Valentine's Day

I am currently ruining Valentinte’s day dinner.

I did not do this for blog fodder, I swear.  I was leafing through one of my soup cookbooks the other day looking for inspiration for Valentine’s day.   Karen probably won’t get home that night until 8:30, so I was thinking about something light and then a dessert.  Luckily Karen already found a dessert here. 

I found this recipe in one of the cookbooks for “Medallions of beef with caramelized onions in a red wine broth.”  It says the red wine broth can be made and frozen weeks in advance, which is good, because with three kids I don’t think I’ll be able to prepare a really involved dish that night.  So I make the broth.  It calls for three fifths of wine.  Holy crap.  Whatever, I go ahead and buy it, right?  Right, but after browning the beef and the onions it says to add a little bit of wine and let it boil down and caramelize.  Apparently this will cut through the bitterness of the wine.  Or something.

I caramelized the wine.  Oops, did I say caramelize?  I meant I burned it.  Badly.  There was a layer of charcoal on the bottom of the pot so thick that was very hard to scrape off afterwards.  So I finish making the broth.  It says to season it to taste, but I’m not sure if it tastes burned or not.  I strained it through two layers of cheesecloth, so the vast majority of sediment is gone, and I think that took most of the burned taste out of it. 

So here’s my problem:  I could give up and toss it down the drain and I know that there’s really no way to save a broth that’s been burned, but I’m kind of desperate to.  There’s $40 worth of wine in this broth.  My other thought is that I don’t want to be so emotionally attached to this broth that I also ruin $15 worth of beef. 

Yes, I know I spent a lot of money on this meal, but I figured going out to eat would be equally as expensive, and we don’t have to pay a babysitter. 

It’s all Karen’s fault for buying me the cookbook and for working late on Valentine’s day.  Actually she came home before I had a chance to freeze the broth and she remarked how badly things were smelling in the house.  Before she could turn around I had frozen it, and she’s convinced I dumped it, and that she’s deeply offended me.