The Best Way to Cook Thanksgiving Turkey; Cook Once, Eat Twice!

We’re donating to food pantries, stocking up on cranberries, and decorating our homes with cornucopias aplenty. Thanksgiving season is all about one thing: food, food, food. As traditional people, there’s not many ways we Americans can get around surrounding ourselves with food during this holiday, but what we can do is apply strategies to address the excess.

I am this week launching my new cookbook Cook Once…Eat Twice! , a book that addresses the issue of excess with creative ways to use your leftover main course.

Here is a way to use up the excess turkey from this year’s Thanksgiving that is recyclable, sensible and different. This Dinner Duo, like dozens in the book, shows you how to rework the main course from one night’s dinner into a completely different dinner experience another night. It saves time cooking, money on ingredients, and waste from leftovers. Having leftover turkey after Thanksgiving is one thing, reusing your leftover turkey as the centerpiece for a delicious Jamabalaya, now that’s cooking!

Roasted Turkey Dinner Duo

Meal 1: Roasted Turkey

Like all the options in the holiday section of the book, this meal combination is the perfect solution for holiday houseguests; they won’t believe the magic you can work with “leftovers.”

Seasoning a turkey with vegetable stock base adds a brothy flavor to the turkey’s natural juices. And the citrus fruit and onion on the inside bring a zesty light flavor. You will be delighted at the brightness and ease of this delicious dish. (Serves 8 with leftovers for Meal 2.)

Ingredients

• 1 (10 pound) turkey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Vegeta or other dry vegetable stock base
• Seasoning salt
• 1 large onion
• 1 lemon
• 1 orange

Preheat oven to 350°F. Rub turkey with olive oil, vegetable stock base and seasoning salt, on top of and under skin. Cut onion, lemon, and orange in half and place inside turkey’s cavity. Place turkey in large roasting pan and roast uncovered for 3 hours, or until internal temperature reaches 165 °F. Cover with tented foil for about 15 minutes before serving.

Meal 2: Jambalaya

Ingredients

• 1 pound leftover roasted turkey, cubed
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 ribs celery, chopped
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 3 small cans tomato paste
• 8 cups chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons Creole Seasoning OR (2 teaspoons cayenne, 2 teaspoons black pepper, 1 teaspoon white pepper, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1/2 teaspoon thyme)
• 2 cans (14 ounces each) diced tomatoes
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 cups uncooked rice

In a pan on stove, sauté diced turkey meat in salt, black pepper and red pepper until just warmed through. Set aside. In a large pot, sauté onion, garlic, bell peppers and celery in oil until just softened. Stir in tomato paste and let it brown a little.

Once vegetables are translucent, deglaze pan with 2 cups of the broth, scraping bottom of pan, and stirring until smooth. Add Creole seasoning, tomatoes, bay leaves, and salt to taste. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Add turkey and cook for another 10 minutes.

Add the rest of the stock, and stir in the rice, combining thoroughly. Cook for about 20-25 minutes, or until the rice has absorbed all the liquid and is cooked through. Turn the heat down to low-medium and let the sauce thicken up a bit, with the pot uncovered, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes.

Discard bay leaves before serving.

Crock Pot Cookin’

Fall. It’s a time of year that families are busy, and warm comfort food is on the menu. Crock pots are a great way to cater to both situations, providing a delicious, moist steaming dinner that can be made in minutes at convenient times of the day (i.e. before taxi-time, after-school activities and toddler melt-down hour). Recently I gave individual cooking classes to three novice cooks looking for solutions for their hungry children. In addition to a basic soup base and a few simple dishes, we focused on the crock pot. The reason for this is that I find meats in the crock pot are fool-proof. Each of these inexperienced cooks said their frustration with cooking meats is that they always turned out dry. It’s true there is a knack for knowing times and temps for cooking certain meats. But slow cooking, and crock-potting, now these cooking methods leave room for grace, and that’s just what unsure cooks need.

