Sunday Dinner, Easter Dinner

I'm excited to say that Easter marked our first official "Sunday Night Dinners with Dad" series. Of course, not all of the dinners since then have been quite as fabulous, but I try. Subsequent Sundays have brought to the table brasciole, brisket, spaghetti carbonara, and chicken fajitas. It's a day to look forward to, and a way to guarantee we'll get together at least once a week.

For our Easter dinner, I finally found a piece of beef tenderloin. (Recall that I looked all over town for one several months ago, and ended up cooking this recipe with a pork tenderloin.) I know now why they are not readily available — the price tag. Oddly enough, after purchasing my hunk of meat at Stop & Shop, I found that it is actually considerably less expensive at Guido's. Who'd have thought?

I spent a good amount of time trimming my lovely little tenderloin of fat and silver skin and tying it into an evenly shaped mass (how appetizing that sounds!). It marinated in a mix of mustard, horseradish, rosemary an thyme. It was perfection (if not a teensy bit overcooked for such a tender cut). With it, I served these cracked potatoes, which cook in olive oil on the stovetop (for much longer than the recipe says!) until they are brown and crunchy on the outside and smooth and creamy on the inside.



For dessert, I made Alton Brown's Baked Apple recipe, for which apples are hollowed out and stuffed with butter, brown sugar, oats and cinnamon. Here are the apples pre-baking, and well — served with a little vanilla ice cream, they were devoured too quickly for a post-baking picture. Next time...