Creamy Cauliflower Soup & Catching up on Beef Daube

A double hitter this week.  Nana was caught up, as usual, but a business trip put me behind a week.  Our families still enjoyed two great recipes......

Per Nana:

Creamy Cauliflower Soup Sans Cream~

The perfect soup for a cold winter's night. 

As I was reading the P & Q section I noticed that Cher

 suggested using crumbled bacon in the soup and

 someone mentioned Cheez-it-ish crackers  on top.

The bacon was easy, but  Cheez-it-ish crackers were hard to find

..... since we ate them all last week. They were so good, but I'll save

 that for another time. I did grate a bit of Swiss cheese on top 

that gave it such a lovely flavor.

I used the food processor to puree the soup and it turned out so smooth.

 I did add a pinch of cayenne pepper to it just because I love it.

The soup was quite good and I was disappointed that I had halved the 

recipe, but I will certainly be preparing this again.  It's amazing 

that a few simple ingredients that are usually on hand can turn

 out to be such a wonderful dish.

Beef Cheek Daube with Carrots & Elbow Macaroni~

First, let me say I wish I had my camera with me at Wegman's 

when I asked one of the butchers if they carried beef cheeks.

The look on this young man's face was hilarious, I believe he

 thought I was pulling his leg. Since it is difficult to find a real butcher

 shop in our area that would even carry anything as unusual

as beef cheeks, I decided to just go with a chuck roast.

The recipe is really a snap, very little preparation other than browning

 the meat and veggies. Add all the other ingredients and in the oven it

 goes for around 2 hours. I will admit that the chuck had to be trimmed

 quite a bit, so I had more than 4 pieces of meat. Actually, it  looked

 pretty much  like stew meat when I finished.  (I'm very picky about grizzle)

I used the Syrah wine as Dorie suggests and thought it all blended 

well.  After two hours it was so tender and delicious.  I added 

the chocolate which was not overpowering at all.  

Hubby kept raving about the meat and the delicious flavor. 

My first thoughts about adding elbow macaroni was that it would 

not work.  I guess when I think pot roast, I think of potatoes.  But

 Dorie was right again, and this was perfect.

Per Tricia:

Creamy Cauliflower Soup Sans Cream~

Long post so I will keep this short. We LOVED this.

 Easy and amazing. As Nana said- the recipe took very ordinary items

 and made them very special. We sprinkled cheese and cob smoked bacon

 from the Wallingford Locker on top.   YUM !!  This is one of my favorite 

FFWD recipes  to date and plan to revisit it very often this winter.......

Beef Cheek Daube with Carrots & Elbow Macaroni~

True story. I crank out the FFWD recipes on more Thursday evenings than

 I would care to admit, but such is life. Two weeks ago got particularly crazy 

with a week long business trip.  I would have just done it late, but the

 "special" beef (not cheek, however) that I bought while visiting 

Wallingford, Vermont was already defrosting. The clock was ticking. 

So for the first time ever....I asked my guys to make the 

recipe while I was away and handle the "Dorie Food". 


YUP. 

Nana lends a hand all the time but for this occasion my husband and

 two sons tackled the task and emailed me back their opinions.  It 

was hilarious and very cool.  My guys did not find the chocolate to

 be a worthy addition, so we will not be combining this flavor with beef

 in the near future. But they actually still all loved the recipe and raved

 about the quality of the meat, which does not surprise me. It's very

 heartwarming to discuss cuts of meat with the owner of butcher 

store in a small town and get his opinion. He did not have cheek,

 but raved about how tender it is. He thought long and hard and suggested

 shoulder as  a substitute.  I jumped on it.  While I am not sure they will 

be up for contributing on a more frequent basis- this time was a hoot for all. 

 Happy French Fridays !