Hubby's Birthday Dinner

For my husband's birthday dinner, I made his ideal, meat-and-potatoes dinner followed by chocolate cake.
Caveat: I have never made a steak before. If we had steak when I was growing up, my dad grilled it. I was a little apprehensive about ruining a perfectly good (and more expensive than our normal budget) piece of meat! I asked the butcher for directions, and followed them religiously to delicious results!

Menu:
Ribeye steak
Green beans
Mashed potatoes
Chocolate cake

I bought fresh green beans at a local Farmer's market (see previous post) and I blanched them in chicken stock (reserved it), then dressed them with olive oil, lemon juice and cracked pepper.
I boiled potatoes, and mashed them with the reserved chicken stock and some margarine.
For the rib-eye steak: I seared it in a frying pan until browned on both sides, then placed it on a cookie sheet covered in foil, gently tented foil over it leaving room to breathe, and baked it in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. I then let it rest, still covered, for 10 minutes before serving.

The final product:


For the cake, I followed the Barefoot Contessa at Home recipe for Beatty's Chocolate Cake and chocolate frosting.

For the cake, I did not have two same-sized round cake pans so I improvised with two different sized ones. For the frosting, I missed the direction about not using chocolate chips due to stabilizers, so after being in the fridge the frosting turned lumpy as the chips tried to maintain their pre-melted shapes. I also left out the egg yolk and instant coffee.

The very homemade-but-still-tasty looking final product:

Merguez

I decided to explore Tower Grover Farmer's market looking for things to cook for my husband's birthday dinner. While I did find some great green beans, I did not find the perfect steak. What I did find, however, was merguez, Moroccan-style lamb sausages. They were slightly thicker and less spicy than I prefer, but with them I made wonderful Merguez shakshouka, my style.

Ingredients:
1 onion
2 small bell peppers, (I prefer sweeter red, yellow or orange)
1 very fresh tomato
4 Merguez sausage links
2 eggs

Supplies:
Frying pan
Knife and cutting board
Wooden utensil for stirring
Bowl and fork for beating eggs

Start by preparing the vegetables:

Chop the onion into thin slices.

Chop the peppers into thin slices, discarding the seeds.

Dice the tomato, keeping the juice.

Heat up a large pan to medium and cook the merguez in their own grease until the outside is browned and they are no longer raw. I punctured the casing to prevent them from popping.

Remove them from the pan, and chop into bite-sized chunks.
Add the vegetables to the pan to cook in the sausage grease until they reach desired consistency ( I like the onions and peppers on the softer side.)

Beat two eggs and return the sausage chunks to the pan to heat through.

Turn the heat up slightly, and pour the eggs over the meat and veggies. As they set, stir gently so that they scramble.

Plate and enjoy!