Apple Oven Pancake

For Halloween weekend I went a little baking crazy. I originally intended to make Brinner one night earlier in the week but it fell through so bright and early Saturday morning I turned to our William and Sonoma Essentials of Breakfast and Brunch Cookbook for the recipe for Apple Oven Pancake.

To begin I peeled and sliced the apples and cooked them in butter and once they are soft I added brown sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon. This is very similar to the start of an apple pie.

I then made up the batter with 4 eggs, milk flour, vanilla and salt. This batter is similar to a pancake batter , which makes sense. I then put the baking dish in the oven for 5 minutes then took it out carefully with potholders (I have burned my hand doing this before). I melted to tablespoons of butter in the hot pan and poured in the fruit and then the batter on top of it. The oven pancake cooked up in an interesting way. The batter rose up the sides and curled over and the middle puffed up. The final product was a thick crepe /apple pie.

Pork Wellington

We recently discovered Good Eats and while watching the episode Tender is the Pork Alton Brown fetchered a recipe for Pork Wellington a fun take on the original English beef dish. To gather the ingredients for this dinner I head the to two different gorcery stores. I first went to
Randalls and was able to get everything but dried apples and puff pastry which I surprisingly found at Whole Foods.

Step one for pork wellington is to cut off the silver skin from the pork tenderloin. The silver skin is an extra membrane that is un-editable. With a little finagling I was able to get most of it off. I then split the tenderloin in two and rotated one of the pieces so it created a gap in the middle for the stuffing, sliced up dried apples.

Then we prepped what we would wrap the pork in. We turned to one of our fav new cured meats prosciutto. On top of wax paper we laid out pieces of prosciutto so they were overlapping and then placed another piece of parchment over in and rolled over the slices with a rolling pin to seal them together. We placed the pork tenderloin on top the prosciutto and used the wax paper to help roll the tenderloin until it was covered with the prosciutto.
Next came the puff pastry . I removed it from the packaging and tried to start rolling it out but it was frozrn solid. So after re-reading the the recipe "1 sheet puff pastry, thawed completely." and letting come to room temperature, I was able roll it out so it would cover the loin. We placed the pork on the pastry and sealed it up. When then flipped it over placed in on another sheet of was paper on a cookie sheet and covered it with an egg wash so it would brown.
The finished product was beautiful. After we cooked it for 30 minutes and let is set for 10, the hardest part we were able to cut into it. The pork was cooked perfectly and had nice flavors with the apples and the yummy pastry. A perfect fall meal.

Mediterranean Night !

When Brian and I got back from our Meditertainisn curise we wanted to have people over and share some of the recieopes we learned in our travels and entlich (finally) in October, 3 months after our cruise we had Drew and Sarah over.

We started our preperation for the evening by heading to Central Market. We wanted to get really fresh ingredients and it is just fun for Brian and I to shop there. We picked up a turban gourd for our center piece (shown above) and also some high quality prosciutto and veal. We also had fun shopping for appetizers and all the other ingredients.


We started the meal with
Bread and Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar
we bought it in Greece
Dolma
which is a grape leaf wrapped around rice or other items
Tapenade
which is a mix of finely chopped vegetable usually olives and garlic that you can top on bread .
Grilled Eggplant with Feta

The recipe for the grilled eggplant came from William Sonoma Bride and Groom Entertaining. We started by slicing the egg plant really thin using our mandolin and then coated the pieces with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Brian used our grill pan to grill the eggplants and ended up filling our apartment with smoke. We opened all the doors and windows and used a fan to usher it outside. Luckily, by the time Drew and Sarah arrived it was all clear. I then made the filling for the egg plant out of ricotta cheese, feta cheese, basil, and allspice. I carefully rolled up eat eggplant slice starting with the large end. They tasted delicious and even Brian who hates egg plant liked them.

We went overboard!

For the Main Coarse again entlich(finally) a Mario Batali recipe like you voted one. We chose Roman- Style Veal Cutlets with Sage - Saltimbocca alla Romana from his cookbook Molto Italiano: 327 Simple Italian Recipes To Cook At Home

To begin we took a veal cutlet placed a sage leaf and a slice of prosciutto on top of in.Then we folded it and pounded it lightly with the meat mallet to keep it together. We then melted butter in the skittle, dredged the veal in flour and then cooked it only tow minutes on each side.
To make the sauce we used white wine to deglaze the pan and added in more butter. The result was amazing but I have yet to meet a meal that did not taste amazing that included veal, prosciutto, and butter.

We greatly enjoyed sharing our pictures and some of the new flavors we learned on the cruise with our friends.