Holiday deliciousness

I love holiday weekends. I admit that I always go overboard and want to cook too much because of all the perceived time and then I end up pressed for time, rushing, and tired at the end.

During the week, I decided that a nice aged bone-in ribeye sounded good so we planned to hit Star on Saturday. The sad thing is that I didn't think I would need to call ahead to get one. Sadness.

Here is the first part of our loot from Star. First of all, you can see the brie de meaux propped up on the wrapped strip steak. The brie is smelly and strong, luscious and creamy. I'm looking forward to leaving it out on the counter today so it gets room temperature and then slathering it on a granny smith apple. You can also see some burrata on the right. I have a full on picture in a bit to drool over that.

In the back left is a jar of olive oil. On Friday night, we went to Floataway (and sat at the bar, 'natch). Oysters, zucchini blossoms, and then a whole loup de mer, since it was on the menu. This time, it came with a salsa verde, a brisk green-tasting parsley/caper mixture with this fresh Chilean olive oil. It was even more delicious than usual. I got an extra serving of the salsa to eat up every morsel of the fish. The resulting plate I sent back to the kitchen was impressive: just a clean center line of bone. Tyler told me that as he passed Anne Quatrano to bring the plate for Drew to see, she wanted to know who I was. Coolness. The Chilean olive oil can be purchased for $12 and refills for $9. The oil is from the Arbequina olives and I think it's La Martina brand. Apparently, it's the olive oil they use at all the Bacchanalia restaurants.

In the deli containers the bottom up, we have ceci salad (meh), black eyed peas salad (okay), oreicchette (good), and then some white anchovies. Over the weekend, I had pulled a spaghetti with tuna recipe from 150 Best American recipes and it included Italian tuna in olive oil as well as white anchovies. We've never actually had any on hand, and they had some at Star, so I had to get some. (I know, they have always had them...) Paul let us try one out of the jar. They are a little saltier than I remember, but you can always soak them in water to fix that.

Here is the refrigerated portion of our Star loot. It's not very exciting when it's all wrapped up with no place to go. From the top, we have the strip steak. Then we have two two-bone pork racks. Then we have a selection of house-made cured meats that we brought over to a friends' dinner party on the 4th. Lastly is a package of summer sausage. About once a summer, they end up making summer sausage for a special event and they make extra to sell. I always buy some.

Lastly in front we have two duck confits and a potted jar of chicken livers. Yum yum yum yum yum. I haven't gotten to the jar yet, but it will keep for a while.

Here's the strip in its trimmed glory. We have been eating ribeye for so long that I hadn't cooked a strip in ... well, years. It definitely gets a gorgeous crust since there is no bone to get in the way. I ended up making this a rare, tending towards medium rare. There was some gristle between the meat and the fat that I didn't remove because I wanted some of the fat to cook with it in the pan. I made a very strong, luscious horseradish cream to go with this. Divine.

From the local farmstand, we got some heirloom tomatoes (looked like purple cherokees) and then some beefsteak-looking guys, a bundle of arugula, some fresh okra, and ... what's that baguette doing in there? Well, the arugula was delicious when tossed with that new Chilean evoo, lemon juice, s+p, and parmgiano shavings. I need to pickle that okra today.

We made a stop at Pine St to restock on breakfast sausage. Josh loves the stuff. He doesn't really care for the normal sausage we get at the store, and now I know why. This Pine St country sausage rocks your socks. We bought three packages of it. (Each package will give us two meals where I make three little patties for each of us.) We also bought two roasted poblano sausages which we had for lunch on Sunday and they were so good plain. In the wrapped package in the top left are bacon ends. I was asked to bring collard greens to the dinner party, but I had no ham hocks and neither did the YDFM. So I called Pine St and they said they had bacon ends which would serve the same purpose. We picked up enough for two batches. Of course, I burned the first batch because the heat was too high (damn!) so now I don't have an overstock. But it's nice to know that I can jump over to PSM whenever I need some. Lastly in the front left, is a package of Flat Creek Lodge cheddar. We heard there are complications with their cheesemonger, so we are hoping that it all works out, but in the meantime, we didn't want to miss out.

Ah, lovely burrata. When I was at Star, we stopped in at the cheese counter and I asked for something to go with my potted livers. I got a taste of a pierre robert which was good, but nothing really to write home about. I asked for something softer. And did I get soft: they gave me a taste of this luscious burrata. At the time, I didn't know that burrata is basically buffalo mozzarella curd mixed with cream and put into a mozzarella wrapper. You cut it open and eat all the deliciousness. We ate these with the tomtatoes we got at the farmstand. SO SO GOOD.

This was dinner that night. You can see the burrata and the tomatoes (drizzled with Italian olive oil and pepper), the arugula with parmigiano shavings, and the strip steak. No, we split it. The wine was one we picked up at Star for $20 that specifically said it was good for strip steaks. It was pretty good.

It was a good weekend of food. I'm off to take the brie out of the fridge so it can come up to temperature. Maybe I'll post a picture.