Valentine's Day Dinner
Feb. 15th, 2002 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenSince we decided to stay home (it was snowing and we hadn't had anything else planned), I made Good Dinner.
I defrosted some filet mignons, whipped potatoes, and cut up a cauliflower to use in a cauliflower gratin.
Normally, I do not think of cauliflower as an especially delicious sort of vegetable. I usually reserve that for off-the-vine tomatoes, fresh artichokes, or pulled off the stalk sweet corn. Cauliflower is kind of blah, usually. But Cooks Illustrated had a tempting recipe for cauliflower gratin, where you boil the flowerets briefly and gently (it also helps to get rid of the sulfur content, so no stinky vegetables here!) and then toss it with a nice roux-based cheese sauce with lots of nice minced shallots and garlic, a kiss of cayenne and then blanket it all with fresh bread crumbs with butter and seasonings. Then bake until bubbling, hot, and crisp on top.
It was a very nice compliment to the pan seared steaks and their garlic and dry Marsala sauce. There was just a bare tablespoon of the reduced Marsala, chicken broth and garlic quick cooked in the still-hot pan after the steaks had been gently removed. That sauce was so intense it did for the mashed potatoes as well as the steaks. Yay! Jet loved the cauliflower and bits of steak. He turned his nose up at the mashed with garlic, though. I actually think it had more to do with the texture than the taste.
Dessert was the last of the lime cheesecake and Jet got enough of a sample that he decided he liked cheesecake and acted like a little hungry bird looking for more hand-outs of the cheesecake. Hee.
I defrosted some filet mignons, whipped potatoes, and cut up a cauliflower to use in a cauliflower gratin.
Normally, I do not think of cauliflower as an especially delicious sort of vegetable. I usually reserve that for off-the-vine tomatoes, fresh artichokes, or pulled off the stalk sweet corn. Cauliflower is kind of blah, usually. But Cooks Illustrated had a tempting recipe for cauliflower gratin, where you boil the flowerets briefly and gently (it also helps to get rid of the sulfur content, so no stinky vegetables here!) and then toss it with a nice roux-based cheese sauce with lots of nice minced shallots and garlic, a kiss of cayenne and then blanket it all with fresh bread crumbs with butter and seasonings. Then bake until bubbling, hot, and crisp on top.
It was a very nice compliment to the pan seared steaks and their garlic and dry Marsala sauce. There was just a bare tablespoon of the reduced Marsala, chicken broth and garlic quick cooked in the still-hot pan after the steaks had been gently removed. That sauce was so intense it did for the mashed potatoes as well as the steaks. Yay! Jet loved the cauliflower and bits of steak. He turned his nose up at the mashed with garlic, though. I actually think it had more to do with the texture than the taste.
Dessert was the last of the lime cheesecake and Jet got enough of a sample that he decided he liked cheesecake and acted like a little hungry bird looking for more hand-outs of the cheesecake. Hee.
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