March 14, 2015 Grilled Steak, Sautéed Mushrooms, Roasted Kabocha Squash, Kale Salad and Chocolate dessert

March 14, 2015 Grilled Steak, Sautéed Mushrooms, Roasted Kabocha Squash, Kale Salad and Chocolate dessert

We invited Ricardo and Cynthia over for dinner tonight.  I asked Cynthia to prepare a Kale salad.  I thawed out one aged rib eye steak and one non-aged bone in rib steak overnight.

During the afternoon we also made

Chocolate Baked Pudding with

8 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate chips

2 oz. Maas Brothers Baking chocolate

1 oz. Dutch cocoa

½ lb. of butter

½ cup of sugar

7 eggs separated and the whites whipped into light peaks

1 Tbsp. of flour

Melt the chocolate and butter and then add the sugar

In a separate bowl you stir the egg yolks with the flour until they are mixed well and then they are added to the chocolate mixture.

You beat the egg whites until they are soft peaks and then you fold the egg white into the chocolate mixture and put into a collared bowl that has been greased with butter and bake in a 350˚ oven for 50 minutes to 60 minutes until firm.

This is really a chocolate soufflé with a bit of flour to hold it together.

I had PPI crème anglais from last Saturday’s meal in the garage, so did not need to make the pouring custard.

I baked the Kabocha squash in the oven with the Chocolate Pudding.

Kabocha Squash

I cut the squash in half at its widest circumference, removed the seeds and laid about an oz. of butter and about 1 Tbsp. of light brown sugar in the cavity of each half.

At 6:30 Cynthia and Ricardo arrived with the kale salad and a bottle of Griffone Reserva chianti (Trader Joe’s ?).  As we inspected the garden, we drank glasses of Amaro di Toscano produced by Knight Gabriella in Tuscany.  It had a bitter taste of the 27 herbs it is made with and the twist of lemon peel recommended by the Asst. Manager at Total Wine ($17.99), where I bought it last week, helped ease the intensity of the herbs. 

We then went inside and I sautéed the brown mushrooms that I had sliced around 6:00 in butter and olive oil with 1 tsp. of fresh thyme and about 1 tbsp. of garlic chives from the garden and about 2 Tbsp. of Amontillado sherry and opened the bottle of Griffone Reserva Chianti and heated the squash while Suzette salted and peppered the steaks and grilled them.

the sauteed mushrooms

the Kale Salad

Cynthia and Ricardo in their Pi shirts

grilled red bell peppers, steak with mushrooms, kale salad and roasted Kabocha squash

In about fifteen minutes when the steakswere cooked to medium rare and red bell peppers steamed , I sliced each of the steaks and separated them on the board so we could tell which we selected an sliced a bell pepper.

Cynthia placed her kale salad on the table and I plated each plate with ¼ Kabocha Squash and each person served themselves steak and mushrooms and salad and I poured glasses of the Griffone Chianti.  I liked the wine a lot and will buy it next time.  It did not have the bitter peppery taste that Griffone’s primitivo has.  It was a medium bodied chianti that went well with the steak.

Cynthia’s salad included chopped curly kale, julienned almonds, and chopped radish, cucumber and a couple more ingredients.  She made the dressing with white balsamic vinegar, which lightened its flavor, so the flavor of the ingredients stood out.  Cynthia said she found a bag of curly kale at Smith’s for $.99.

After dinner we sat and talked for a few minutes and then I poured glasses of Nue Grapefruit vodka and then served the chocolate Baked Pudding with the PPI crème anglais and glasses of Knight Gabriello Grappa de Brunello (Total Wine $39.95).

the chocolate baked pudding with creme anglais

Katie,, who hosts the children's show on KUNM and in whose guest house Cynthia and Ricardo are staying while their kitchen is being remodeled gave them shirts celebrating the only day of the century with all of the digits of Pi in its correct order (See picture above) 

I thought dinner was wonderful with just the right amount of food.

The comparison of the aged versus the non-aged steak was interesting.  We all preferred the aged over the non-aged because the non-aged was a little more chewy and not as dense as the aged beef.  It appears to me that aging breaks down some of the cartilage in the muscle of the beef and the salt it was aged on drew out some of the liquid in the steak over the 18 days it was aged.

Bon Appétit