Here is my menu for the week of May 10th. Simple food but quite a variety.
Steak and Twice-Baked Potatoes
Cream of Mushroom Soup
Teriaki Chicken Burgers
Raviolis
Fish Tacos
Okay. For this week, we’re starting with steak and twice-baked potatoes. Do you know how much steaks cost right now? Holy cow. I’m having my mom over for Mother’s Day. She said, “I would like something grilled on the barbecue.” I ask, “Do you want beef?” She said, “Yes.” She really likes prime rib, but I thought, instead of cooking for hours, maybe steaks would be a little more fun because it doesn’t take as long. I looked at the prime rib anyway. Now, mind you, it was enough to feed eight people, but it was $125. Oh my gosh, what’s happening!?! So, I bought some very nice steaks instead and still spent $70.
With the steaks, I’ll make twice baked potatoes. What I do is I bake a nice big baking potato. I wrap them in tinfoil so that the skin remains a little soft. I put a little butter in there, stab them (pierce the potato), then put some salt on them, put them in tinfoil, so that the skins are easy to eat. Then I carve out the middle after they are cooked. Then I put some butter and sour cream and then different cheeses with the potato I removed. Then I stuff the mixture back in and then I will just put them under the broiler until the cheese melts on the top. Then I’m going to make a salad, probably with homemade ranch dressing. Then maybe some bread, I haven’t decided.
Then I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a long time. Momma loves broiled tomatoes. I’m going to take some tomatoes and carve out the middle, then I’m going to mix a flavored fancy soft cheese, like Boursin cheese. I’ll mix that with some lightly sauteed vegetables, maybe some mushrooms, spinach or zucchini or whatever. Then I’ll stuff all that stuff back in the tomatoes. A neat trick is to take croutons and grind them up. So I put them in my little, what do we call those things? Ninja blender. I chop up croutons that are already flavored and they have some oil in them and they’re kind of already toasted. So, I’m going to put those on top of the tomatoes.
Next night I will be making cream of mushroom soup, it’s really good. For my cream of mushroom soup, I take my mirepoix and I sauté it up. Then I add the mushrooms, and I cook mushrooms down, a lot of them. So then at this point I will put some wine in it, or Brandy, or cooking sherry, and then cook that down. Then I will add some chicken stock, Thyme, Parsley, and Bay leaves and I’ll simmer it for a little while. Then I’ll probably add some cream, and then I know this is funny, but I might add a small can of cream of mushroom soup. I know it’s stupid, but it’s just what I do, just to get the consistency exactly perfect. Then I have a big pot of cream of mushroom soup and I use an immersion blender to blend it. I might sauté some mushrooms on the side, get some color on them and then float those in the cream of mushroom soup when serving.
Up next, my chicken burgers dinner. I take boneless chicken breasts and I soak them in some sort of marinade, generally like a teriyaki or I’ll just make a teriyaki marinade up. Then cook on the BBQ. We always do whole wheat hamburger buns. We use Swiss cheese, we use butter lettuce, we use a beautiful tomato and then we serve it with some grilled vegetables and then maybe make like sweet potato fries. So that’s what we do for chicken burgers. It’s just a fun twist.
Then we’re going to have ravioli’s that I bought from Trader Joe’s and they’re called Bolognese. So they’re stuffed with a nice little kind of meat Then I’ll probably serve it with Bolognese sauce I have frozen with some broccoli and salad.
And lastly fish tacos. So we’re going to go to the fish store and we’re going to buy something fresh, hopefully a nice tuna, ahi, or yellowtail. I’ll coat it with mayonnaise, lemon and soy sauce. Then I’ll put it right on the grill in big chunks, and then it makes a big mess, but it’ll be super good. Then we serve it with cabbage, I’ll make a nice sauce, which is ranch dressing mixed with salsa, which is the biggest, best cheat ever when you want that fun sauce for a fish taco and then some cheese and then maybe some rice and beans.
Okay that’s it, for this week. Let me know if this is helpful.