Moules Marinière & Some Catching Up

Per Tricia
With the boys back to school the only mussels eater between my house and Nana's is  my own husband. He got to enjoy 2 pounds of this recipe all to himself, and he just about finished it all in one sitting. Easy, fairly inexpensive, and different from the typical weeknight fare.

 While my husband feels a loyalty to Dorie Greenspan based on the enjoyment he has gotten out of French Fridays over the past few years, he also knows which side his bread is buttered on and declared that he prefers Nana's recipe. She makes a similar dish each Christmas Eve as part of the Feast of the Seven Fishes, and I imagine he wants to ensure he still gets invited. 

Speaking of redemption, I needed a "do over" on the recent stuffed apples since yours truly managed to screw up the simple recipe by using cider vinegar instead of cider. I am glad I have a great sense of humor. And forgiving taste testers. 

With homemade whipped cream and gold sugar ~

I went ahead and did these individually this time. One thing that struck me on the first foray was that the stuffing seemed to brown and frankly, almost burn. I went ahead and loosely covered each bowl with foil from the get go. Was I glad I did. As the pictures show, the lighter colored fruit and nuts kept their color and the final result was truly spoon soft juicy decadence and they cooked beautifully in just about an hour. 

Drizzled "Fat Toad Farm Vanilla Bean Caramel" finishes it (and me) off ~

Per Nana~

Since our Feast of the Seven Fishes, which included mussels, was less

 than a month ago, I could not possibly bring myself to prepare mussels again.

 I do enjoy them but Hubby does not eat them at all, so I decided to prepare

 two "catch up" recipes instead. The first is hachis parmentier. 

For Christmas dinner I had served a beef tenderloin and with all the meat

 trimmings left over I decided to use them in the recipe. The combination of 

beef and sausage was out of this world. I added the remaining cooked

 vegetables to the filling and topped it all with mashed potatoes. 

The melted Gruyère cheese and grated Parmesan gave the topping a beautiful 

color and added delicious flavor. A wonderful dish that I will be making again, 

but maybe not with a beef tenderloin.  

My second catch up recipe was Gougères.  

 This turned out to be so easy that I wondered why I didn't try it earlier.

 I had leftover Gruyère from the hachis parmentier so it all worked out quite well.

 These little morsels of cheesy dough were wonderful and they go

 perfectly with a glass of Kir, Champagne or even wine. 

Absolutely delicious.