We're Baaaaccccckkkkk!

I know right...where have we been? Well, time just got away from us. This past summer, we were too busy to get together to pull off a blog dinner and then we just never got our acts together enough to get going again...UNTIL NOW!

We are planning a blog dinner for the end of this month, but until then we thought that we should probably get some of our kitchen adventures documented on our blog for all to see. Today I will start with a kitchen adventure (which was actually a "blog dinner" that I hosted for my family back in the summer time).

My judges included my brother BJ and his wife Beth, my two cousins Marc and Callan, and of course two of my gorgeous children.

The Book: 

365: No Repeats

The Author: 

Rachel Ray

The Menu:

Shrimp Martinis and Manhattan Steaks, Recipe # 158, Pg. 141

The Undertaking:

This dinner took place in the home of my brother and sister in law right after the birth of my beautiful niece J

Since I was attempting to pull off a dinner on my own (without my fabulous Helen), I chose to do only one recipe (which included a starter, a side and a main).  Luckily, I wasn’t lonely in the kitchen…I got some help from my brother…he tackled barbequing the steaks for me.  Thanks BJ!  And while BJ was working on the barbequing, I worked on the martinis (which is the reason I chose this menu of course), the broccoli spears and the Manhattan sauce for the steaks.  Since I had an assistant working on the steaks, this recipe was a synch to cook up.

I had a lot of fun making this recipe, mainly because we got to play with fire!!!!  It surely is a great choice to do when you have guests!  I suggest practicing a few times first though, so that you can get really good at it…good at the flambé part of the process I mean.  You could definitely put on a good show!  As for my first attempt at a flambé though…it was a little more like:

“Where is the fire extinguisher?”
“Get ready…we are going to try it now!”
“Make sure the door is open so that we can get out quickly should something catch fire!”

Fun times!

Now it’s time for a little bit of education!  I am about to explain what Flambé is.  I am sure that by looking at the pictures on this blog post, or from watching the Food Network, you might already know what it is…but humor me! J

Flambé is a cooking procedure where you add liquor to a dish to add flavoring.  The word flambé means flamed in French.  Flamed?  Yes, FLAMED….because you light your dish on fire!  …Noooo…not while you are eating your food!  You light it up during the cooking process in order to burn off the alcohol.  Once the flame has gone out and all of the alcohol is burned off, you are left with the flavor of the liquor…not the hangover!

The Judgement:
Manhattan Steaks:

“The savoury tender viscosity of the main course tingled my tastebuds and stimulated my salivary glands in a competent spectacle of debaucherous taste and splendor.” – Marc

“Sauce was very good, nicely cooked.” – Callan

“Very good.  Good way to prepare.  Steak sauce was awesome." - BJ

"Really good.  Perfectly cooked and everything. Sauce was really good.  A nice change from BBQ sauce.” – Beth

“Really good steak.  The icing was the sauce with the yummy shallots.  I would definitely eat this again and again!” – Amber

The Manhattan Steaks got an average score of 4.9 out of 5.

 Shrimp Martinis:

 “I’m too drunk” – Marc

“Too much vodka, and it’s kinda spicy.” – Callan

 “Good, but too much vodka, lemon and tabasco." - BJ

“Don’t like the cocktail sauce, but it was ok. Too much vodka” – Beth

“This was hard to eat, because it called for too much vodka.  There was tons of celery flavor though, which was nice.” – Amber

The Shrimp Martinis got an average score of 2.3 out of 5.

Broccoli:

 “yeah…” – Marc

“Kinda plain.” – Callan

"Too plain, needed a sauce, but still good for plain broccoli." - BJ

“It was broccoli.” – Beth

“Was good.  By the time I got to eat it, it was kind of cold, but it was good.  At least I could eat it, which is more than I could say for the cocktail appetizer!” – Amber

The Broccoli got an average score of 2.9 out of 5.

 The Kids Vote:

Both kids ate their supper pretty well.  They did not get to try the shrimp because it had liquor in it of course.  Emmersyn gave all of her food an infinity rating, and the broccoli got an infinity rating (even if she didn’t really like it as much as the meat), because “it is healthy for you”.

So I mentioned that we are going to be having a blog dinner at the end of this month and you can expect a new posting soon!  I hope that you all are as excited as we are about getting started on our blog posts again!

Amber & Helen