I quickly decided I would serve it exactly as PW had intended it to be served.
As you might know, I have three sisters by marriage: Samantha, Kristina, and Mallory. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for us to get together without our men to share in exploratory cooking, conversation, and hopefully, laughter.
I was not disappointed.
I am going to admit, I wouldn't blame Hubby for wrinkling his nose at this meal. The burgundy mushrooms, in particular, were not something I was looking forward to cooking or tasting. A few years ago, Mallory and Kristina were skimming through The Pioneer Woman Cooks and when they came to the mushrooms they both screeched in excitement over the wine soaked mushrooms. I, on the other hand, said to myself, I will never, ever, cook those.
Little did I know.
Here's a run down of our meal from start to finish:
Homemade Ranch with Iceberg Wedge
I left out the sangria recipe PW includes in this girls' dinner with plans to serve it at a later event this month. To make up for this, I added PW's wedge salad as a starter. Wedge salads are enticing, however, I've made it a point never to order one when out at a restaurant.
I'm sure you can guess why.
They require hardly any effort. A five-year-old could make a magnificent wedge salad! It is merely a matter of washing the salad, chopping it into hunks, and making the dressing. This is certainly not something worth paying $4-$8 for at a restaurant.
PW's ranch dressing was delicious. It was incredibly simple, however it did require a lot of fresh herbs--so keep that in mind if you get the urge to make it as I'm not sure if it will taste the same with dried herbs.*
*I would assume it should, and if I hadn't been religiously following each recipe's directions, I might have substituted dried dill and dried parsley for the fresh stuff.
Side Dish: Burgundy Mushrooms
The mushrooms needed to cook for NINE HOURS.
Nine!
Can you believe it?
About half way through, my house was smelling amazing, but oddly enough it did not smell like mushrooms.* At first it smelled a lot like biscuits were cooking (they weren't) and then it was simply a sweet, almost even meaty, smell. Regardless of how delightful their smell was, I ate only one mushroom. I knew I could not get by with having simply made them, and figured my tasting each recipe was an unspoken rule for this recipe challenge. All three of my sisters commented that they were amazing, and so much more flavorful that ordinary mushrooms.
Then again, what exactly do mushrooms smell like?
Side Dish/Appetizer: Olive Cheese Bread
If you like olives, you will love the olive bread. If you aren't an olive fan, like me, you might be able to endure the bread, but you'll be thinking the entire time that there are way too many olives and secretly you'll be wishing for more cheese and perhaps even a little garlic.
That said, if I ever made this bread again, I would cut the entire thing in half (because I had way too much as you can tell from the above picture) and then I would cut the amount of olives used in half again.
Perhaps I would increase the amount of butter used, and sprinkle in a handful more of cheese. Yes, that sounds perfect.
Side Dish: Creamy Rosemary Potatoes
My favorite part of the whole meal were the rosemary potatoes. I thought for sure I would hate them because rosemary is probably my least favorite herb. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way. But the potatoes were outstanding, and they better have been because making them was an intensive three-step process.
I got to use my favorite little kitchen tool, the mandolin, to slice the potatoes up. Then some of the best ingredients in the world: butter, cream cheese, and cream, were warmed on the stove to make a cream sauce that when baked only increased in its rich, creamy flavor.
Entree: Roasted Beef Tenderloin
The meat was a real pain in my tail. First of all, I couldn't find a beef tenderloin at my grocery store to save my life. When I finally did find one, it was such an astronomical price I almost began cursing PW's name right there in the store.
I suppose when you own a cattle ranch you have the liberty to make any kind of meat at any time.
Sigh. If only.
I've already spent a lot on this recipe challenge, so I decided that getting a chunk of meat from the relative area the beef tenderloin is from would work. I know in the end that the meat would have been a little better had I gone with the beef tenderloin, but that was a life choice I made and stuck to my guns on.
The girls were awesome about the meat, raving about it even though it was super rare (which they all claimed the rarer the better). The crust made of salt, pepper, sugar, olive oil, and bacon grease (oh yes!) gave the outside of the meat an amazing flavor.
Sam reached eagerly for a thick, very rare, piece. However, she also seemed to have gotten stuck with the fattiest piece of all.
This led to some cutting issues, but she pressed on.
I love Sam. We always laugh when we are together.
Kristina is pretty awesome, too.
And so is this cutie patootie.
The awesome thing about creme brulee is that it is a dessert that is made hours ahead of time and needs only a little heat from a kitchen torch to make it seem like it was just prepared. The not so awesome thing about creme brulee is that it is a bit of a prima donna. It must, absolutely must, be made in creme brulee dishes. No ordinary ramekins will do for creme brulee.* Also, you must, absolutely must, have a kitchen torch and rimmed baking sheets in order to achieve perfect creme brulee.
*I wish PW had pointed all this out in the recipe.
I hope you're catching on here that I did not achieve perfect creme brulee. In fact, perhaps the worst part, I knew long before dinner that my creme brulee had a problem.
The best part of making creme brulee is that it requires so few ingredients.
The creme is made and then baked in the oven for a short time until the tops just begin to show a hint of brown. When I removed my ramekins from the oven I knew for certain too much jiggling was occurring under the stiffened and browning surface.
But there was nothing I could do at this point.
I have since acquired a set of actual creme brulee dishes and will be attempting it again before this month is over. The good news is that the creme was so sweet and delicious that we munched on our hardened sugar from the top and then scooped the insides up like melted ice cream.
In the end, although I felt that at least two of the six recipes I made were major fails, I realized that this meal overall wasn't about my cooking or even my recipe challenge. That might have been what brought us to the table, but overall, it was about four women sharing life the best way possible: with food, a little imperfect, but still delicious.
*Note: Due to the large number of recipes used for this post I haven't rated these recipes. However, each, despite my personal tastes, would be rated Keep in the Strainer!
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