Father's Day Meal

Sirloin Steaks With Sauteed Mushrooms

My sister and I thought it would be really nice to make our stepfather a meal for Father's Day as opposed to taking him out, especially since we are so often disappointed with restaurants nowadays. We decided to make him grilled sirloin steak with sauteed mushrooms over top, boiled corn on the cob, roasted potato salad with a sour cream and horseradish dressing, tatsoi sauteed with an Asian dressing, and a blueberry cake for dessert. The entire meal was very delicious; my step dad said he enjoyed it immensely! It was also very reasonably priced to make by comparison to a restaurant meal and we had leftovers for the next day.

Grilling Steaks

The sirloin steaks, I am happy to say, were cooked beautifully on the grill. I'm always afraid with overcooking meat because it tends to get tough and some meats, like beef, really don't need be to left on for too long. I'd say we got our steaks to a tender medium rare to medium.

I even managed to get some nice crosshatched markings on them making them look extra pretty! When the steak doesn't stick to the grill anymore, you just turn the steak about 90 degrees and leave on for an extra minute or two before flipping to get the crosshatched markings.

The mushrooms we sauteed were white mushrooms. What we do is we first get a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan and get it very hot until it bubbles. When the fat stops bubbling you can add the sliced mushrooms in and watch them absorb all that fat, before they'll start to brown. We presented our steaks on a platter with the mushrooms draped over top.

Roasted Potato Salad

We found the recipe for the roasted potato salad in the "Earth To Table" cookbook in the winter section, but we figured it would work just as well now as in winter and would be a perfect accompaniment to the steak. The only thing was we couldn't find fingerling potatoes which the recipe calls for, and instead had to use baby potatoes. We roasted them off with some olive oil, white wine, and thyme leaves until tender and then tossed them in our creamy dressing of sour cream and grated fresh horseradish. Topped with green watercress it was an elegant looking salad and accompaniment to our meal.

Tatsoi

My sister was responsible for cooking the tatsoi, which is an Asian mustard green. She chose to wilt it with rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds which amounted to a very yummy side dish.

The blueberry cake is something that I've tried several times before and have even spoken of in a previous post. This cake is so delicious with a thick layer of blueberries on a cornmeal cake and is a light way to finish a meal.

Mexican Omelette

Today for breakfast I chose to make a mexican-style omelette. The idea really struck when I looked into the fridge and saw a lonely cob of corn that we boiled a few nights ago, leftover sweet red pepper, leftover diced onion, and leftover chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Along with the eggs, it was a pretty obvious idea to make an omelette with all those ingredients.

For my sister and I, one chipotle pepper adds good spice to this dish, but if you're hesitant about spice you can use a quarter of one or a half depending on the amount of spice you like. I wouldn't cut the pepper out alltogether though, because along with the spice, it also imparts a nice smoky barbecue flavour to the omelette.

For the cheese, I used a taco cheese that I bought from the store, but shredded cheddar or mozzarella, or anything else that you prefer should work well too.

For the garnish, I used chives because that's what I had, but for more authenticity some cilantro would be nice as well.

I should add that I didn't really measure anything for this recipe, so the amounts listed below are approximate, but I think they should be pretty close to what I did.

Here is my recipe:

Mexican Omelette

Serves two people

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced sweet red pepper
1 cob of corn, boiled, kernels cut off
1/4 to 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, diced
1/4 cup shredded cheese (I used taco cheese)
4 eggs
chives or cilantro for garnish

Directions:

1. Heat olive oil in frying pan
2. Add onion, red pepper, corn, and chipotle; cook until onions are translucent and vegetables are tender-crisp; set aside on a plate
3.  In a bowl, mix up eggs
4. Add eggs to frying pan and cook until halfway done
5. Add vegetables to half of the omelette and top with cheese
6. Once cooked enough that the egg is pliable, place empty half of omelette over the vegetable side
7. Remove from pan onto a plate and place in microwave for approximately 30 to 60 seconds until all the egg is cooked
8. Cut in half and place halves on their own plate; garnish with chopped chives or cilantro

French Onion Soup

French onion soup, especially with the rainy cool weather that we're having right now, is something that I love to eat. I've actually made Julia Child's recipe for it twice recently as it's so delicious.

