Saturday Date Nights with Yours Truly - Mushroom Stroganoff

Kevin had a man-date last Saturday, which meant I had a full Saturday night to myself.  Whenever I get a Saturday night on my own, I jump on the chance to make Mushroom Stroganoff since Kev hates mushrooms. 

This dish has been one of my favorites for years.  It was my birthday dinner with my dad since I was about 12 years old, and is my most-requested dish when I go home. My dad gets his recipe from no other than....Mollie Katzen (yes, her again - she's just SO GOOD!).  When I moved into my first apartment, my dad gave me one of my favorite gifts yet - a wooden recipe card box with my favorite recipes added in.  Stroganoff was one of those recipes. 

I cook this pretty much according to the recipe, though I do add moer wine and a little more dill than it calls for, just because I like it better that way.

Unfortunately, this recipe has the sauce cooked in a double-boiler.  I do not have a double-boiler, though at this point, I should probably invest in one. Normally, I work with what I have and put a sauce pan in a large multi-pot (8 qt. or so).  Unfortunately, I am working with less than a full set of pots and pans right now (we never bought new ones after the move, and didn't get a full set as a wedding gift, so we've only got random pots right now).  I first attempted to use my usual method using a saute pan and my 8 wt. multi-pot, but the saute pan was not large enough for all the stroganoff sauce I was attempting to make.  I also accidentally let the pot sink and got a little water in the sauce.  Oops.  I promise I'm not normally this bad with these sorts of things. Please keep reading anyways.  So I stopped cooking and started over with the pots.  This is what I came up with.

Pretty ghetto.  And since I was using a frying pan to hold the water and the pot, the multi-pot was resting on the bottom of the frying pan, which probably completely negated double-boil effect.  But I decided to ignore that and just go ahead with it anyways.

At this point, I needed a glass of wine more than the sauce did, so I opened a bottle of Skinny Girl Red.

I've never had it, and truthfully find all the Skinny Girl drinks I've had to taste a little watered-down, but I was curious about the wine.  It was actually pretty good, though it did taste a little watered-down. ;)
I will also note that I cheated a bit on this recipe.  I didn't actually steam any vegetables.  Sometimes, I just want the sauce and some noodles.  They ARE my favorite parts...

Let me tell you, with a glass (or two) of wine and last week's episode of Downton Abbey on the DVR, this stroganoff cannot be beat.  Happiness.
Enjoi!