Balsamic-and-Rosemary Marinated Florentine Steak

"Cari Weilhammer is a total dullard," is something you could say that would not be untrue. Cooking rule #1 (if you cook by the rules): READ THE RECIPE. Blast. What we ate more closely resembled pot roast than steak. Baffling. Until I read the recipe and noticed that it calls for a 4" thick porterhouse. O-oh! I see now.

In a way, I'm glad I don't have access to that kind of meat because I would most certainly buy it and it is undoubtedly insanely expensive. But, also, why don't I have a good butcher?!?!

If I remember my reading Food & Wine correctly (we've established that my reading retention is questionable, so it's entirely possible that I do not), this recipe is part of a special profile of chefs cooking in a Florentine vacation home? Some of the other recipes in the article were just a little too... something to really appeal to me. This one stood out and I can see why, because despite the 1", overcooked, porterhouses that I was working with, this recipe was good.  I think it's a forgiving cut of meat and the balsamic and rosemary marinade makes it even more tender and flavorful. I did manage to marinate properly and overnight, despite my cursory reading.

If you can get your hands on a 4" steak, please make this now, with no adjustments necessary. It will be fantastic. If, like me, you cannot, I would adjust the roasting time- perhaps even eliminate it. Test the meat with a quick-read thermometer after it comes off of the grill pan. I would guess that no more than 5 minutes in the oven would have produced a nice medium-rare for my steaks.

With the steak I roasted some onions. I had half a baguette in the freezer so I sliced it and threw the slices on the grill pan with the steak juices and oil. Also, as almost always, salad. I just like that salad picture, so I'm including it.

 Balsamic-and-Rosemary-Marinated Florentine Steak

Recipe By: Food &Wine March 2009

-= Ingredients =-
1 cup Balsamic Vinegar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons Extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup Finely chopped rosemary
3 pound porterhouse steak ; 4 inches thick
2 teaspoons Kosher salt
2 teaspoons Coarsely ground black pepper

-= Instructions =-
1. In a sturdy resealable plastic bag, combine the vinegar with 1/2 cup of the olive oil and the rosemary. Add the steak, seal the bag and refrigerate overnight, turning the bag several times.
2. Preheat the oven to 425 and bring the steak to room temperature. Heat a grill pan. Remove the steak from the marinade and season with the salt and pepper. Rub the sides with the remaining two tablespoons olive oil. Grill over moderately high heat until nicely charred on the top and bottom, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer the steak to a rimmed baking sheet and roast for about 30 minutes, until  an instant read thermometer inserted into the tenderloin registers 125.

Spicy Asian Stir-Fry with Whole Wheat Linguine

I did everything right. All went according to plan. Things browned nicely. Nothing burned. Still...

Eh.

I've had hits and misses with Vegetarian Times and this falls pretty solidly in the miss category. Everything sounds good. Pasta. Veggies. Chile-Garlic Sauce. But really, with vegetarian dishes like this, the sauce has to have a lot of flavor. Hoisin and chile-garlic should provide that, but when you add the rest of the liquid the effect is watered-down.

Also? Where is the salt? What kind of recipe does not call for salt?

I added salt, which helped. I was still not even a little bit whelmed.

That said, it's not terrible and it is fast and easy and healthy, so, you know if that's what you're looking for...

check out Vegetarian Times March 2009

I thought I had the recipe. Alas, I deemed it not good enough to keep and threw it away. (Instead, I have posted a fantastic recipe from VT in September that you should definitely make instead.) Some highlights:

How cute is baby bok choy?

Mango-Avocado Rolls

Recipe By: Vegetarian Times September 2009
Serving Size: 4

-= Ingredients =-
2/3 cup Diced avocado
2 tablespoon Lime Juice
2 teaspoon Grated lime zest
2/3 cup Finely chopped red bell pepper
1/2 cup Cream cheese ; softened
1/3 cup Thinly sliced green onions
1/3 cup Chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon Chile sauce ; such as sriracha
8 8 1/2 inch Vietnamese rice paper wrappers
2 cups Alfalfa sprouts
1 1/2 cups Thinly sliced fresh mango