The recipe includes the same sorts of ingredients as other onion soup recipes, but one that is quite unique to the recipes I have tried in the past is the addition of wine. I find that anything acidic like that brightens up the flavour a bit and makes it more complex.

The first time I served this soup, I simply dished it out into individual bowls, placing a slice of ciabatta bread in the center and sprinkling parmesan cheese over top. The second time, the soup was ladled into individual onion soup dishes, some toasted ciabatta on top with grated gruyere cheese, and set in the oven until the cheese melted. I really enjoyed this recipe and would try it again.

Chocolate Mousse

I've seen several chocolate mousse recipes before, some which utilize gelatin and other which simply fold in whipped cream. In fact, a mousse recipe by Nigella Lawson I used once even required marshmallows to be melted down. The chocolate mousse recipe that I tried last week was the best I have ever made and used a much more traditional method to gain a silky texture, beaten egg whites.

The first step of the recipe is simply to melt your chocolate down with some butter, adding egg yolks to it and setting it in the fridge. The next step is to whip your egg whites. Then you whip your whipping cream before folding both the cream and egg whites into the chocolate mixture. At the stage of melting the chocolate I added some strong coffee for extra flavour.

I chose to pipe the mousse into dessert bowls to give it a more elegant finish. Then I chilled it for several hours. The mousse was really silky and smooth, although I would use less coffee than I did because it overpowered the chocolate slightly.

Vanilla Cupcakes With Butter Frosting

I've definitely been on a cupcake kick over the last week or so making red velvet cupcakes a few days ago with friends, and shortly before that, baking some vanilla cupcakes with butter frosting. My sister and I used the recipe from the Joy of Baking website for these cakes, and while very sweet, I found myself enjoying them immensely.

I think that my sister's and my real motivation behind making these was to practice our piping technique, because thus far, we've simply been using a star tip to create a swirl topping for cupcakes. We thought we would try the star tip for other effects as well. The blue ones that we used the star tip on ended up reminding me of lilacs. Despite our piping technique not being expert yet, these cupcakes still ended up being very pretty.

Rosemary Foccacia Bread

The Italian Food Forever website is fast becoming one of my favourite spots for recipes on the internet. I've only made their pasta dough recipes thus far, but a few days ago, I attempted the Rosemary Foccacia recipe. My sister had made this recipe before (see Megan's Blog), but I didn't have a hand in it. I thought I would try it myself this time.


As far as bread dough goes, this was a quick one to come together. All the ingredients go in the bowl at once and then there is a period of kneading followed by letting the dough rest until doubled in size. Then, you shape your dough, set it on a pan and give it another period of rest. Afterwards, you dimple the dough all over so that you can fill the holes with olive oil, which makes this bread so moist. Part of what makes this bread so delicious, including addictive, is the sprinkling of freshly chopped rosemary and course salt over top. My family and friends couldn't get enough of it!

Homemade Fettuccine Alfredo

A few weeks ago, I purchased a Remy Olivier pasta machine for $30 which manually rolls out pasta dough and cuts it into fettuccine or spaghetti. This machine makes it so easy to make pasta at home, which I had never done before. My sister's and my first attempt of fresh pasta with this machine was butternut squash filled ravioli in a garlic cream sauce, which my sister blogged about at Megan's Blog. We purchased a circular ravioli stamp which both cuts and seals the edges of the ravioli. The effort to make these was long, but well worth it!



For our second attempt at making homemade pasta, we chose to invite a few friends over to make Fettuccine Alfredo. The recipe we used for the noodles was the same we had used for our ravioli, found at the Italian Food Forever website. For our Alfredo sauce, we simply poured whipping cream over the cooked pasta, and added grated fresh garlic, lots of parmesan, and butter to melt in, and let sit until thickened. This recipe was based on the garlic cream sauce we made for our ravioli, although I can't remember the website we got it from.


For us newbies, it took us approximately two and a half hours in total to make the pasta dough, cut it, and cook it, which isn't so bad when you have a weekend to do it on and friends to enjoy it with!