That Cookbook Thing II

So here I am. Where have I been? Not in the kitchen enough, obviously – or at least, not enough with my camera. But I’m back – over a week late – for the next round of That Cookbook Thing II, where we present you with: Tournedos Sautés Chasseur, or – when spoken without a French accent - Filet Steaks with Mushroom and Madeira Sauce.

This recipe rocked pretty hard for The Professor (although I’m going to have to work hard to find anything else in the book as scrumptious as that chicken dish we did last time). All in all, it’s a good thing that we can’t afford to eat like this every day, for two reasons:

1) I can’t afford that much filet (or tournedos, or whatever similar cut I can find), and
2) Julia = copious amounts of butter.

How in the world have the French avoided massive rates of heart disease? Oh…I bet Julia didn’t spend every waking minute in front of a laptop.

This was startlingly easy – I guess after roasting and setting a chicken on fire, I was expecting something that would require me to be in the kitchen for hours. But this was more than manageable on even a week night.

I’m not going to go into the entire process – Mike’s done a great job of that. And my fellow bloggers have made some great suggestions that I was able to take shameless advantage of:

• Mike and Shaun both commented that the sauce was too tomato-y, so I cut it in half.
• Ruth – I noticed after the fact – made the most perfect looking little potatoes to go with it.
  
• Like Sara, I used sherry instead of Madeira because that’s what I had on hand.
• I haven't done an analysis, but I know that at least one other blogger used filet instead of tournedos - that being what I could find. I asked the butcher at Publix if they made bacon wrapped filets and he promptly did, which kept me from buying a pound of bacon and then "making" myself eat the rest so it wouldn't go bad. God, I love bacon.
  

I also had a lonely red bell pepper that needed something done with it before it committed suicide, so I roasted it in the oven while I cooked and then sliced it up and served it over the top. I don’t care if this makes every French person in the world scream in agony – I love roasted red peppers, and I’ll put them on just about anything.

So now it must be time for pictures. Well, I don’t have any of the finished product – my batteries were all dead and I was too hungry to wait. I got a couple of action shots, though:

The bread, soaking up butter:



The mushrooms, having already soaked up more butter:



The filets - rocking away in yet more butter:


We had nice mixed baby greens salad to go along with it.
And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go run 102094 miles to burn off all that butter.