Red Cabernet Gravy and Baked Steak

Sometimes, I get tired of routine recipes and decide to concoct my own. But really, I mostly do it because I don't have enough time for routine recipes. About 60% of the time, the reason I concoct my own recipes isn't because I'm awesomely curious and a culinary genius - it's because I'm short on time, with a hungry husband/dinner guests looking at me like a zombie looks at a brain buffet. This recipe was born out of exactly this circumstance. I was actually shocked when the whole dinner turned out to be a success. After all, I didn't even START prepping until after my guests had arrived and I had shattered our first (of three) bottles of wine on the floor.

Bad start to a great dinner. Sometimes, you just have to soldier on, even when the odds are against you. The next two bottles of wine turned out to be EXCELLENT.

My original plan had been to make salisbury steak. I had a beautiful cut of grass-fed sirloin beef steak in the fridge which I had (thankfully) the foresight to thaw earlier. With some kind of boeuf bourguinon/salisbury steak mixup in mind, I had ordered my husband to pick up some carbernet and mushrooms. Aside from those ingredients, some wilting broccoli and a few scraps of bacon, my fridge was basically empty.

With guests arrived and hungry, a slow-cooked meal was not an option. Armed with lots of booze, this is what I did:

I cut about 8 pieces of bacon into 1 inch squares and fried it until golden brown, reserving the grease. In the same pan (unwashed), I sauteed 2 small, sliced onions and a dozen sliced white mushrooms in the remaining bacon grease until golden brown (remember what Julia says: don't crowd the mushrooms!), which I set aside.

Meanwhile, I threw a pint of stewed tomatoes into a saucepan along with 3 cubes of beef bouillon and a hearty pinch of salt and turned it up to boil. I tossed in the cooked bacon and the better part of the bottle of cabernet (ok, like half). When the mushrooms were finished, I rinsed the pan out with about 2 cups of water, which I tossed into the soon-to-be-gravy. With the gravy happily simmering, I poured about 1/2 the reserved bacon grease into the same pan and whisked in about 4 Tblsp. of flour to make a thick roux which could be rolled into a ball. I rolled the roux around in the pan on medium high for about 5 minutes to brown it, then whisked it into the boiling gravy, which had now been simmering for about 20 minutes.

(You'll note that this recipe doesn't have the nice, friendly list of carefully measured ingredients my posts normally have. That's because this is how I actually cook. Frantically, tossing handfuls of ingredients in between conversations with 4 pots going on the stove at the same time. Like washing off my mascara before going to bed, measuring ingredients is a luxury I don't really bother with anymore.)

As the gravy contemplated its new existence, I threw the sirloin steak (which I had cut into 3" chunks) onto the same pan (with a little bacon grease to keep it from sticking) and seared it on high about 3 minutes on each side.

With all my players in place, I layered a casserole dish with the sirloin, topped it with the reserved mushrooms and onions, coated everything with the red gravy and threw it in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes.

Incidentally, I steamed some broccoli and whipped up hollandaise sauce in my blender while it baked.

Forgetting for a moment that this meal is packed with bacon grease and booze, it couldn't have turned out better. The steak was still slightly pink in the center, and it was very moist from being baked in the gravy. The red gravy (as I've named it) was just...the best gravy I've ever had. Probably because it had half a bottle of cab in it. Julia Child calls for this much red wine in her famous boeuf bourguinon recipe, which has lead me to one of the most important culinary breakthroughs of my twentysomething foodie career: everything is better when cooked with wine. Really, just everything. Red gravy is no exception (a little bacon doesn't hurt, either).

Despite my mother's admonitions to not "mess with tradition!", I'm going to make red gravy with turkey drippings for Thanksgiving dinner this year, which will be slathered over my yukon gold basil mashed potatoes.

I may decide to up the wine and see if dinner progresses any differently than it normally does. It's just a suspicion, but I may have found the cure for holiday dinner awkwardness.

Pumpkin Manicotti with Pumpkin Pasta Sauce

As my regular readers know (all 2 of them), I'm a big fan of eating seasonally. This time of year in Michigan, produce has become limited to squash, apples and the few stalks of celery and brussels sprouts which haven't frosted yet.

