Mme Pépin: Texas Beef Bake

While sifting through the 'Beef' section of my Healthy Cooking for under $7 cookbook I came across a 'Texas Beef Bake'. It sounded interesting and filling, perfect for a meal in with Mike since he eats like a horse.

The ingredients were simple enough: ground beef, mashed potatoes (from baking potatoes), frozen broccoli, parm cheese, an onion, beef broth, and some seasonings.

For meals involving more than just throwing pasta into boiling water while heating up some sauce, Mike and I like to work together. While he got to work chopping the onion, I skinned the potatoes and waited for the water to boil so I could get them ready for mashing. While we continued to wait for that water to boil, Mike sauteed the onions and I got the rest of the ingredients ready to be added to his pan as needed. Note on the water: just now boiling, potatoes added. Whole. The recommended 15 minutes had passed and the potatoes were in theory supposed to be ready to mash. Mike was running out of things to add to the pan.

The mashing was not a success, the potatoes were still too hard (note that I'd already drained the water). So, Mike lowered the heat on the contents in the pan, as I got the water boiling. Again. The potatoes sat in the boiling water for another 15 minutes. Still too hard to mash as Mike tested their firmness every few minutes with a mashing utensil. We even debated if the utensil I gave him was appropriate for mashing. Finally Mike said, perhaps we should have cut them up before boiling them. Lightbulb. I looked in the cookbook, and noted that the ingredients called for the potatoes to be cut, not the directions (where I'd been looking this whole time). Oops. Needless to say that made a world of difference and we were back in action.

After everything had been sauteed (the pan turned into a large metal bowl as we ran out of space), we transfered the contents to a pyrex baking pan, sprinkled on the cheese (note next time I will not get grated parm, I'll get shredded), and popped it into the oven. The bake time took longer than expected, Mike attributed that to the cheese being grated.

When all was said and done, Mike did most of this meal, as I threw complications his way left and right (unintentional of course). Despite some of the set backs, the meal tasted excellent. It was incredibly filling, leaving plenty of leftovers (score for me, I got to bring it to work for lunch!).

I will say, don't make this as a company dish since it's quite the opposite of appetizing looking. But it does taste great, is under 400 calories, and is simple to make: if your baking partner isn't me.

Mme. Pépin: Gratin Dauphonaise

This past Sunday a smaller group assembled to gather round another one of Jacque's recipes. This time I planned to re-create the dish that my Godmother and I made together, the dish that inspired her to give Jacque's cookbook to me, the Gratin Dauphonaise, or in plain English, cheesy potatoes.

Becky, my Godmother, loved to cook and made it look effortless. After we made the potatoes, she whipped up a Bananas Foster just to give me a brief demonstration (I'm not ready to try that one on my own yet, especially not in my small kitchen). Everything, of course, turned out delicious.

Coming off of a successful rendition of the Onion Soup, I felt that this would be another notch to add to my belt of cooking successes. Though, I should mention, as not all of you are aware, the smell of onion lasted for almost a week in my apartment, and when I traveled to Texas for Becky's memorial (which I will mention was flawless), all of my clothing smelled of onion and needed to be aired out.

My dear Mme. Diat had taken ill, so I'd be doing this one with different aid. My sister and my other best friend stepped in to help with a few tasks as I orchestrated the meal. The plan was to have the cheesy potatoes with some steamed broccoli.

Becky emphasized the value of using a food processor on the potatoes, showing me how thin and even the potatoes could be. Unfortunately, I do not own a food processor (ergo, the Not-so-Palatable Pesto Disaster of 2008), so I set to work cutting the potatoes. Needless to say, my slices were rather thick and uneven. After a potato and a half, my hands were aching so my sister stepped in and finished cutting the final potato. I had my friend take care of the garlic. Knife in hand, she did her best to get the pieces of garlic as small as possible. Just to finish painting your mental picture of this scene, all of this is taking place in my living room as my kitchen doesn't have any counter space and is quite small.

While my sister was finishing up cutting the potato, I filled the large saucepan with half and half, a little salt, and some pepper (we couldn't figure out what peppercorns were and where to obtain them). The mixture, along with the potatoes went onto the stove and was left to boil. After reaching its boiling point, I poured the contents of the large saucepan (I feel like there's a better name instead of large saucepan) into a more shallow pan (I didn't have a gratin pan and Mother said a brownie pan would suffice), added the cheese, and popped it into the oven for an hour.

Needless to say we didn't eat until almost 9pm, but no one complained since the apartment smelled great. When the timer went off we anticipated the cheesy greatness that we were about to ingest.

What came out of the oven looked a little like skin and melted cheese. My sister inspected the situation and deduced that the 'skin' look was just the cream forming a skin (for lack of a better word), and that underneath it, the meal would look like the beautiful photograph in Jacque's book. For all intensive purposes it did. Sort of.

We sat down to eat, carved our portions from the brownie pan (literally had to carve it, the potatoes weren't coming out without a fight) and added the steamed broccoli to our plates (I bought the steam in the microwave in the bag stuff since I wanted to focus on the potatoes, and 5 minutes in the microwave couldn't be that difficult). There was bad news and okay news. The bad news was that the broccoli was cold and soggy, so much for 5 easy minutes in the microwave equaling broccoli perfection. The okay news, the cheesy potatoes were, well, okay.

Truth be told, they weren't as cheesy as the photograph or my memory let on. They also had completely fallen apart upon contact, perhaps they were over-boiled?

As much as my dinner guests (thankfully they were few in number this week) assured me that it was good, I was unsatisfied, I didn't do this meal justice. I will tackle it again at some point, and next time, I will be victorious.