Many relatives have commented that I use too much butter in my cooking. In actual fact, the combined portion of butter for each person for the entire meal is about what one would spread on one or two pieces of bread at the most. Nevertheless, last Saturday, I tried to cook an entire meal without any butter. Here is what I did….
Seafood Vegetable Soup
Spinach Pesto Capellini with Mushroom
Roast Fillet of Beef with Mirepoix
Recipe…
Seafood Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
vegetables : cabbage, carrots, celery, onion
herbs: red pepper, basil, thyme, black pepper, bay leaf (all to taste)
seafood : shrimp, scallop, clam
red wine
Procedures
Put all the vegetables and herbs in a pot. Add red wine to cold water to the color of desire. Then add the water wine mixture to the pot of vegetables until just below the top of the vegetables. Medium heat to bring the temperature up until just before boil. Turn to minimum heat and cover the pot but leave the lid on an angle to leave a small opening. Make sure it does not boil to keep the soup clear. Let it simmer for 2-1/2 hours. 10 minutes before serving, take out the vegetables and bring up the heat up until the broth is piping hot but do not boil. Put the clams in to cook until the clams are opened. Take out the clams slowly without murkying the broth. Add sea salt to taste.
Before serving, boil another pot of water and add sea salt. Put the shrimps and scallops into the boiling water, turn off the heat, and let it sit for one minute. Drain the water.
Put the vegetables and seafood onto a serving plate then add the broth to serve.
Spinach Pesto Capellini with Mushroom
Ingredients
Spinach, garlic, capellini, mushroom, Parmesan cheese, olive oil.
Procedures
Boil the spinach and garlic. Drain the water. Put the spinach and garlic into a food processor and blend to a paste. Add a generous amount of olive oil and blend for 10 more seconds or so.
Dry fry the mushroom until all the water from the mushroom have evaporated. Add black pepper and salt to taste. Add some olive oil.
Boil the Capellini to al dante. Drain the water. Bring a pot to medium heat. Put the spinach pesto and the mushroom into the pot. Put the Capellini into the pot immediately after draining the water. Keep stirring and add olive oil until the pesto, mushroom, and olive oil are all mixed into the Capellini. Add Parmesan cheese to taste.
Roast Fillet of Beef with Mirepoix
Ingredients
Carrots, potatoes, zucchini, celery, onion, black pepper, sea salt, garlic, olive oil, fillet of beef, chicken broth.
Procedure
Chop the carrots and potatoes into about the size of half a thumb. Boil a pot of chicken broth (or substitute with some of the above vegetable broth). Add the carrots and potatoes into the broth and let it boil for 20 minutes.
Cut the zucchini into thin slices and celery into small pieces. Cut and break the onion into thin lengths.
Put olive oil into a thin baking pan. Put all the onions and celery into the baking pan. Add some sea salt. Add a little wine if desire. Put all the rest of the vegetables into the baking pan and add some black pepper.
Preheat the oven at maximum setting.
Just before cooking, rub a generous amount for sea salt, black pepper, and olive oil into the fillet. Dry pan fry the fillet in high heat on all sides just enough to brown the surface a little. Place the fillet on the vegetables and place some garlic slice on the fillet. Add some more olive oil to cover the entire fillet and the mirepoix.
Put the baking pan into the oven and bake at maximum heat for about 35 minutes for a 2.5 pound of fillet.
Take out the fillet and let it cool for about 15 minutes before cutting to serve. Stir and mix the mirepoix to serve.
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