crafty

My old faithful dinner ideas were getting a little stale and it was time to try something new.  I showed David my Pinterest board of fun food ideas and asked him what he’d like to try.

So yesterday, with lots of weekend time on my hands, I tried my hand at a mustard roast and strawberry cream cheese cobbler.

First the roast:

Here’s the pic from the original recipe and it’s pretty accurate-

Here’s the recipe:

2 teaspoons mustard seeds (I think you could omit these if you added a few teaspoons of course mustard you may already have to the mix)
1 teaspoon sea salt flakes
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon thyme leaves
1/4 C olive oil, plus one tablespoon extra
4 lb boneless beef rib eye or just a really beautiful roast (I used an eye of the round)
1/4-1/2 C Dijon mustard depending on taste (I mixed every mustard I had in the fridge)
1 stick room temperature butter
kitchen string (forgot to get string, didn’t tie, came out fine)

Remember to take the beef out of the fridge at least 10 minutes before you sear it or put it in the oven, this will ensure even cooking.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Place the mustard seeds, salt, pepper and thyme in a mortar and pestle and pound until lightly crushed. (Ziplock bag and a hammer works too! And if you’re just adding some coarse mustard, you could skip this smashing entirely) Add the oil and pound until combined. In a separate bowl combine butter and Dijon mustard until completely integrated. Combine spice mixture and mustard mixture, set aside.
Brush the beef with the extra oil. Heat a large non-stick frying pan over high and cook the beef for 1-2 minutes each side or until brown. remove from the pan. Secure with kitchen string and rub the mustard mixture over the beef. Place on a rack in a baking dish and roast for 1 1/2 hours for medium rare (I use a meat thermometer, and remember that the meat continues to cook after you remove it from the oven.) Serves 4-6 After roasting, cover the meat with foil and rest in a warm place for at least 10 minutes to allow the meat to relax.
Make a sauce from the pan drippings. Simply put the roasting pan on your stove top and on medium high heat, add either beef broth or red wine and reduce down a bit and you will have a beautiful sauce to accompany your beef.

I don’t have a meat rack so I made a makeshift one out of crumpled strips of foil. Also, it was hard to get ALL of that mustard butter mix onto the roast at once so half-way through, I added the rest. This didn’t give as dark of a crust on the roast but, whatever.

30 minutes in. My roast was a 5 lbs instead of 4 so I used a meat thermometer to reach medium temp of 140.

I also made the sauce by adding the drippings to a small sauce pan and adding a bit of red wine, heating it up for a while. The sauce was delicious.

The original plan was to make these polenta cakes to go with but I forgot to get polenta! Thankfully I had 2 sweet potatoes in the fridge so I boiled and mashed them and sauteed asparagus:

Sloppy plating but I was starving. End pieces were med-well and would’ve cooked more evenly if I had tied it up but some people like different temps so, there you go.

I have a TON of leftovers so we’ll be making roast beef sandwiches all week!

Now the cobbler… god bless, I love me some cobbler. It reminds me of my mom and it’s so comforting. I used this recipe for Strawberry Cream Cheese Cobbler.

Cobbler couldn’t be easier -

preheat oven to 350

melt a stick of butter and pour into a 9×13 glass pan
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 quarts whole strawberries, capped and washed
4 ounces cream cheese, cut in small pieces
Plain Greek yogurt or vanilla ice cream for serving, optional (necessary)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter and pour into a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish. In a small bowl, mix together the egg, milk, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Pour directly over the butter in the baking dish, but do not stir.

Add the strawberries, arranging in a single layer. Sprinkle cream cheese pieces over strawberries. Place in preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes, or until top is golden brown and edges are bubbling. (Crust rises up and around the fruit, but fruit will still peek out of top.)

The strawberries I got weren’t very ripe (local summertime strawberries would be best). So it was a little tart but still good. My favorite will always be peach and you can do this same recipe with canned peach slices, which is definitely happening soon!

So there you have it. 2 Pinterest recipes down, that I will definitely do again! I’m not going to think about the fact that I used 2 sticks of butter last night. ;)

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