The First Recipe!

Tonight I cooked my first recipe "Bistecche Tritate Con Panna e Funghi," roughly translated into hamburgers with bread and mushrooms and a ton of cream and butter. The recipe was very straightforward, but for hamburgers slightly time consuming. First, I soaked porcini mushrooms in warm water for an hour.  By the way, it looked like way less than 7 dollars worth of mushrooms, but for what they lack in volume they made up for in mushroom flavor. Then I drained and chopped the little guys and put them aside. I put a few slices of Italian bread minus the crust in some milk and let it soak. I think that's how my grandma made meatballs a long time ago.

Anyway, I fried the mushrooms in some butter and then I was supposed to put them through a food mill.  That was a problem, as I don't have one. I improvised using my Cuisinart to get the desired consistency, maybe? I went back to my milk/bread conglomeration to which my best friend stated, "It looks like Play-Doh!" She is a preschool teacher; I assert a rorschach effect. To me, it looked like bread and milk. I squeezed out the excess milk, combined with the ground beef, dusted them with flour, and put yet some more butter in the pan to fry it. A confession, I almost didn't put flour on the patties, I thought it was unnecessary, but I decided to follow the recipe to the letter. Silver Spoon may just know more than me and that is the whole point in this exercise. Remember, I told you, I needed a project.

To finish the recipe up, I added some cream to the mashed up porcinis and made a simple sauce while frying the patties. The burgers burned a little, I suspect they were too thick and the heat was a touch too high. However, both fiance and best friend gave rave reviews, ah the power of a cream based sauce. I am surrounded by positivity and am domestic goddess with a sink full of dirty dishes from hamburgers for dinner. I served the italian cream butter burgers with salad and home made mac and cheese. It didn't look very italian but I enjoyed it and hey, 1 recipe down 1999 to go.