Another nice spread…

Leah is a great cook, but I’m doing my best to at least keep up. Usually when I go out to do the groceries, I try to find something interesting to do to surprise Leah and Chris and make something new/unique for them to eat. I don’t mind our normal menu, but there’s nothing wrong with trying something different, and last night I did just that.

I managed to get some very nice steaks of Veal, but since my grill was broken I was going to have to pan fry them. To add a lot of flavor to the dish, what I did was dice a full onion and green pepper and steam them in a separate pot for a good time until they were as loose as noodles. After that I added a very rich sauce to the peppers and onions, and used that to top the steaks to add a very deep flavor to them. When I was shopping, I spent an extra buck or so and picked up one of those better sauces… and I picked a cool one: a vokda/roman tomato flavored sauce. Combined with the pepper and onion that I diced and steamed, they made an amazing topping for the Veal steaks.

I also finished up the meal by adding honey garlic noodles, baby carrots and a creme soup on the side. The soup was carrot and coriander, which was interesting given that I had never tried it before. Overall the meal turned out really, really well. And I have the pictures to prove it!

(Here are the Veal steaks and the pot with the Peppers & Onions.)

(Closer pick of one of the Veal Steaks…)

(This was the peppers & onions after they had cooked and I added the sauce…)

(Yes, I cheated a bit with the noodles and the soup, but who do you think I am, Mario Batali?)

(And the finished product, I think it turned out all right…)

Overall the meal was well received. The only part that wasn’t eaten was the soup. I liked it but Chris and Leah didn’t really like it that much. But everything else was consumed in record time, so 3 out of 4 items is a good record to work with. That was my Sunday surprise for Chris and Leah and I think it went over with the both of them. My way of letting them know their work and time to help the house is apprecaited.

I really enjoy stuff like this. The meal I made here wasn’t too ambitious, but I needed to tone it down a bit cause when I made Butter Chicken it wasn’t eaten at all. This time most of it was eaten… so I’ll go from here and only get a little more bold with each meal instead of jumping leaps and bounds, which is what I did last year with unsuccessful results.

But cooking that meal and cleaning up after it and watching the Presidental Forum I tivoed from Saturday night is how I spent the majority of my Sunday. Hopefully everyone else had a good weekend, and have an even better Monday. Take care and I’ll be around…

Peter