First Blog First Post! Part 2

O.K. I feel that I'm a very seasonal cook and find more inspiration with finding ingredients through farmers markets and foraging than any other way. You will eventually see that I am also one of those cooks that has got to find a way to do things himself no matter how difficult the task, and always on a shoestrink budget. As soon as I can hang another ham, I want to do that again. I just built my own chicken coop so I could have eggs that are fresh from the chickens ass. Thge more interesting things I come across the deeper I have to dive and figure out how I can do that myself. That's where the big learning comes in. I've carried on with my side bar a little too long. May I digress back to my dinner party.
So the salad and the lemon vinaigrette was set aside and ready to go along with the Branzini. I decided to try and cook the ribeye steak sous vide. I've never done this before but I had to give it a go. I seasoned the steak with some herbs and black pepper and vacuum sealed it up. I don't have a circulator so I had to manually circulate things. Believe me, I didn't stand there stirring the whole time I just decided to flip the steak every so often. It took me about an hour and a half to cook it. I kept the temperature about 140F and monitored it carefully. Next I blanched a pound of asparagus and set it aside for a simple sauteed asparagus side dish. I also tried a celerly root puree sous vide. (Who do I thing I am!) I peeled and diced the celery root and one small potato, placed it in the bag that went into a pot of water waiting as just above a poach and below a simmer. That ended up taking about the same time as the steak.
After our guests arrived and after a Manhatten and some wine we made motion to start getting things read to eat. I was pretty much in charge of this. So I zipped open the steaks and patted them dry so they would sear well. I opened the celery root and dumped that right into the cuisinart and pureed that. That was done. I turned on my little non-stick pancake griddle and I seasoned the fish and cooked them along with the asparagus all at once. I cooked the fillets skin side down almost the whole way and they came out beautifully. I flipped them and cooked them on the other side for a brief second and they were done. I cooked the asparagus just to give it a little color and then tossed it in whole butter and salt. One of the last things I did was sear the steak. All I had t do was get a good hot cast iron pan with a little oil and drop it in. I left it there until nice and caramelized on one side, then flipped it added butter and shallots and basted it until the other side was nicely colored. And it was perfect! Entirely uniform of doneness throughout and very beefy! I plated everything neatly but quickly so it stayed hot and then placed it on the table to eat. We quickly toasted the evening with Prosecco and ate till we felt like bursting. The dinner that evening was what having good friends and conversation, in the presence of good food, can do to make great memories and bring each other even closer together.