So last night Heather and I had a few things to celebrate. One, my son Alex returned home safely from a 9 week holiday across North America and two, we had a table full of friends who’s better halves were traveling on business and they all really needed a good home cooked meal and a game of Yahtzee.
It was a homecoming/take care of your buddies kind of night and on the menu was our infamous rib eye roast with Béarnaise sauce (click here for the original recipe), roasted rosemary potatoes, crunchy beetroot and pear salad and a very special peanut butter cream pie (more on the pie later…)
It was also a special kind of evening in that Roman wasn’t snapping photos of every step, it was a dinner prepared with love (hence the iphone pics generously supplied by our friend Andrea!)
I did want to share the recipes for the sides and I’ll leave you a link for the peanut butter pie that will surely bring a tear to your eye…truth be told, Roman made the pie because of the story you’ll read.
The roasted potatoes:
1 1/2 pounds small white-skinned potatoes
1/8 cup olive oil
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
6 cloves minced garlic
2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons minced fresh thyme
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and while that’s getting up to temperature pepare your tatties by cutting them into quarters. Place them in a baking dish and heap on a generous slathering of good quality olive oil. To that, add your minced garlic, rosemary and thyme followed by a good seasoning of Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Place the dish into the oven and set your timer for 25 minutes. At the sound of the tone, remove the potatoes and turn them over to ensure an even browning occurs. Pop them back in for another 25 minutes. Shake them around a bit once the timer pings and then reduce your temperature to a medium low for the next 10 minutes. You’re pretty much done at the 60 minute mark so get ready to plate up the roasted potatoes in a nice serving dish.
The Raw Beetroot & Pear salad:
2 good-sized beetroots, scrubbed, peeled and cut into fine matchsticks
2 ripe Chinese pears cut into matchsticks (leave the skin on…its delicious!)
1 x lemon oil dressing (basically 1 part lemon to 2 parts olive oil and a bit of salt & pepper)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
200g feta cheese
a small bunch of butter head lettuce leaves cut into bit sized pieces
a large handful of sunflower seeds
Combine all your ingredients in a large bowl and then crumble on the feta cheese and finally adding your lemon/oil dressing at the end. For such a simple salad, you’ll freak out your guests with an awesome earthy taste. Who knew that raw beetroots could taste sooooo good?!?
Now, the final piece that made up last night’s meal is the Peanut Butter Cream Pie – please read the following post (click here) to find out why we chose to do this. Thank you Jennie for your recipe and for sharing such a lovely tribute. It really made us appreciate the loved ones we had around the table last night!
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Comments