Stilton Stuffed Mushroom

As you can probably see from my posts, we enjoy our steak, arugula and mushrooms. It's one of those things that isn't broke, and I don't stray away from the flavors much. However, I really liked this mushroom cap. I took large crimini mushrooms and sauteed them for about 15 minutes in a small amount of butter. I then added some english stilton bleu cheese to them and covered it so the cheese would melt down a bit. It was a perfect savory bite to complement the chianti we were drinking with dinner.

Here it is on the plate with the strip served over arugula:

Braised Ox Tails

And yet another combination of braised meat over polenta....but at least the weather is warming, which means that these hearty dishes will be shelved until the fall. This time I used oxtail, and slow cooked it.

Added button mushrooms and browned them before adding the wine and beef stock.

The finished product...

Rib Roast

In going back through some pics, I realize there are some I haven't posted and want to recall. This was a killer piece of beef we had hand cut when a friend was in town. I don't want to show the final product out of respect to the demolishing we did to it, but it was solid.

Steak, again?

The number of cast iron cooked NY Strips I have made in recent months has almost becoming obscene. It's probably just a sign of how often they go on sale at Whole Foods, that, and a combination with how often I'd like to eat steak. Either way, tonight was a night to celebrate and it happened to coincide with a sale at WF. The one thing I did do to spice it up was go with an unusual mushroom. The Forest Nameko was surprisingly delicious and tasted better than the crimini's that I use as my go-to.

I just sauteed the Nameko's in a small amount of butter with some diced yellow onion.

For a starter, I sliced a baguette and topped it with an Italian Gorgonzola then added toasted pistachios, peppadew and microgreens.

For veg, I sliced pickling cucumbers, grape tomatoes and onion and then tossed them in sherry vinegar, rice wine vinegar and mirin.

Friday Night Bistro

I had been craving something a little richer so I decided to do a simple bistro meal with steak and au gratin potatoes last Friday night. I cooked the strips in my cast iron skillet to medium rare with a nice pepper crust on them. It would probably have been more bistro like to make the au poivre sauce, but I decided to skip it. I topped the steak with bleu cheese and microgreens.

I stayed pretty traditional with the potatoes, using an aged gruyere and vermont cheddar. I also added chives to them and some cream so they would have a little sauce. I used Yukon Gold's and they seemed to melt into each other while baking.

I really love mushrooms of all kind. For this dish I simply sauteed up some crimini's and added a balsalmic glaze that I brought back from Italy. The glaze is really thick and cooks down pretty well. They were a nice complement to the steak.

Beef Shanks with Polenta and Crunchy Salad

Beef shanks are something that I don't use all that often, but I really enjoy them for a change of pace. I prepared these like a traditional osso bucco, browning then braising and adding tomatoes to prepare a sauce.

I chose not to cook these too long so that they maintained some of their texture and we were able to cut through the large pieces of meat. Although the picture doesn't look all that appetizing, they were quite good.

I left the polenta fairly rough and didn't add milk or much cheese to keep the texture grainy, which I think succeeded in keeping the richness of the dish to a minimum.


I had a lot of veggies around so I decided to make an arugula salad with a lot of crunch and flavor. I chose to add the diakon, fennel and kumquats to the salad. I also added stilton and topped it with a peppadew.

I topped the salad with a light vinaigrette.

Grass-Fed Sliders

I like to keep my burgers simple, tending not to fuss with extra ingredients blended with the meat. This time, I just used 85/15 grass fed beef and added salt and pepper. That's it. I gently rolled them into small balls and added them to my cast iron skillet on medium high. I added shallots in the pan to caramelize and add flavor.

I added gruyere and capped the pan with a lid so that it would steam the cheese a little. I added them to wheat dinner rolls and served with blanched green beans that I topped with a simple mustard vinaigrette.

Steak Salad w/ Homemade Croutons and English Stilton

I'm a big fan of stilton bleu cheese and since we bought a nice chunk of it, I thought it would best be served in a steak salad. I used a strip steak and simple olive oil/balsamic dressing with the salad, which consisted of an organic medley of greens.

I made the croutons fresh from a loaf of rosemary bread I had lying around, they were really unassuming and added just the right amount of crunch. I simply seasoned them with salt and pepper and toasted them with a nice olive oil.

Prime Time

Prime Rib is typically something that I only eat at a restaurant, unless it's Christmas Eve. This was the best prime rib that I have ever made along with the best Jus. Again, I wish that I had a photo of it sliced, but I was mesmerized by this thing.

For the Jus, I used beef base and water and added dried porcini mushrooms and a splash of red wine and sprigs of rosemary and thyme. The earthyness of the mushrooms really shone through and I will be adding them to every jus I make in the future.

Last Night's Dinner: Osso Bucco

I made a nice slow cooked Osso Bucco last night. It was the first time I have cooked with shanks, but I was really impressed with the texture of the meat after it was braised for only 2 hours. After browning the shanks and sweating the mirepoix, I added red wine and tomatoes to the chicken stock, creating a succulent braising liquid. After 2 hours of simmering I placed the shanks on top of a long cooked polenta, which I enriched with Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor cheese. Cypress grove makes Humboldt Fog, which is one of my favorite cheeses, but I hadn't tried this truffle tremor. It's pretty ridiculous. The addition of the cheese to the polenta really took the dish over the top. I added a fresh gremolata to the plate (garlic/parsley/lemon zest) which helped cut through the richness.