Fun with Dick and Jane

Fifty years is a long time.  1961.  John Kennedy was president and Barack Obama was an infant.  It was also the year that my in-laws, Dick and Jane (yes, really) were married.  A fiftieth anniversary is a lot of things--it's 50 years of memories and 50 years of stories, but mainly, it's a really good reason to have a party--a fancy one.  And so we did.  We gathered the clan, which after 50 years has grown to 21, and pulled out all the stops:  china, crystal, silver, and a meal that used 3 lbs of butter, 10 lbs of beef tenderloin, and at least 6 cups of heavy cream.  It's the kind of party that, candidly, you really can only have once every generation years because I'm not sure you would otherwise survive it. 

A word here on fancy dinner parties, which I recognize are a dying breed.  It's funny really.  The average bride-to-be will spend countless hours figuring out her "registry," will dutifully ooh and aah at the haul of china, crystal, and silver she gets as shower and wedding gifts, and then she will summarily stuff it all back in its original box and store it in the crawl space over the garage.  For a very long time.  If not forever.  Instead, when she and her husband entertain, they'll head to Costco for a tower of paper plates and a box of silver colored plastic utensils.  There's a belief, I suppose, that if you use your good stuff, it will break, tarnish, look "used", and will otherwise never be in the wondrous pristine condition as when you first got it.   It's not a short step from there to putting plastic runners down your hallways and covering your seat cushions with cellophane.  Don't do it.  Use your stuff. 

Be careful with it.  Baby it.  Pamper it.  Clean it with ammonia-free detergents and store it in layers of bubble wrap.  And yes, I am fully aware of how much work that it is, but for God's sake USE IT.   Expect and understand that along the way it will get chipped, scratched, and broken.  That's OK.  Puttin' on the Ritz is fun, and after 50 years, you'll be happier for the memories than with unopened boxes.  Just ask Dick and Jane.

Individual Beef Wellington--a dish served best on bone china.
1.   Pat dry with a clean paper towel eight 4 ounce cuts of beef tenderloin-trimmed of all visible fat.  Generously salt and pepper.  (OK, I made 24 of these bad boys, which took 5 hours, and on some level was simply insane, but for an 8 person dinner party, this recipe really isn't that bad.)

2.  Heat about 3 Tbs of olive oil in a large frying pan, and sear each steak until it is brown--about 3 minutes per side.  Set aside and chill.

3. In the same frying pan, because you want to scrape up all the good bits of seared meat and juice, add 2 finely chopped shallots and 2 cloves of minced garlic.  Add a little olive oil if necessary.  Soften--about 5 minutes.

4.  Add 1 cup of Madeira and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes or until the Madeira is reduced to about 1/2 cup. 

5.  Add 1/2 cup of beef broth and simmer for another 3-4 minutes.  Remove the sauce from heat and refrigerate.

6.  In the same pan (because there are some tremendous flavors in this pan about now) add 2 Tbs  butter, one large Mayan or Vidalia onion, thinly sliced, and 2 Tbs of chopped shallots.

7.  As the onions and shallots begin to soften, add 8 large thinly sliced mushrooms.  Salt and pepper.

8.  Continue to cook on medium heat until the mushrooms are lightly browned.  Set aside to cool completely.

9.  In a small bowl, beat one egg to make an egg wash.

10.  On a lightly floured surface, roll out one puff pastry sheet and cut into 4 squares, each large enough to fully wrap one tenderloin steak, about a 6.5 inch square.

11.  Put one heaping Tbs of the onion/mushroom mixture on a puff pastry square, and then top with a tenderloin steak.  If you want to go really high-falutin', you can also add a small two inch square of pate, or one Tbs. of crumbled Gorgonzola between the mushrooms and onions and the beef.

12.  Wrap each corner of the puff pastry over the steak, and seal the seam with the egg wash.

13.  Repeat for each steak, which will require a second puff pastry sheet for the last four steaks.

14.  Arrange each Beef Wellington on a non-stick baking sheet, seam side down.

15.  Chill at least one hour and up to one day.

16.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Brush the top of each Beef Wellington with the egg wash.  Bake 20-30 minutes until the puff pastry is golden brown.