Following are some simple yet unique crock pot recipes that your family is sure to love, and are even more sure to leave you feeling like a success at dinnertime. Leftover chicken works great in each these recipes. If your chicken is raw (which is fine too), season it with salt and pepper, and sear it for 2 minutes on each side in a pan on the stove first.

Crock Pot Mexican Chicken

Ingredients

 

2 cups chicken

1 tablespoon taco seasoning

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 jar salsa

1 package tortillas

 

Add all ingredients to crock pot. Cook, covered, for 3 hours on low. Serve in tortillas.

 

Crock Pot Grecian Chicken

Ingredients

 

4 chicken breasts

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 can marinated artichoke hearts

1 can diced tomatoes

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

4 servings rice

 

Cook rice according to package directions. Add remaining ingredients to crock pot, and cook for minimum of 3 hours.

 

 

Crock Pot Chicken with Wine and Sundried Tomatoes  

Ingredients

 

3 chicken breasts

1/2 onion, sliced

1 can sundried tomatoes, drained and sliced

1 package mushrooms, rinsed

1 can black olives, drained

1/2 cup dry red wine

1/4 cup chicken broth

1 tablespoon flour

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce

 

Saute onions and mushrooms in butter in pan on stove. Transfer to crock pot and add remaining ingredients. Cook for minimum of 3 hours and serve with rice, potatoes or pasta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following link also has many great crock pot recipes and also compares the latest deals on crock pots and slow cookers: Crock-Pots.

Restaurant Recipes; Portillos Chopped Salad meets Pockets

Do you ever long for your favorite restaurant recipes? Wish you could achieve that same restaurant taste at home? Me too. My husband and I used to love a restaurant and it’s invention, called Pockets, when we lived in Chicago. The Pocket is a chopped salad, often with meat, stuffed in a mini loaf of bread and served with dressing on the side. Now living happily 42 miles out of the city, our cravings for Pockets have gone unsatisfied…until now.  I had been making my own version ofPortillos’ (another Chicago restaurant) Chopped Salad for a few months now. Why not, I decided, use it to make my own Pocket? “It’s just chopped salad in a roll”, I thought. Like many successful sandwich shops, the Pocket magic is in the bread. It’s sweet yet hearty and always served hot. This was definitely a great first stab at making my own Pocket at home, though I do need to try variations of bread. I used premade Ciabatta rolls, which were great, but lacked the sweetness of Pockets’ bread. My kids loved it. And it was healthy and easy.

 

Chopped Salad

• 1 heart Romaine lettuce, finely chopped
• 1 avocado, diced
• 1 tomato, seeded, cored, and diced into small pieces
• 1/2 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
• 3 slices cooked bacon, crisp
• 1 cup small pasta noodles, such as Orzo

Cook pasta according to package directions, and rinse in cool water. Drain pasta. Mix all ingredients together, chill and serve on large rolls or homemade bread. Serve with your favorite dressing on the side.

Follow this link to my copycat recipes for P.F. Chang’s Lettuce Wraps, and Wolfgang Puck’s Thai Peanut Pasta Salad. Want some help replicating your own restaurant recipe? Tell me what restaurant favorite you would love to make at home, and I’ll see if I can help!

Butternut Squash Recipes

It’s harvest time… that time of year when Butternut Squash recipes such as soups, and pastas are popping up on restaurant menus everywhere. And at the grocery store, Butternut Squash is plentiful and inexpensive, tempting us to buy them with their extraordinary unique shape, their beautiful color and their delicious taste. But many are stumped by what to do with the squash once they get it home. Cooking with squash and achieving restaurant-quality flavor is easier than you might think. The meat softens to perfection with ease, and the flavor is great alone or with very little accompaniment. Below are two simple recipes for achieving delicious Butternut Squash flavor in your kitchen. 

