St. Patrick’s Day Recipes
Ribeye with Brussels Sprouts and Stout Cream Sauce and Bread Pudding with Irish Whisky
Weather your Irish or not everyone looks forward to St. Patrick’s Day. Not sure if it’s the Irish spirit, Irish whisky, green beer or corn beef and cabbage, this day is usually celebrated around food. We really wanted to find a unexpected recipe but kept with the Irish theme. This week we are featuring two recipes both from Food and Wine, first we have Ribeye with Brussels Sprouts and Stout Cream Sauce and also, Andrew Zimmern’s, Bread Pudding with Irish Whisky. Most of the items we found at our local supermarket but we did have to go to the butcher for the thick cut rib eyed steaks. Spending about $50 on the rib eye recipe and roughly $30 on the bread pudding recipe (whole vanilla beans are pricey). With all our ingredients we got straight to business.
Going over the recipe, they had three steps to complete the dish, make the sauce, make the vegetables and grill the ribeye. We decided to change the order because we felt it would be more efficient if we make the sauce, grill the ribeye and while the ribeye rested make the vegetables. Making the sauce was pretty straight forward, we found it interesting to use bread to thicken the sauce. We were kind of worried since the sauce didn’t look very appetizing as it was cooking but the moment it hit the blender it really came together. As soon as it was done we left it on the side on a warm setting.
We asked our butcher for two pieces of ribeye, just in case we over cooked one. We grilled each side for five minutes and set it aside to rest, then we grilled another piece for three and half minutes per side. After it rested we sliced the first ribeye and it was cooked beautifully to a medium and the second ribeye was more of a medium rare. We feel it is really important to use a timer when grilling that way you have even cooking from both sides.
While we let the meat sit we started our vegetables. Again, this was quite simple to make, our only concern was using water toward the end of the recipe. We were worried the water would make the veggies soggy and dull the flavor. We were worried for nothing, the amount of water used not enough to justify my concerns. The veggies came out bright and beautiful, although cooked well were not soggy.
We are never short of an audience or mouths to feed, for some reason everyone comes around on cooking day. Once again with our family hovering over waiting for thier share of the goods. The steaks were flavorful and cooked perfectly and the stout sauce complimented it perfectly and rounding off the dish were these beautiful bright vegetables. We highly recommend this quick and delicious recipe.
Next, we have dessert to make. In retrospect, we should have started making this but oh well, lesson learned. Reading throught the steps we quickly realized the instructions didn’t state where to add the whisky. The whisky was under the “bread pudding” ingredient list but towards the end of the instructions it state, to make a head, “The sauce (without the whisky) can be refrigerated over night.” We made the decision to add the whisky to the sacue and not the bread pudding. Again, starting our of order we started to make the bread pudding first, we figured we could make the sauce while the pudding was baking. The bread pudding was faily straight forward and we thought it was a really good idea to use the buttered non-soaked pieces. In to the oven it goes.
Now that we have the pudding in the oven, on to the sauce. As we followed the first step, we knew this was going to be delicious. The aroma of vanilla engulfed the air in the house. Step two is very important to follow properly. When tempering your eggs it is really important to drizzel the hot milk slowly if not you will end up with scambled eggs. At this point we decided we would add whisky and allowed the custard to thicken making sure it coated the back of the spoon. Straight to the ice bath it went.
After the hour we checked the pudding, it was still a little wet so we left it in the oven. More waiting and after another 20 minutes we checked and it seemed ready so we took it out and let it rest. Thirty minutes later we sliced out a piece and noticed it was a little soft and could have used another 10 minutes in the oven. That didn’t stop us from plating and digging in. Boy was this good, the top of the pudding had a nice crunch and was flavorful. The sauce was creamy with a slight hint of the whisky. The only thing we thought didn’t add to the dish was the almonds. They were almost un-noticable and when you did find an almond it didn’t add anything to the dish. Next time we make this we would just eliminate the almonds.
Ratings:
Rib eye with Brussels and Stout Sauce
Bread Pudding with Irish Whisky Sauce
If you would like to get the full recipe for Rib-Eye with Brussels and Stout Cream Sauce click here and if you would like to try Bread Pudding with Irish Whisky Sauce click here and check out Food and Wine’s website.