Where has she been?!!!!!!!!!!

OMG!!!!!

The worse possible thing that could happen happened dear reader or absentee reader/non reader/ghost reader/ghost?

Picture it, Cicily, errr Indianapolis December 25th 2009. I have some lovely beef tenderloin which happens to have cost Me 70+ dollars per pound. YIKES but...hey it's Xmas so what? I only do this what? Once a year.

Beef wellington with real English mustard, cooked down mushrooms, parma ham... puff pastry...

My idea was to do two Wellintons at different temps. One would be RARE RARE RARE (My husband and My taste). The other? Medium which is My Father and his wife's taste.

Sounds simple enough.

First the menu and then the fiasco that followed. You can laugh at My pain. Go ahead, a big full belly laugh.

I rarely have a fiasco in the kitchen. Not to toot My own horn but its true. I rarely do. Perhaps I have just been very lucky?

So, I season and sear the beef in a hot pan. The mushroom paste is on hand as I did that beforehand. The English mustard is on hand as is the Italian bacon/ ham which is thinly sliced as per directed. I have around 7 slices per Wellington.

So, the night before Xmas Eve I baked a TON of bread. Amish friendship bread My rear! Nothing friendly about this bread. You get a starter from someone (which happened to be My next door neighbor who oddly enough is a big grizzly bear type of a man) who is a father to a dear darling little girl named 'Kalyee' but, I always mix her name up so that may be incorrect, but for now We will say that I am right.

About Kaylee, she's five and as sharp as a tack and as cute as a bug in a rug. She says that I am confused. I told her that when you get to be My age that many things get confused and that she was lucky that I showed up at her door step with My pants on the right way!

Anyways,

Back to this stupid Amish friendship bread. That night, I hated the Amish. I hated horse and buggies and plain clothes. Friendship bread? Bulldookey! I had Amish bread coming out of My ears. I think..the Amish are responsible for My oven going on the fritz.

So this grizzly guy comes over with two baggies full of this dough type crap. He says do you know anything about starter breads? I say yes, yes I do.

Good he says. He couldn't pawn this stuff off on Me soon enough! He basically dropped this crap in My hands and ran away!

Luckily he gave Me some instructions via print off internet instructions.

His bread? It turned out like petrified turds that were shaped like footballs.

Sigh.

Mine? This is ten day bread. What a LOAD of crap. Do these Amish have to make everything so difficult?

What a load of bunkola!

So again, I made this crap and made a good many varieties of bread. I made pineapple upside down cakes. I made banana chocolate chip bread. I made banana bread, I made YOU NAME IT DIGGLY DANGED BREAD BREAD).

What was funny was, I brought some of that bread over to the neighbor. You know..edible bread that didn't look similar to footballs. I know he must have felt horrible but hey, I am a Chef so..you know.

Back to Xmas day. I am having so many snafus and to add insult to injury, I only had ONE box of puff pastry. I normally keep two on hand JUST IN CASE something goes wrong.

Something DID go wrong.

Since I only had a limited supply of puff pastry...I decided that I would roll out the dough quite thin in betwixt two sheets of.....wax paper.

BIG MISTAKE!

The pastry stuck to the wax paper and I had a hard danged time of getting the pastry OFF of the paper.

My loving husband was at My last frigging nerve. I wanted to ship him off to Siberia at this point. He was only trying to help but I gave him eyes that said "if you wish to secure your life, leave NOW!!!!!!!!!"

I really thought that if he valued his life he would leave the kitchen.

He kept trying to come up with ideas that were indeed, crazy! I wanted to take out one of those knives and gut him! I know that sounds horrible and of course, I love him and would never think of filleting him... but....

So, with eyes that could send one to Hades and back I glared at him while infernal flames surely shot out of My tightened butt hole! I sure was wrapped tight that day to say the very least.

Then? Then? OH GUESS ALREADY!

The love of My life, My oven quit working! Heck yes! It gave up the holy ghost! I thought that I may have a heart attack! As the wonderful comedic movie 'Airplane' would say and I'll quote:

"I picked a good day to quit smoking crack"!

How could this be? I have a lot of money on the line. I have a LOT of people coming over. Crap the bed!

So....here I am with two Wellingtons on sheet pans and tip toeing through the darned frozen tulips to the grizzly bear neighbors house just HOPING that he will allow Me to use his oven.

It so happens that he was alone on Xmas and had fruit basket bigger than My body to give to Us. He said yes, please use his oven. Unfortunate it was that his oven was a ticking time bomb.

As Alton Brown says, never trust an oven and I don't. I took a digital thermometer over to test his ovens temp.

It was a time consuming event. I had guest over at My house waiting on din din and I was over there testing the temps and raising and lowering the temps on the oven. Dennis (that is the nice sweet grizzly bears name) was as cool as a cucumber in making jokes about My cooking. See, the oven was smoking. What I found out later was that it wasn't My Wellingtons making the smoke, but the cheap excuse for tin foil that he kindly provided Me with that was catching flame and smoking.

Dennis get some Renyonlds foil for Pete's sake!

Hot as Satan's toenails it was in that kitchen and I there on My Palm Treo calling next door to say that I am coming....soon, soon.....

Son of a gun!

Well, suffice it to say everything went off without much of a hitch after that. People were fed and leftovers were packed up and eaten throughout the week.

One Wellington was however more medium well that medium. Ahh crap.

The other? Pretty good. I have pics of My Wellintons..

I served with the Wellington:

Homemade 17 hour cheesecake.
Fresh snapped green beans with ham.
Fresh mashed potatoes (fingerling) with butter and fresh heavy cream.
Fresh baked bread.
Salad with freshly made ancho/balsamic dressing and 20 plus dollar per pound Parmesan cheese. Anchos were fresh too and fillet in house.
Chilled Buffalo Mozzarella cheese with fresh basil, tomatoes and balsamic vinegar dressing (homemade) with flake salt and freshly ground pepper.

YUM YUM!

Anyway, what a day/night.

Still I am thankful, even with all the problems that day in the kitchen that I was here to cook another Christmas day. I mean, really when you think about it, My problems were minute compared to what could have/should have been. I could be worm food.

Whew! I live to cook another day. Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year!

As always,
Eve.