It’s also extremely easy to make as a stand-alone side dish, and instructions are included for that as well. Better yet, make two night’s courses with the effort of one… serve the squash as a side dish, and use the leftover in place of the cubed squash to make soup. Now you’re cooking!

** Peel a butternut squash just like you would a carrot, until the peel and colored vein layers are off. Slice off the top and bottom, cut the squash in half, and scoop out the seeds. Cut remaining squash “meat” into cubes.  

Easy Butternut Squash Soup Recipe

Ingredients

• The meat from one half a butternut squash, cubed
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup heavy cream (lighter cream or milk are ok too)
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Season squash with garlic salt. Cook the squash in oil in a large pan on the stove until soft, about 20 minutes.
2. Add onions to the pan, stir and cook a few more minutes until translucent.
3. Add broth and water and simmer.
4. Puree squash with an immersion belnder, or transfer squash to a blender and puree.
5. Return to pan. Stir in cream, lemon juice and pepper. Cover, and continue to simmer 25 minutes.

Butternut Squash Pasta with Gorgonzola Cheese Recipe

Ingredients

The meat from one half a butternut squash, cubed

• 8 oz. Orzo pasta
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 cup Parmesan Cheese
• 1/2 cup gorgonzola cheese, crumbled (Feta, Bleu, Goat, or other soft, crumbled cheese work fine too)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Season squash with garlic salt.
2. Cook the squash in oil in a pan on the stove until soft, about 15 minutes.
3. Add onions to the pan, stir and cook a few more minutes until translucent. In a separate pan, brown orzo in butter until lightly browned.
4. Add broth and water to Orzo in 1/4 cup increments, stirring frequently, until most of the liquid is absorbed and pasta achieves desired tenderness. 
5. Add squash and onions, and Parmesan cheese to Orzo, and stir to combine. Continue to cook, stirring often, until sqaush is soft. 
6. Remove from heat, stir in Gorgonzola cheese, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Butternut Squash as a Side Dish

To enjoy butternut squash alone as a side dish, follow the first two steps from the pasta recipe. Continue to cook squash until it falls apart, mash to blend, and season with salt and pepper.

 

 

Picky Eaters? Play on Your Kids Tastes

Many moms struggle with the task of increasing their children’s tastes, menus, etc. Some kids are picky eaters, and may have a repertoire of just five foods that they’ll eat. A great way to expand dinner options is to play on your kids’ favorite foods and flavors. It takes persistence, but it pays off. My kids love chicken pot pie. Not out of the womb, mind you . . . we had several years where no two foods could touch on a plate. But persistence paid off, and for each of my older two, at around age 6, when they got home from a school-plus-activities filled day and sat down at the table facing a steaming, buttery-crusted piece of pot pie, their response changed from “yuck” to “yum”. Wow, a small victory. It’s been a few years since that time in my life, and I’d been wanting to introduce salmon to my kids’ diet. Rather than going cold turkey and placing a piece of poached salmon in front of them, I decided to play off their love of pie crusts, and make salmon pastries. I made a simple sour cream/mustard/dill sauce, added a bit of that to each pastry, served the rest on the side, and voila! A love of salmon was born in my family.

If your child is one of the picky ones, start with their favorites as a base. If they’ll eat pizza, try making your own with many different kinds of toppings. If they’ll eat salad, you can introduce a whole bunch of different flavors on a bed of lettuce. Same with pasta, soup, risotto, omelets or in a wrap. Start slow, but be persistent. I promise you it will pay off! BTW, let me know what works for you. I love hearing your success stories!

Salmon Pastries

Ingredients

• 4 Salmon patties
• 2 pie crusts (1 package)
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoons dijon or spicy mustard
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon dill
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Combine sour cream, mayo, mustard, lemon juice and dill to make sauce. Cut pie crusts in half. Place a small dallop of sauce on the center of each pie crust half, and then place salmon patty in center. Fold edges into a tent and pinch together, leaving seams for venting. Place on a baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes. Serve with remaining sauce on the side.