-= Instructions =-
1. Comine avocado, lime juice, and lime zest in small bowl. Stir in bell pepper, cream cheese, green onions, cilantro, and chile sauce; set aside.
2. Fill large bowl ( 9 in. in diameter) with warm water. Submerge 1 rice paper wrapper 10 seconds in water, or just until it becomes soft. Remove wrapper to flat work surface, and let rest 30 seconds; it will become more pliable.
3.Spoon scant 1/4 cup avocado mixture just below middle of rice paper wrapper, leaving 1-inch border on either side. Top with 1/4 cup alfalfa sprouts and 2 to 3 mango slices. Fold bottom of rice paper wrapper up over filling, pressing filling as you go. Fold both sides of rice paper inward. Gently press to seal. Roll up wrapper to top edge. Brush water on top edge if necessary to seal. Reppeat with remaining wrappers, avocado, sprouts, and mango.

Desmond is moving!

Going forward, Desmond's letters and all non-food-related topics will be on http://cariweilhammer.blogspot.com/
Check it out!


Someday I might even figure out to transfer the old posts over there.

Desmond 9 & 10

Goodbye fox. Goodbye stream. We are in our own (rented) house that is not nearly as good as our now lost potential house and I could. not. be. more. grateful. I feel like I've been holding my breath for eight weeks.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Susan and Mike for saving us at the last second there.

This new house is ugly. All the fixtures are gold or brass or brass-y and from 1990. ( The house was built in '95, but I'm guessing this stuff was out of date even then.) The tile is peach. Peach! The walls are pink. Pink! The realtor tried to get away with beige, but we all knew he was grasping at straws.

It's not actually nearly as ugly as all of those sentences strung together make it sound. The point is, though, that I do not give a goodgoddamn. I want to take this bloody ugly house with its kitchen and its space and its multiple rooms and welcome it into my marriage as a sister wife or brother husband or gender-ambiguous third spouse who makes people feel awkward when having to choose pronouns. We'll call it Sam.

I cannot even express to you the pure joy of sleeping in a bed that does not contain you, of opening windows and letting light into rooms, of not tripping over piles of things that have no other place to be.

Finally, a return to normalcy.

I missed a month. A month! I feel as if I actually missed a real live month. Of your life and mine. These past weeks have been among the hardest I can remember. I think I went a little wacko there for a little while. At least I now know that I am easily felled by seasonal affective disorder (among other things). No moving to Alaska for us.

I'm not going to say anything more about that, except that I wish people weren't so frequently exactly what I expect them to be. Somehow, though expected, it's always disappointing. You and your father are the one bright spot of the past two months. I could never get by without you.

You.

You are such a happy little monkey. And I mean monkey. You climb. Holy crap, you can get halfway up a baby gate. You do not like being caged. You have a face that you make when you're angry or when you think it might make people laugh (see above). You scrunch up your nose and eyes and purse your lips and breathe like a bull getting ready to charge. Classic.

You're eating pretty much anything, which is good because it slightly assuages my guilt about not making your food anymore when we moved. It's too hard to manage in a foreign kitchen. I have to be careful now not to fall into the kid food trap of chicken fingers and grilled cheese- you would eat nothing but Gerber veggie puffs if I let you. Those things are not a far cry at all from cheese doodles- even if the package DOES say vitamin-fortified.

At the Dermatologist's office on Monday- let me just take a second to declare that my warts (gross!) are officially vanquished!- Dr. Pascoe asked as he left the room, "Does yours really seem more like a toddler now?" He'd been moping all day, the nurse explained, because it was his son's first birthday and the man wanted his baby back. Time to have another one, I said, and then realized with horror that we are only two months away from that point.

No, you do not seem more like a toddler than a baby now, but what will the next two months bring? Will you be talking? Walking? Will my uterus start letting me know once again that's it's always ready to incubate? I hope not. It needs to wait about two more years for everyone else to be ready too. I fear that you've given it a taste of how good the results can be and now it won't ever stop. I'll end up like my mother- 50, incontinent from all the birthing, and wishing I weren't too old for more of it.

Speaking of grandma, today you are wearing an outfit that she gave you six months ago saying, "It'll be a long long time before this fits him." And here we are. Fuck. Hold on to babyhood just a little bit longer little one. Two months will go by very very fast.

Love,
Mom