a sunday supper

this past weekend I decided to make dinner for a new friend. .. .alya. .it was a cold chicago sunday evening and I decided that I wanted to make risotto. .. and I knew that I also wanted to make a salad but had no idea what it should be. .. so I went to the grocery store knowing that I was going to make a roasted garlic and mushroom risotto and a salad.

while walking through the produce section I became fixated on the cippolinni onions .. . they have such a great shape and I remember reading that they get really sweet when roasted. .just next to these were some beautiful small red onions. I know knew what my plan would be. .. a seared steak salad with maché, roasted onions, roasted plum tomatoes, and a very simple vinaigrette.

once I got home from the store I started roasting. .. first I peeled the garlic and drizzled it with olive oil . .salt and pepper and set it in the oven to roast. .. then I started peeling the onions and slicing the tomatoes in half. .. I coated these with olive oil. .. salt and pepper. .. and then added about 10 sprigs of thyme. .. set these into the oven to roast for an hour or so . .. these perfumed the house amazingly. .. I can still smell it. ..

I had recently read an article about how to make the perfectly seared steak on a stove. .. so I began preparing this by pulling out the filet and letting it come to room temperature. .. and since I put olive oil, salt, and pepper on everything. .. did this as well. .. and set it aside for the time being.

I had decided to use cremini mushrooms because I love their rich earthiness. .. I removed all the stems and decided to leave the caps whole and sautéed them in butter and seasoned with some curry and salt. .

now that I had a fair amount of the prep work done I decided to open the wine that we would be having with dinner. .. a really nice pinot noir. .. but I cannot seem to remember the vineyard right now. .. but I think it was the perfect bottle for the evening. . it was a young bottle but had all the characteristics you would want from a pinot. ..

now it was time to start the risotto. .. I finely chopped an onion and got all my ingredients out. .. butter, oil, chives, warmed the stock on the stove. shaved parmesan.. got out the cream and bacon. I started by rendering the fat off of 3 slices of bacon. .. and set the bacon aside. .. added a bit of butter, the onion, and the rice and began to sauté it until it was translucent. .. at this time I put the bacon pieces back in. .now that the stock was warmed I began adding it half a cup at a time for the next 20 minutes or so. ..

while the risotto was working away on the stovetop I pulled out my cast iron skillet and set it over a burner on high. .. let it sit on high for about 8 minutes and then added the filet to it so it would get a nice sear. .. seared it off on both sides and then put in oven to get it to the right temperature. . a beautiful piece of steak. . perfectly medium rare. ..

now it was time to dress the salad. .. I mixed a bit of olive oil, balsamic, and shallots. . and I am sure it had salt and pepper in it too. .. and tossed the marché in it. .. then I added the onions and tomatoes atop the greens so that they would be just a touch wilted. .. .pulled out the steak and sliced it diagonally. .. and put this atop the onions. .. it turned out to be a great salad. ..

now it was time to finish the risotto. .added the parm. .. then. .i tasted it and added a bit of salt. . then a ton of chives. .. a touch of butter and a bit of cream. pulled out the bacon .. then stirred in the mushrooms. .. .plated this and it was time to eat

conversation was great. .. the dinner turned out really well. .. .

here is what was left at the end of the evening. ..

two-oh-oh-eight

happy new year to everyone!

i just noticed that the only two months of the year i missed posting were the last two. which just happen to be the best months for cooking!! i hope it was more of a result from holiday bustle and less of a result from laziness.

so, with that said, i have something to post. last year marcela and i hosted new years eve with her family and i cooked a 5 course dinner. it turned out wonderful and i hope to post the results at sometime, but for this post, i'll focus on this years family 5-courser! after going to church on sunday, marcela, christina, lucita, heidi, and i went out for lunch. while eating we decided to repeat the idea of a 5-course dinner for new years, except we only did 4 courses. this year though, we'd split up the courses allowing everyone to cook. in true top chef fashion, we decided we needed a theme to tie all the courses together. thanks to heidi, we chose root vegetables. i haven't cooked a lot with root vegetables so i had to do some research in order to get creative. we decided to have mami do the appetizer, lorena and ricardo do the salad, yours truly to handle the entree, and heidi to do dessert. i thought the dinner was amazing. i will only write about what i cooked though...

mami wanted to do tempura carrots and heidi had the limited chore of dessert (ginger being the obvious choice). i didn't want to pick something that would make more sense for a salad so i chose some of the less popular root vegetables. my entree, a pork tenderloin with apple-horseradish dressing, roasted beets with an orange-ginger glaze and i topped the plate with parsnips chips. i have to admit, i had to resort to david for my side dish idea. i realized pork and apple-horseradish are mainly white dishes, parsnips are white, and mami's dinner plates are white! where's the color!?! my dad really likes to cook beets with sweet potatoes, which would have been an excellent choice, but i wanted to do something a little less sweet and something i've never had before. dave's roasted beets with orange-ginger glaze was the perfect solution.

i was able to prep a lot at home and only had to roast the beets and pork tenderloin at mami's house. the apple-horseradish dressing was made by boiling granny smith apples in water and lemon juice, then adding sugar, ground cinammon, and some cinammon candies. this dressing is then cooled to room temperature and you can add the prepared horseradish right before serving. i marinated the pork tenderloin with olive oil and fresh rosemary. the beets were roasted for an hour and the orange-ginger glaze was just an orange juice, honey, grated ginger, cardamom pods, and chicken stock reduction. my parents gave us a deep fat fryer that i filled with canola oil and then fryed parsnip shavings in and then added salt as they cooled to room temperature. unfortunately, not everyone showed up on time and my dinner was a bit cold, but i really look forward to making this again. i thought it had such great flavor and i really did like the presentation of this meal...although i think almost everything looks good on white plates!!

despite a horrid sports year, 2007 brought a lot of happiness to me. i can only hope that 2008 brings more of the same, to me, my family, and my friends.