Steak au Poivre

 

What a busy day! My niece, Makena, received her First Communion today. The mass was very nice and the kids all looked so cute. A perfect day to catch up with my brother's children. The cake was from J Cakes. I had just a taste and wow, what a tasty cake!

Dinner was really quite good. Steak au Poivre. I got the recipe in an email from the New York Times this week. I read it and it seemed simple enough. Well it was simple and the result was a delicious piece of steak. The butcher did cut it for me about 2 hours before it was cooked. That's fresh! The sauce was perfect. I used heavy cream instead of crème fraîche. Click here for the recipe.

For side dishes I made Roasted Potatoes and Roasted Asparagus that was tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper and bread crumbs.

Taco Pacifico

Kind of a big game tonight, Saints vs Viking... Go Saints!
Anyway I wanted something that would involve as few dishes as possible. There is food truck in Madison that was recently written about in the New York Times, Taco Pacifico. I picked up a Tacos and a Beef Burrito. Excellent choice. The burrito was pretty big. Everything is made fresh and salsa was a good as Mike Casey's! Unfortunately they ran out of guacamole. I picked up some Mexican beer to go with dinner. The beer was good but next time I'll get Corona.

Parmesan Chicken and Tortelli Filled with Swiss Chard

Today I was reading the Mark Bittman blog, Bitten which lead me to a recipe for Parmesan Chicken. There was a video featuring Mark Bittman and Jamie Oliver. I knew the last name would get your attention. This was so simple to make. It came out moist and the flavors from the herbs and lemon peel were delicious. I used organic chicken for this dish.

As a side dish we had Tortelli Filled with Swiss Chard, a recipe from La Cucina. The recipe comes from the Emilia-Romagna region. I made these last weekend and froze them. I did cheat with this recipe by using Wonton Wrappers for the dough instead of making fresh pasta.

Ingredients:
For Filling:
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 1/2 lbs ricotta
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 egg
pinch grated nutmeg
salt

For the Sauce:
1 cup unsalted butter, melted (I only dused 1/2 cup, 1 stick)
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Method:
Clean the greens, cutting away the stalks, and boil them just until bright green. Remove them from the water, squeeze them dry, and leave to drain. Combine the ricotta with the grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and butter. Chop the boiled greens and work together with the cheese mixture along with the egg, a pinch of salt and nutmeg. Arrange small amount of filling on the wonton wrappers and fold to form the Tortelli. Cook the Tortelli in lightly salted boiling water for 15 minutes or until they float (this took my tortelli only 5 minutes, I tasted one and it was cooked), then drain thoroughly. Combine the melted butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Arrange some of the tortelli in a single layer in a deep bowl. Spoon over some the sauce and repeat the layers using all the tortelli.

This was a big hit. There was a comment about the green stuff in the tortelli but they seemed to disappear.

We had a bottle of Fat Cat Pinot Noir with the meal. It was a simply delicious Saturday night meal.