International Night – France

I’m home with a sick 12 year-old today, so I can finally take the time to post last week’s International Night fare. At the suggestion of my son, we chose French cuisine. Although there are many more elaborate and well known French dishes, I chose to prepare steak frites largely due to time constraints.

We will probably revisit the food of France on a week when I’m not working because most of the recipes I found required lots of preparation and cooking time. With only about two hours after we get home in the afternoons to prepare our dinner, I’m a bit limited as to the complexity of the dishes I can select.

Steak frites, which is essentially a steak and fries, is apparently very popular in France and Belgium. Growing up steak and fries was a weekly meal in our house, but I had no idea we were being European chic!

There were a couple of unique things about the way the French prepare their steak and fries, though. First of all, they cook the steak in a skillet instead of grilling or broiling it. I don’t remember this, but several of my friends say they recall my mom preparing steaks in a skillet when they would stay over at our house. I do this occasionally when I don’t want to heat up the oven or grill, and it’s usually pretty good.

It appears the French use a variety of sauces to serve with the steak, but the most common seems to be a red wine and shallot sauce. I couldn’t find shallots, so I just used yellow onions. The sauce was excellent, though.

The other interesting thing in the preparation was the way the fries are cooked. They make homemade fries and cook them in medium hot oil for a few minutes and then remove them to drain on paper towels. Then the oil is heated to a higher temperature, and the fries are cooked until golden brown. They were very crispy, and I guess the frying method is the reason.

There were tons of recipes online for steak frites, but I used one from Rachael Ray just because it had the easiest to find ingredients. She called for strip steaks, but I found ribeyes on sale, so I used those. Most of the other recipes I found online used ribeyes or sirloins as well. I also didn’t cut my fries as thin as the French normally do just because I was in a hurry.

3 medium russet potatoes, scrubbed and dried

1 T.  extra-virgin olive oil

4 NY strip steaks or ribeye steaks

Salt and pepper

3 T. butter, divided

1 large shallot or small yellow onion, finely chopped

2 T. all-purpose flour

1 c. dry red wine

Heat 1 1/2 to 2 inches oil in a deep frying pan over medium heat to 325 F degrees or use a deep fryer set to 325 degrees. Cut potatoes into thin slices lengthwise. Cut each slice into thin shoestring strips. Place cut potatoes on paper towels. Place two generous handfuls of potatoes at a time into hot oil, in two batches. Par cook the potatoes 2-3 minutes and transfer to a towel lined plate. Raise heat to medium high up to 375 degrees F. When oil is heated to 375, return potatoes to oil in two batches to crisp them, cooking them to a deep, golden brown color, another 2 to 3 minutes per batch. Remove potatoes from oil to clean towels to drain. Season with salt and serve.

For steaks, heat a large nonstick skillet over high heat. Add a little oil to the pan, one turn. Season steaks with salt and pepper. Place steaks in skillet and sear 2 minutes on each side. Reduce heat to medium and cook steaks 6 minutes longer for medium rare, 8 for medium to medium well. Remove steaks to a warm plate to rest. Add 2 tablespoons butter and the shallots to the pan. Cook shallots 2 or 3 minutes, add flour to the pan and cook a minute longer. Whisk wine into pan and lift pan drippings up. Add the last tablespoon of butter and remove the pan from the heat. Spoon wine and shallot sauce over the steaks and serve with hot, shoestring potatoes.

International Night – Greece

My son requested Greece for our featured country this week, and it proved to be a bit of a challenge to find a main dish recipe. Many Greek dishes are made with lamb, and none of us really care for lamb, so those recipes were out. I finally settled on pastitsio, a pasta and meat sauce dish that is popular in Greece, particularly around Easter.

To be honest, we didn’t really care for it, but it’s only because I insisted on preparing it the authentic Greek way, with cinnamon and nutmeg as seasoning for the tomato based meat sauce. I don’t know about most readers, but in my family cinnamon and nutmeg aren’t spices we generally use with ground beef and tomatoes.

