Mystery Dinner

[Roxanne 21]

I'm gonna jump in here before I wimp out when I have read your five star delights!

DISASTER!!!! But YESSSSS this was a fun idea and I hope it continues.

Anyway, I did use all of the ingredients listed and thought I had a pretty good and simple game plan.

This is not in any particular order--just following the list:

Spinach salad topped with roasted trussed cherry tomatoes and a light vinagrette with a tiny bit of grated parmesan and minced red bell pepper (I should not have wilted the spinach for this)

Hamburger patties (sort of salisbury steak style without the fillers--just some sauteed garlic and onion) with mushrooms and leeks in a red wine sauce
(Nothing to write home about--I think I may have overcooked the burgers a wee bit DUHHHH!!!)

Baked creamy polenta with mushrooms and red bell pepper--this had parmesan cheese and cream.
Now the oldies here know how much we LOVE polenta (blech!!!) but I thought I would give it another shot. Putting it together looked really great but the taste---must be what wallpaper paste must taste like....another experiment bites the dust but was fun in the making---

Okay y'all---I fessed up. Now you can give me your culinary delights---GO AHEAD!!!! Lay it on me!!!! I'll go and hide my head in shame later----

I TOLD YOU---I'm NOT creative in the culinary department but at least I tried and had a good time!! Talk about amateurville!!!

CIA---think I will sign up before I get too senile!!!

[pjcooks]

Here goes! My take on burgers and rings~




This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the list of ingredients building, so I decided to go with it. It’s not fancy, but it is a fun take on comfort food!

I pan-fried a roasted tomato, red pepper, Vidalia onion and parm polenta cake. Grill is under a foot of snow at the moment, so had to rely upon my little cast iron skillet (so cute). Topped with a pan fried ground veal patty (pulled the wrong ground meat from the freezer, no matter, it’s still bovine), sautéed spinach and garlic, and topped with a cremini-oyster mushroom red wine sauce, with a dash of Tabasco. Served with Frizzled leek rings (sprinkled with x-fine sea salt) Gave all a few curls of Parm.

I really had fun with this. Not a very sophisticated dish but fun. Roxanne, I wonder how many of us did the same thing we did? And stop beatting yourself up, I'm glad you played along, even with an ingredient you weren't crazy about!!

And yes, I used all the ingredients

[Corinne]

Let me preface this by saying, I had a BALL and can't wait for the next one.

It's so cold that I decided to make soup with polenta croutons. I cooked the polenta with cream and parmesan until it was really stiff and spread it in a 11x7 pan to cool. I cut it up and tried to fry the pieces. Since it kept melting, I just decided to add a big rounded spoonful to each bowl of soup.

I was thinking taco soup:

I sauteed the bell pepper, onion, garlic and then added the ground beef. I added salt, pepper, chili powder, onion powder, paprika, cumin, a bit of sugar and stirred it together for a bit. Then I rough chopped a can of tomatos in the blender, to make it soup. It was more like a sauce than a soup so I added some tomato juice and water. It was still just nothing and too tomato-y so I thinned it with beef broth and began to put in more of the seasonings. I was drinking burgundy and splashed a shot or 2 into the pot, for the wine.

I let everything simmer for an hour thinking the soup's flavors would meld and it would become a masterpiece but my hopes were not high at this point. I never added the mushrooms. I already had a 1/2 gallon of this and didn't think 'shrooms would help it at all. They didn't sound good in Mexican, to me.

At serving time I swirled some fresh baby spinach in the pot and it really looked nice. I had sliced a leek very fine. Soup, polenta blobs and a sprinkling of leek rounds. It was a pretty presentation, no kidding.

We sat down to eat and it was ok. Picky only ate 1/2 of his and said it was fine but please don't make it again. He apologized that he wasn't very hungry. Do I have stupid stamped on my forehead?

So I went back to the kitchen and added black beans, corn and chopped jalapenos. It's much better and I'll have it for lunches.

I would have never though to put polenta in a taco soup but it was really nice. The polenta melted into the soup and made it heartier. THAT was what I learned from this exercise.

I had a wonderful time making this and that's all that matters.

Edit - I'm kinda glad I messed up with frying the polenta because the white spoonful looked nicer than a piece of light brown stuff sitting on top of the soup.

[cjs]

Oh Roxanne, I'm so sorry you had a bad experience. And polenta is good fried, Corrine, yours was too creamy, huh? maybe?

