Disneyland at Home - Making Napa Rose at Home!

Today is going to be a really good one!
One of my favorite restaurants anywhere is at the Disneyland Resort at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel. Napa Rose! I've had many delicious meals from there and there's a few things I will always get.
It's my birthday this week and if we weren't stuck at home, I would have wanted to eat at Napa Rose. But if we can't go to the Napa Rose, we're going to bring the Napa Rose here!

None of these are my own photos. Credit for each is listed on the photo below.
But I did throw together the graphic to show an example of my favorite things at Napa Rose.
It starts with the bread basket with a few different style breads, including a parmesan cracker. And the butter presentation is pretty too, with a circular disk and a sprig of fresh rosemary pressed into it.
My favorite appetizer, and possibly my favorite pizza, is the Signature Pizzetta.
I love the taste of truffles, and so the Truffled Mac and Cheese is always delicious.
And finally for the entree, you can't beat the Grilled Filet Mignon with the red wine reduction.

Theresa and I are ready to tackle it! Bringing it all together at the same time is going to be a challenge but we're up for it!

We're cooking a lot of these at the same time, but to keep from jumping around to lot of different things, I'm going to stick with 1 item and go from start to finish.

So because it takes the longest, I'm going to start with the pizzetta. I've made quite a few pizza crusts as part of our "Pizza at Home" series, but I don't think any of them are quite the same as this Signature Pizzetta crust.
I'm going to try out a new one. Today I'll be making the Artisan No-Knead Pizza Crust from kingarthurflour.com. It starts 24 hours before we're ready to bake our crust, mixing flour, salt, yeast, and water together.

There was only 1/8th of a teaspoon of yeast in this. 24 hours later it's just filled with bubbles! I punched it down and split it into two separate bowls.

An hour later, these have risen a little more. It's time to put on toppings.

There were no "secret recipes" that I could find for how to make this. Good thing the Napa Rose menu tells us what is inside. We need Smoked Prosciutto, Cambozola Cheese, grapes, and caramelized onions. Finding the ingredients took a little bit of time, but eventually we found everything we needed at Trader Joe's. Prosciutto was prevalent everywhere, but finding smoked prosciutto was more difficult. It was the same with the Cambozola Cheese. Looked for it everywhere, but finally found it at Trader Joe's too!

There's no sauce on this pizza at all. I stretched the dough out onto a piece of parchment, making sure to leave a nice ring around the edge for a crust. I brushed the crust with oil and then it went into a super hot 500F oven for 7-8 minutes.

And after that time, oh my goodness! This looks so amazing! I hope it tastes as good as it looks!

For our next item, I'll be making the Napa Rose Truffled "Mac & Cheese" Orecchiette Pasta. I love this stuff.
If we're going to do this, we're going to do this right. Certain recipes suggested using small shells, but I have to find the right type of pasta. Finally I was able to find a bag of it at my local Vons. Hooray!

I found a couple different recipes to make this, and I liked different parts of each of them. For most of it, I'm using the recipe for Truffled Mac and Cheese from myrecipes.com. I did find it a little odd to bring 2 cups of onion, a bay leaf, and milk almost to a boil and then throw all the onion and bay leaf away after it sits for 15 minutes.

For cheeses, we're going with the classic Gruyere and Fontina.

I grated them fine and added them to the warm milk mixture that I had thickened with a little flour.

This is Truffled Mac & Cheese, right? We're going to need a little bit of good truffle oil to add to it.

After mixing the pasta with the cheese sauce, it was time to top it off. Theresa sautéd some garlic, toasted some breadcrumbs, added some parmesan cheese, and now we're ready to make our crispy crust. Now it goes under the broiler for a few minutes!

Oh that's toasty! It's going to be so good!

I have a few Prime Filet Mignon steaks that have been sitting out at room temperature. I seasoned them with Kosher Salt and freshly cracked Black Pepper, and then took them out to the grill.
Theresa is going to make our red wine reduction sauce. She's using the recipe from onceuponachef.com for a Red Wine Sauce. It starts with a lot of butter and some shallots.

Into the sauce it goes. Next she followed it up with a lot of beef broth, red wine, thyme, and other things. It will take about 30 minutes to reduce down and become more concentrated.

Time to plate it up Theresa. Gotta make this plate pretty.

The filet is usually plated on top of a bed of vegetables. We're using shallots and also fresh Flavor Bomb tomatoes from our very own garden! This is going to be great!

There's one more thing to make. The bread basket that you get before the meal. How can I make that pat of butter? Using parchment and a meat pounder, I squished butter into a disk until it was in a relatively circular shape. I then placed my spring of fresh rosemary from the garden and lightly pressed it into the butter. Then using a cookie cutter, I made a nice circle and then refrigerated the whole thing.

Theresa is making our parmesan sheets that also go into our bread basket. It's just shredded parmesan and Italian seasoning spread out onto a cookie sheet.

And here's our bread plate. That looks so great!

Ian's excited to eat this again. He's especially excited about the pizza.

I am really looking forward to this meal tonight. I might have put down a nice white tablecloth for this photo and put on a collared shirt. Gotta make this classy.

I flashed that graphic with the foods from Napa Rose before. Here's the same graphic but with the items that we made ourselves! I think we rocked it!

Everyone excited to eat this meal tonight.

Here's my first plate... A little bit of everything.

So how did we do? Outstanding!
The Truffled Mac & Cheese was so good! The pasta was the right shape and texture. The cheese sauce was great. The truffle flavor was outstanding and the crunchy topping was excellent. I love this.
The Signature Pizzetta, I really had my fingers crossed on this one. I love this pizza, but it's $19 for a relatively small pizza, and Napa Rose is only open after 5pm. Could I make it myself? I closed my eyes, took a bite, and YES! To me, this is just as good as their Signature Pizzetta. The crust was just right, the cheese was the flavor I was looking for. Awesome!
The Filet was cooked Rare, just like I like it. The red wine reduction tastes like a fancy restaurant sauce and was so very tasty. And the veggies below the steak, also delicious.
And of course the bread it great.

I wasn't to sure what the kids were going to think of the meal tonight. But, I didn't need to worry. They loved the steak, pizza, and bread. Ian is giving me a thumbs up for the pizza.

Theresa is thinking we're going to be able to save a lot of money in the future making Napa Rose at home. This meal would have cost hundreds if we had it from Napa Rose.

Alli was a big fan of the steak, asking for seconds, and then thirds!
Richard and Chi loved it too. Richard said "I haven't felt this full in a long time." I agree! I was very happy with how tonight's meal turned out!