We did not cook Wednesday or Thursday, because of Suzette's girls night and my meditation on Wednesday and my Last Thursday Book Club group on Thursday (Willy and Suzette ate left over enchilada casserole with guacamole on Thursday), but I had thawed a ribeye steak out.
On Friday we had planned to go to Santa Fe 4:00 p.m. and we were both tired, so we decided to cook at home and rest rather than rush up to Santa Fe.
We had picked all of the ripe peppers from our garden on Friday morning, including pimientos, shishitos, and purple bells.
At 7:00 p.m. after the PBS news, I found the last three mushrooms in the back of the crisper, so I sliced up the mushrooms and peppers and Suzette mixed PPI pesto she had made on Thursday evening into the bag of PPI pasta and microwaved it to heat it and mix the flavors.
Suzette then started making the soup. We had roasted and removed the meat from a large yellow skinned squash that had pimples on it (Gavilloin?) and put in in a 32 oz yogurt container several days ago. Suzette then emulsified it in chicken stock and added nutmeg and salt and pepper and a bit of paprika to the soup. Then she added heavy cream to make it into a cream soup. I minced four stalks of chives to garnish the top of the soup.
While the soup was cooking Suzette smashed a couple of cloves of garlic into a large skillet and added about 2 ½ Tbsp. of butter and about 1 1/2 Tbsp. olive oil to the skillet and about 2 Tbsp. of chopped onion and sautéed that with the mushrooms and peppers for several minutes until they softened and took on color while I cut the steak into 1 inch thick strips and chunks. We then added the steak and shishito peppers to the skillet and cooked slowly while we ate the soup.
I went to the basement and fetched and opened a bottle of Murphy Goode Claret 2006 and we ladled soup into pasta bowls and garnished it with chives. The soup was delicious. The squash had a buttery texture and mild flavor that worked well with the spicy, creamy soup. I was amazed that the clean fruity Murphy Goode claret went well with the soup.
When we finished our soup, we heated the skillet of steak and peppers and tossed a pile of pesto coated pasta into the pasta bowls on top of the residue of soup, which gave the bowl that creamy light yellow color and a little creamy flavor, and then ladled the steak and pepper mixture onto the top of the pasta. After pouring more glasses of claret, we enjoyed one of the best comfort food meals I have had in a very long time.
The combination of wonderful meat (Costco $8.39/lb) with fresh sautéed peppers and mushrooms in a butter sauce with pesto pasta was a combination that I do not think I have ever had before and it was great. Suzette said this is really Italian and I agreed and mentioned that there is a beef celebration in Cortona, Tuscany, Italy at which large quantities of beef are cooked. I could imagine the Italians cooking the beef with peppers and eating it with pesto coated pasta and even squash soup, because the combination is an obvious end of summer combination because of the fresh availability of all of the ingredients.
Bon Appétit
No comments:
Post a Comment