Steak Frites

Our usual Wednesday night dinners at restaurants have moved to Chris’ dining room/patio. Eating out all the time isn’t good (you don’t know how much fat they use, who prepares your food, etc) and it can get so loud in restaurants you can’t hold a conversation, so we’ve decided to eat at Chris’ place more. We bought all of our ingredients at the new Whole Foods on Bowery (it’s HUGE and definitely worth checking out from 6-8pm for the free samples!). We decided to make steak frites because I’ve never really cooked meat (only shellfish and pasta) and I was craving some juicy steaks, plus, it’s a pretty simple meal (it was pouring rain last night and we didn’t get back to Chris’ place until past 8:30). We’re going to Peter Luger’s next month for steak, but I figured you can never get too much steak. We started out by cutting up the potatoes and frying them to make pommes frites:

Chris was in charge of the fries and is really great at taking them out right when they’re crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside (the best kind of fry). Maybe he missed his calling at McDonalds? 🙂

Since I was making the steak medium rare, we saved that for last (so they wouldn’t get cold while we were frying the potatoes). Next, we made a simple salad from arugula, spinach, tomatoes, and a homemade dressing (red wine vinegar, olive oil, lemon, and a little salt):

I cooked the filet mignon and portobello mushrooms with a little season all (that’s all you need for steak, I swear!):

While the steak was cooking, I cut up the watermelon Chris picked out:

The watermelon is supposed to be seedless, but there were a couple seeds (no worries). We’re going to use the leftover watermelon to make watermelon sorbet this weekend! (Yup, I’m investing in an ice cream maker).

Our final set up of steak frites for two:

We also bought orangina and Peter Luger Steak Sauce (which tastes exactly like cocktail sauce…I would definitely pass on that). Dinner took less than an hour from start to finish! This weekend, I’m running in the 10K (pray that it doesn’t rain and that I actually FINISH), hopefully playing tennis in central park (if the weather is warm enough), and getting ready for my birthday! I’ll be back on Monday with updates!