I had fun with this also, and we did enjoy the dish -

The dish – Polenta Stack with Beef & Mushroom Sauce




Ingregients:
Spinach – used in meatballs and polenta stack
Ground Beef – meatballs
Mushrooms – sauce
Polenta – stack
Red bell pepper – red pepper coulis
Onion – green onion – meatballs & garnish
Cream – mushroom sauce
Tomatoes – red pepper coulis
Parmesan – polenta and stack
Wine – mushroom sauce

I hope I can duplicate this again, the flavors really went well together – now I have to go try and write up the recipe…

I hope we do this every once in a while - now, we have the new issue, so we can be off again with another idea from that.

By the way, we need the birthdays of the new friends we have around here, because when it's near your birthday you get to choose the dish from whichever issue of C@H you want to try. So far this month Lab is the only b'day, I think - Jan. 26th.... Anyone else this month?

[labradors]

Well, I think CJ certainly wins for presentation. Beautiful!


For this challenge, I prepared a meal for a couple of friends, using new recipes created for the challenge:

MENU

• Soup Course: Roasted-Red-Pepper Bisque
  
  
  
• Main Course: Sherry-Cream Meatballs
  
  
  
• Side Dish: Polenta Aglio-Porro
  
  
  
• Dessert: Polenta con Leche
  

Because one of these friends is a fifth-year medical student who can really put away the food, I made twice as much as I have spelled out in the following recipes, and served large portions. The comments for each, individual item were very favourable, but the other friend (who doesn't eat quite as much) did comment that the servings for the side dish and dessert were too large. Also, he felt that the dessert just added too much grits (remember: I couldn't get actual polenta here), since the grits had already been seen once for the side. Then again, that friend also indicated that he had had too many grits when he was growing up, and doesn't eat them much, any more. Otherwise, he especially enjoyed the bisque (was surprised that it wasn't spicier) and the sauce for the meatballs. The medical-student friend ate it all. (For the sake of reference and comparison, the medical-student friend is Honduran, and the other friend is American.)

About the pictures: So that you may keep the portions in perspective, please note that the outside diameter of the soup bowls is actually in between that of the main dishes and the side dishes, and that the bowls I used for the desserts are about the same as the inside diameter of the soup bowls. Because of the cropping, etc., the photos make all the dishes seem to be about the same size, which would be huge servings, indeed!

Here are the recipes. You'll notice that I don't use a lot of salt. In general, I don't, anyway, but since I was using chicken and beef bouillon from the pantry, instead of canned or homemade stocks, there was already sufficient salt content. The bouillon I use, though, is a brand that IS lower in sodium than the other brands available.

Also, you'll notice that the picture of the dessert doesn't show the whipped cream mentioned in the recipe. This is because, when I was in the store, buying the ingredients, I had miscounted the amount of heavy cream I was going to use, wound up short, and didn't want to go to the store just for one cup of heavy cream.

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Roasted-Red-Pepper Bisque
Ingredients:

• 6 Red bell peppers
  
• 1 Cup Chicken stock
  
• 1/4 Cup Dry sherry
  
• 1 Cup Heavy cream
  
• Salt and white pepper to taste
  
• Mexican cream (or sour cream)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to broil and spray a baking sheet with Pam.
   
2. Place peppers on a baking sheet under the broiler until the skins become black, turning until the peppers are black on all sides.
   
3. Place the peppers into a large pot, cover with plastic wrap, and allow to stand at least 15 minutes.
   
4. Carefully peel the skin and remove the seeds from each pepper. Discard.
   
5. Purée the peppers and place into a clean pot.
   
6. Add the chicken stock and simmer for 15 minutes.
   
7. Add the sherry and simmer one minute more.
   
8. Add the cream and heat through.
   
9. Adjust the seasoning with salt and white pepper to taste.
   
10. Garnish each serving with some Mexican cream from a squeeze bottle, or a dollop of sour cream.

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Sherry-Cream Meatballs
Ingredients:

• 1 Lb Ground beef
  
• 1 Small Onion (or 1/2 large), finely chopped
  
• 2 Cloves Garlic, minced
  
• 15 Baby spinach leaves, finely chopped
  
• 1 Lb Mushrooms (fresh or canned), sliced
  
• 1 Medium onion, halved and sliced
  
• 1 Recipe Sherry-Cream Sauce
  
• 2 Tbsp Olive oil
  
• 1/2 Lb Baby spinach leaves (whole)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F and spray a baking sheet with Pam.
   
2. In a bowl, mix together the ground beef, onion, garlic, and chopped spinach.
   
3. Use a 2-Tbsp cookie dropper to form meatballs, and line them up on the baking sheet, with no space between them.
   
4. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the meatballs is 145F AND the onions in the meatballs are soft.
   
5. Drain the juice for use in the Sherry-Cream Sauce.
   
6. Once the sauce has been made, heat the meatballs in the sauce.
   
7. Heat a sauté pan on medium-low heat.
   
8. Add the olive oil.
   
9. Add the whole spinach leaves, coating them, as much as possible, with the oil, and tossing them until they are wilted.
   
