Eating Dinner With My Family

I love this recipe for company.  It isn't too labor intensive but looks very impressive and is much less expensive than it fancier beef cousin.  I am not a fan of pork but am ok with the tenderloin.  I normally do not like fruit in with my savory dishes either but I can handle it in this one.  I actually like it very much.  We had company tonight, so I busted out my fancy company recipe:).  With it I made some rice cooked in chicken broth and some butter and my friends brought a lovely salad with lots of colorful veggies. (yellow peppers, tomatoes, spinach, etc...) with a choice of Cesar, ranch and raspberry vinaigrette for dressing.  Pork Wellington 1    whole egg 1 T  water 1    -ounce dried apple rings 1    whole pork tenderloin approximately 1 pound 4 1/2    ounces thinly slice prosciutto ham 1/4 t  kosher salt 1/4 t  freshly ground black pepper 1 t  chopped ...

Well this dish was one enormous pain in the butt from start to finish.  It was pretty tasty at the end but not pretty and not really worth all the effort.  I put it in the fixable file.  It is from a top chef winner so I'm sure with a professionals skill it would we easier and perfect but in my less adept hands it was just a hot mess.  This was supposed to be yesterday's dish, but when I looked over the recipe at three, (normally plenty of time to prep and make the dish) I realized that there were a good 5 hours of prep before I could even start the final dish, so I make the stock and refrigerate it and make tonight's scheduled dish yesterday.  Of the 9 "cakes" I made, only 2 resembled a cake and not a bowl of pasta.  I know this means I made them a bit too big. (there was to be 12) However, I could not get them to hold any sort of cake shape and the only solution was to use an egg ring I had and press the cake mixture into it and lift the ring.  ...

I love pho, but this one is a lo cal copy so I wasn't sure how I would like it. I was a bit concerned when I googled the noodles.  They are almost calorie free, (never tasty) and they said that for the uninitiated they had a unpleasant smell.  (turns out like they smell like dirty socks soaked in musty fish sauce!)  This was a super quick recipe.  The only thing that might take you time is the slicing thin of the tenderloin, but your butcher can do that for you and then dinner would take 10 min tops.  The first few bites I wasn't sure I liked it.  I think I put way too much basil on mine and I was getting a lot of it in the first bites.  The meat was heavenly.  It looks raw in the picture, but once I dunked them under the broth, they were a perfect medium rare.  Thin slicing is key in this dish.  The noodles were odd, but they kind of grew on me.  They are made of tofu and like a cup of them was 20 calories. So from first ...

Well we have a ham, pasta with vodka sauce we love, and I thought I would try this vegetarian, lighter and spicier cousin of that dish. The tomato portion was pretty spicy when I tasted it. I had started a bit earlier than I needed to so I tasted it and put it off the heat still with the lid ajar.  If you love this sauce, you could make batches up to this point and freeze it, but I haven't tried this yet.  I would then gently reheat it and add the cream and cheese etc... and finish the recipe.  It was a bit spicy; I felt no need to add the additional red pepper flakes and even added a touch more cream to try and tame the heat.  If you are not a spicy lover, I would recommend halving the red pepper flakes initially.  You can always spice it up later.  I liked the omission of the ham, but missed the smokiness.  My husband added ham to his because he missed it in this dish.  Next time I make this I will add a few drops of liquid smoke to it and ...

My husband's plate was the picture plate tonight.  He put WAY too much siriacha! The odds of me liking this dish were a million to one.  I don't like chicken. I loathe seeing it raw, particularly the dark meat.  If I see it raw I am grossed out and don't want to eat it.  Chicken thighs smell awful raw. I hated this dish from the moment I started it.  Add to that that I am sick and tired and in a bad mood. Oh and they looked like wet garbage.  Loose, wet "meatballs" that didn't hold their shape and of smelly gross looking chicken and green paste.  (I know I am totally selling you on this dish right?:)  I was gong to skip dinner since I really had no appetite but I am a big girl and very much interested in the culinary arts, so I was going to at least try them.  I don't have to like everything but I do need to try everything for knowledge's sake.  I steel myself for horror I am about to put in my mouth and fou...

After the mediocre reception of the other carbonara recipe, I thought I would try an different one.  I thought this one would be superior in several ways.  1) It has cream in it, and that couldn't hurt.  2) This recipe has peas in it.  Not only do I love peas, but I thought it would add another flavor element to the dish that was needed.  And 3) this recipe is from 2 Top Chef contestants I thought seemed to be really great chefs.  (as always click on the title of the post for a link to the original recipe.)  This one was better.  I did have some issues with the dish, but not flavor wise.  The peas and pancetta were not evenly distributed.  No matter how much mixing I did, they sank to the bottom of the pan and I had to hunt with a spoon to put some over the top of the pasta.  The sauce was also a bit thin.  Not horribly so but I would have liked it a bit thicker and dare I say a tad less cream.  The other recipe was p...

I have only had fennel bulb once before and I did not care for it.  It was baked into some dish I made many years ago that we vowed to never make again. (yeah it was that good;) I am also not a fan of licorice which is another strike against the poor fennel plant.  I have to say I really liked it. The boy wasn't a fan so I didn't make him eat the sauce.  It just goes to show you never know if you really don't like something until you try it in many forms.  I think it was the long slow cooking time that mellowed the flavor of the bulb and made it more palatable for me. Perhaps also the strong flavors of the curry powder helped tame the fennel.  I'm not 100% sure what did it;  I am only sure that I enjoyed it. I served it with a green salad with a "dressing" of some left over coleslaw from the fish tacos we made for the progressive dinner.  That worked well too and it used up leftovers. Salmon Steaks With Curried Fennel-Wine Sauce 3 T  veget...