Feeling Lucky...

I'm not sure how the rest of you do dinners, but I'm discovering that my plans mean little more than good intentions in my household.  I had a wonderful dinner planned for Friday night, which I executed, but I had defrosted more steaks than I ended up needing due to an impromptu sleepover invitation for THREE of my four children.  So I left five medallions in the marinade, knowing I'd have to cook them soon.

On Saturday, Geoff had to meet someone at the airport so he asked if we wanted to come into the city as well.  We ended up doing that and had dinner there.  So tonight, I had to cook the steaks and the roast (that I took out on Friday - for yesterday) will have to be cooked tomorrow.

Anyhow.  So I had a second chance at the cooking time on steaks and I am super proud to say that I nailed it!! Perfect medium rare on ALL five of them!  I also took some liberties with this rice and it was delicious even though I accidentally added white wine vinegar when I meant to add only white wine.  It still worked!  I also tried a béarnaise sauce - from scratch - and it was heavenly.  The marinade recipe is posted on Friday Sept. 13.

Rice:
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 red onion, diced
1 clove of garlic, diced
Sautee in pan
1 cup of parboiled or other non-instant rice; add this to the pan and let it soak up all moisture; then add
approximately 3 Tbsp of white wine vinegar
6 Tbsp (or a healthy pour) of white wine
Allow the rice to soak this up; then slowly add
2 cups chicken stock - add just enough for the rice to soak up the moisture before adding more - it will take all of it
When the rice is finished and removed from the heat, add your extras: I folded in about 5 chopped green onions but you could use those, tomatoes, celery and/or peppers for some fresh flavours

Béarnaise sauce:
This came from Epicurious.com; Bon Appetite 2000 (since it's free, I'm sure I can reprint it)
Have 1 cup of melted butter on hand.
Bring 2 Tbsp white wine vinegar, 2 Tbsp water and 1/4 Tsp each of salt and pepper to a boil; remove from heat, and add 1 Tbsp of cold water. 
Whisk in three egg yolks, do not return to heat just yet as you do not want to cook the yolks.  Keep whisking and begin to drizzle butter into the mix.
I kept the saucepan near the burners that were on and did not return the pan to direct heat.  Keep whisking and drizzling until all of the butter has been mixed in - slowly and stop adding if it's not mixing; whisk more and then once it's mixed in resume butter drizzling.
Once this is complete, add lemon juice and salt to taste.  Fabulous.

I blanche the asparagus quickly; I like mine with a little crunch and it only takes a bare couple of minutes. 

Rice really does lighten a meal.  Being that it's still fairly warm out, I was happy to have a "lighter" meal.  The fresh green onion makes it look like a lighter meal too.  I'm experimenting with sauces but we usually just have the asparagus with a little salt and butter if you're not into the added sauce.  It was a little stressful because it's an unforgiving recipe but it turned out just fine. This meal was ready in about 45 minutes :)

PS. Looking at this photo, I think it looks like I portion control my meals - I don't mean to but I'll certainly bring it up if my weight changes.  Actually I don't own a scale, so probably not.  Happy Eating!!