Tonight we wanted to make two classic dishes that we had heard of but never made: Beef Wellington and Tiramisu. But we also wanted to add a summer twist–a nice summer salad, so we made a spinach, feta, orzo and pine nut salad.(We made a olive oil -balsamic vinaigrette as well).

Here’s the final products:

The Salad: after we put all the ingredients together we threw it in the fridge for an hour. According to the recipe, it helps the flavors blend.  The only thing we changed about the recipe was to toast the pine nuts and add them at the very end so they didn’t get soggy.

Ingredients for the salad                           Chopping onions (with goggles!)               Mixing the salad

The Tiramisu: for the Tiramisu, we actually started in the morning because it has to sit for 4-6 hours in the fridge.  Again it must be for the flavors to blend.  One thing we realized was that you shouldn’t actually “soak” the lady fingers in coffee and coffee liquor.  If you “soak” them, they will fall apart.  So you really just brush the lady fingers with the coffee mix (you can just use coffee if you don’t want any alcohol involved, or decaf coffee I guess if you don’t want to stay up late:)

The Tiramisu ingredients……                              Six egg yolks!                                                    Egg yolks w/ mascarpone              Coffee-soaked lady fingers             Final product

The Beef Wellingtons: for the individual beef wellingtons, the actual recipe is pretty easy. But there are a lot of steps.  First you have to make the mushroom sauce (or “mushroom duxelles as Emeril Lagasse calls it).  Then you have to sear the beef filet mignons.  Then you have to let them cool completely.  Then you have to roll out your puff pastry and make your egg wash glue. Then you have to put it all together.  (Puff pastry, then filet mignon, then mushrooms then proscuitto then puff pastry wrapped up like a package and sealed with the egg wash (the “glue”).  Then you brush them with more egg wash and put in the oven until the pastry is golden brown and you HOPE that the meat is medium rare. :).  One filet was cut too thin by the butcher so Max had the brilliant idea of making a double decker beef wellington.  He cut it in half and put a layer of mushrooms between the two halves. Delicious!

AND STILL MORE STEPS!…

Egg-washed Wellingtons                                    Golden-brown Wellingtons                               Double-decker Beef Wellingtons                     Note layer of mushrooms between filets