Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The day after the night before

Friday night was a trip down to the Crown & Badger on the Strand in Tauranga with the neighbours. With some rugby, live music, good pub food and just a few ales and wines it was back home for some more ales & wines. Finally said good night to the neighbours in the wee hours so it was no surprise that Saturday was a bit shaky. Despite this, by the time evening came round it was time to have a bit of fun in the kitchen and cook a good meal.
The chosen menu was:
beef fillet in red wine sauce
oven roasted tomatoes
cajun stuffed mushrooms
and wow did it go down well!

Beef fillet in red wine sauce
Now it just so happened that I had an excellent 1 inch thick steak waiting for me to eat. Bought it from the Papamoa butchery. I see he now has a presence on youtube as well. In fact I have run out of raw bacon so I will down to see him in the next few days.
After that digression back to the recipe...

Ingredients (serves 2)

1 tbs Olive Oil
2 x 180g beef fillet steaks, trimmed
1 onion, halved, sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
100g small button mushrooms, trimmed
1 tsp tomato paste
1 tsp plain flour
1/2 cup (125ml) dry red wine
3/4 cup (180ml) good-quality beef stock

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Heat 1/2 tablespoon of oil in a fry pan over medium-high heat. Season steaks and cook for 2 minutes each side. Transfer to a tray and cook in oven for 2-3 minutes for rare; 5 minutes for medium.
Heat remaining oil in same pan over medium-low heat. Cook the onion for 5 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and mushrooms and cook, stirring, for a further 1-2 minutes until mushrooms start to brown. Stir in tomato paste and flour. Add wine and stock, then bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 5-6 minutes until well reduced. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Remove the pan from heat and return steaks to pan to just warm through in sauce.

Oven roasted tomatoes

This is an adaption of a BBC recipe done with feta. I chose not to add the feta.

Ingredients (serves 2)

About 2 tbsp extra virgin oil
As many tomatoes as you would like to serve as a side dish
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
1/2 tsp sea salt flakes
freshly ground black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 240C. Oil a shallow roasting tin with 1/2 of the oil.
Cut the tomatoes in half lengthways and lay them cut-side up in the tin.
Sprinkle over the thyme and some salt and pepper and roast for 15 minutes.
Reduce the oven temperature to 150C and roast for a further 1 & 1/2 hours (actually anything more than 15min will do) until they have shriveled to about half their original size and concentrated in flavour. Leave to cool just a bit.
Arrange the tomatoes the plates and drizzle over the remaining olive oil.
Sprinkle with a bit more sea salt and some black pepper to serve.

Phew! I might leave the mushroom recipe for another time.

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