I remember one time when I was young, my dad accidentally added cinnamon to the chicken and dressing one Thanksgiving because he thought it was sage. I never really ate chicken and dressing, so it didn’t bother me, but the rest of the family gave him a hard time about that for years. I guess he would have fit in nicely as a Greek cook!

If you are willing to try new tastes, you can prepare the pastitsio the way the Greeks do. If you’re not feeling that adventurous, feel free to omit the cinnamon and nutmeg and add the familiar spice of your choice.

The Greek salad, however, was a big hit. It was very simple to make, and I’m going to do my best to approximate the measurements for the recipe since I just threw it together based on the traditional ingredients.

Greek Salad

3 medium tomatoes, chopped

2 cucumbers, sliced

1/4 c. red onion, diced

1 c. kalamata olives

8 oz. feta cheese, cubed

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cracked black pepper

1/4 tsp. dried oregano

1/4 tsp. dried basil

2 T. olive oil

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Serve on a bed of lettuce, if desired.

Pastitsio

8 oz. penne or ziti pasta

3 T. melted butter

1/3 c. grated parmesan cheese

1/3 c. milk

1 egg, beaten

1 lb. ground beef

1/2 c. chopped onion

1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/8 tsp. pepper

4 T. butter

4 T. all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp. salt

2 c. milk

1 egg, beaten

1/3 c. parmesan cheese

Cook pasta; drain, and return to pan. Stir in the melted butter, 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, 1/3 cup milk, and the egg; set aside.

In a a skillet or large saucepan, cook ground beef and onion until meat is browned and onion is soft; drain excess fat. Stir in tomato sauce, the 1 teaspoon salt,  cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper; set aside.

In a saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons butter, then mix in flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Slowly stir in the 2 cups milk, stirring well after each addition so that no lumps form. Cook and stir on medium high until cream sauce starts to thicken; stir for one minute more, then remove from heat. Beat egg in a small bowl, then pour into cream sauce, stirring briskly. Blend in the 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese.

Layer half the pasta mixture in a 11" x 7" (or 2 quart) baking dish. Spoon the meat mixture evenly on top, then the remaining pasta. Pour cream sauce over top, to cover completely. Bake, uncovered, at 350F for about 40 minutes, or until hot and lightly browned. Let stand for 10 minutes.

Sunday supper – roast pork tenderloin

In case anybody’s wondering why I haven’t posted recently, I do have an explanation. My family and I got back on Thursday from a trip to Florida, so I wasn’t around to blog about food that I prepared. While at Disney World, we ate at a wonderful restaurant called Biergarten, which is located in the Germany pavilion of Epcot. There were several tasty pork dishes on the buffet there, so I decided to try to replicate their roast pork at home for my family’s dinner tonight. The result wasn’t quite like the roast pork we had at Biergarten, but it was good nonetheless.

I started with a pork tenderloin because they are very lean, and I’m trying to get back on track with my Weight Watchers program after a week of eating too much. After browning it with some spices, I roasted it in the oven with some Worcestershire sauce and onions. I had intended to make a red wine based sauce to serve with it like the one we had in Epcot, but I didn’t have any red wine on hand. With it being Sunday afternoon, I would have had to head to the state line to pick up a bottle of wine, so I decided to make due with what I had on hand. It turned out pretty good, but I still wish I could be in Epcot to have the roast pork at Biergarten!

Here is my variation of roast pork tenderloin with mushroom sauce:

2.5-3 lb. pork tenderloins
3 T. olive oil
1 onion, sliced
4 T. Montreal steak seasoning
1 tsp. garlic salt
2 T. Worcestershire sauce
2 lb. fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 T. minced garlic
2 pkg. brown gravy
1 pkg. onion soup mix
3 c. water

Preheat oven to 350º. Sprinkle pork tenderloin pieces with 2 T. steak seasoning and garlic salt. Heat 2 T. olive oil on medium high heat in a large skillet. Add pork tenderloins and brown on all sides. After browning, place tenderloins in a roasting pan with Worcestershire sauce and half of the sliced onion. Cover and roast in preheated oven until a meat thermometer registers 165º.

