Sunday, January 06, 2008

Food TV

One of my favorite things to do by myself is to watch Food TV. Even if I can just sit for a partial segment. I have always enjoyed watching people make food. When I was little, I remember watching Julia Child and the New Orleans cajun guy on PBS. I would stand in our kitchen stirring canned corn and adding spices to my masterpiece. I would talk out loud and describe in detail what I was making, as if I were being taped for TV. (I'm not kidding).
Some 20 years later, I find myself actually trying to make a Barefoot Contessa dish. Her dishes seem to be elegant yet simple. When one begins the recipe, one seems to find themselves over their heads, namely "Me". I made filet of beef bourguignon. ( I'm not even sure how to pronounce that last word). It looked good and we are beef lovers at our house!
I will say it turned out perfect... at 8:45pm last night. I was hoping to have this romantic dinner for two at 7:30 or so. AGGH. Thankfully, it was just the two of us. I kept thinking if I was serving this for guests I would have died.
My carrots WOULD NOT cook, I kept having to add more of the liquids to create more sauce. I think I used almost a whole bottle of wine for my reduction sauce! To finish cooking my carrots, I did a few short cuts that I will not share because "Contessa" would not approve . The dish turned out perfect in the long run. I googled this recipe to include in this post and look what came up! Someone else having a hard time with their carrots. I wasn't loosing my mind. I thought how can you mess up carrots! I agree with all of his other suggestions too, like the bigger pan. Thankfully, that's the only size I had, so it worked out fine. By the way, I found a really good deal on the filets of beef. I spent only $10.00 for two and sliced those to have a total of 4 pieces.
By the time we sat down to eat, I was done. I was so sick of the sauce and tasting to see if my carrots were cooked. However, Pete seemed to really like it. I will try this again and will fine tune it for the future.

PS Microwaves work wonders

2 comments:

Monique Boucher said...

I hear you! I love Ina as well, but she is a little bit unaware of the fact that we do not all own French cookware in every size and keep Grey Poupon in our cupboards.

The Nester said...

That sounds so delish right now even at 9:30 a.m. I could eat that meat.

I too, love to watch the food network. Even though I am a house girl I can tell you that our food tv is on channel 55 and I'm not sure what HGTV is.