THE "ANTI SUPERBOWL" SUNDAY DINNER

To be honest, I'm not so much anti-superbowl as superbowl indifferent. So while many of my friends were off attending Superbowl parties, eating chicken wings and pizza, I was at home, cooking dinner for a small gathering of friend who were as superbowl indifferent as myself. And for the first time in a long time, I had a dinner party at my house where everyone could fit around the dining room table and be able to speak to each other. Which can be a nice change. Not that I don't love having you all over for dinner, but sometimes, a small dinner is also pleasant.

So what was on the menu for this dinner? I once again took inspiration from my Boston Organics order and used foodtv.com as my menu guide. I decided to make a celery soup, a fried polenta with spicy tomato sauce and chicken sausage, and an antipasto featuring sauteed red chard with garlic and oven roasted lemon cauliflower. Now, I know that many of you read the Amateur Gourmet, just like me. And I'll admit that I took some inspiration from his recent polenta post. And I used his Barefoot Contessa recipe. (cause i love Ina Garten). But I was also inspired by this lovely polenta I had in SF, which had the spicy tomato sauce and chicken sausage.

Moving on, the only thing i really documented was the making of the celery soup. I used a simple recipe off of foodtv.com, that oddly, had as much carrot in it as celery. Here it is below:

2 cups chopped celery, divided
2 cups chopped carrots, divided
4 tablespoons butter
2 cups onions, diced
3 tablespoons flour
6 cups hot vegetable broth, divided
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup heavy cream

And this time, I actually measured all the ingredients. First, the most timeconsuming part of this recipe is chopping all the veggies. After that, it's not so bad. So here are my bowls of chopped celery, carrot and onion.
So first, you use 1 cup of carrots, 1 cup of carrots and 1 cup of broth and put these in a small sauce pan. You cook the veggies until they're tender and put them aside.

In another pan, you sautee the onions with butter until they're clear. Ok, so this is the first part where i screwed up. I didn't read the recipe all the way through. So i actually started off making a roux, by melting the butter and then adding the flour. Then i added the chicken stock. And this is the point where i figured out I'd forgotten the onions.
So I put aside my chicken stock-roux mixture. And started over. I sauteed the onions in butter until they were clear and added in the flour. I allowed that to cook for 2 minutes. Then i dumped all this until the chicken broth and let the whole thing come to a boil, whisking frequently. I then added the rest of the celery and carrots and let the whole thing come to a boil, then reduced the heat and simmered for 30 minutes. I think the entire mixture turned out a bit thicker than it should've cause of the additional flour, but it wasn't too bad.After 30 minutes, i strained out the cooked veggies from the broth. Then i used a hand blender to blend the cooked veggies with 1 cup of broth. this is what it looked like. I was a little worried that my celery soup was turning out orange, rather than the green that i had imagined. But it was too late now.

I added the blended veggies with the rest of the cooked broth. Then, remember the veggies we cooked at the very beginning that were still in chunks? I added those in too. So the soup had some nice texture, too. And i added in a cup of half and half (rather than heavy cream, it keeps the soup a bit lighter). Now after all this work, i tasted the soup, and it was actually a little bland. (not surprising since there weren't any seasonings involved). So i sliced up a whole bunch of garlic and tossed it all in, and that helped a lot.Also surprising was the fact that the soup did have a lot of celery flavor to it. I was relieved that the flavor wasn't masked by all those carrots, and it ended up tasting pretty nice.

Now onto the rest of the meal. I didn't photograph most of it. It's something I forget once i start cooking. Suffice it to say that the Barefoot Contessa recipe for polenta was great. I'll definetly use it again. It had so much flavor and made the polenta, which can sometimes be quite bland, turn out super tasty. The only problem i had was at the end when fry the polenta. Make sure you use a nonstick pan. It turned out a bit ugly, but still yummy. Here's what it looked like when i fried up some leftovers the next day. The nonstick pan helped tremendously.

Also, the recipe i used to make the cauliflower turned out to be quite good. and of all amazing things, it came from Emeril. It was super easy too, so here's the recipe below.

5 to 6 cups cauliflower florets, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter (from 1 medium cauliflower)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon sliced garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
Chopped chives, for garnishPreheat the oven to 500 degrees F.

Place the cauliflower florets in a large saute pan or a roasting pan. Drizzle the olive oil over the cauliflower, and season with the garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Place the saute/roasting pan in the oven and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure even roasting. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the Parmesan. Garnish with chopped chives and serve immediately while still warm.

I did make one modification, which was to add breadcrumbs with the Parm and mixed that in with everything else. I wanted the cauliflower to have a bit of crunch to it. Then I added extra Parm after it came out of the oven. So if you're ever sitting there on Superbowl Sunday, and you don't want to watch the game, I suggest trying out any of these recipes. They all turned out great.