Silver Spoon Adventure: Week 2 - Beef Stroganoff

Well readers, this one isn't nearly as funny. Or as colorful, come to think of it. I love my version of beef stroganoff which is probably as American as it comes. My version is elbow macaroni, a handful of mushrooms, a pound of ground beef and a can of cream of mushroom soup. That's it. If I'm feeling frisky I add in some paprika. Finito (you're all jealous of that Italiano, I know you are!).

The Silver Spoon beef stroganoff, or Bue Alla Stroganoff, is straight from scratch. There's heavy cream and strong mustard and a half cup of butter. First off, what the heck is strong mustard? Even Google failed me. I couldn't find anything on "strong" mustard except that Dijon can be strong and extra strong. Kroger had neither. In fact they had no strong mustard anywhere. So we went with Dijon because at least it was supposed to have strong brethren. I almost had to sneak the butter in because DH was watching and he's a butter Nazi. Maybe a butter Fascist working for Il Duce?

You must have a Revolver Boch when making homemade stroganoff.

The outcome was good but very beige. It was heavy and a little too tart for me. I'm guessing it was the cream and lemon juice mixture...almost like sour cream, but not quite. It didn't specify what kind of noodles to use, so we improvised with whatever we had on hand.

As you can see below...it's all one color. All. One. Color.

The Verdict: When we make it the next time we might try a lighter cream or 2% milk, and I'll probably cut the sugar completely or at least by 1/2. Oh and I'll make something a color other than beige or slightly orange.

We froze the extra and ended up having it with linguine later on in the month. I liked it much better the second time. Maybe it was the noodles?

Up Next: Roman Spring Lamb

The Silver Spoon Adventure: Week 1 - Pork en Croute

Week 1 - Pork en Croute

DH and I picked this recipe strictly from the picture in the book. It looks delectable! It's a pork loin with what looks like a mushroom tapenade all wrapped up in puff pastry. Um, that's pretty much exactly what it is. So we venture out to Kroger to get our weekly groceries and the ingredients to amke this dish. We pick everything up, the mushrooms, lemon, onion, pork loin and phyllo dough. What's that you say? Phyllo dough isn't the same as puff pastry? Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way.

  We decided to make these recipes on Sundays since we have more time to make dinner. Our normal weeknight dinner is usually planned out but sometimes I may or may not eat half a block of cheese and a glass of wine while I'm cooking. And then there are the nights that we say "Screw it!" and just order pizza.

  I get the mushroom and onion mix going, I'm feeling pretty dang good about this recipe. I even read through it multiple times to make sure I didn't mess it up. I mean, this is The Silver Spoon and I'm Italian. If I screw this up I'm pretty sure the Polizia di Stato come and take away my Italian card. So there I am, stirring away, getting everything ready to go. And I ask DH to come trim the fat off of the pork loin.

Now, the concept of this dish is that you have a pork loin. And you slice it like a hotdog bun and open it up. The mushroom mixture goes on one side of the "bun" and the other side is folded on top. You slice the filled loin in half and wrap the whole thing in puff pastry. The end result when you slice it is a stuffed pork loin. Everyone good with that rambling description? Good.

Well my lovely DH comes to the kitchen, takes the pork loins out....wait, what? Pork loins? Our two pound package of pork loin was 2 one pound loins. Hmmmm....so we improvised and beat the crap out of the loins to flatten them enough to stuff with the mixture. We ended up with 2 very long more narrow than really acceptable loins that dropped mushroom stuffing everywhere. Enter into this tragedy the imposter puff pastry: The Phyllo Dough. In my defense the box said "Phyllo puff pastry". Kroger didn't have puff pastry by Pepperidge Farms.

I have taken the time, followed the instructions etc. to make sure the phyllo dough is thawed and is ready to be "rolled twice the width of the loin". I had a flutter of misgiving when I opened the package and a sheaf of paper rolled out. Those misgivings increased quickly when I attempted to roll the very dry phyllo sheets wider than God intended. I was ready to give up, toss the overstuffed pork under the broiler and call it a day. But my engineering DH separated the bundle of dough into for stacks that overlapped in the center to create enough dough to wrap the pork in. So we wrap it up, pop them in the oven and wait.

They come out looking...ok. Not quite the picture in the book. But it looks like this might be a winner-ish.

The picture from the book...seriously check this out at your local book store or Amazon!

We let it rest, we sniffed it, we were standing ready with mouths watering. Finally the 10 minutes pass and we can cut into these bad boys.

Can you see the layers upon layers of uncooked phyllo dough? It's there. You don't have to squint...it's freaking layer upon layer people!

The Verdict: As now noted for my future generations to come within the book, make sure you buy ONE pork loin, not two babies parading as a larger one. And more importantly, phyllo dough may be wonderful for baklava, but it is not in fact a replacement for puff pastry. Ever. The dish was tasty, and when you scraped off the uncooked dough, the crispy bits were good. We did finish eating the whole thing though!

Up Next: Beef Stroganoff

The Silver Spoon Adventure

DH was lovely enough to surprise me with The Silver Spoon for Christmas! I've drooled over this cookbook for years but never put down the cold hard cash for it. This book is a tome.

It is over 1500 pages. So we have decided to make one dish every week for the next year to try and use it at least an infinitesimal fraction.

So far we've made Pork en Croute, Beef Stronganoff and Roman Spring Lamb. I've got pictures and pointers ready to post. Now to start writing the posts to go with them! The lamb is the hands down winner right now.

Enjoy your week, y'all!