Camembert and Cranberry Fillet

Camembert and Cranberry Fillet

For my company's year-end lunch we went to one of those Medieval restaurants where you have to eat potatoes and fish balls with your hands. You don't get napkins and if your fingers get dirty you HAVE to ask the person next to you to lick your fingers. Fuck, what an ordeal.

I needed something to balance this out or Friday would be nothing but a big suck-fest. Luckily my fiance (or m'lady in shining armor) rescued me from my Medieval nightmare. She bought the best beef fillet she could find along with some Camembert Cheese and Cranberry sauce.

Ingredients:
Beef Fillet (size = depending on how shitty your lunch was)
Camembert Cheese
Woolworths Cranberry sauce with crushed berries
Crushed Garlic
Salt flakes
Olive Oil
Red Wine
Balsamic
Sugar
A Spring of Parsley
A Small Spring of Thyme
A Small Spring of Rosemary
A Spring of Coriander
Onions

Prepare the beef fillet by rubbing some olive oil, crushed garlic and salt flakes on the meat. Let it stand for a while.

After the fillet stood for a while, cut slits into the side of the fillet to create a cavity in the side of the fillet. Fill the cavity with Camembert Cheese and finely chopped parsley, thyme, rosemary and coriander. To ensure that the filling don't spill out when you cook it, tie some string around the fillet or if you don't have string, you can use toothpicks to keep the fillet together.

Put the fillet aside for time being, it is now time for the Cranberry sauce with Red Wine.

Heat some olive oil in a pan. Fry the onions until translucent and soft. Stir two teaspoons of sugar into the onions. The sugar will caramelize the onions.

Now stir in the Cranberry sauce and a dash of red wine. Cook for 5 minutes while stirring continuously.

Add a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, turn down the heat and let it simmer for 10 - 15 minutes. If the sauce gets to thick, you can add some water to dilute the sauce.

While the sauce is simmering you can start cooking the steaks. Cook them which ever way you prefer your steak - Charcoal, medium or bloody as hell.

Once the steak and the sauce is done, it's time to dish up! Pour some of the Cranberry sauce over your steaks and enjoy with a side dish of your choice. You can go for rice, mash or a nice salad.

 

Friday - rescued!

Lavender and Thyme Chicken with red wine sauce

When I heard about mixing red wine with chicken I was intrigued, usually the experts will only recommend white wine with chicken, and so we decided to take up this experiment.

Ingredients:
4 portions skinless deboned chicken breasts
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
(get the good shit, not the cheap crap my boyfriend has in his pantry)
8 shallots (that is now the fancy pancy word for small onions)
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 cup of red wine
(go for the decent bottle in your wine rack, it's only one cup, you can have the rest while making this awesome dish)
1 cup of chicken stock
4 twiglets thyme
2 tsp lavender flowers
shredded skin and juice of 1 orange
salt and pepper to taste

Garnishing the chicken you will need the following:
1 orange, peeled and divided into sections
A few lavender sprigs
4 tsp lavender flowers

So now the experiment can begin, I must say besides being intrigued I was also sceptic.  But me and the boyfriend is one mean team and we were sure that we will pull this off successfully.

The Method:
Heat the butter and "good shit olive oil" in a pan, once heated, add the chicken breasts.
Fry the breasts until they are brown (fondle the breasts of your girlfriend while waiting for the chicken, see that is why a man is handy in the kitchen).
Once the chicken is done, move it to a ceramic bowl.
Fry the shallots in the pan until golden brown and soft.
Add the shallots to the chicken in the bowl.
Add the flour to the pan, cooking whilst stirring continuously.
Add enough red wine and chicken stock to the pan to create a thin sauce.
Bring to boiling point whilst stirring continuously.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Stir in the following:
Thyme twiglets
Lavender Sprigs
And the shredded orange skin and juice.
Pour this combo over the chicken and shallots in the bowl.
Cover and simmer for 40 minutes and Bob's your uncle.

Dish up and garnish the chicken artistically with the orange sections, lavender sprigs and lavender flowers.

You can basically serve this dish with any starch, in retrospect I think cous cous would have been a big hit, but we went with baby potatoes, see the boyfriend just LOVE potatoes, so I had to repay the favor mentioned earlier in this blog :)

And now you can take the word of two self taught amateur cooks that red wine does go with chicken.