooking, you've cooked the alcohol out. Noel is a bit of a cider snob and I am sure she wished I had used a better cider, after all I only used a half cup in the recipe and we drank the rest of it.

The recipe was pretty easy. What You Need:
2 pork chops (it calls for bone in chops I used regular chops)
2 Tbs butter
tsp salt
tsp pepper
1 sweet red apple halved,cored, cut into small cubes
1 medium shallot
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup cider
1/2 cup chicken stock
Tbs dijon mustard, better if you use the grainy kind
tsp fresh thyme (thyme is my favorite herb!!!)
Pre-heat oven to 425F. Melt the butter is a skillet over medium/high heat. Salt and pepper the chops and cook them on both sides for about two minutes. Long enough to brown them on both sides. Then stick them in the oven for about eight minutes or if you are using a meat thermometer, when it reaches 145F. While they are in the oven, reduce the heat to medium/low and add the apple, thyme and shallots and cook until they are slightly browned, about two minutes. Add the cider, scrape any bits left from the chops, and reduce by half, again about two minutes. Last add the stock and mustard, stir and reduce by about half, yet again about two minutes. Serve the sauce over the chops. This meal looked like and tasted restaurant quality yet was easy to make.

I served it over rice and a side of steam broccoli. The broccoli I steamed in water, chicken stock and tsp butter. That is fat kid broccoli!!! Along with the cider this meal was a perfect end of the week meal!! Fancy enough for Friday, yet easy enough to make after a long day/week of work. I can't wait to see what the next email has in store for my dinner!!

Sorry Bambi But Your Meat Is Just So Good

Its been a long time, too long, since I have last posted. I was going to post about my Thanksgiving Dinner but I figured it was to easy to talk about it. Then I was going to talk about my Christmas Eve dinner that I cooked but I didn't. I also could have blogged about the Christmas Day Dinner but I got lazy. I have cooked some great meals and some not so great meals. I was going to blame it on being busy with work and life, but the truth is I have been too lazy to blog. One of my many New Year's Resolutions is to blog more.

To ring in the New Year, Noel and I went and visited our friends Erik and Sami J on Martha's Vineyard. Two of the best people I have ever met. We had a few great meals, drank good wine and beer, and watched some great fireworks. Erik is the ultimate outdoors man!! One day when he got home he noticed a deer in his backyard. He grabbed his bow and got the doe. How bad ass is that?! I bribed Erik with a few bottles of wine and he sent me home with a few venison steaks and a roast. They had a great cookbook on how to cook venison, and I found a few great recipes, so I couldn't wait to get home and try them out.

Tonight's recipe is Saffroned Venison and Beans from The Complete Venison Cookbook. Sounds easy enough, and I love using Saffron. All you need is a cup Navy Beans (these are called Navy Beans not after their color but because they were a staple in U.S. Navy cooking. I was looking for 20 minutes before reading labels), a  pound of venison cut into cubes, bacon fat (venison is very lean meat and bacon fat helps. Its easy to cook up some bacon for the fat), three tomatoes quartered, small onion sliced thin, can of corn, bell pepper quartered, 1/8 tsp pepper, 1/4 tsp saffron, 1 tsp brown sugar, 1/2 cup dry white wine and two tsp salt.

You need to first cook the beans. This is easy, but takes a long time. First, make sure to rinse the beans. Then put them in a saucepan and add enough water to cover the beans. Bring them to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer for two hours. Add the salt and cook for another hour. As the beans are finishing, take a few strips of bacon over medium/low heat in a skillet. Render the fat off the bacon (this is my favor part...eat the bacon). Brown the venison. Add the tomatoes, onion, salt, pepper, saffron, brown sugar and wine. Let simmer until the meat is tender. Drain the beans and add them with the bell pepper and corn to the venison and cook until the bell pepper is tender.

The meal came out well. The beans could have cooked a little longer, I could have used smaller, riper tomatoes and, had I known it would come out more like a stew, I would have cut the bacon up and added it to the mix. But for the first venison meal I've made in more than 10 years it came out better than expected. I can't wait to make the other cuts of venison I have.

So what do you drink with venison? Cabernet Franc, Carmenere, Chianti, Gigondas (or anything from The Rhone Valley), Syrah- the choices are endless. Venison has a great gamy taste that goes really well with many big, bold, bad-ass wines. If I had a Cab Franc in my cellar right now, I would have opened that. But, sad monkey, I didn't have one. So I opened my BOOM BOOM Syrah. This Columbia Valley Syrah comes from one of my favorite wine makers, Charles Smith.This wine is perfect Washington wine. Bright, fresh and smooth. Full Bodied, dark meaty fruit with a touch of spice and sweet tobacco.