Mom's Day Dinner - I think it went well.

So, on Mom's day, the tradition is breakfast in bed.  Cheap perfume (why do we want Mom to smell like a hooker?), socks, or handmade cards.  In my house, usually a meal is made and it isn't breakfast.  I allowed Amy to have a say in the menu and she picked slow roasted halibut parmesan, sweet potato and yukon gold gratin and a shaved asparagus salad.  Dessert will be addressed in a later post.

On important aspect of the meal was where I found the recipes.  On my iPhone, I have the epicurious app.  It is a great app.  It could be a little faster, but it's a great app.  You can put in a meal, an ingredient, a course, any number of variables and search it's huge database.  Most of the recipes in this post were under a seasonal recipe section.  I frequently turn to my Epicurious app when planning a meal.  I believe all the recipes from the app are available online as well.

For the gratin, it was easy.  Take some cream, some herbs, some butter and the potatoes.  I sliced them thin, and poured the cream and herb stuff on top and tossed it in the oven.  Then, add more butter and milk.  It's actually kind of unexciting.  

Amy loves potatoes, and she loved it.  I like potatoes, and I liked it.  Apparently, this dish shows the true nature of potatoes, and you will like the dish as much as you like the potatoes.

The salad was intriguing and was a source of drama during the preparation of the meal.  It has two ingredients (other than the dressing).  Asparagus and fennel.  Both are raw.  I shaved the asparagus with a vegetable peeler.  I sliced the fennel root very thinly and tossed the two.  No cooking required.  It was a nice, low maintenance addition to a fairly involved meal (for me).  This was especially vital since I was cooking solo.  I should note, that Amy's mom was in town and she can cook the pants off both Amy and I.  She is, however, quite humble and happily assumes the role of sous chef at our house.  This is very handy for complex meals.

 However, since this was Mother's Day, I was cooking this one solo.

The drama came when I whipped up the dressing.  It was basically mustard and lemon juice with capers.  I let Amy taste it, to see if she liked the salt levels.  Her response was that the dressing sucked.  Well, it was too late for a substitution and I decided to just hope the rest of the meal was good.

Finally, the fish.  We didn't find halibut at Sams Club (serves us right, for shopping at Sam's Club), so we went with Tilapia.  It was fine.  The hardest part of the recipe was making breadcrumbs out of not-yet-stale french bread (shown above).  I ended up putting it in the broiler and scraping the crumbs out as it dried. 

The crumbs were mixed with lemon peel, parmesan cheese and herbs.  Then, I just baked them for a little while.  The recipe was smart enough to not require breading on both sides.  I think this is a lesson one should incorporate into all baked, breaded items.  Breading on both sides means the breading will fall off when you turn the food and when you remove it from the pan.  Just put it on top and it looks great.

So, here was the presentation.  I think it looked great.  It was well received and was reasonably healthy.  Nothing was fried, the flavors were robust, and we had room (a couple hours later) for our decadent dessert.  I also feel like it was healthy for me, especially, since I ended cooking for about three hours straight.  It felt like exercise, but tasted like vacation.

Let's review:

1. Sweet Potato and Yukon Gold Gratin - very well received.  The colors were great.  The flavor was pretty good.  I would make it again, but I will try to increase the flavor next time.

2. Asparagus and Fennel salad - very well received.  Amy even loved the dressing, once it was on the salad.  It was a testament to simple flavors - lemon and mustard, on fresh ingredients - asparagus and fennel, making a memorable dish.  It also looked fancy as all get out.

3. Slow roasted tilapia.  Very well received.  This had a great texture, the breading was crispy, in part because it was never underneath the fish.  The flavor was bright and full.  The dish felt satisfying but was still reasonably healthy.

Lessons learned?  It was a lot of work, and no single dish was particularly complicated, but I really appreciated how much help, help is.  I also realized I need to plan ahead and make ahead whatever I can next time.  

The other lesson: that a reliable recipe source is invaluable.  Epicurious is just such a resource.

Happy Mother's Day!