Holt's Birthday Dinner

Tuesday November 20

Since we were going to drive to a big family Thanksgiving in just two days, Holt decided to have a quiet birthday celebration at home this year. Not that it wasn't going to be fancy. Here is the menu:






Beef tenderloins: Holt cleverly cut two choice inch-and-a half-thick slices off the ends of the tenderloin we served to Jeff and Caroline this past summer, and froze them for just such an occasion. They were crusted with thyme and kosher salt, seared in a hot pan, flipped every two minutes, and then set in the oven until they reached 120 degrees, just barely medium rare.

Chanterelles sauce: to enrobe (good word, huh?) the meat, we got fresh chanterelle mushrooms from Madison's and made the sauce that La Côte Basque used to serve with veal medallions, saving one or two chanterelles to top each tenderloin, as directed. Holt also had a lot of fun flaming the cognac.

Turnip gratin: we've had this very recently, but loved it so much we had to have it again, only this time we used goose fat. Its spicy creaminess went very well with the strong woodsy flavors of beef and mushrooms.

With the meal, we served a nice little bottle of red…Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape 1989. We bought a case of this wine in 1991, when it was named Wine Spectator's Wine of the Year. We thought we were splashing out then, when it was $35 a bottle, but now it's up to $200-300. Aging has made it lighter but more complex, and its rating is higher now than it was in 1991; but as we've said before, it throws a sediment like a raisin pie, and has to be strained and decanted.

Every birthday demands cake; Holt's demands chocolate cake. So he decided to bake our nephew's chocolate soufflé cupcakes. They're delectably intense, and intensely delectable, so here's the recipe.

Mike Sosin's Chocolate Soufflé Cupcakes
(makes 12 cupcakes)

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate
1 stick butter, plus extra for greasing a muffin pan
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. natural process cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting
4 Tbsps. flour
pinch salt
4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Melt the chocolate with the butter and vanilla, either in a double boiler or the microwave. In another bowl, thoroughly mix the sugar, cocoa powder, flour, and salt.

With your mixer starting at low and gradually working its way up to high, beat an egg at a time gradually into the chocolate mixture. Blend in the dry ingredients a little at a time, so there are no lumps. Beat at high for 5 minutes, and then refrigerate for 5-10 minutes.

Abundantly butter a 12-cup muffin pan, and dust a little cocoa powder into each one. Fill each cup with the cooled batter, about 2/3 full. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until puffed up; serve at once.

You can serve these with a dollop of whipped cream or ice cream on top, with a fruit sauce lapping the bottom, or both. But as Mike says, they are good all alone.