Personal chef

Date: 2011.01.02 | Category: eating, recipe | Tags: cooking,family

Yesterday Mike and Mark and I went skating at Steinberg park, an outdoor skating rink in Forest Park.  The rink was a little dicey since it was about 60 degrees yesterday and we had rain and tornadoes, but we still had a good time.

Then we went and had lunch at Whole Foods and got some ingredients for dinner.  Mike is a chef so he came up with the menu: Togarashi encrusted beef tenderloin,  edamame puree, braised sesame collard greens and a roasted red pepper coulis.

Um, what?  Ok, here’s what we did:

Chopped the collard greens

Stuck them in a pot with heated oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then turned the pot down from medium high to low and covered the pot.  At the end (about 30 minutes), sesame seeds were tossed in.

Shelled the edamame

Then processed with a little oil, salt and pepper

The blogger and the chef!

Roasted the pepper on an open flame

Removed the roasted skin, and took out the stem and seeds.  I got in trouble with the chef for washing off the char and learned an easier way – gently brush a chef’s knife backwards across the pepper.

Process and season with salt

Mike got beef tenderloin that apparently was rang up wrong – we got a 50% discount. 

We had to go to an specialty store to find this Japanese chili.  It was smelled really spicy – next time I use it I would definitely recommend covering the pan or roasting this in the oven – the particles filled the air and were making our noses run and making us cough!  I was worried at this point that this exotic hot stuff was going to kill us when we ate it but it wasn’t that hot, it’s just ground chili.  I think it’s such a fine grade that it gets in the air easily.

Plating

Yum

The meal was a success.  The beef was really tender and perfectly cooked.  I really liked the pepper and the edamame puree – I thought that was a clever way to add some color and vegetables to the plate.  Mike is going home today – no more personal chef for us.    Now I have a bunch of roasted red pepper – I think some roasted red pepper hummus is in my future.

I don’t really know what we are doing today other than being kinda lazy.  We’ve been hanging out in front of the tv all morning.  I think we might brave the mall, although the mall has been scaring me lately – it’s always crazy crowded! 

Hope you’re having a good year so far