Choosing Teams (Giveaway Post)

by Mara @ What's For Dinner? on March 21, 2010

in Baking,beef,contest/giveaway,friends,giveaway,Italian

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, you’ve probably heard of Twilight by now. You’ve also probably heard of New Moon, the second installment of the Twilight series, recently made into a blockbuster movie which was released on DVD this weekend. I’m not as huge of a Twilight fan as some people (I do however, love True Blood), but my best friend Lizz certainly is! I definitely think they’re a great story and fully entertaining, not to mention full of (jailbait) eye candy like this:

Enough of that…

When Lizz and I found out that New Moon was going to be released on DVD on a Saturday, we decided right then and there that we were going to have a New Moon/Twilight themed dinner “party” so that we could watch the movie and drool enjoy the deep and thrilling plotlines. Originally, we were going to cook things that were red and/or blood-like because well, the movie is about vampires. We opted to go a little deeper, and rather than going with the obvious, we went with food that was mentioned in Twilight. Our menu? Mushroom ravioli, steak, and cobbler. Can you name those scenes? Answers to follow

We also decided that not only would we make this food, but we’d make as much of it as possible from scratch. Lizz has been so supportive of my blog endeavor and fully recognizes when there’s a good post in the making, and this was definitely one of them! We went all out! After shopping our feet off at a couple department stores, we hit up two grocery stores to find all that we needed to create our themed meal. From here on out, all Twilight references will be in red no matter how cheesy they are.

First course: Homemade mushroom ravioli with shallots and goat cheese. (Gina , are you paying attention?)

The reason: In Twilight, Bella orders mushroom ravioli at the Italian restaurant she visits with Edward after he rescues her from the random riff-raff in Port Angeles (thanks Shima!).

Skylar was a HUGE help with cleaning the cremini mushrooms (a.k.a. baby Bellas, since they’re tiny portabella mushrooms). After I chopped them along with the shallots, she helped me add them to the frying pan.

After the mushroom mixture had cooled a bit, I mixed it with 4 oz. Chavrie goat cheese and a touch of garlic powder. (You’ll get the full recipe in a minute. Never fear!)

I’d never made pasta dough before, so I followed a simple recipe for ravioli pasta dough:

2 c. all purpose flour
2 whole eggs
1/4 c. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. cold water

Mix, allow to rest, and then roll thin. We used glasses to cut out circles and make agnolotti instead of fully round ones. We added about 1 tsp. filling to each one, sealed them, and boiled them for about 30 seconds. Ok, ok, the filling recipe:

16 oz. cremini mushrooms (or other wild mushrooms) cleaned and chopped
1 large shallot, minced
1 tsp. butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/4 c. white wine (or water)
4 oz. goat cheese
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
S&P to taste

Heat a large frying pan with olive oil and butter, and once foamy, add the shallots. Cook a few minutes until the shallots have softened, then add the mushrooms. Cook until dark and soft, then add the wine. Stir until all the liquid is gone, then remove from heat. Once mixture is cooled, stir in goat cheese, garlic powder, and S&P.

The dough:

We had a lot of help with the dough as well:

There was about 1/4 c. of the filling left over, so I used that to create a mushroom sauce for the ravioli. Here they are simmering away:

In the meantime, Lizz got to work making roasted dill red potatoes with garlic, onion powder, dill and butter. They roasted, and then we had the idea to use the extra pasta dough to make a special silly dessert for Skylar. Lizz cut the remaining past dough into strips, and then we cooked them with cinnamon, sugar, and banana.

The final product just wasn’t pretty, but Skylar swore it was delicious!

I began prepping the steaks we’d gotten by thoroughly drying them, then seasoning them simply with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. The reason: Bella picks on Charlie (her dad) in Twilight for always eating steak and cobbler (there’s that one too!) at the local diner every day.

Lizz and I set out then to make our “cobbler“. Since neither of us wanted to attempt making real cobbler with biscuits, we made a family favorite of ours with a simple crumb crust made of

1 c. sugar
1 c. flour
1 stick butter
seeds from 1 vanilla bean
2 bags frozen fruit (we used red strawberries.)

It had to bake a while at 350, so you’ll see the final product in a minute. We plated our meals and poured glasses of a truly delicious Riesling.

The ravioli:

All the plates:

And mine:

We started the movie, enjoyed every bite, and soon our dessert was ready!

I have to say, those ravioli were some of the best things I’ve ever cooked. Ever.

Now, for the giveaway part! When we went to get Lizz’s copy of New Moon, there was a special offer for something else. Lizz took the store up on the offer, then asked me if I wanted to have a giveaway on the blog for it!! (See? I told you she was supportive!) So, with the low low price of a comment below, you can win this lovely New Moon prize, courtesy of my BFF!

A lovely New Moon T-shirt complete with eye candy, and some real candy: A chocolate with Edward on it! I can almost hear all the screams of “SQUEEE!!!” from here! You can enter in the following ways:

1. Leave a comment below.

2. Tweet the giveaway then leave another comment that you’ve tweeted.

3. Link back on your blog (or email me if you don’t have a blog) then leave another comment.

4. Leave another comment telling me: Team Edward or Team Jacob? Or, are you more a True Blood fan? Or do you just not “get” this Vampire thing?

Good luck! The contest will run until Wednesday 3/24 with the winner announced Wednesday evening.

Have a great evening, and a lovely Monday! #TGIM! It’s my last Monday before Spring Break! Thank you all so much for your positive response to my BIG NEWS on Friday! I’m so excited!