I had originally planned this for Friday, but that just didn’t happen. I picked up the spinach on Saturday and the beef tenderloin on Sunday.
As soon as I got home from work, I turned the oven on to preheat (because it seems to take forever) and put my cast iron skillet inside to heat as well. I got the beef out of the fridge and starting working on the spinach salad. I mixed up a variant of my usual mashed potatoes, this time using butter in place of olive oil and eliminating the garlic. The salad was topped with Chevre and sliced sun-dried tomatoes. I used some of the oil olive from the sun-dried tomatoes (which are so much better than the dried kind) to make the vinaigrette.
I lightly oil the tenderloin and hit it with salt and pepper. When the oven was hot, I took out the cast iron and put it on my hottest burner. I seared the beef on both sides (flipping it as soon as it released) and put it in the oven to finish. I took it out when my thermometer read 125deg F. I transferred it to a warm plate and the temp was at 135 before I got it tented with foil. In five minutes, it was almost at 155. I’m not sure what to make of that. It was a little more done than I wanted, but it was more red than than it looks like in the pic. I served it with a 2004 Chateau Bellefont-Belcier Saint-Emilion Grand Cru (a right-bank Bordeaux), which just exquisite.
(Unfortunately, it will be water and ramen noodles for the rest of the month, but sometimes you just have to live!)
Ravings of an Amateur Foodie 