King's Arms Tavern, Part II

I was so excited last week Tuesday when I was grocery shopping.  I always check out the meat department at Wegmans to find these amazing little orange stickers that say "special today."  Usually they can be found on meat that is nearing the last days it should be sold.  Of course this is Wegmans, so that date is sooner than any of my other local grocery stores... Giant would probably try to sell it for another week, and I don't even want to guess how much longer Food Lion/Bloom would wait.  Anyways, as I was looking around the beef section I noticed two beautiful Fillet Mignon's half price!  I got both of them for $13.  YES!  I could try to recreate my King's Arms meal!!!!  Since it was my favorite, I was really excited.

When making my weekly menu out, I decided to put the King's Arms meal on Friday so that I would have plenty of time to make it.  Well, by the time Friday rolled around, I was really tired.  I didn't feel like cooking, and I don't think Darryl did either.  But I could not let the beef go to waste.  I decided to make the meal anyways.

The Williamsburg cookbook had a short cut for making the brown sauce using gravy mix.  I decided not to try that, since everything I've been making has been just about from scratch.  Also, I didn't have the short-cut type ingredients.  Darryl makes a very similar brown sauce, and we usually freeze a bunch in ice cube trays, so I thought I would use that.  You just pull out a few cubes right before the meal is ready and pop them in the microwave.  Heat and serve.

I cut up the potatoes like I'd been doing for all my other meals last week, seasoned them, and wrapped them in tin foil to put on the grill.  They were taking about a half hour or so to cook, so I went ahead and put them on the grill and went back in the house to get the beef ready.  I should have looked at the thermometer on the grill to see that it was oh... 500 or so degrees.  I had been cooking the potatoes around 350 degrees. 

I just lightly seasoned the beef with salt and pepper and just a touch of garlic and onion powder.  Took them out to the grill and put them on.  I got beautiful grill marks on each side, but when I cut into the larger steak, it was still very red.  I decided to leave them on just a few minutes more.  We enjoy our meat medium-rare.

Ok, time to talk about the disaster I should have called dinner.  First, we didn't actually have any brown sauce in the freezer.  I think I found something that once perhaps was... but it was now an icy clump of mess that you may find on the side of the road after a really bad snowstorm.

My beef, well, I over cooked it.  It was a medium to medium-well.  I read in a cookbook that you want to pull the beef off a few minutes before you think it is done, because the meat continues to cook.  Now I understand why.  Besides being cooked more than we normally like, we did eat it and enjoy it.  I probably could have used a little more salt and pepper because they were thick pieces, but overall it was pretty good.

Now for the potatoes.  Does anyone need any extra charcoal for their grill?  Yep.  Burnt to a crisp.  I even have the picture to prove it:

I know, they don't look so bad, but the smoky flavor given off by the ones that were bad penetrated all the other ones.  Besides, if you flip over the good looking ones (if you can even get them off the tin foil), you will find they are just as bad.

You'll notice, I have not talked about any vegetables...  that is because I didn't make any.  My anti-veggie protest of sorts. 

So, my lesson?  Don't give up, but don't cook something nice when you really don't feel like it.  Perhaps I should have made my chicken pot-pies that day... (those were made from left overs from the Shields Tavern dinner).

I plan on attempting this meal again.  And I will make sure my head is in the game when I do.  It was an awesome meal at the tavern, and I think it could be an awesome meal here.  Perhaps I'll make it for a group and even include the relishes and creamed Spinach.