Meanwhile, in the same skillet that you browned the pork tenderloins heat the remaining olive oil and minced garlic over medium heat. Add the remaining onion, mushrooms and 2 T. steak seasoning. Saute until the onions and mushrooms are tender. Whisk together the water, gravy mix and soup mix and add to the onions and mushrooms. Heat to boiling, then reduce heat and cook until thickened.

Serve sauce over sliced pork tenderloin. It is also good served over rice or mashed potatoes.

Pasta sauce – one of my early recipes

I served the sauce tonight with bow tie pasta and some chicken that I cooked in a little olive oil and Italian seasoning, a side salad and some bread.

Two good things came out of my first marriage. The best of these two things is my 11 year-old son, and the other is my creamy pasta sauce. The sauce came about one evening when I was looking for something to cook for dinner using the ingredients I had on hand, since we were broke at the time. After looking through the fridge and the cabinets, I decided to throw together some canned tomatoes, cream cheese, basil, oregano and garlic together in a sauce. I served it over spaghetti, and it was actually pretty good. Over the next couple of months, I refined the recipe to include onions, mushrooms, olive oil and a little marsala wine. Sometimes I would use canned tomatoes, but I eventually preferred using fresh Roma tomatoes. I was proud of myself for creating something so tasty by accident.

I was working at the local weekly newspaper at the time, and we would get lots of press releases on our fax machine. I remember that I was going through the faxes one Tuesday afternoon when we had finished mailing out the paper. In that pile of faxes, there was a release from the public television station AETN about their latest promotion. They had been producing a series of cookbooks based on a specific food for each letter of the alphabet. This release was for T is for Tomato. All the recipes that were submitted by viewers were going to be included in the cookbook, and a few people would be selected to prepare their recipes during the station’s upcoming pledge drive. I decided right away to send in my sauce recipe.

A few weeks later, I got a call from someone at AETN informing me that I was one of those selected to prepare my recipe on live television. I was really excited at first, but then I got a little nervous. When the time came, I went to the AETN studio in Conway, Ark., with all my ingredients for my now nearly famous sauce. It was only a few months after my wedding, so I was thrilled to get to use all my new cookware that I had received as gifts. I think I was the third person to go on, and I guess it went pretty smoothly. There was a host (whose name I can’t remember after 13 years) out there with me, so he helped keep the dialogue moving.

I was supposed to get a copy of the cookbook and copy of the show, but for some reason, I never got those things sent to me from AETN. They did give all of us an AETN apron to wear during our segments, so I didn’t come back completely empty-handed. My mother recorded the show for me, and other than looking a little scared, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I didn’t do anything too stupid while on camera. It was a fun experience, and I enjoyed the opportunity to share my recipe with the (probably very small) Saturday afternoon AETN audience.

I wish I still had that VHS tape now to show it to my speech students. Every year when we do demonstration speeches, I tell them the story of my one and only television experience.

Here is the current version of my creamy pasta sauce:

2 1/2 lbs. tomatoes, peeled and finely chopped or 2 cans diced tomatoes
4 T. olive oil
1/4 c. marsala
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried basil
4 cloves garlic, crushed or 2 T. minced garlic
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 lb. fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened

Bring tomatoes, 3 T. olive oil, oregano and basil to a boil over medium heat in a large saucepan. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes. While simmering, heat remaining olive oil and garlic in skillet. Add onions and mushrooms; stir constantly until vegetables are tender. Remove from heat. Add cream cheese to tomato mixture and stir until cream cheese is completely melted into sauce. Add onions and mushrooms. Mix well. Serve over hot, cooked pasta. May be served with chicken breasts, if desired.

I bought some Roma tomatoes at the grocery store, but it’s also good with canned tomatoes if you want to speed up the process. I didn’t have any marsala wine, so I just used some burgundy cooking wine that I had in the fridge. Tonight I used bow tie pasta, but any kind will work.