March 9, 2020 A whole week’s worth of cooking in one day! Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches, Potato, Cheddar and chive casserole and Jacque Pepin’s Wine Merchant steak.
The Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches are our own interpretation. The casserole is from a really neat cookbook - One Potato, Two Potato by Roy Finamore and Molly Stevens and the steak is from Jacques Pepin’s Table: The Complete Today’s Gourmet.
We think that a good cheesesteak needs mushrooms, onions and bell peppers. That turned out to be a bit more bell pepper than needed.
The veggies sizzle down a lot!
The real secret to the sandwiches - Minor’s Au Jus concentrate from Soupbase.com.
Doesn’t everybody weigh their sandwich ingredients?
With the assistance of or quality control expert, we managed to put the sandwiches together in only twice the expected time…
The finished sandwiches!
Now, the first part of dinner, the potato casserole. Yes, One Potato, Two Potato does call for boiling them without peeling them!
We did start hand grating the potatoes, which is where the little bit in the stainless steel bowl came from, but there was just too much potato and they were too hot, so it was time to get some serious help!
The complete mise en place for the casserole. From left to right - Extra Sharp Cheddar cheese, melted butter, the grated potatoes, chives, sour cream and some extra butter.
Assembled and ready for the oven!
Fifty minutes (a full ten minutes longer than expected) the casserole is done!
The complete mise en place for the wine merchant steak. In the far row, the cornstarch - water mix (Pepin calls for potato starch, but corn starch works as well), shallots in the fancy measuring cup, freeze dried chives, Dijon mustard and Worcester sauce. Up front, chicken stock, garlic, red wine and a bunch of mushrooms.
Tonight’s wine is a wonderful Pinot Noir by Willamette Valley Vineyards. It’s their Whole Cluster 2017, meaning that they used clusters of grapes, instead of whole bunches. Wine Spectator didn’t rate the 2017, but the 2018 is a good solid 88.
They are traditionalists, actually using a lead capsule, which we remove completely so Livingstone doesn’t find any!
The fully set table. The keyboard is for the Mac Mini that we use to play dinner music and run the Music (formerly iTunes) visualizer.
You can hear The Beatle’s, “Across the Universe” playing. Livingstone likes the casserole!