Saturday, February 27, 2016 – So when I first started doing ingredient challenges, the rule was that the people who issued the challenges had to eat whatever I cooked for them. (This was to prevent people from choosing the most ridiculous ingredients and make sure they picked things that people would actually eat.) That and, whatever I came up with, I wanted to share with my friends. So naturally, it’s dinner party time!
Today’s menu was
- bacon cheddar garlic mashed potatoes (by request)
- roasted butternut squash and green beans wrapped in chard
- sausage wrapped in bacon wrapped in steak
- chocolate nut rosewater honey cinnamon pastries
Side: Mashed Potaties
So let’s start with the mashed potatoes. They weren’t originally on the menu, but one of the dinner guests requested potatoes, so I decided to mash some. And I figured bacon and cheddar would really oomph up the potatoes. And also garlic, because garlic.
So the first question: milk or cream? Some recipes call for milk, others call for cream. So I decided to split the difference and use half-and-half. (Plus, the store didn’t have any pints of milk.)
For the bacon, the crispier the better. I normally prefer soft bacon, but crispy bacon gives a better contrast with the creamy potatoes. I used 4 strips for 2 lbs of Yukon gold potatoes. My preferred brand of bacon is Smithfield. Fries up nicely. Not too expensive. (Oscar Mayer is good too, which may surprise you if you assumed big-name brands are bad.)
The cheddar flavor didn’t come through, and I used a lot of cheddar. (It’s hard to tell in the photo, but I used so much cheddar, the potatoes turned yellow.) Not only that, but I had to put a ton of salt and pepper in the potatoes to get flavor out of them. I suspect (but don’t know for sure) that the cheddar didn’t inhibit the other flavors in the potatoes. If I were to do this over again, I’d melt the cheddar on top of the potatoes as a last step instead of mixing them into the potatoes. (My preferred brands of cheddar are either Sargento or Tillamook. Lucerne is secretly just Safeway brand, and Kraft cheddar is actually just flavored American.)
Bonus: Remember this guy? I decided to bring back the freeze-dried garlic. Didn’t bother rehydrating it. Just sauteed it in bacon grease for about 30 seconds, simmered it in the half-and-half, and added it to the potatoes. Apparently, it’s more garlicky than garlic, a concept I can’t fully explain.
Simple version: freeze-dried garlic is actually kind of awesome.
Side: Veggie Wrap
Last time, I used pumpkin and injured myself slicing up the pumpkin. (That skin is just too tough. And this was an eating pumpkin, not a Halloween pumpkin.) So this time, I used butternut squash. Also really tough, but much easier to work with than a pumpkin. (Plus, pumpkins aren’t in season in February.) As far as squashes go, it’s hard to go wrong with butternut.
The second change was I didn’t bother grilling or sauteing anything (grill marks don’t really show up on squash anyway), just tossed the squash and green beans in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and tossed them into a 350 F oven for 40 minutes. Came out great. Nothing like roasted squash and green beans.
The last change was I blanched the chard for only 15 seconds instead of 2 minutes. This softened the chard, but kept it firm enough to use as a wrap. (Although it didn’t matter because most people just ate it like a salad anyway.)
Main: Beef Roll
Like I said last time, I’d get rid of that second layer of beef (so it’d be sausage, bacon, beef), simmer it in more liquid, and add more flavor to the sausage.
In the case of the simmer, I decided to use 1.5 cups of BBQ sauce and 1.5 cups water in the dish and braise the beef in it. Last time, I cooked it for 2 hours, and it was overcooked. This time, I cooked it for 1.5 hours, and unfortunately, it was still overcooked. Alton Brown says to braise it for 45 minutes, so I should cook it for much less time. Case in point, even the sausage was well done by that point, so I don’t really need to cook it for that long. (Speaking of Alton Brown, he says I should use flank, as opposed to round steak like my other source recipes say. I trust Alton Brown, so I’ll try flank next time.)
I also still didn’t have enough liquid. I could prolly get away with 4 or even 5 cups of liquid. Or alternatively, instead of my big wide saute pan, I should braise it in my stock pot. (Unfortunately, my stock pot was being used for mashed potatoes today, but I could keep it in mind for next time.)
Speaking of well done sausage, the sage and fennel didn’t add that much flavor to the sausage, and I added a lot of sage and fennel. Cooking for a long time destroys complex flavor, so cooking for less time will certainly help. I’m also thinking of wrapping the sausage in some cheese to add something complex and interesting on the inside.
And for something interesting on the outside, even though I simmered the roulade in BBQ sauce, I didn’t really get much BBQ flavor in the beef. So I’ll still need to slather BBQ sauce on the beef when I’m done cooking.
I’d say the beef roll was the weakest part of the dinner, which is a shame since it was the main course. The only saving grace was that it was a pile of meat, and the guys love meat, so…
Dessert: Everything Pastries
And by everything, I mean chocolate, nut, rose water, honey, and cinnamon in puff pastry rolled up like a chocolate croissant. It was pretty much the same as last time, and they were a hit, like last time. The only comment was that the pastry was soggy, but there’s no way to avoid that when you need to infuse rose water flavor into the pastry.
Bonus: A big pile of 6 pastries. Want one? Come visit me in Seattle. They’re only good when fresh out of the oven.