Mom’s Birthday Dinner

The wines!

I picked some really fun dishes for Mom’s birthday over the weekend - my sister made a cool appetizer of apricot with brie en croute and for the main course we had lamb chops with a dressing I made of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon, and fresh rosemary with garlic, kosher salt, and black pepper.

My dishes?  I made side dishes - stuffed tomatoes, risotto, and the cake - a New York style (or sort of German style) cheesecake.  Delicious!  I picked the wines, too - a Provence rose’, a 2007 Right Bank Bordeaux (that means it’s mostly Merlot with some Cabernet), and a Chateauneuf-du-Pape (mostly Grenache based wine with other grapes like Syrah and Mourvedre, from Southern Rhone).  The wines showed perfectly, and the dishes turned out really well.

Very easy stuffed tomatoes

The stuffed tomatoes are incredibly easy - I cut a few large vine ripened tomatoes in half, and, using a grapefruit knife, I hollow them out.  In a bowl, I mix together Italian seasoned bread crumbs, parmigiano reggiano, fresh finely chopped garlic, fresh chopped parsley, and olive oil.  I blend the olive oil into the mixture with a fork and make sure the crumbs are moist with olive oil, and then I spoon and lightly tamp down the mixture into the hollow tomato halves.  I then drizzle them with a bit more olive oil just to let them brown a bit, and bake them in the oven at 400 degrees F.  When they’r golden brown and just starting to crack a bit on top while the tomatoes are softened, take them out and enjoy them!

A cheesy, lemony risotto

The risotto I taught myself.  It’s not the easiest thing to make but if you get a feel for it, it can be quite simple.  I use 2 cups of arborio rice and my ratio is just over 3:1 liquid to rice.  I begin with a large pot and a drop of olive oil and cook an onion, chopped.  I add about 4 tbsp unsalted butter and let it melt, and using a wooden spoon, I add the 2 cups of arborio rice and stir to coat with the melted butter.  I then add, about 1 cup at a time, chicken stock, and keep the pot on fairly low heat.  I use about 6 cups of chicken stock, and then I also add the juice of 1 lemon and about 1 cup of dry white wine (this time I used a Cotes de Gascogne so not quite as dry as usual - Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio).  I add 1 cup at a time and stir so that the rice will gradually absorb the liquid.  I use about a pinch of ground black pepper, garlic powder, and about a tsp of fresh thyme leaves.  Once the rice has absorbed all liquid and is at a cooked rice consistency, I add about a cup (or slightly less) of grated parmigiano reggiano, and stir it in and remove the pot from the heat.  Once it’s integrated, I put it in a large heated bowl and top with chopped fresh parsley, and it’s done!

Cheesecake!

Let that cheesecake settle!

So about the cheesecake - there’s a story behind this one.  I was a girl scout when I was a kid until I was almost a teenager.  Somewhere around the middle of my girl scout years, I guess I was around 10 or 11, we had our first real bake-off.  I had never baked anything before - so my mom suggested her cheesecake recipe - it’s not that hard and it’s 100% from scratch, and she’d be happy to watch me, since she had made the cake so many times (I think she was given the recipe by someone named Connie that Mom worked with a long time ago, before I was born).  So the cheesecake it would be.  We’ve always called it the German cheesecake, but it’s definitely New York style (for those of you who have had a real New York cheesecake - and it’s far more fresh than most cakes that you’ll find in a New York deli or diner.  Anyway, it gets made in a spring form pan, and so there’s no graham cracker crust - in fact, there’s no crust at all.  I grease the pan with butter and coat it with plain bread crumbs.  The cake itself consists of cream cheese and butter blended together, and then add to it: sour cream, heavy cream, sugar, flour, corn starch, eggs, and vanilla, and there it is - use an electric mixer (I begin on low but bring it all the way up to the highest setting as I like loads of air in it - it can be pretty heavy for a cake so air helps!) - and 4 minutes later, pour it into the prepared pan, and bake it for almost an hour.  It’ll crack just a bit on top, but let it settle for a little while, and it;ll return to form, and carefully release the spring form sides, and it’s done!  Let it cool and place it in the refrigerator and that’s all there is to it.  Easy, right?  Well, maybe.  But I won that girl scout bake-off, and so the cheesecake was my first ever kitchen project, and a success it was.