Mother's Day Gluttony

For mother's day, Greg and I decided that we would cook a gourmet meal for our wives (read our baby mammas).  Here's what was on the menu:

For an amuse bouche, we had tuna tartare - (recipe here) - this was amazing!  Some diced ahi tuna in a soy / lime / wasabi sauce.  I decided to serve it on a spoon, like this:

This was so good, that we broke the amuse bouche rule and had to have a second helping.

For the appetizer, I wanted to make a pan-seared foie gras with caramelized apples (recipe here).  So, at Sobey's Urban Fresh, across the street from where I work, they used to sell foie gras.  (at least, they did in March).  Turns out that they don't anymore.  Woops.  So, with some scrambling (and phone calls by Kathryn, because I hate the phone), we found mousse de foie gras.  I thought that we'd give it a try.

Served with this dish was a home-made brioche.  This recipe is from the French Laundry cookbook.  I was really impressed that I could cook something from that book.  The brioche and apples were amazing, the mousse, not so much.  But, live and learn.  The brioche recipe is here.  And here's a link to a really funny blog of someone who cooked her way through the French Laundry book.

By the way, making the brioche dough with a hand mixer was a bit troublesome... I had to keep re-attaching the dough hooks after they got bogged down in the buttery dough.

A picture of the brioche (before / after).

And the finished appetizer:

Next, a palate cleanser of cranberry sorbet (recipe here).  This was helped by Donvier, my good friend and ice-cream maker.

For the main course, we had Beef Wellington.  Note to anyone wanting to make this - please be sure to buy/make puff pastry - Phyllo pastry is NOT the same thing.... (requiring a second trip to the grocery store).  With this, we served creamed spinach and a Gorgonzolla and pear risotto.  The risotto was absolutely amazing (and probably the only thing on the menu that a vegetarian could eat).

The Wellington recipe is here, and the risotto recipe is here - from an interesting cooking blog.

Finally, for dessert, we had lime panna cotta with mint and tequila.  This was like an amazing creamy lime-y jello.  We had to eat it out of the ramekins, because we couldn't tease it out (despite calling it names).  It was a nice, light, awesome end to a wonderful meal.

Side note - the meal was even better because Greg and I served it all wearing chip-n-dale outfits, I mean just aprons, no wait, shirts and ties.