Zen and the art of cooking

I reached a new milestone yesterday in the kitchen.

As the gals on this blog know, I'm an anxious chef.  A year ago, cooking was a stress-filled event for me, fraught with spills, cursing, and frantic calls to my mother-in-law.  It was absolutely the LAST thing I would ever have done to kick back and relieve stress. 

But yesterday... that's just what I did:  found my inner peace through cooking a great meal.

I have had a really cruddy week.  I'll spare you the details, but it involved kids and needles, ERs and noxious bacteria.  Good times.

So yesterday, with the kids finally parked in front of Kung Fu Panda, I found myself with a big fillet of beef and a lot of anxiety.  I put the two together and made a kickin' Beef Bourguignon from the Barefoot Contessa:

There were a few hiccups and modifications along the way:

- I had no pearl onions, so I diced a medium yellow onion.    This was fine, but in retrospect I would have left them a little larger - say, slivers of onion rather than diced.  They were lost in the sauce, whereas the pearl onions would have stood out a bit more, at least visually.

- The only carrots on hand were "baby" carrots in a bag.  These were handy and easy, but... like the onions, they looked unappealing in the sauce.  They ended up mushy and flavorless.

- I overcooked about half of the fillets, having (gulp) never actually cooked a fillet before.  On the one hand, this dish was a good one for some ruined meat, as the rich sauce sort of atoned for the mistake.  On the other hand, it was really expensive meat, and the portion I cooked correctly was a LOT better.

- Kung Fu Panda ended abruptly, so I over-reduced the sauce right at the end and had to add a little more stock to fix that problem.

My conclusions:

- use heartier vegetables that won't get lost in the sauce

- baby carrots are never a good plan

- when you're stressed, look for a recipe that involves both bacon and wine  

- Beef Bourguingnon is really hard to spell

The food was good and the sauce was delicious (see bacon/wine note above), but the meal was a smashing success mostly for reasons other than the actual food.  Standing there slicing, stirring, even cleaning up the mess... was cathartic.  It was an "a-ha" moment, like the first time that I was in shape enough to enjoy running.  I finally get why people love doing this.