Medium Rare

Medium Rare does one thing, and does it well - steak and fries.  Its not the greatest steak in town, not by any stretch, but its very good, the fries are awesome, the salad is excellent, the sauce awesome, and the slices of hot bread crispy enough that the Madeline-adoring francophile ChaseKBH is happy.  Downside is the lack of a valet, though it's right by a Red Line metro station, and is a easy (as in 30-45 minutes depending on traffic) drive from Columbia as its in Cleveland Park.   Met friends there to celebrate new careers, brought the kids, drank a terrible sparking Loire that tasted like carbonated apple juice, and a very nice Fitou, though I liked the Washington Cab we had the time before better.  It's loud, casual, and they do a kid's portion of the menu, and have fun (though not terribly clever) desserts.  In other words, we can take the rugrats without the stares of death.

Fake Lady Hatt's Cake

I truly hate Thomas the Tank Engine and all his little friends.  Thomas is a moron who fails to listen, does something stupid, gets yelled at, listens, and forgets the lesson by the next installment.  Henry is whiny, Percy has an attitude, James is a snotty jerk, and Sir Topham Hatt is abusive at best.  Plus what the heck does it mean to be cross?  The three year old, however, loves Thomas and all the accouterments. I've stepped on every damn train Rev. Awdry could have ever dreamed of, and compliment ChaseKBH by calling him a Really Useful Engine. So of course for his third birthday, the Thomas obsessed child wanted Lady Hatt's Cake.  I search and searched to try and find a recipe or something that would give me a hint as to what constituted Lady Hatt's Cake.  The internet failed me, however, and I could not find a definitive recipe.   Moreover, ChaseKBH was not particularly able to articulate what on earth Lady Hatt Cake consisted of, but did babble a bit about strawberries and cream and butter and flour and Thomas getting it all wet.  It turns out that he was actually talking about the cake made for Alicia Boddy's tea, but whatever.       I told him it was Lady Hatt's Cake and he believed me.  Its one of the many things he will be in therapy for later.

We served the cake, along with chocolate cupcakes with blue icing, at Chase's third birthday party.  I'm not sure if every where is like this, but here you invite the entire preschool class and their parents.  It actually is nice to have the relationships with the other parents, but I'm far too lazy to throw a party at a party place.  Instead, I used my parents' backyard, served steak, chicken, corn, hot dogs, and Trader Joe's frozen naan, booze, and made the cakes.  Trust me, I love my kids and his friends, but the booze was necessary to deal with their screeching.  

 The adults loved the Lady Hatt Cake, and ChaseKBH was just happy he got what he (thought he) wanted.  It's a simple genoise layered with cream and strawberries. The genoise recipe is adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum, and really does require a stand mixer.  The below recipe makes about 24 parfaits.

Lady Hatt Cake for ChaseKBH

Ingredients:

3 lbs of strawberries, hulled and sliced

1/4 cup sugar

Juice of one lemon

1 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons of European-style butter (I used Kerrygold)

8 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cup sugar

2 cups sifted cake flour

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

2 pints heavy (whipping) cream

1/4 cup sugar (increase to 1/2 cup if you like it sweet)

Method:

Prepare

- Preheat oven to 350F.

- Macerate strawberries in 1/4 cup sugar, lemon juice, and a little salt.  Let sit at least 45 minutes.

- Line 2 jelly roll pans with parchment paper, with substantial overhang.

Make the genoise

- Brown butter over low heat.  Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

- Whisk together eggs, vanilla, and sugar in the bowl of the stand mixer.

- Place the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water.  Whisk, whisk, and whisk some more until the mixture has warmed and is increasing nicely in volume.  About 5-8 minutes.

-  Place bowl in stand mixer fitted with whipping whisk.  Whip the heck out of the egg mixture, until it is extremely voluminous, shiny, and just about to burst the bowl.

- Pour in butter and fold in gently.

- Sift together salt and flour.

- GENTLY fold in the flour/salt mixture.

- Pour the batter into prepared pans.

- Bake 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

- Remove from pans and let cool.

Prepare the filling

- Whip cream and 1/4 (or 1/2) cup sugar.

- Drain strawberries, reserve liquid.

- Boil 1 cup water.  Mix in 1 cup sugar and reserved strawberry liquid.  Cool.

Assemble the parfaits

- Prepare 24 little cups.  I used the simple clear cups you can buy at any grocery or party store.

- Cut one pan of genoise into pieces about the size of the bottom of the cup with a biscuit cutter.  Do the same with a biscuit cutter the size of the top of the cup.  Split rounds in half.

