Past few meals re-cap

It seems like this week has been nothing but big special dinners! I guess that's what happens when you make a trip out to a chain market that caters to organic and international cuisine... Probably watching the mini-marathon "Iron Chef" before shopping didn't help. That show honestly makes me feel invincible and adventurous in the kitchen! A remiss anniversary dinner coupled with the onslaught of fresh quality ingredients sent me into overdrive... Not to mention all my grand plans for St. Patrick's Day dinner floating in my brain. More on that in the next post, but now, onto pictures!

Mussels and Hard rolls: 

The mussels were simply steamed in white wine with minced shallots, garlic, and parsely. The hard rolls are my favorite roll recipe from Fanny Farmer. The mussel steaming liquid creates a wonderful broth to dip the rolls in.

Ribeye steak, fingerling potatoes, couliflower puree, and red wine mushroom sauce:

The fingerling potatoes were oven roasted, tossed in olive oil with chili powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. I placed the potatoes over a cauliflower puree, that was accented with chive oil. The steak was seared for 1 minute on each side, then broiled till done. This was topped by a shiitake mushrooms sauteed in a red wine and butter sauce. I will post the sauce recipe at some point, but is not one I would repeat. The wine over powered the delicate mushroom flavour.

Golden baked fish, asparagus, salad: 

This was a neat recipe -but not a major hit with the family. I enjoyed it, and will post it later. I got some decent Haddock fillets (skin on) and tried out the latest RISAA recipe. It is effectively a savory meringue topping for the fish. I thought this meal was super clever, because the fish topping called for egg whites and I needed egg yolks for the hollandaise sauce over the asparagus. Perfect! A delicious combo no doubt.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My attempt at a pretty cake... I said 'attempt'. It tastes good at least! Chocolate 2 layer cake with my mom's recipe for confection sugar frosting.

For dinner we had rib eye steaks that we aged, sauteed shiitake mushrooms with scallions and butter, and red potatoes done in the skillet with garlic, rosemary, and butter. The wine was a Pinot Noir by Cavit.

Aging steaks is easy, but I don't know how much it really adds to the meat. I think 4 days was too long this time, and we do better with just the overnight age. The ultimate goal of aging meat is for better flavour. To achieve this, the meat must loose excess moisture and should end up weighing about 1/2 of what it did when you purchased it. I prefer my meat nice and juicy, so an overnight age tastes better to me personally. The biggest thing to remember when aging is to replace the paper towel under the meat every day, and allow plenty of air flow. 

The steaks as we bought them

Aging the steaks in the fridge day 2

Day 3 of aging 
(I flipped the lower right steak bottom side up for the picture to show the difference better)

Day 4 of aging

By day 4 (the day we cooked them) you can really see the difference. They did end up weighing almost 1/2 of what they did when we first bought them (due to the diminished moisture content). We also salted the bottoms of the steaks on day 2 in order to help wick out moisture. It's important to always keep the same side down while aging.