Monday, June 18, 2007

The Hot Oven Father's Day Dinner

Without much planning, I ended up hosting a 7 person dinner party on Sunday for my husband, father, father-in-law and the women in their lives. I kept it simple, but ended up with a smart approach that I may do more often. Basically, I heated the oven up really high and never turned it down. (So often you can't bake too many things because one thing calls for 350 degrees and another for 400, etc... this dinner didn't.)

From the oven's perspective, these were the courses:
at 480 degrees:
1) No-knead bread (45 minutes)
2) Oven Roasted Asparagus (45 minutes)
take out when done, then turn oven on to broil (500 degrees) and cook
3) Oven Broiled Filet Mignon (20 minutes)

With all those long cooking times, I had plenty of time to make a picturesque but easy ceasar salad (take apart 2 heads of romaine carefully, rinse, arrange 4-5 spears of romaine on each salad plate, drizzle with homemade ceasar dressing, then shave parmesan with a vegetable peeler over each salad).

Dessert after such a hot meal? Ice Cream. Specifically an impulse buy they were sampling at Costco (the whole meal was from Costco, actually) called PJ Madison's, an organic gelato that was incredibly yummy.