Friday Night,Swordfish Steak Au Poivre, August 26,2011

I am typing this three weeks late, I hate when I do that because I may forget some of what I did, but I will do my best. We left for Florida the day after I made this dinner and I didn't have time to tell you about it before we left that Saturday. I was in Florida last Friday so I didn't do a Friday Night Dinner last week. Here I am about to start this weeks Friday Night Dinner that I will tell you about in the next post.

Citrus Marinated Olives with Crusty Bread and Gooey Cheese

This was in the new Bon Appetit September 11 issue. They reminded me of the olives I love at Whole Foods that I get once in a while in the cheese department. The ones at Whole Foods have a lemon and garlic flavor, these are orange and coriander. I served the olives with Boucheron Cheese and crostini toasts, all together this appetizer went well with drinks. I made a whole batch (knowing we wouldn't eat them all that night) thinking they will last in the refrigerator while we are on vacation and they will probably be better after sitting a week in the marinade. Well hurricane Irene came the next day and our electricity was out for 3 days, we ended up throwing out the olives when we got back, along with a lot of other food. I will make this same idea using garlic and lemon flavors to try and reproduce the olives at Whole Foods. Here's the link to this recipe.

Swordfish Steak Au Poivre, Soft Polenta and Portobello Mushrooms Sauteed in Butter and Fresh Thyme

One day I was sitting out on the patio looking through a cookbook for ideas and I came across this idea. We have had "beef" steak au poivre a few times and it's coarsely ground black pepper corns just pressed into the meat. This swordfish steak au poivre is the same idea, between 2 sward fish steaks I used 1 Tbsp of crushed pepper corns (I used black, white and pink peppercorns because I had them in the pantry) and pressed it into the flesh. I heated a cast iron pan on the stove top until it was very hot. Place the swordfish steaks in the dry cast iron pan and sear 4 minutes per side. I served them over polenta and topped them with portobello mushrooms that I sauteed in butter and fresh thyme. I did make a dill aioli sauce that I forgot to serve with the sward fish, we had it the next morning with eggs.

Craggy Top Chocolate Cake with Fig Ice Cream

On Laura Calder's French Food at Home show, I keep seeing this "Cook for a Chef" episode with this cake, and I keep wanting to make it so here it is. I used a slightly larger cake pan so it wasn't as high as I wanted but it was easy and delicious. Here is the link to this recipe. I was amazed at the limited ingredients in this recipe, just chocolate, butter, eggs and sugar. Tony had just gone out to a dinner two nights before, with some people from work to send his boss off to retirement. Someone ordered a dessert that included fig ice cream and after sharing it with the table, everyone raved about it. I thought I would try to make some for tonight's dinner. I started by chopping up a pint of black mission fresh figs and cooking them in a small saucepan covered in port wine and some sugar. I let that go until the figs were very soft, about 30 minutes. I had planned to make a basic vanilla ice cream recipe and kind of fold this fig mixture in. Worried that wouldn't come out right I looked up fig ice cream to get an idea and see if I was on the right track. I found this recipe and working with the port and fig mixture I added lemon, more sugar and heavy cream. I didn't need to use eggs like I was going to do.