Beef Bourguignon? No problem.

As we say goodbye to Julia, I feel compelled to cover her and her movie’s most famous dish, Beef Bourguignon. Please, don’t get scared. Read on, you will want to try this. Julia’s Beef Bourguignon recipe is very similar to her Coq Au Vin, a method of tenderly slow-cooking tough meat in wine and acidic vegetables.

I searched the Internet to find recipes of how others had interpreted the complicated french cuisine. I remember years ago, a Pillsbury Bake-Off finalist created a Weeknight Beef Bourguignon recipe that got rave reviews. It looked great, and easy, but the flavors seemed a bit too simple. You guys need to know you can still achieve GREAT flavor without a huge mess or effort… so I searched on. I’d heard good things about Ina Garten’s recipe. This one is very similar to my Coq Au Vin interpretation. I needed something that was a much-easier alternative for you guys. So I needed to look further. When I found a recipe that combined stew meat with sundried tomatoes, I knew I’d hit the jackpot. Don’t those flavors sound like a perfect complement? Trust me, they are. And this recipe is super easy to make. This recipe slow cooks the beef in the tomatoes and red wine, and the result is divine. Serve it over rice, with noodles or potatoes, and your family will ask “When are we having this again?” Yum.

Ingredients

• 2  teaspoons  olive oil
• 2  pounds  beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1  medium onion, vertically sliced
• 2  garlic cloves, minced
• 1 package button mushrooms
• 1  tablespoon flour
• 1 cup water
• 1  cup dry red wine
• 1  cup chicken broth
• 1  cup sun-dried tomato halves, packed without oil, cut into strips (about 2 1/2 ounces)
• 1  tablespoon brown sugar
• 2  tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 1/2  teaspoons rosemary
• 3/4  teaspoon salt
• 1/4  teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Heat olive oil in a large pan on stove over medium-high heat. Add beef, seasoned with salt and pepper, and cook 4 minutes, browning on all sides. Add onion and mushrooms; cook a few minutes more until onion is softened, stirring occasionally. Add minced garlic; cook 1 minute, stirring frequently. Stir in flour; cook 2 minutes, stirring often.

Add water and next 7 ingredients to pot on stove, or transfer all to crock pot. Cook over high heat for 3 hours, or low heat for up to eight hours in crock pot, less time on stove.

Stay tuned for the Cook Once, Eat Twice version… I will find a way to “re”use this delicious dish. It’s so good it should be made by the pounds, and eaten in as many creative ways possible.

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Side-by-side pictures of the dish 1) just as it is put in the crock pot, and 2) after simmering for 3 hours shows a great example of how time brings flavors together. See how in photo 1, there is a broth-like consistency, but in photo 2) you have gravy.

The Gastronomist vs. The Multitasker

AS BOOKmama and I continue to explore Julia Child, BOOKmama this week discussed the essence of Julia. She summed her up in one word: Gastronomist. I too am a gastronomist, lover of food, connoisseur of good taste, and I too would go to great lengths, at times, to achieve the best flavor combination. When I think about my friends, my children’s friends’ Moms, and the hundreds of real women to whom I have had the privilege to teach cooking concepts, the word gastronomist does not, one bit, apply. The word I would use to describe the people in this group is Multitasker. Yes, everyone in this group would love to make a great meal… they just would also like to have a clean house, squeeze in a workout, run some errands, drive their children safely to activities, make sure homework is done, volunteer or work, and have energy left at the end of the day to have quality time with their spouse and or family. 

My friend Beth told me a group of her Multitasker friends covered “Julie & Julia” in their recent bookclub. She said it was the saddest, most gloomy discussion they had about a book. I was surprised. She was too. She said the discussion quickly led to feelings of inadequacy and pressure felt by women to “measure up” in the kitchen to Julia Child. This made me sad for them. There IS middle ground. Julia is amazing, but her way is unrealistic in today’s world. She didn’t have kids, and even if she did, in her era kids walked where they needed to go most of the time, or played in the yard and street.

