Insert introduction
about Ashley and her husband Gabe getting small, matching tattoos immediately
after their wedding and then again to commemorate their tenth wedding anniversary.
Roy and I plan to celebrate ten years of marriage this summer as well, but
instead of a tattoo we’ll have a new baby. And then to actually celebrate we
plan on going to Paris in the summer of 2018. Without children. With espresso
and croissants and chocolate and wine. And cheese. And bread. And crepes…
This DNI came at a good time. I’ve found in pregnancy if
I’m not getting enough iron I get nosebleeds. I had a dandy one a couple of
days ago and started getting lightheaded on my daily walks, so knowing we’d be
consuming a pound of high-quality beef seemed appropriate. And a nice ‘justification’
for spending $20 on .88 lbs of beef tenderloin. <gulp>
I thought this DNI would be pretty simple, relatively
speaking. No salad, no homemade bread, no cocktail for me. I’ve made the dessert
a dozen times already so nothing surprising there. It ended up being
surprisingly frustrating and complicated.
Menu:
Kickin’ Kentucky
Mule
Potato Chips with
Fennel Coriander Salt
Roast Beef
Tenderlois Sandwiches with Caramelized Onions, Horseradish Mayonaise, and
Arugula
Salted Chocolate
Chip Cookies
Let’s take this one item at a time in regards to
preparation. The mule ended up being ginger ale, due to a lack of bourbon in the
house and me not drinking. (Ginger ale was an alternative listed in the book,
so we count it.) Owen helped me make ginger-lime syrup yesterday morning. He
was quite helpful actually! He helped me put limes in the juicer, which took a
long time since we needed over a dozen limes to reach a cup of fresh juice. He
also helped me process 10 ounces of fresh ginger and stir in water and sugar.
My new mini food processor ate that ginger for breakfast no problem. (Thank you
KitchenAid!)
The ingredients all came together nicely and I dipped my finger in
for a taste…and almost threw up right there in the kitchen.
In normal life it didn’t taste bad. It was fine. But a
wave of morning-sickness memories washed over me at that first drop. When I was
pregnant with Owen I had a lot of nausea and a lot of well-meaning friends that
suggested and brought me gingery things to take the edge off the icky. I’ve
since enjoyed a little ginger in savory dishes but can’t say I’ve had anything
especially sweet, and this triggered all of those real fun weeks of “please don’t
make me eat or look at that.” The reminder was so strong I felt queasy for the
next two hours!
Next up: slicing a single russet potato with a mandoline
into “paper-thin slices 1/16 of an inch thick.” This is why we bought a mandoline.
Well, it didn’t work so well. The potato refused to slice evenly across so I
ended up with about 200 paper-thin half-renderings of “does that actually count
as a potato slice?” I wanted to throw the tool across the kitchen after re-centering
the potato a dozen times and experimenting with various techniques and angles
to get an even slice. No dice. I was skeptical as to the outcome of such
pathetic shards of potato.
Then I caramelized an onion. Ashley includes a mini essay
on the virtues and definition of a true caramelization. I had read such sermons
before. Apparently lay-chefs think you can heat up an onion for ten minutes and
call it caramelized. But if you are a REAL cook it should take at least 45
minutes and up to several hours. I am rarely patient enough for such
shenanigans, but the boys were napping and I had nowhere else to be. So I set
my pan to a temperature so low I doubted it would even warm and checked it
every ten minutes. Sure enough, in about an hour I had caramelized onions that
were even and slightly crisp…almost like the French-fried onions that come in
the can. Chalk up one success!
The fennel coriander salt was pretty easy. Lightly
toasted a few spices and ground them up and mixed with salt. I feared for a
minute that my spice grinder was broken, but I persisted and broke through its
stubborn exterior. Hah!
The horseradish mayo sauce wasn’t executed to the best of
my ability. I was confused as to what she meant by “prepared horseradish”. It
obviously wasn’t just the plant, but did she mean jarred plant, or like Helmann’s
horseradish sauce? I picked the sauce and I think that was the wrong choice.
The sauce was OK, but it tasted mostly just like mayo. Roy said he was fine
with it, but I wish I had gotten the authentic combination of ingredients.
THEN I seared $20 worth of beef tenderloin. The entire
kitchen spattered with oil (a kitchen I had just wiped down from top to bottom
that morning) but we got every side nicely browned and popped into the oven for
a short roast. I took it out at the very earliest time recommended to check the
internal temperature. And it was 30 degrees over what it should have been. I
almost cried. “Roy, did I just ruin $20 worth of meat?!?” We decided to trust that
our sear kept it from being completely dried out. When I sliced it an hour
later we were relieved to see that, while not medium-rare, it wasn’t shoe
leather either. An authentic well-done with moisture and tenderness. Just right
for a pregnant woman. Obviously this was my plan…
Other steps included making cookie dough. Thankfully,
this is something I could do in my sleep. No problem. I also had to deep fry
those horrendous slices of potato. Deep frying is something I’m slowly getting
used to. The Dutch oven we purchased helps a lot, and dang it if
those chips didn’t turn out all crispy and lovely. Frustrating to have to wait
20 minutes just for the oil to heat, but the frying process was speedy and
efficient. The slices were so small that the oil never really dropped in
temperature, so I didn’t have to wait between batches. Slight redeeming factor
for a lengthy process that gives me new appreciation for growing up in the snack
capital of the world (sending “I Heart U’s” to Utz and Snyders right now…your
chips are just as good and save me hours of frustration).
Finally we ate all this food. And it was really good. The ginger ale wasn’t that bad—the seltzer helped
dilute the super strong ginger and the lime came through a bit more after a
rest in the fridge. The sandwich and chips went together really nicely, and we
knew dessert would be awesome.
These are my favorite cookies in the world.
They caused a
Christian woman I know to exclaim, on mic, in front of 50 people that “you cannot
understand the true power of the Holy Spirit until you’ve eaten one of these
cookies.” And a Christian man to whisper to me, “Don’t tell anyone I said this,
but that is one DAMN good cookie.” The dark, high-quality chocolate, the trifecta
of sugars that give a deep sweetness and slight crystallization to the texture,
the flake salt on top. The soft height and chewy interior. They are perfection.
These cookies make me look like I know what I’m doing in the kitchen. (Which,
as most of this essay has proven, I really don’t.)
We usually eat them straight out of the oven, off the
cooling rack, or snuck out of the container when we think no one is watching.
But this particular batch were fresh, warm, and served up with French vanilla
ice cream. And you know what? It was a damn good, Holy Spirit-filled dessert.
In spite of the challenges I don’t think we doubted that
this food would taste good. It’s a roast beef sandwich, potato chips, soda, and
cookies. Even if it’s not the best you’ve ever had it’s still going to be
palatable. And this food was really very good. I’m not sure it was worth all
the labor. The cookies, yes, but they don’t really take that long. I doubt I’ll
ever make ginger ale again, or potato chips. I might try to make good roast
beef again, but probably with a different cut of meat and definitely a
different strategy to temperature. And real horseradish.
The arugula was really hard to find too.
"Through all the
changes, big and small, we know that for as long as we can help it, there will
be an us. We’ve got the tattoos spit-up and Eiffel Tower keychains to
prove it.”
-Ashley Rodriguez, NWS, p. 74
