When I first commited to undertaking this blog undertaking, my friend Joy suggested I include some of my recipes.

Recipes? I don’t have any recipes. I mean, I cook stuff. Good stuff, too. But recipes are lists, playbooks from which others can derive some scant hope of being able to recreate a dish in their own kitchen. Recipes are for people who think in complete sentences, linearly–from beginning to end, point A to point B. My claim to fame is getting all the way to point Q before I realize that I skipped point B altogether.

To tell the absolute truth, I can’t even follow recipes. I have to read the whole thing through a few times, figure out what the heck it is I’m trying to make, and then go for it. In the course of preparing a dish I might refer back to the recipe 12 or 13 times to make sure I have the measurements right or the order of steps in the correct order. More often than not, I just kind of wing it.

No, I told Joy, I don’t do recipes.

And then a few days later I posted about what I was making for dinner–I think it was Kefta (Morrocan meatballs). That post ended up with over 20 comments when it was all said and done. So I started thinking, maybe Joy was right. Maybe I could post recipes….

Who am I kidding?

Again, after my anniversary dinner with The Hubby out on our patio, my menu seemed to garner some favorable comments and curiosity. So I’m throwing caution to the wind. Here, for your consideration, is the first of what might be more than a few “un-recipes.”

19th Anniversary Menu: Bleu steaks w/ white wine reduction, served with asparagus and balsamic roasted tomatoes.

Balsamic roasted tomatoes:

okay, here’s the part where you realize that I really wasn’t joking about not being good at this whole “recipe” thing.
I used campari tomatoes, because they’re really sweet and juicy. But you could use Romas.
Cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise. Kinda poke holes in the flesh (don’t go all the way through) so that the balsamic vinegar can penetrate.

Drizzle some balsamic vinegar over tomatoes. “Some” is as specific as I can get, because I didn’t measure or anything. But I will tell you that whatever spills onto the cookie sheet (oh yeah–you should be doing this on a cookie sheet) is going to carmelize, which is a yummy-sounding word for “burn,” so you should probably line the cookie sheet with foil or else you’ll never get it clean.

Put the foil-lined cookie sheet with the drizzled tomatoes in the oven on….okay, here’s the deal. I had a busy day when I did this–in and out of the house. So I set the oven to maybe 300, cooked them for half an hour, then I had to turn off the oven (with the tomatoes in it) because I had to run to the store. I did that a few times, actually, and they turned out perfectly. That’s probably not very practical in terms of recreating it, though. But if you want them to be soft and squishy, you might want to cook them for half an hour. If you want them a little more firm, like sundried tomatoes, maybe an hour and a half. Either way, it’ll still be good.
Remove from oven and sprinkle with sea salt. Like a pinch, don’t get all crazy.

Asparagus:

Steam it. If you don’t know how to steam asparagus, then you’re probably already in way over your head. But don’t let that discourage you–I’m generally in over my head, and I’m okay with that.

Bleu steaks

beef tenderloin steaks (most people consider all tenderloin steaks to be filet mignon, but technically it’s only filet if it is the itty-bitty cut at the very end of the tenderloin. Just ask your butcher for tenderloin steaks, they’ll be perfect. They’re not cheap–about $15/ pound, or about $5/steak. Still, it’s a whole heckuva lot less than you’d pay at a restaurant, and this way you get all the accolades).
bleu cheese
salt
pepper (if you like the stuff. Me, I can’t stand it. It makes everything taste burned. But to each his own).
dried thyme
butter (how much? I dunno…have you had a cholesterol screening lately? I’d use that info to make this decision.)
olive oil
dry white wine (you could use sherry. I didn’t have sherry. I used to, but the bottle got all suicidal and leapt off the pantry shelf onto the stained concrete floor. I used Barefoot Pino Grigio.)
heavy cream
beef consomme (consomme is like broth, only it has gelatin added. Sounds gross to me too, but I guess it helps the consistency of the sauce. If you have broth, I’d say it’s probably fine)

My best real-chef tip: with a paper towel, blot the meat all over to dry. Seriously. If you cook wet meat, it steams. Eeeww. Steamed meat. This is steak, not potstickers.

Rub the meat with the salt (I used sea), pepper (if that’s the way you roll) and dried thyme. Place it in the pan in which you have melted (oh yeah–melt the butter) the butter and olive oil together.