- Layer cake in the cup, use a pastry brush to brush on the syrup, then layer strawberries and cream, alternating, and topping with whipped cream.

- Smooth tops with a spatula.

- Keep refrigerated until serving.

Tomato leek sherry sauce

It actually almost feels like fall could be around the corner.  Actually, who am I kidding, it only almost feels not completely like we are roasting in the fifth circle of hell.  A request was made for lasagna, but despite my general love of garlic and basil, I was just not in a mood for the garlicy, acidic sauce I usually throw on my lasagna (and every other pasta).  Last night we also reminisced about the first meal J ever made for me, spaghetti with a mushroom sherry sauce.  Of course, he tried to make it again on our anniversary, burned the sauce, I think also the pasta, and destroyed a lovely carpet all at the same time.  Best laid plans and all that.  

We had some tomatoes and leeks left over from our Gorman Farm CSA share, that needed to be used up before they went off.  I decided to make a simple ricotta cheese lasagna with a sauce using up some of the left over vegetables.  I tried to convince J that some squash would be lovely inside the lasagna, but he resisted.  This sauce worked well with this autumn-y feeling lasagna, and would be very nice over pasta and squash, or a lasagna made from slices of squash when one feels the unnatural need to play around with the low carb thing. 

Anyway, back to the food.  I'm a big fan of fresh tomato sauces, and I don't like to seed my tomatoes (I actually like the texture and flavor of the seeds.  August in Maryland means tomatoes - and a lot of them.  J's issue with the CSA every year is that inevitably, we get deluded with tomatoes in August, and after a couple nights of pasta with fresh tomato sauce, he's bored and has heartburn.  I could be industrious and can tomato sauce, but I'm not that organized.  For this sauce I used large beefsteak tomatoes, since that's what we had.  It worked well, though I would be more likely to choose a plum tomato if I was actually going out and buying things specifically for the sauce.  The tomatoes used had a good bit of sweetness and not that much acid - as always, taste, taste, taste the produce and adjust according.  

Tomato leek sherry sauce

Ingredients:

3 large tomatoes

4 small to medium leeks

1 small onion

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

Salt

Pepper

Method:

- Boil water in a small pot, deep enough to dunk each tomato and keep it fully submerged.  

- Prepare a bowl with cold water and ice, or set up a colander under a source for running cold water.  

- Score each tomato with a shallow "x" knife cut at the bottom.  Place tomato in boiling water for 1 minute, until the skin starts to peel away.  -- - Place tomato in cold water for 1-2 minutes, or rinse under cold water.  - Peel off skin with fingers.

- Repeat until all tomatoes are skinned.

- Heat olive oil and butter over medium-low heat in a large saucepan or pot - I use my enameled cast iron dutch oven for this.

- Peel off outer layer of leek, rinse well, cut off stem and dark green parts.  Slice white and light green parts of leek thinly, then rinse again.  Leeks tend to get a lot of dirt.

- Dice onion.

- Place onion and leek into pot, stir, cook over medium-low heat about 5-10 minutes.

- Dice tomatoes, discarding stem area.

- After making sure that the leek and onion mixture is fairly translucent, toss in tomatoes, 2-4 teaspoons of salt, and 2-4 teaspoons of pepper.  

- Increase heat to high and wait for mixture to come to a boil.

- Add half a cup of decent sherry - I used Harvey's Bristol Cream.

- Reduce heat to medium, cook another 5 minutes.  

- Taste.

- Add salt and pepper as needed.  If the tomatoes are really acidic sugar might be necessary.

- Blend sauce with either a stick blender or in a blender.  BE CAREFUL not to splash and burn.  Sauce should be more orangey or pink than red.

- Taste.

- Add salt and pepper if needed.

- Serve or use in the recipe below.

Lasagna with tomato leek sherry sauce

Ingredients: 

Tomato leek sherry sauce (recipe above)

1/2 package fresh lasagna noodles or half pound dried lasagna noodles, prepared according to box directions.

8 ounces whole milk ricotta

2 tablespoons hazelnut oil (really worth it, but if you don't have it, use olive)

8 ounces shredded mozzarella / Italian blend cheese / pizza cheese

Salt

Pepper

Method:

- Preheat oven to 350F.  

- Mix ricotta and oil until smooth.  Add salt and pepper to taste (2 teaspoons each is my suggestion).

- Spritz a bread pan with nonstick spray or spray oil (this keeps me from pigging out and eating a half pan of lasagna for lunch the next day).

- Layer a bit of sauce on the bottom of the pan.