On the upside, this is the only time of year that you can get your hands on fresh sugar pie pumpkins. There's nothing like fresh pureed pumpkin for pumpkin pies and pumpkin cheesecake, and pumpkin freezes beautifully, so you can keep the puree on hand to make fresh pumpkin pies throughout the winter.

But pumpkin pies are so been-there-done-that. Since eating seasonally means I get to choose from squash, pumpkins and other kinds of squash, I wanted to try using pumpkin in something other than pies. Something savory and unusual.

My aunt and I were browsing the pantry section of World Market a few weeks ago, and we discovered yummy-looking jars of pumpkin and butternut squash pasta sauce. I scanned the ingredient label (which was surprisingly free of preservatives), made some mental notes and developed a plan to make my own pasta sauce.

But what to put that pasta sauce on? Plain pasta seemed boring, and carbs tend to outstay their welcome on my midsection. I wanted something a little tastier. Something like lasagna, but EASIER. Like stuffed manicotti. I'd never actually made manicotti before, but I know the recipe for lasagna by heart, and isn't manicotti stuffing just the yummy ricotta cheese part of lasagna? I always kind of resented the meat part of lasagna, anyway. More cheese, please.

Since I had a LOT of pumpkin puree on hand (I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the other four pumpkins), I added pumpkin to the manicotti as well.

(Sidenote: I've always hated cooking squash. If you bake it, it's hot and messy and gooey, if you steam it, it's like cutting and peeling a rock. It's messy and difficult, no matter which route you take - that is, until I discovered this new trick. Bake the squash or pumpkin at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes, until the skin softens and starts brown. Take it out and let it cool enough to handle, then you can easily peel the skin off, slice the semi-firm pumpkin flesh in half, scoop out the seeds and harvest the fleshy part, which I cut into large pieces and steam for another 20 minutes, until completely soft. I like to pop this in the food processor and puree it for good measure.)

Here's my frankensteined recipe for pumpkin stuffed manicotti with pumpkin sauce, in all its mushy orange glory. This filled one 9x13 casserole pan and one 9x9 square pan, which got stuck in the freezer for later. When you go to this much trouble for a meal, why not make some for later?

Pumpkin sauce:

1/2 pumpkin (~2 cups), steamed and pureed

1/2 medium onion or 1 whole leek, finely diced

4 cloves garlic, finely diced

1/2 red pepper, finely diced

3 Tblsp butter

3 cubes chicken bouillon

1/2 cup water

2 cups crisp white wine (pino grigio is good)

1 cup cream

1 Tblsp kosher salt

Saute the onion, garlic, pepper, butter and salt in a pan on medium heat until golden brown. Add these to the pumpkin puree, water, sage, chicken bouillon and wine in a saucepan. Mix together and turn on medium heat, simmer for 30-40 minutes, until some of the liquid has cooked off. If the sauce seems too thick, add a little extra water. Last, add the cream and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Pumpkin manicotti:

24 manicotti/cannelloni

1 1/2 pint ricotta cheese (whole is best)

1 Tblsp freshly chopped sage

1 egg

2 cups grated fresh parmesan cheese

2 Tblsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ginger

1 cup pumpkin puree

Boil manicotti in salted water until al dente, then drain and re-submerge in cold water to keep them from sticking together. Mix together all ingredients in a bowl (reserve 1 cup parmesan) and grease casserole dishes with butter. Stuff each manicotti tube full of the ricotta mixture and place in the casserole dish in rows. Once all the manicotti is stuffed and the casserole dishes are full, evenly spoon out pumpkin sauce over the pasta and top with remaining parmesan cheese. Bake at 375 for 40-50 minutes, or until bubbling in the middle.

Personally, I loved this recipe. I'm a sucker for ricotta cheese, and I loved how the pumpkin was so much mellower and lower acid than traditional tomato sauces.

When I asked my husband what he thought, he announced that it tasted like "grandma food". After a lot of carefully posed questions, I gathered that he was referring to the sauce's fine, hyper-mushy texture, which he wasn't a fan of.

Some people have strong aversions to "weird textures", like avocados. I don't, and I loved it, but as a fair warning, if you're serving people who hate the texture of avocados, you might want to forego the pumpkin sauce for something a little bit less grandma-ish.