In a shocking act of forethought I made this dish last week. I knew that with Thanksgiving, Black Friday, our 4 day trip to MN, and getting back into the swing of things at work there would be no way I would have this done and blogged by Friday. So, yay me! But I can’t pat myself on the back too much since I haven’t even made the goat cheese mini puffs from two weeks ago yet. Le sigh.
I called the butcher to find out if they had beef cheeks in stock since that’s what the recipe originally called for but they said I would have to wait a week so I said “Chuck roast it is!” I’ll be interested to see how many of us can actually get the beef cheeks.
This recipe marked the maiden voyage of my newest Le Creuset piece – the braiser! I have wanted this one for awhile and I earned it by teaching a Learning to Love Le Creuset class with Bek last month. That is a topic I feel very qualified to teach! 🙂
This was another hands-off recipe that made the house smell great and allowed me to do lots of important things while it was braising away in the oven….like read blogs and catch up on The Walking Dead (things are going down in post-apocalyptic America people!) and paint my nails. We had some company over for dinner and they were kind enough to let me finish my photos before digging in. I would definitely make this again because it was easy and a real people pleaser. If you want to give it a try, I found a very similar Dorie recipe online here.
Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! The dinner that I made was kind of a mixed bag. The meatloaf was outstanding and I would definitely recommend it (the link is in my previous post) but I’m not so sure about the Pumpkin Scalloped Potatoes. I think if I made those again I would definitely make them more saucy – they were kind of dry. And speaking of dry – I tried braising some turkey legs but I really overshot it on the time because they started out looking like this:
and ended up looking like this:
Well obviously not exactly like this but you get the idea. Whoopsie. Also my pie kind of sucked which was a real disappointment as I’m mostly into big holiday dinners for the dessert. I mean, it looked amazing, no?
But the flavor was really meh. I used the Holiday Pumpkin Tart (or pie) recipe from BFMHTY by Dorie and it just wasn’t my favorite. There were 3 tablespoons of rum in it and I think it overpowered everything else. It was a real bummer. Good thing Cassidy saved the day with a good old-fashioned Libby’s right off the can pie. The dinner we had at home on Sunday was delicious but that’s no surprise. I made the Sweet Potato Cream Cheese Swirl Pie from EmmyCooks and it was universally liked by the few of us who had room for dessert (that always includes me). Now I am off to find cute holiday cards for the exchange so wish me luck!
Always Add More Butter 