Date Night--October 8, 2014

Happy Anniversary to Us!!!

Okay, technically it's not until Friday, but we have to be up and out of the house early on Saturday, so a fancy meal on Friday night didn't seem wise.  And Josh has to conduct a "technical interview" with some folks in India at 10:00 at night on Thursday, so drink wasn't in a good choice for Thursday either.  Really, Date Night is on Wednesday so this made it the most obvious choice.

I've been planning this meal for weeks now.  I had actually planned two different meals, but this is the one that won out in the end.  I'm glad this was the choice I made...Josh called it the "best meal he's had...in or out...in some time."  He called it restaurant worthy.  I made some of his favorite things, and he said they were exactly what they were supposed to be.  He orders these things out with great frequency, so I think he's qualified to make these judgments.

So you want to know what this meal was, right?

Cocktails and Appetizer

Not my photo...I forgot to take one.  This is what the drink looked like.

This cocktail is called the Boulevardier.  It is described as "bastard child of a Manhattan and a Negroni."  That went well with my whole menu plan.  It contains 2 oz of bourbon or rye whiskey (I did 1 oz of each), 1 oz of Campari, and 1 oz of sweet vermouth.  It as a tasty little concoction.

With the cocktails, I made this

Again, I forgot to take to a picture.  This looks better than mine anyway.  :-)

Maybe I needed to let the puff pastry thaw a little more. My tart was kind of gummy in the center adn never got that beautiful golden crust.

Salad

My husband loves, I mean LOVES Caesar salad.  Me?  I'm not too fond of it.  Raw egg and anchovies aren't my thing.  But I can find and follow recipes.  So did.

Ingredients for the dressing and salad.

Josh's Caesar salad.  This picture was taken before I dressed it and add the 4 anchovy filets.

My Panzanella.  Italian "bread salad".  It was yummy, but I couldn't finish it.

Did you notice the croutons in the salads?  You should. I made them. Easy  peasy and super delicious.I did not use the fresh parsley in the recipe, but subbed some Italian seasoning blend.

It's a good thing I made the  croutons.  It made a great vehicle to taste....

Main Course

my tomato sauce!  Have you figured out that Italian was the theme of this week's Date Night.

Now this was not a Spaghetti and Meatballs kind of Italian.  This was Chicken Parmesan.  The only alteration that I made to the recipe was to use olive oil instead of vegetable and I added a Tbs of butter.  It was really good.

Chicken before adding sauce and cheeses.

Okay, I kinda forgot to take a picture of the main course after it was plated.  It kinda looked like this,.



I did not have garlic bread.  I did have the spaghetti though.

Dessert

Ahhh dessert. For this I have many pictures.

I made Panna Cotta.   This is basically an eggless custard.  But I didn't want to make just chocolate panna cotta or just vanilla panna cotta. No.  That would have been too easy.  I wanted to do both.  I wanted this

This is actually MY dessert.  I took the picture and everything.

See the layesr?

 Wondering how I got that.  I was cooking all day long.  Did I mention that? ALL DAY LONG!  It started with the chocolate Panna Cotta.

I poured the custard from the saucepan to a measuring cup and then from the measuring cup to my stemless cocktail glasses nestled in a loaf pan. Into the fridge and then wait.

They were chilling in the fridge by 9.

At 12 I added the vanilla.

At 3:30 or so I added the raspberrries.

As I said at the start, I've been planning this meal for weeks.  After all, you only have 1 10th anniversary.  I used pinterest to do my searching.  I loved it.  I could pin and compare recipes very easily and pull them up on my i-pad in the kitchen for cooking.

This bring this installment of Date Night to a close.

happy cooking

Date Night 11/9/11

So here we are in the middle of another week and that means it's date night.

Dinner tonight?  Steak and potatoes!

I was able to get a Porterhouse steak at Marriano's.  We plan to share it...I'll eat the filet portion and Josh will get the strip steak.  YUM!

The rest of the meal has just been one big brain fart. 

I bought and roasted baby beets on Monday.  I got goat cheese.  I have red leaf lettuce.  So my salad was planned and ingredients obtained. 

I decided Josh would really like a Caesar salad.  Alas, I had no anchovies.  It was okay though, I had to stop at another closer market yesterday.  I got the anchovies.

I realized with a start that  I didn't have any Romaine lettuce.  A must for a true Caesar salad.  Okay.  I remedied that after a "beauty appointment" I had earlier today.

After getting the anchovies and other groceries into my car yesterday, I realized I had no potatoes.  I turned around and marched right back into the store.  I left with 2 baking potatoes.  89 cents of potato that had to go my credit card because I had no cash...not even enough change.  Yikes!  Thus we are having good old fashioned baked potatoes with dinner.

While getting ice cream, I passed these frozen, cheese filled, phyllo triangles.  Score on tonight's appetizer!  I think I want to make an apricot-mustard dipping sauce.  I could find no such recipe, so this one is coming out of my own little head.

I am also going to make a horseradish cream sauce to go with the beef.  Josh also likes it on his broccoli (Tonight's vegetable).

SAUCE

• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish
• 2 green onions, chopped

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Marinated-Flank-Steak-with-Horseradish-Sauce-2343#ixzz1dF7vjwf0

That leaves cocktails and dessert.  They are actually kind of related.  I bought a pineapple on Monday.  I had no plan for said pineapple.  I like pineapple and the price was reasonable, so I bought a pineapple.  Josh thinks fresh pineapple would make a lovely dessert.  He is sure he can pour some kind of spirit over it as well.  (I think he's thinking Cointreau.)  Check...we'll have pineapple for dessert.

Now to the cocktail.  I get regular emails from tastingtable.com.  Sometimes they are foody, other times they feature adult beverages--with recipes.  This one is called No Contest.  It's a very unusual recipe but it's garnished with, you got it, a pineapple wedge.

So that's what I'm cooking tonight.  How about you?

happy cooking