- Lay prepared noodles down to make a one noodle thick cover.

- Layer ricotta mixture over noodle layer.

- Repeat noodle / ricotta layers until noodles and ricotta are exhausted and/or the pan is full.

- Pour remaining sauce on top.  Jiggle so it gets into the layers.  

- Top with shredded cheese.

- Bake 45 minutes.

- Let cool at least 10 minutes before serving.

Ancho banana pepper salsa

I can't take credit for the lamb burger, the feta, the tomato, or the red onion.  I can however take credit for the salsa, which was highly, incredibly spicy, but apparently did well as a condiment.  The peppers are from our CSA.  I would add a bit more acid and oil in order to make it looser and more of a dip than a condiment.  This makes a great addition to burgers.


Ingredients:
2 banana peppers, seeded and roughly chopped
3 ancho chile peppers, seeded and roughly chopped
1 clove fresh garlic, peeled
1 half sweet white onion, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of one half lime

Method:
Place all ingredients in a food processor.  Buzz until smooth.

Caprese Pasta

This is an easy, quick dinner that's perfect for August's tomatoes.  If you're in a real hurry there's no need to cut or chiffonade anything, just tear and toss - the heat will get everything to mix a bit, and you can always squish with a spatula.  I made this with fresh linguine - the Wegman's house brand - but it can be made with any pasta type or shape.  My kid likes long noodles, so I tend to use those, but I think this would be great with penne or similar short pasta.  If I was feeling adventurous, I would make my own pasta and serve with that, but the refrigerator case is a great substitute.  Balsamic would be nice here, however, I wasn't thrilled with the brown visual, so I used lemon juice as the acid.  This is a one dish weeknight meal or a nice pasta course for a longer meal (reduce serving size).  A nice green salad would complement this well.  My husband thought I should serve it with steak.  I'm not sure why, except he likes steak.

Ingredients:
3 servings pasta of your choice, cooked.  Here, I used a 13 ounce package of fresh linguine - part of it was reserved for plain buttered noodles, so about 9-10 ounces were used here
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves of very fresh garlic, cut in half
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
1 large bunch basil, stems removed, chiffonaded (this just means cutting finely into ribbons)
8 ounces fresh mozzarella balls, cut in half (or not)
Juice of one half lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Cook pasta according to package directions.  Aim for al dente.
Place 2 tablespoons of olive oil in large saucepan or frying pan (not cast iron) over medium low heat.
Add garlic and toss to coat with oil.
Cook garlic over medium low heat until it becomes soft.
Increase heat to medium.
Toss in tomato halves and basil.  Stir.  Cook about 2 minutes until heated through and tomatoes are very soft.  Basil should still be bright green.
Toss in mozzarella balls and lemon.  Cook another 30 seconds to 1 minute, until the mozzarella starts to just ooze.
Taste.
Add salt and pepper to taste.  This will need a bit of salt.
Remove from heat.
Warm serving bowl - either in the microwave or by pouring in boiling water and pouring out.
Add pasta to serving bowl. 
Pour over tomato mixture.  Toss.
Serve immediately.

Watermelon Feta Salad

Savory watermelon dishes can be a fun way to use up August's ubiquitous pink fruit.  I made this dish to be kid-friendly.  Unfortunately the kid was in a no-foods-can-touch mood and instead decided to consume plain watermelon pieces and cheese separately instead.    This salad makes a nice starter or side dish for grilled burgers.  It doesn't keep well, so try to eat it up on the same day as its made, or it will likely be destined for the trash.

  Ingredients:
 4 cups seeded watermelon, cut into cubes or balled with a melon baller
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 sweet white onion, sliced into half moons and pulled apart
8 ounces crumbled feta
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
Juice of one lemon
1/8 cup olive oil

Method:
Place watermelon pieces on large plate or platter.
Sprinkle salt on watermelon, let sit 5 minutes.
Pick watermelon pieces up off platter and place in a bowl.  The salt will help reduce the water content a bit.  The resulting watermelon juice is great to drink or put in a cocktail.
Toss onions and feta with the watermelon.
In a separate bowl, blend together vinegar, lemon juice, and oil.  Pour over salad and toss together.
Serve immediately.

Gorman Farm CSA

This year's CSA is from Gorman Farm, located in North Laurel.  Its across from the Columbia Horse Farm.  Its a nice variety of things - not as large as One Straw Farm was, but its nice to pick up the farm, and occasionally supplement from the farm stand.  The three year old will eat any vegetable in the world on Thursday, pickup day.  On Friday its back to corn, raw carrots, and broccoli.