So, I decided that rather than interpret one recipe for you, today I will interpret some of her methods for the common-sense, multitasking women. As I’ve said before, sometimes you just need “permission” to substitute or cook a certain way. Here you have it. A woman in one of my cooking classes told me she made Julia Child’s meatloaf after seeing the movie, and it was the most difficult meatloaf she ever made and that the taste was not worth the extra effort. Meatloaf?!?! This should be one of the simplest dishes you ever make. Here I give you Julia’s recipe. Next to the ingredients and steps I give you the common sense interpretations:

Julia Child’s Meatloaf Recipe meets FOODIEmama’s Common Sense

• 2 cups minced onion
• 2 tablespoons butter or oil
• 1 cup pressed-down homemade bread crumbs (no, they do not have to be homemade)
• 2 pounds ground beef chuck plus 1 pound ground raw turkey (use any combination of ground meats you have on hand)
• 1 cup cooked rice (optional)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup beef broth (substitutions here can include condensed cream of mushroom soup, any flavor broth, canned diced tomatoes, and yes…ketchup) 
• 2/3 cup grated cheddar cheese (substitute any shredded cheese)
• 2 cloves pureed garlic (minced, diced, jarred all are dine)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 teaspoons thyme *
• 2 teaspoons paprkia *
• 1 teaspoon allspice *
• 1 teaspoon oregano *
• 3 bay leaves (skip the bay leaves…unless you happen to have some fresh ones laying around your kitchen)

* You can omit some of these spices if you don’t have them… it’s meatloaf… it can be made thousands of different ways… there’s no “right” spice combination)

Heat oven to 350. Saute the onions in the butter or oil 5 minutes or so, until tender and translucent; raise heat and saute a few minutes longer, until lightly browned. (Fresh diced onions work just fine here. Then you can also omit the butter.) Scrape into a large mixing bowl. Combine all ingredients except the bay leaves in the bowl and mix together thoroughly, using first a wooden spoon and then your hands. Shape the mass into a free-form loaf on a buttered cookie sheet or into a buttered 8-cup loaf pan. Arrange the bay leaves on top. Bake in the lower middle of the oven for about 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees. The meat loaf is done when the juices run almost clear with a pale pink tinge. A meat thermometer should read 155 degrees. Let cool for 30 minutes and pour off the fat and juices before serving.

Bon Appetit! Amen

Homemade Pizza

You need go-to recipes. And they don’t need to come from a box. Having a few “standards” that you know your family will always eat… that are easy for you to make…. and with ingredients you usually have at home is a great way to guarantee dinnertime success. I encourage you to know your family’s palletes. Not palate as in taste buds, but palette as in what is a standard meal base. Would your family eat pasta any which way shape or form? Buy pounds of it and always have it on hand. Is soup the thing that warms their hearts any night of the year? If so, always have powdered broth on hand to be able to create steaming soup from what you have in your fridge. Is pizza a sure-fire succes story in your kitchen? If yes, there’s no need for frozen. Making a homemade pizza is surprisingly easy, and so extremely flexible. Here is a basic pizza dough recipe. It’s fun to make with kids, and can be doubled and tripled for either lots of pizza, several different kinds, or to freeze in individual dough balls for later use. (The dough uses just flour, salt, water and yeast. The first three ingredients are items you likely have in your kitchen year-round. Buy a jar or several packets of yeast and you are simply stocked for success with an easy weeknight standard.) 

Pizza Dough

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1 packet (1/8 oz.) dry yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup very warm water (120 – 130 degrees)
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Generously grease a baking sheet, and place on middle rack of oven. In a medium bowl, stir together 1/2 cup of the flour, the yeast and the salt until well blended. Add water and oil. Mix by hand until almost smooth. Gradually stir in remaining flour to make a firm dough. Cover and let set for 15 minutes. Generously prick dough with fork. Roll out and prebake for about 8 minutes until slightly done and browned. 