10. Serve the meatballs on top of a bed of wilted spinach leaves.

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Sherry-Cream Sauce
Ingredients:

• Juice from cooking the meatballs
  
• 1 Cup Beef stock
  
• 1/2 Tsp Thyme
  
• 1/2 Cup Dry sherry
  
• 1 Cup Heavy cream

Instructions:

1. In a saucepan, simmer the beef stock and the thyme.
   
2. Reduce to half.
   
3. Add the sherry.
   
4. Reduce to half again.
   
5. Add the cream and heat through.

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Polenta Aglio-Porro
Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp Olive oil
  
• 2 Medium Leeks - white and light-green parts only, halved, rinsed, and sliced
  
• 2 Cloves Garlic, minced
  
• 1 1/2 Cups Chicken stock
  
• 1/2 Cup Polenta or grits
  
• 1 Oz Grated Parmesan cheese
  
• 1/2 Cup Dry white wine
  
• 1 Cup Heavy Cream
  
• 4 Red bell peppers, roasted as above
  
• Roasted-Tomato Coulis

Instructions:

1. Heat a sauce pan on medium-low heat.
   
2. Add the olive oil.
   
3. Add the garlic and leeks.
   
4. Cook until the leeks are soft.
   
5. Add the chicken stock.
   
6. Add the polenta.
   
7. Simmer, covered, for about seven minutes, stirring occasionally. The liquid should be almost all absorbed.
   
8. Add the Parmesan. Stir to incorporate well.
   
9. Add the wine and cream and heat until mixture thickens.
   
10. On each side-dish plate, arrange four slices of roasted peppers as spokes.
    
11. Serve the polenta over the peppers, with some of each slice of pepper still showing, then garnish with Roasted-Tomato Coulis from a squeeze bottle.

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Roasted-Tomato Coulis
Ingredients:

• 4 Roma (Plum) tomatoes, halved lengthwise, seeds and juicy pulp removed
  
• 1/2 Tsp Basil
  
• 2 Tbsp Olive oil

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to broil and spray a baking sheet with Pam.
   
2. Place tomatoes on a baking sheet under the broiler until most of the moisture is gone, and the skins separate easily from the tomatoes (unlike the peppers, they may not be completely black).
   
3. Remove and discard the skins.
   
4. Place the tomatoes and the basil into a small saucepan, and heat on medium-low for one or two minutes, making sure they don't burn.
   
5. Place the tomato mixture into a blender.
   
6. With the blender running, slowly add the olive oil.
   
7. Transfer the coulis to a squeeze bottle

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Polenta con Leche
(or Grits "Rice" Pudding)

Ingredients:

• 1 Quart Milk (divided)
  
• 1/2 Cup Polenta or Grits
  
• 1/3 Cup Sugar
  
• 1 Tsp Ground cinnamon (or to taste)
  
• Garnish: Whipped cream and ground nutmeg

Instructions:

1. Slowly cook the polenta, on medium-low heat, using two cups of milk, until the polenta is very soft and almost all the milk has been absorbed. Stir occasionally, but not too often. If all the milk is absorbed before the polenta is soft, add more, as necessary.
   
2. Add the rest of the milk, sugar and the cinnamon. Stir well. Continue cooking on medium-low heat until it becomes thick.
   
3. Remove from the heat and let stand until cool.
   
4. Serve cold, or slightly warmed, topped with a small dollop of whipped cream and a light dusting of nutmeg.

[luvnit]

I had so much fun with this and my husband loved it. I was waiting for someone to notice it was also my Avatar.





I will tell you that the Grilled Leek Salad with Red Peppers and Vinegrette was so wonderful.

For the main dish [I don't know what to call it] I made meat loaf rounds, on top of spinach mousse molds, on top of a savory parmesan-onion polena. Then I sauteed some mushrooms and tomatoes with red wine to top it off.

I have never had polenta before. Thought they were like grits. I don't like grits very well. But these so good and so soft. Yummy.

Now I have another recipe from C@H that I am making this week! It's the Jalanpeno Steak with Cheese Polenta and Tortilla Chile Sauce from issue No. 59!

And Yes! I also used all the ingredients.

[cjs]

everything looks so good!!

[luvnit]

Wow Labs... You put us all to shame with so many creative dishes!

Everything looks wonderful!

[Corinne]

Golly Miss Molly! Your's do like they were served at a fancy restaurant.

Luvnit, I did notice the beautiful plate in your avatar but never put the two together.

[HomeCulinarian]

Laura - I did notice your new avitar, but I didn't put it together. Beautiful presentation!

I didn't get around to playing this time... too much going on! Too bad about your adventure, Roxanne. At least you tried.