This is one of my favorites!
And no steak would be complete without a great batch of salty matchstick potatoes...
This was the salting station...
Alex chipped in with an appetizer and a salad...
A fantastic meal!
Here are the recipes courtesy of the Barefoot Contessa:
Download beuf_au_poivre.doc
Download matchstick_potatoes.doc
This is a little something that I stole from Ina Garten's show. I was a bit of a doubter at first, but with a little "fixing", the recipe came out wonderfully.
After browning the meatballs in the skillet, brown the onions in the same pan without the oil but with all the meatball bits left behind. Go on, scrape them off the bottom. You know you want to...
If you look closely, you'll see I added some dried oregano... And some wine and mushrooms (whole small ports) and some peppers...
From chaos...
Order...
The peppers, I cooked in the sauce. The mushrooms, I just squeezed in around the meatballs...
Excellent...
Okay, so this is one of my favorite shrimp dishes. Great taste, great presentation...
They are dead easy and terribly delicious...
This comes out of the August 2004 Cooking Light Magazine so remember to double the marinade recipe...
Grilled Lemon-Bay Shrimp
2 T fresh lemon juice
1 T olive oil
1/2 t salt
1/2 t crushed red pepper
1/2 t freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
32 large shrimp, peeled & deveined (~1 1/2 pounds)
32 fresh bay leaves
4 large lemons, each cut into 8 wedges
cooking spray
So, your supposed to combine the first 6 ingredients into a large bowl and toss the shrimp in and let sit for ten minutes. Make life easy and give the shrimp twice the time in a large zip lock bag. The lemon wedges and bay leaves count will all depend on the number of shrimp you want per skewer. (It's mostly decoration, after all.) They say you're supposed to coat the bay leaves and lemons in cooking spray, but for the life of me I don't know why. Waste of time, if you ask me. The fresh bay leaves are sometimes hard to find. You may need to go to a specialty grocery store or simply leave them off. (CL says you can take dried leaves from the jar and soak them overnight, but I tried it and it was a complete disaster...)
I had some shrimp left over, so I put a chili salt rub on them. I will probably use them later with some noodles or something.
Add something light like asparagus and you've got a meal...
So we all felt like burgers today...
Alex says that I make my burgers too big, but I hate shrinkage...
Sister and I had cojack and Alex had Colby cheese...
We had baked beans, potato chips, and Sister made some great macaroni salad...
It was a big meal of big burgers...
So, we topped it all off with a small dessert...
Ben & Jerry's do a wonderful plain vanilla. If you haven't tried it, you should.
Sometimes you have to shake things up a little. This is a permutation of an old recipe that Auntie June, the head of the kitchen at my old high school, used to make.
Her meatloaf didn't fall apart like mine, so next time it will have more egg in with the meat. I also thought it would be interesting to try to make it Italian by using Italian seasonings in the meat. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't good...
Oh well, back to the drawing board.
This weekend, Alex and I have had our baking britches on...
He made these amazing s'more brownies...
These definitely come with the warning: Do Not Eat without Milk!
I had a hankering to try out a new Ina Garten recipe for apple pie. Heidi, my friend in Panama, got a head start on me and I think her crust came out better than mine, but I think we can both recommend this pie.
Here's the recipe:
4 pounds Granny
Smith apples, peeled, quartered, and cored
1 lemon, zested
1 orange, zested
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 teaspoon to sprinkle on top
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
Perfect Pie Crust, recipe follows
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
Preheat the oven
to 400 degrees F.
Cut each apple quarter in thirds crosswise and combine in a bowl with the
zests, juices, 1/2 cup sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.
Roll out half the pie dough and drape it over a 9- or 10-inch pie pan to extend
about 1/2-inch over the rim. Don't stretch the dough; if it's too small, just
put it back on the board and re-roll it.
Fill the pie with the apple mixture. Brush the edge of the bottom pie crust
with the egg wash so the top crust will adhere. Top with the second crust and
trim the edges to about 1-inch over the rim. Tuck the edge of the top crust
under the edge of the bottom crust and crimp the 2 together with your fingers
or a fork. Brush the entire top crust with the egg wash, sprinkle with 1
teaspoon sugar, and cut 4 or 5 slits.
Place the pie on a sheet pan and bake for
Perfect Pie
Crust:
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) very cold unsalted butter
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening
6 to 8 tablespoons (about 1/2 cup) ice water
Dice the butter and return it to the refrigerator
while you prepare the flour mixture. Place the flour, salt, and sugar in the
bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse a few times to
mix. Add the butter and shortening. Pulse 8 to 12 times, until the butter is
the size of peas. With the machine running, pour the ice water down the feed
tube and pulse the machine until the dough begins to form a ball. Dump out on a
floured board and roll into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30
minutes.
Cut the dough in half. Roll each piece on a well-floured board into a circle,
rolling from the center to the edge, turning and flouring the dough to make
sure it doesn't stick to the board. Fold the dough in half, place in a pie pan,
and unfold to fit the pan. Repeat with the top crust.
So, here goes...
Drop in the apples...
And cover...
Now, Ina taught me something new with this recipe. Never mind putting the citrus in the pie, I think the most exciting part was folding the dough together. She recommended folding the top dough under the bottom dough. (The caveat here is that this is great for a "country" style pie. Prim & Propers need not apply...) Some action shots...
And then the crimping...
Of course, the dogs were on hand to supervise...
Finally, the egg wash and the sugar sprinkle...
Into the oven...
An hour and 15 later...
Add some ice cream...
Finally, the things I will CHANGE next time around:
1. Leave out the nutmeg and allspice. There's enough going on in this pie without crowding it. These two spices just don't seem to fit.
2. Add some butter under the top crust. It was a little dry.
3. Remove pie after about a half an hour and then egg wash.
4. Buy more vanilla ice cream...
Now here's an opportunity to eat something like a skirt steak and really enjoy it!
Order your skirt from the butcher "cleaned". (This means they will take off the connective tissue that lines the back of this cut of meat.) I do not recommend "pounding it flat" as most recipes say. It's a silly waste of time.
This is the second time I have used this rub and it has gotten great reviews both times...
Chili Rub for 1 1/2 lbs of cleaned skirt steak
10 tsp chili powder
3 tsp ground cumin
3 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp course salt (kosher salt)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp course ground pepper
Coat meat with rub. Drizzle with olive oil. Let stand for at least an hour.
Grill four minutes a side for medium rare on hot grill.
The results: Yum.
Add to this wonderful meat some roasted asparagus and Brussels sprouts, garlic mashed potatoes, and awesome garlic bread from the bakery, and you've got a meal!
Grandmother Corning is in town and shared this meal with us...
After a little inspiration, I tried my hand at Southwest "Chili" Burgers with Avocado Crema and Lime-Marinated Slaw...
It's not as hard as the recipe looks and it's definitely worth it...
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