Now let’s get to what you put on your pizza. For me, making a pizza is a great way to use what’s left over in my refrigerator. Leftover taco meat and cheddar cheese can be the basis for a taco pizza, leftover barbecue chicken, some onions, green pepper an Mozzarella cheese a great BBQ chicken pizza, and a new favorite of my family: Chicken Caesar Salad Pizza. I use leftover chicken cut into strips, and cook that on top of the pre-baked crust with mozzarella cheese for 8 minutes at 375 degrees F. Cool slightly and top with Romaine lettuce, Caesar dressing and Parmesan cheese, It’s delicious. Your family’s pizza might be more traditional. If so,  just keep good old red sauce and cheese on hand for your weeknight success. If you feel like experimenting, there’s just about nothing you can’t do with pizza. Attached are some photos of a recent pizza diner in our house: Potato pizza and Goat’s cheese with tomatoes and red peppers. Yum!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check back soon for more on Julia Child.

Julia’s Turkey Orloff

As BOOKmama and I continue to explore Julia Child, I decided to Google Julia’s recipes this week to see what was the most popular. The Tomato Bread from the movie? People were talking about it all over the Internet. Awesome, I thought. Since I have made Bruschetta hundreds of times (Most often without the addition of the famous Julia pats of butter) I was beginning to feel that me and Julia were in the same category. Compadres. Queens of the Kitchen. The second most common recipe I came across was Turkey Orloff. Again I was confident. “Could this elaborate creamy poultry and rice dish really be the gourmet version of my Creamy Crock Pot Chicken?,” I thought. “A gourmet play on Campbell’s One Dish Chicken & Rice Bake?” Since I’d already been cooking, and even blogged about the everyday-cook-friendly version, I set about to try the Julia way to see if using all those extra pots, those extra pats, and those extra French terms would make this very good weeknight standard something AMAZING. It did. But . . .

As I’ve told you before, I don’t do all the steps that gourmet cooks call for in their recipes. My specialty, and what I bring to you, is the ability take out the steps of a recipe that pose threats to successful dinners for the everyday cook. I have strategies, I have plans . . .  Julia didn’t seem to care. Her recipe remained the same, staring at me with it’s “butter here” and “butter there”. “Ok, ok” I said, and I dug in. NEVER before have I felt so out of control in my kitchen. NEVER. Not one Christmas Dinner, not one ladies lunch, not ONE dinner for coworkers has ever, ever put me over the edge like Julia did tonight. We are not (in case you were wondering) in the same category.

I cannot stand a recipe that calls for cooking something in one pot on the stove, transferring it to the oven in a different type of pan, and then baking it in a third dish. And that doesn’t even include the mushroom gratin that used another pan, OR the veloute (sauce) that required two further pans and a bowl for it’s own construction. This is a CASSEROLE! A ONE-PAN DISH! What is going on here?! Clearly too much. This kind of madness is uncalled for. By the end I had burned my hand, soaked sleeves from unclogging the garbage disposal and a disaster of a kitchen. 

Was my family pleased with the results? You bet. They licked their plates clean. But I was too tired to eat. Too tired to even open the bottle of wine to enjoy with the meal, and deflated at the chore of cleaning ahead of me.

This, I thought with a smile, is exactly how my students feel. Those of you who come to my classes with the same request: “Help”. This is not how it should be even though “they” often tell us it is. Do I not love Julia you ask? Do I think I am better? Yes, I do. And No. We are different. My way is Smart. Her way is Glamorous. Glamour is great for nights on the town. On a weeknight in your own home, it’s a waste. Be Smart, and be successful.

