Quarter-Finals - France and England - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

On the same note from yesterday, since I was having a hard time, I needed to find easier options for the challenge so that it didn't feel like one more burden. I was lucky to be able to find some good options that helped me make some delicious dinners that didn't add to my stress. 

France

The first time I went to France, I knew much less about food and was looking through a travel book when I found steak frites. Steak frites are exactly how they sound... steak and fries. I was determined to have this dish in France and I did. It was all I hoped and dreamed it would be and I knew it would be a good pick for my challenge.

There is one secret to perfect steaks. It's butter. 

Once the butter is heated up, put your steaks in and then just listen to the beautiful noise of them sizzling to perfection. I normally season the steaks but I wanted the meat to shine so I only added sea salt this time.

While my steaks were cooking I baked my fries. I added salt and garlic and paprika to them as well. 

When the steak was done, I added them to the plate with the fries and topped it with some garlic and herb butter. Butter really was the VIP here.

I also bought a Cotes du Rhone wine. Rhone is my favorite wine region and I wanted to get a true French Rhone for the challenge.

The wine had a beautiful color and was the perfect balance to this rich meal.

 Fin

England

For England, I wanted to go with another easy classic. I decided to go with bangers and mash.

Bangers are just a wacky English word for sausage. Despite the impression the name might give, the term actually came from the pockets of oil that build up under the sausage casing and tend to pop while cooking. If you've ever been near a sausage when it's does this, you know they're no joke.

The mash is, as you'd expect, mashed potatoes.

There really wasn't too much complicated here. I just made my mashed potatoes with some almond milk, butter, and salt. I then served it with the bangers and let the sausage impart some natural flavor.

On an unrelated note, that night started a serious of ridiculously beautiful sunsets so I thought I would just share this one with you. 

World Cup Eating Challenge - Day 4: France

The second and third day of my challenge had me making some simpler dishes so I wanted to really ramp it up now that I'd had a few days to plan and looking at the schedule, the fourth day gave me a great opportunity - France.

I love French cuisine and watching a lot of cooking shows, I hear a lot of "French techinique" or mother sauces or being classically trained - however, when it came down to the challenge I was suddenly drawing a blank. I kept jumping to cop outs like French fries or French toast or French onion soup and even though I knew there were better options.

Finally I came up with two great options - roast duck or steak frites. I decided to see what was available at Costco and sure enough, they still had a few ducks left so I decided to go with that option. It's hard to believe that just a couple of months ago I'd never made duck and now here I was cooking up my third duck this year. Roasting duck is actually really easy. All you have to do is clean it, season it inside and out, and put it in the over for 30 minutes per pound. I also cut off the extra skin and render it for duck fat. Duck fat is pretty expensive but it's an amazing fat/oil to cook things in. The duck fat can also be used to confit a future duck.

As for sides - I used also used some of that duck fat to cook my carrot "fries" and then added some fresh parsley. The salad was lettuce, spinach, radish, and goat cheese with a olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I paired the whole dish with a rosé that I got for my birthday from my aunt and uncle. The rosé is from Provence and is made by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The wine is my ideal kind of rosé - very dry with lemon and citrus notes. It went wonderfully with our French meal. I've seen this wine a few times at Costco but it wasn't there last time I checked. It's been getting a lot of press so if you're interested in trying it, I suggest you track down a bottle as soon as possible.

I've been having a lot of fun looking up recipes for the countries I'm not as familiar with. Today I learned a lot about different African cuisines. I've also been trying to guess which teams will make it to the round of 16 because I'll get an extra chance to make their recipes. I'm really excited to keep cooking new things!