Filet Mignon with Balsamic Pan Sauce and Truffle Oil

Okay… so this is a late one, but I’ll make it short.  I totally forgot about Christmas dinner I made last year for my dad and I.  I had purchased a small duo of black and white truffle oils back when Alex, Lingie, and I visited Andrew in Seattle last December.  I had been meaning to try them out on something other than potatoes, pasta, and every other carb truffle is usually paired with.  My diabetic dad doesn’t eat carbs at night, so I bought some grass fed filet mignon steaks from Whole Foods for us. For desert, I made the Apple Mosaic tart with Salted Caramel which I enjoyed so much I ended up making again for a Sho-Yu Christmas potluck.  Sadly, my dad and I ate about 3/4 of the tart that night (it was supposed to make enough for 12 servings).

Here’s the recipe, as I found it on Food.com.  The sauce was really good, and not too overpowering with the truffle as long as you aren’t heavy-handed with it.

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 filet mignon steaks, 1 1/2 inches thick
• sea salt, to taste
• fresh ground black pepper, to taste
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• white truffle oil, for drizzling

DIRECTIONS:

1. Sprinkle steaks generously with salt and pepper.

   

   Steaks!

2. Coat the bottom of a large, heavy frying pan with olive oil and heat over medium-high heat. Add the steaks and cook to the desired doneness, 3-5 minutes on each side.  I had thinner than 1.5″ steaks, so I only did a total of 2 minutes on each side.

   

   After a Minute on Each Side

3. Transfer to a platter and let rest, tented loosely with aluminum foil, while you make the sauce.
4. In the same pan over medium-high heat, add the vinegar and deglaze by scraping up any browned bits from the bottom. Cook until slightly reduced and thickened, about 3 minutes.

   

   Balsamic Pan Sauce

5. Remove from the heat. Whisk in the butter to form a smooth sauce.

   

   Whisk in Butter

6. To serve, transfer the steaks to individual plates, top with the sauce, and drizzle with a small amount of truffle oil.

I paired this with a made-from-scratch butternut squash soup (post to come soon), and an avocado and corn salad which I wasn’t really a fan of (won’t be posting about that one).  A great special occasion meal!

Christmas Dinner is Served

 

Vanilla Roasted Pears

Kevin and I hosted a fun Saturday evening in Los Feliz for Tony and Julie a few weekends ago, basking in the warm afternoon sun cocktail in-hand on the outdoor patio of Katsuya at the Americana followed by a fun four-course homemade dinner courtesy of Kevin and yours truly.

The Capitellis!

Apologies in advance for the poor photo quality and plating, as I used my phone’s camera and only briefly had the food on a plate before we shoveled it down our throats.  Classy bunch, I know.  No time for fluff and positioning when there was food to be eaten!

First Course – Cheese & Charcuterie

To start, we put together a simple cheese and charcuterie board with Supreme brie (my fav), a gouda-cheddar blend, red wine (chianti) salami from Trader Joe’s, and a Trader Joe’s prosciutto (my absolut fav storebought prosciutto).  We threw in some granny smith apple slices, and wheat and flax crackers.  Tony apparently is a big chocolate beer guy, so Kevin decided to pick up a couple of chocolate stouts for the boys to try.

Second Course – Arugula Salad

For the second course, we made a simple arugula salad topped with homemade candied walnuts, julienne fuji apple, and shaved (not grated!) parmesan cheese, all drizzled over with a homemade brown sugar balsamic vinaigrette (1/4 C balsamic vinegar, 1 chopped shallot, 1/2 C olive oil, 2 tsp brown sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp fine black pepper – whisked together and sitting for at least an hour).

I didn’t remember to take a photo til midway through eating this dish…

For the entree, we did a wheat rotini pasta dish with simple grilled shrimp, pan-friend kale, and Trader Joe’s sundried tomato.  We also added a touch of Trader Giotto’s Organic Vodka sauce to add a little bit of moisture to the dish – Kevin’s genius idea.

And now for the real subject matter of this post – dessert!  I wanted to make something that we could make and eat right away, rather than the types of things I typically make in advance (i.e., cupcakes, cookies, bars, etc.).  Also, baking at Kevin’s means either needing to be self-sufficient as far as not needing the typical tools and machinery goes, or bringing all the machinery myself.  We settled on a vanilla poached pear recipe (below) as adapted from one I found on Smitten Kitchen.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 vanilla bean
• 4-5 slightly-under-ripe, fragrant, medium pears, peeled if desired, halved though the stem and cored (I used Bosc)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoon unsalted butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Place the sugar in a small bowl. With a thin, sharp knife, split the vanilla bean lengthwise in half and scrape out the seeds. Stir the seeds into the sugar.

2. Arrange the pears in a large baking dish, cut-side up. Drizzle the lemon juice evenly over the fruit, then sprinkle with the sugar. Nestle the vanilla pod among the fruit (I first slit my halves lengthwise into quarters). Pour the water into the dish. Dot each pear with some butter.

Pears, Vanilla Sugar, and Butter – Easy!

3. Roast the pears for minutes brushing them occasionally with the pan juices. Turn the pears over and continue roasting, basting once or twice, until tender and caramelized, 25 to 30 minutes longer. A paring knife poked into the thickest part of one should meet with no resistance.

Slightly Blistered Pears

4. Serve warm, spooned with the caramelized pear drippings from the pan over vanilla ice cream.

Vanilla Roasted Pears

I LOVED this recipe – it’s a nice light dessert that I could eat probably every day.  When (not “if”) I make this again, I might substitute the white sugar for a little less than the same amount of brown sugar just to get a little more of a molassesy-sticky texture to the glaze. MMM