One of the things I love most about shopping at Hot Mama boutique is the styling services provided by their staff. I am fashion challenged to say the least, and wouldn’t know if one certain trend was “ok” to wear with another and when. But having them tell me what looks good with what is just the “permission” I need to know that what I’m wearing is ok. I feel that it is my job as an everyday cooking instructor and FOODIEmama blogger to give you permission to think outside the culinary box and take the steps necessary to make dinner work for you with less stress and less mess. It is therefore my honor to give you permission to never make Julia’s Turkey Orloff, and know that YOU, the everyday cook and amazing woman, are doing just fine.

Beef WellingMom

Ok, cheesy title, I know. But it makes me laugh every time I say it. Perhaps it’s because I am, in part, laughing at the ridiculousness of Beef Wellington itself. Do I not love Filet, Mushrooms Sauce, and puff pastry, you ask? I do, I do. However, I do not think the risk of failure presented by trying to cook them together is worth the price of steak. A classic Beef Wellington calls for wrapping tenderloin in a mushroom pate followed by a delicate pastry. In searching the Internet for various Beef Wellington recipes, I came across many, many comments from people who said they ruined Christmas dinner, sent their dinner over to he neighbors, or pitched it in the garbage because it didn’t turn out. In Julia Child’s recipe, there is call for browning, then cooling the beef to set, then cooking again, along with many complicated pastry steps in between. I have no doubt that this recipe, from her kitchen, is something for the Gods. But for us everyday busy folks, it’s just too fussy, when a good, no….a great dinner doesn’t need to be. Why not cook the flavors separately, enjoy them together, and spare yourself the risk of anything short of success?  I’ve created a recipe that can be executed in less than 30 minutes, is foolproof and fabulous! This recipe calls for baking the steaks for 15 minutes after a quick sear — in the same pan (talk about less mess). Your results are moist and tender fillets.

Top with a wonderful mushroom sauce that works double-duty as an omelete base. Cook or buy some croissants to enjoy on the side, and you’re good to go!

I truly will never cook filet any other way again. And when you realize it still has all the show and delicacy for serving company or celebrating a special occasion I doubt you will either. With smart recipes and smart shopping, dinner really can be made with less stress, less mess… and more success.

This blog is a continuation of the Julie & Julia series presented by BOOKmama and FOODIEmama. If you haven’t yet, check out BOOKmama’s current blog for some insight into Julia outside the kitchen. And again, Bon Apetit!

Beef WellingMom

a.k.a. Filet Mignon with Red Wine Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

• 4 8-oz. Filet mignons
• 2 tablespoons McCormick Steak Seasoning (Or and equal combination of rock salt, cracked black pepper, garlic powder and paprika)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions

1. Remove all moisture from beef with paper towels. Rub steaks with seasoning.

2. Heat oil in pan on stove and over medium-high heat, sear steaks for one and a half minutes on each side.

3. Transfer pan to 375 degree F (185 degree C) preheated oven, and continue to cook 15 minutes more for medium steaks.

Red Wine Mushroom Sauce

• 3/4 cup dry red wine
• 3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons thyme
• dash of salt and pepper
• 1 package button mushrooms, finely chopped
• 2 green onions, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. Heat butter in pan on stove over medium-low heat.

2. Add mushrooms and onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened.

3. Ad remaining ingredients, increase heat to medium-high and continue to cook for 20 minutes until some liquid evaporates and flavors set.

Morning After Mushroom Omelets with Red Wine Mushroom Sauce

If you are lucky enough to have some leftover mushroom sauce, (the above recipe is generous, so you should) you have the makings of a delicious, gourmet-quality, and effortless mushroom omelet. Cooking once to eat twice is a bonus for anyone who values their time, and this recipe makes that possible.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon butter
• leftover mushroom sauce
• ¼ cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions

1. Melt butter in pan on stove. Whisk eggs and milk together.

2. Add eggs to pan and let set for one minute.

3. Top with three-quarters of your remaining mushroom sauce, and cheese. Let set one minute more, and then fold omelet and cook until eggs are set. Top with remaining mushroom sauce.