So Many Dishes

Yesterday was a great day at our house. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are huge fans of the Philadelphia Eagles, so we were cheering like crazy during the Super Bowl last night. We had expected a much closer game, so we were a lot more relaxed than we are during many Eagles games.

No matter what teams are playing, the Super Bowl gives us a reason to cook something special for dinner. We don’t do typical game-time fare. No wings or chips and dip here! It’s a special occasion, so it calls for a special meal.

There’s usually no theme to what we cook. Ben, our son, usually chooses something that relates to at least one of the cities represented by the teams in the game. He was making Philly cheesesteak mac and cheese yesterday. We made Cincinnati chili the last time the Bengals were in the Super Bowl, but otherwise, it’s whatever suits our fancy.

This year, we ended up paying homage to the host city, New Orleans. The Big Easy is home to the restaurant where I had the best restaurant experience ever, Commander’s Palace. It had everything: fantastic food, impeccable service, beautiful surroundings. I chose to make a dish from the Commander’s Palace Cookbook that is a favorite for a special occasion, tournedos Provençal.

This meal was, perhaps, not the best choice, since it was pretty labor-intensive for the 30 minutes or so before serving. Most years, I cook something that I can put together midafternoon and let cook. But I did as much prep work as I could early in the afternoon, and served dinner about the time of kickoff.

One of my prep steps was to peel and seed a tomato. Peeling tomatoes isn’t difficult, but I was always drafted to peel them when my mother made a big batch of sauce. It wasn’t unusual to peel five pounds of plum tomatoes. Spending that much time handling hot tomatoes didn’t result in treasured memories 😄

The dish really is quite simple. You sear steaks in butter, remove them, then add a mix of vegetables to the pan and quickly saute them, then finish with more butter. I make two changes to the recipe: instead of tenderloin, I use boneless top sirloin fillets, and I cut down on the amount of butter. The steaks are seasoned with a mix called Creole meat seasoning. It’s basically a seasoned salt, adding granulated garlic, black pepper, paprika, and cayenne. I compared these ingredients to those in Penzey’s Creole seasoning, and that is completely different, so I wouldn’t use that as a substitute. The included recipe makes 3 cups, but the batch I made a while ago was much smaller than that. Essentially, it’s 4 parts salt, 3 parts granulated garlic, 3 parts black pepper, 1 part paprika, and cayenne for taste.

To accompany the steaks, I made green beans with a lemon butter glaze, and cooked some German bread dumplings that Alice gave us in our Christmas gourmet basket. The dumplings worked really well. They soaked up the sauce nicely.

Tournedos Provençale

• 4 tenderloin or boneless top sirloin steaks, about 6 ounces each
• 1 tsp. Creole meat seasoning
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup peeled, seeded, diced fresh tomatoes (about 1 large tomato)
• 1 cup coarsely chopped onions
• 1/2 lb. mushrooms, quartered
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 cup minced parsley
• 1 tsp. cracked black pepper

Dust steaks with meat seasoning.

Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a sauté pan. When butter foams, add meat and sauté to desired doneness (for me, this was about 3-4 minutes per side). Remove from pan and keep warm.

To butter and juices remaining in pan, add onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, and parsley. Stir gently and cook until onions are almost translucent. Add remaining butter and pepper. Remove from heat and stir gently until butter is melted. Spoon sauce over meat and serve immediately. Serves 4.

Happy eating! And fly, Eagles, fly!