17.  While the Beef Wellington is cooking, bring out the now fully chilled Madeira sauce.  Heat until hot and add 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream.   Spoon the sauce on that plate of china you agonized selecting, and top with a Beef Wellington.  Pair with mashed potatoes and a nice crisp green vegetable.

Mushroom Smothered Pork Chops

Remind me not to shop at Costco.  I needed a handful of mushrooms last week, and since I was there anyway for some salmon, I got lazy and picked up a mega-sized container of 'shrooms.  The thing was massive.  How could any average family really plow through all of those mushrooms unless they also offered some hallucinogenic value?  Because it kills me to simply buy groceries only to eventually shovel them into the compost heap, I was bound and determined to use those mushrooms.  As I watched them slowly turn from white to brown, and observed the stem start to separate from the button top, a feeling akin to panic erupted.  There's nothing worse than a refrigerator full of mushrooms except perhaps a refrigerator full of rotten mushrooms.  I mean the purpose of a refrigerator is to store food--not garbage, and the only thing to stop that process was a cook.  But what in the hell do you do with a pound and half of mushrooms that aren't quite as fresh as they should be?  Here's a thought:  mushroom smothered pork and mushroom risotto.   The mushrooms are practically stewed, so it won't matter that they aren't quite pretty enough to slice and toss on a salad.  And not to brag, but I also cleared out 3 onions, some leftover chicken broth, and 1/2 bottle of a truly sucky pinot grigio, and the meal was phenomenal.  Sometimes I amaze myself.

Served with roasted tomatoes and patty pan squash,
a salad, and a lovely Viognier 

 Smothered Pork chops with Mushroom Risotto

1.     Dredge 4 thick boneless pork chops in flour seasoned generously with rosemary, salt and pepper.  Pan sear in hot, but not smoking, olive oil until a light golden brown--about 4 minutes each side.  Set aside.

2.     Add about 2 Tbs olive oil to the pan, and add 3 medium-sized chopped onions and one and one-half pounds of sliced mushrooms, scraping up any bits from the pan-seared pork.

3.     Saute for about 3-5 minutes until just tender.  Add 1/2 bottle of pinot grigio.  Don't even think about sipping it.  It's been sitting in the refrigerator for 3 weeks because it was too gross to drink.  Ignore what the Food Network advises about never cooking with a wine you wouldn't drink.  Bull.  For God's sake, you are going to boil the hell out of this wine.  What is that going to do to the structure and nuanced flavors of a really good wine?  If it's good enough to drink, drink it.  If it isn't--cook with it. 

4.     Continue to let the onions and mushrooms simmer in the wine until most of the wine has been either absorbed or boiled off.  Place 1/2 of this mixture on the pork chops.

5.     Add 1 cup of risotto to the mushroom mixture that remains in the saucepan.

6.     Continue to add hot chicken broth to the mixture, one cup at a time until the rice is plump and tender--about 2-3 cups of broth depending on how much wine the rice initially absorbed.  This process will take about 20 minutes, and requires you to consistently stir the risotto. 

7.    In the meantime, preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and place the previously set aside pork in the oven for about the same 20 minutes. 

A word here on cooking pork.  Cooking pork has been forever ruined by the fear of trichinosis.  Do not underestimate this fear.  Trichinosis is a horrible, debilitating, life threatening disease--that no one in the modern era has ever contracted.  Still, it is largely responsible for both the Jewish and Islamic faiths wholly writing off any meal associated in the least by pig.  The fear of trichinosis caused my mother to cook pork to such a degree that it really should have been more properly advertised as: "Pork--the other gray meat."   But despite what the Department of Homeland Security would have you believe, there's a big difference between fear and reality.   The fear is trichinosis; I get that, and that fear is huge.  The reality is that pork cooked until it is just slightly pink, with the juices running clear and white, tastes simply and utterly amazing, and it is completely safe.  Really.  For years, I've not just been eating pork, but have actually been enjoying it, and well, I'm not dead yet.