Beef Stroganoff for a Birthday Dinner

recipe from the 1977 House & Garden Cookbook - Long Live Cast Iron!

 -Yesterday was Significant Other's birthday, and I decide not to make his favorite stuffed cabbage but instead to make another old favorite, Beef Stroganoff.  He always ordered it at Jacques French restaurant on Chicago's North Side back in the day.  This is a menu item that could always be found on any "Continental" restaurant menu.  I've been making the New York Times recipe for years, but thought it always lacked je ne sais pas, so I hunted around and sure enough, in an old 1977 House and Garden New Cook Book someone had given me, I found a recipe calling for cognac, dried mushrooms, tenderloin, etc.  It looked good and it was.   The recipe is not on line, but a similar one is here from
Martha Stewart  

  I only  expected to get one meal out of it, because I cut the recipe in half, but lo, there was a lot left.  With the tenderloin and sour cream it is rich, and we had salad and veg to accompany.  For dessert I served my mom's Bacardi rum cake, made, as I discovered from a box cake and a package of pudding and LOTS of rum.  I followed some tips on the web site where I double-checked the recipe, and used milk instead of water and put the nuts all the way through the cake.  I also added part of a grated orange rind to the glaze.     We cooks know how to help each other out, cooking among women being mostly a collaborative not a competitive endeavor.  

S.O. took a photograph, which I'll post soon.  Cold weather is back.  Birds have suet now, but have "flown the coop."   Warm weekend ahead.  I am reading my friend's novel MS on my Kindle and it is better than much of the published stuff I read.  A  great and perpetual mystery.  

Off to do the morning tasks.  Stay warm, stay dry, and remember, April is just around the corner, but then it is the cruelest month before the merry month of May.   

 As ever, 

Grapeshot