cook: winter vegetables and a calamari steak supper

Patrick’s garden has produced some beautiful produce as well as tulips and daffodils for my vases.                 

One night, I roasted the broccoli and cauliflower. I just drizzled olive oil and sprinkled sea salt on top and then into a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes until it browned and caramelized a teeny bit.    

The roasted vegetables accompanied a calamari steak dinner. I had defrosted calamari steaks and decided to simply bread them and make a beurre blanc sauce to drizzle on top of them, for which I found a recipe on the Costco site but can't find since though this person's recipe on primal wellness is exactly the same. I did not have panko breadcrumbs, and so I toasted and then pulsed in my Vitamix a couple slices of sourdough bread. I simmered the 1/4 cup Chardonnay (the rest of the 2 glasses which I sipped and drank with dinner), 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice, finely chopped shallot and garlic as directed in the recipe...              

 

however, I did not have an immersion blender to emulsify and puree the sauce and instead drained the simmered aromatics and added the cold butter to the thin sauce. In the meantime, I boiled linguine and fettucine pasta and heated my stainless steel and cast iron pans for sautéing the alfredo and pan frying the calamari steaks.

 

It'd been a long while since I made a cream sauce, but I had ground a lot of garlic cloves and soaked the allium in Golden Mountain seasoning sauce and which I sautéed in butter before adding heavy whipping cream and grated Parmesan. I do not yet have the technique for making a smooth, creamy Alfredo sauce without it turning into a clump of cheese. I think this time I had not used enough cream for it to emulsify. 

 

On another night when Patrick grilled steak (the weather finally paused in its rain, so he could light some charcoal and also because our dog needed human vittles to eat with her kibble), I also chopped the Savoy cabbage and some red cabbage that I had in the fridge and decided to sauté in salted butter. I love the bright green and purple of these cabbages.

Hubs said I needed to cook the cabbage longer as it was a bit al dente for him, whereas I disagreed but said next time I will separate the stem from the leaves and cook it earlier in order for it to soften. To each his or her own opinion.