Friday, March 5, 2010

Roasted Orange-Ginger Asparagus

The worst thing about our dinner tonight was my photography. I'm fine with that because everything tasted so damn good.

The older spawn was out with his friends and the young'n was spending the night at his buddy's so it was just Alexis and me. So we went with something simple and quick.

Grilled ribeye steak on the Big Green Egg using a Craycort cast iron grate (a product by one of our fellow BBQ Brethren).

I made up an easy but great mushroom sauce for the steaks.

I was going to make a mushroom cream sauce but looking at the mushrooms reconstituting in the beef stock steered (beef pun intended) me in a different direction. Make the sauce while your steaks are resting for 10-15 minutes after grilling.

Brandy Porcini Sauce


Source: Pulled out of my rear but I had enjoyed a beer or two

Ingredients
3 Tbsp butter, divided
2 Tbsp shallot, diced
1/3 cup dried porcini mushrooms
3/4 cup beef stock
2 Tbsp Brandy

Instructions
Reconstitute the mushrooms in the beef stock for 30 minutes. Remove the mushrooms from the stock (reserve stock) and chop.

In a hot saute pan, melt 2 Tbsp of the butter and saute the shallot over medium high heat for about 1 minute. Add the chopped mushrooms and saute another 2 minutes.

Add the brandy and flambe until the flame dies down in about 10 seconds (For me on a gas range top, I boost the heat to high, remove the pan to add the brandy, put it back on and tilt. For you: This is very dangerous and you should never flambe inside. Don't even think about doing it without wearing Nomex long johns, gloves, and a welder's mask [lawsuit disclaimer for Darwin award candidates].)

Add the stock and simmer until the volume is reduced by half. Stir in 1 Tbsp of butter and remove from heat. Serve over steaks.

The side dish was from this month's Southern Living (March 2010):

Roasted Orange-Ginger Asparagus

Source: adapted from Southern Living

1/2 lb fresh asparagus, bottoms snapped off
1/4 cup orange juice
1 Tbsp ginger, fresh grated
1 Tbsp mustard, coarse ground
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
slices of orange

Whisk together the juice, ginger, mustard, salt and pepper. Slowly add the oil while whisking rapidly to create an emulsion.

Drizzle over the asparagus and mix in a casserole dish. Top with the orange slices

Place the dish on the hot grill as the steaks come off.

Cook for 10-15 minutes until the asparagus is done to your liking, turning 1/2 way through. On the Big Green Egg, I did it as it was cooling down from the 550f steak portion of the dinner, it only took about 10 minutes. (Done in a 400f oven for 15 minutes according to the original instructions.)

The food was spot on perfect. I was so glad that I went with using the stock instead of the cream on the mushroom sauce. Impulsive inspirations can be a good thing. The asparagus recipe was not only packed with "both ends of the spectrum flavor", it also adapted easily to the grill.

Sigh....roll me in bacon and put me to bed, I'm content.

PS: Never try that last line in a singles bar....it never works.