Cook the steak a few minutes–1 or 2 minutes on each side will give you rare. 4 minutes gives you oh-crap-this-is-almost-not-medium-rare-anymore.

I read that you can tell how cooked your steak is by comparing it to your face. I mean by touch, not sight. If it feels like your chin, it’s rare; like the tip of your nose, it’s medium; like your forehead, it’s ruined because who the heck wants to spend $15 a pound on tenderloin and eat it well done? Anyway, you’re going to have a bottle of wine out to use for making the sauce, and if you’re standing over the stove touching your chin while you poke the steak, people are going to assume you’re drunk, so just cook it a couple of minutes on each side and call it good.

Take the steaks out of the pan and set them aside to let the juices redistribute. If you want, you can stick an oven-proof dish in the hot oven for a few minutes while the steaks are cooking (which requires a bit of advanced planning–if you’re actually reading as you go, it’s too late now) and set the steaks in the hot dish. I didn’t, because the idea didn’t hit me until I was finished.

Add wine, cream, and consomme. I dunno, maybe 1/2 cup each for 3 steaks? Scrape up all the little bits in the pan, simmer and stir the sauce until it’s reduced to the point where it looks like sauce and not juice. You’ll be able to tell, trust me.

Okay, here’s where it all comes together:
Pour some sauce on the bottom of the plate, set the steak on top of it. Crumble some bleu cheese on top of the steak, artfully arrange a couple of asparagus stalks on top (and serve the rest on the side), and drizzle a little more sauce over the top. Serve the tomatoes on the side (unless you couldn’t wait and you ate them all while you were cooking the steak).

I would post a photo of the steak, but the lighting was bad (that’s the thing about dining by candelight), and so the photos aren’t nearly as appetizing as the actual food was. But it’s all easy stuff…steak, tomatoes, asparagus–you already know what all that stuff looks like.

Dessert: Cheesecake w/ dark chocolate ganache

Okay, so I’m going to admit to cheating on this one. My kitchen was a wreck before I even started dinner, and there was no way I was going to pull off making a cheesecake from scratch if I wanted The Hubby to come home to a clean-ish kitchen. So I bought a frozen cheesecake. So sue me. If you want to make a homemade cheesecake, you can: a few bricks of cream cheese, 3 eggs, some sugar (I dunno–a cup?), vanilla, ooh–you could melt a cup of dark chocolate chips and throw them in, but if you do, make sure you let the melted chocolate cool first so it doesn’t scramble your eggs. Oh–beforehand you’ll need to make that crust with the crushed up cookies and butter. You’ve done that one before, right? Okay, good. Then pour the filling over the crust and bake it. I guess everything bakes at 350, so I think that’s what I use. I’d probably check on it after about 40 minutes and just see how it’s doing, and go from there. It’ll taste way yummier than storebought–the consistency will be infinitely better. But chances are, your Hubby won’t notice.

Anyway, what makes this cheesecake stellar is the ganache topping. And it is so simple. Honest. You’ll need (I am actually going to give you actual honest-to-goodness measurements this time. Since that is so out of character for me, I’m assuming you’ve figured out that I wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t really, really important. Crucial even.) 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream and 8 oz. (1 cup) dark chocolate chips, OR semi-sweet baker’s chocolate, chopped. DO NOT use that bark crap. You’ll be sorry.

Put the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl. Heat the cream in a saucepan on the stove until it’s bubbling. Get a whisk–once you pour the cream over the chocolate it’s too late to go searching for your whisk, because it’ll cool off. Pour the cream over the chocolate and whisk until melted. If you want, you can add a couple of tablespoons of liqueur or flavored coffee syrup. Hazelnut is divine, as I remember (I’m going on long-ago memories of the days before we had a nut-allergy in our family).

Spread the ganache on top of the cheesecake. You’ll need to do this before you take it out of either the pan (if homemade) or the paper edging (if you bought frozen). Put it in the fridge so the ganache can set. Serve w/ fresh berries.

There you have it–simple, elegant, and oh-so-delicious. The Hubby said it was better than any restaurant meal he’s ever had. I’m guessing he might have exaggerated a little. But not much….
Bon apetit!