Archive for January, 2012
Mustard-Roasted Beef Tenderloin
Steve and I serve beef tenderloin often – especially for parties or company. Everyone loves it, it is very simple to prepare and cook, and can easily be served at room temperature, eliminating some of the last minute stress of serving dinner to a lot of people.
When Steve’s mom requested tenderloin for her birthday dinner, I looked for a different way to prepare it. We usually rub olive oil over the meat and season with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper – roast on the grill or on convection bake in the oven for 45 minutes – and it is done. Let it rest for 15 minutes – or longer – slice, pair with several types of mustard, mayonnaise and/or horseradish sauce and you’ve got a great entree.
For Jeri’s birthday we tried a new recipe:
4 pound Certified Angus Beef Tenderloin, tied (We used CAB – it was Jeri’s birthday, after all!)
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
4-6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons stone-ground mustard
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
Let the beef stand at room temperature for 1 hour. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Season beef all over with salt and pepper. Make a paste with the butter and mustards; spread on the roast. Put the roast on a rack in a foil-lined pan, or on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast until thermometer reads 135 – 140 – about 45 minutes. Let rest 15 minutes before slicing.
We also made a simple sauce to accompany the beef. Whip 1/2 cup heavy cream until peaks form. Fold in 2 tablespoons stone-ground mustard and 1 tablespoon dijon mustard – the same as used for the beef. Yummy!
We will definitely use this recipe again! Steve has had requests to tie tenderloins and thought it was a bit pointless, but the presentation is different. The beauty of serving tenderloin to guests is the ease of preparation – and the leftovers! The worst thing you can do to tenderloin is overcook it – but a good instant-read thermometer is a tool every kitchen should have.
My plated dinner
Here are the recipes for the potatoes and green beans on the plate – easy and delicious! I hope I altered the post so that you can easily print it!
Shingled Roasted Potatoes
Use smooth flat russet baking potatoes – as many as you need. Scrub them well and dry. You need to peel the top 1/2 to 2/3 only of the potato; find the flat side and hold it in your hand. Since you are going to place it on a baking sheet to roast, you want the unpeeled bottom to lay flat with the top peeled part of the potato straight up. That sounds complicated, but if you look at the picture it makes sense.
With top half peeled, use a very sharp knife to thinly slice each potato through to the peel only, halfway through. Steve made about 20 slices in each potato. Brush top with olive oil and sprinkle kosher salt on top. They looked a little strange at this point; I wondered if the extra 15 minutes it took (for 7 spuds) was going to be worth it!
Bake in a 425 oven for a little over an hour. If you are using a convection oven, check them after 30 minutes – they may get too crispy on the top. You can either move them to the bottom of the oven, cover with foil, or move them to a non-convection oven. You don’t want the top to get too brown before the bottom half is done. When the potatoes are done, they fan out a bit and you get the shingled effect. The extra time was worth it.
Green Beans with Dried Cherries
This is super easy. Steam fresh, trimmed beans for 6-10 minutes. Drain, transfer to serving dish. Drizzle a little extra-virgin olive oil on top, add as many dried cherries or cranberries as you like. Season with a little kosher salt.
From tenderloin to dessert!
My mother-in-law just celebrated her ?? birthday. Steve and I invited Don and Marianne Diekman, Dottie Klepp, Pat Crow and my parents to our home for Jeri’s birthday dinner party Sunday night. The onset of ice around the county necessitated postponing the party until Monday night, Jeri’s actual birthday. Fortunately, though everything was prepped, nothing was in the oven – phew!
The menu was as follows: Mustard-Roasted Beef Tenderloin with Creamy Mustard Sauce, Roasted Red Onions, Shingled Roasted Potatoes, Green Beans with Dried Cherries – and White-on-White Birthday Cake!
Most of the menu came from December’s Martha Stewart Magazine. Instead of the Roasted Red Onions, that menu included Mushroom Wellington Cups. I despise mushrooms. I never serve mushrooms. I love onions. I serve onions often and this particular recipe is delicious!
The menu from the magazine also included a parsley and citrus salad. I fashioned the garnish with parsley, leaf lettuce, oranges and a little citrus vinaigrette; the only difficult (and extremely time-consuming) part of the entire menu was peeling the membrane from each orange section and squeezing those membranes for the juice! I have to say that each “skinless” section of orange was really good – but it seemed a little ridiculous and you sure don’t get much juice from those membranes! But that’s Martha!
It was very easy to actually cook the meal Monday afternoon – everything was ready to go in the ovens, the table was set – Steve had to shovel the driveway a couple of times, but for the most part we were good to go! Dave brought a few bottles of really good wine and champagne, we toasted Jeri, then Wayne, then Sue Crow. I love champagne!
Dinner was delicious. I’ll post recipes for the tenderloin and the sides later; Barb and Gregg are working on making it easier to print recipes from my blog and the website. Watch for the recipes!
Jeri's Cake - White on White
The first time I was part of a Northrop family birthday celebration, I learned about white on white birthday cake. In the Callsen family, we always had yellow, or more often, marble cakes(you can’t even buy marble anymore!) In fact, my mother tried to make a white cake once. She used the entire egg, not just the whites, and it turned out yellow. She couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t use the whole egg.
When Steve’s mom served a beautiful white cake with creamy buttercream frosting, I was hooked! Since then, no Northrop family birthday celebration is complete without this special cake.
A couple of years ago, Jeri gave me this beautiful white (of course) cake stand. For her birthday cake yesterday, I embellished the white on white cake with fresh mint leaves, raspberries and blackberries. I am not a baker, but I was very impressed with the way it turned out. And – it was absolutely delicious!
Volumes 1 and 2
Just like every family or business, Main Street Market amassed a very large number of photos over the past 24 years! And, just like almost everyone, they ended up in boxes that were somewhat organized in the beginning, but became a jumbled mess.
Teri Madden is a Creative Memories consultant, and during the winter last year, she used those talents to sort through the pictures and create a Main Street Market scrapbook. She continued to work at it and at our Christmas Party 2 weeks ago, Teri brought Volumes 1 ,2 and 3 to the party. It was very fun to look through all the photos of all of us as young (!) babies, children or adults – and to see the evolution of Main Street Market.
As you can imagine, there are a number of photos of people we cannot identify. We’ve been trying to put names and faces together – and it is not easy. Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours going through old employee records to try to determine identities. (This leads me to another winter project, cleaning up file folders with hundreds, maybe thousands, of applications, work permits and other data – ugh!)
We’ve managed to identify almost everyone – there are a few still unnamed. I’ve gotten smarter about documenting the international kids we’ve worked with – pictures and their American names or the names we used, noted next to their “official” names has helped immensely.
The scrapbooks are on the counter at the front of the store. If you have some time, look through them. Teri has created an amazing pictorial history of Main Street Market.
