Over the next few weeks I kept myself busy by browsing my recipe books (something that I actually rarely do), searching my favorite sites online, and getting ideas from my favorite day time tv. I finally decided on a 5-course meal:
1. Salad - blue cheese, dried cherry and walnuts (an easy choice, it's Jeff's favorite)
2. Cannelloni with a ground turkey filling
3. Cabernet Sauvignon sorbet
4. Veal Scaloppini with a saffron cream sauce
5. Chocolate Peanut-Butter Ganache Heart Cakes
With the planning underway in January, I had many weeks to refine the menu. I decided that the pecans on the salad would be candied/spiced, that I'd make my homemade tomato sauce for the cannelloni, I also added roasted asparagus to course 4, and I decided the dessert wouldn't be complete without some homemade raspberry sauce. I also wanted the five courses to come sequentially, which turned out to be a pain in my ....
So, a few (very minor things) that I decided to simplify. I decided to use store bought salad dressing and I decided to use wonton/egg roll wrappers instead of making the pasta noodles for the cannelloni. This is the point at which you're probably thinking - crazy lady. But, it's not like I'm busy during the day, so I was ready. I'm not going to take you through the entire process, but I will share what I learned....
1. Turning cannelloni into ravioli is easier than you might think.
When my eggroll wrappers came from Fresh Direct as wonton wrappers (I'm pretty sure that was my fault), it was clear that it would be impossible to make cannelloni, unless they were the world's smallest. Easy enough, I thought, I'll make them into raviolis. Great, except that it's difficult to make ravioli ahead of time; I was planning on putting the dish in the oven when we ate our salad, and it wouldn't have worked if I needed to boil the delightful little packages. Hmmm... tricky. In a flash of shear brilliance, I decided to cook the noodles and the filling ahead of time (I was already planning to cook the filling ahead) and then put them in the oven while we ate our salad. Yeah, um, well that didn't really work out so well, the whole cooking the noodles thing. After throwing 8 wrappers into boiling water and pulling them out in one big glob. I needed to re-think. So, I tried cooking them one at a time. No luck. They folded over themselves and when they were cool enough to even touch they were already glued to themselves. AAAAAHHHHHH! So, I thought to myself, "screw it, I'm using raw noodles, covering them with pasta sauce and hoping for the best." Turns out, that works too. Easy and delicious.
Even better, was that I turned our favorite turkey meatball recipe into the filling for the ravioli's. I cooked the meat, dropped the breadcrumbs and added the egg and romano cheese to the cooked meat mixture. Tasted just as good in a ravioli as it does as a meatball. Clearly, it's possible to put anything that you think tastes good into some noodle squares.
2. Spiced nuts turns a regular salad into an unquestionably delicious restaurant grade salad.
This decision was a last minute one. For the weeks leading up to the big dinner, I was torn between wanting to make Jeff's favorite salad and wanting to make it special. It hit me just a few days ago like an ice cream headache, "dress up the nuts!" (yes, you can laugh childishly at that quote). It took me some time to find a recipe I liked. I really wanted them to be spicy and sweet, kind of like the ones that Zingermans makes. And, I didn't want to deep fry them (which was a step in many of the recipes). So, I checked the Zingermans site and tried to find out what spices they used and then searched for those ingredients. I finally found a recipe in which you mix a bunch of sugar and spices (typical pumpkin pie spices actually) and then drop the nuts in egg whites and the sugar/spice mixture and bake 'em.
Seems like a lot of work for some nuts on a salad? I know, I know. BUT, the good thing is that the recipe makes a TON of them, and you can keep them in an airtight container and then you'll have them on hand for many a delicious salad. Or, you can eat them right out of the container as a snack, and everyone will love you and your nuts.
3. If your first 4 courses go off without a hitch. Dessert is destined to be a disaster.
Maybe it was because I was sure I'd screw up one of the other courses. I went into the dessert course like Bode Miller at the Olympics. I was going to kick its butt. I decided to wait to make the dessert course until after we had finished the first 4. It was only supposed to be about 20 minutes to make and bake the heart cakes (which it was). Things were going great, raspberry sauce was already done, the eggs were whipping up just as they should, truffles were, if I might say so myself, perfect. Into the oven the heart cakes went, 10 minutes later out they came. 5 minutes to cool and then, time to "pop" them out of the pan.
This was the point at which I realized that the silicone pan that the cakes were supposed to be baked in was kind of the key of the whole thing. I was using a heart shaped pan, but it wasn't silicone (yes, it's true I have a pan that makes mini heart shaped cakes, but I don't have a panino maker to feed my panino habit). Crap. Seriously, once I pried the little cakes out of their molds, that's what the cake actually looked like, crap. Literally. But I gracefully put the crap on the bed of raspberry sauce and added a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Luckily things that look like crap still can taste good.
So, the cornerstone of my five course Valentine's dinner completely flopped. Really, literally flopped. Thankfully, everything still tasted fan-tastic, and while it took me all day yesterday to prepare everything and it'll probably take me all day today to clean all the dishes, I think that it was totally worth it (though, ask me again once I finish the dishes today).
I'm gonna share the recipe for the nuts (I got it from the Food Network), because I think everyone should try making them. I don't think everyone should try making the chocolate peanut butter heart shaped cake unless you have the specific silicone W-S pan, and that's just annoying. Whether or not you like them on your salad is irrelevant, eat them as a snack, eat them for dessert (guaranteed not to flop), eat them with some cheese and grapes, eat them with some yogurt for breakfast. And, don't forget about all of the goodness and health benefits in them:
Ginger: helps with digestion, helps reduce motion sickness, helps reduce blood pressure and blood clotting (similar to aspirin). Perhaps not enough ginger in the recipe to do all these things, but that doesn't really bother me.
Walnuts: reduce coronary artery disease (Omega-3's), reduce inflammation (Reversatrol flavonoid), reduce likelihood of adult onset diabetes, has lots of Vitamin E (which, apparently, people don't get enough of), helps prevent cancer and some aging (folic acid and ellagic acid)
Enjoy and don't feel bad about all the sugar that's in them!
Spiced Nuts
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 pound pecans (I did some research to find an equivalent in cups, and I thought it was equivalent to about 2 cups, but I think this was a bit of an underestimate. I also made it with half walnuts and half pecans, both were good)
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Beat egg whites lightly with salt. Sift together sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and allspice and mix well. Add pecans to egg whites and coat completely. Transfer pecans from which excess egg whites have dripped off to cinnamon sugar mixture. Coat pecans completely and place on parchment lined baking sheet, leaving space between nuts. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until sugar coating on nuts is crisp. Cool and serve or store in an airtight container.
No comments:
Post a Comment