07.28.06

Whole Foods Night

Posted in food, home cooking at 11:07 pm by wingerz

Once in a while, Jen and I like to do a “Whole Foods Night” – we’ll pick a few recipes and adopt a temporary spare-no-expense attitude towards food shopping at the pricey organic grocery store. Our most notable previous purchase was a (very small) $10 bag of fleur de sel – the most expensive salt I’ve ever used (a few grains were used to enhance the flavor of some home-made toffee).

A few weeks ago we made the following (for 8 people):

• Popovers: In theory, very fluffy bread; in practice (at least this time), dense, eggy bread.
• Shrimp and Avocado Salad: Red leaf lettuce and watercress tossed with a citrus dressing, topped with orange slices, steamed shrimp, and avocado slices.
• Roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes: Roasted potatoes with olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper. Simple and delicious.
• Filet Mignon with Bordelaise Sauce: Seared (and cooked the rest of the way in the oven) filet mignon topped with a rich brown sauce. Main sauce ingredients: small slices of bone marrow (which kind of melt in your mouth), shallots, red wine, and veal demi-glace (an absurdly expensive sauce base).
• Apple Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream: We didn’t make the pie. It was from Petsi’s.

All in all, a very good meal. Getting the bone marrow out of the bone was a pain. Cooking with demi-glace was a first. Unfortunately, I don’t know what bordelaise sauce is supposed to taste like so I don’t know if I did a good job of replicating it.

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