Local Surf & Turf

After a one hour commute over the George Washington Bridge I was grumpy but prepared to make the dinner I'd planned on starting an hour sooner. I had a lot of time to think simultaneously about what I could do with the various items in my fridge, warming up in my car, and my hatred of New Jersey drivers.



We started off with this interesting cheese I found at the local cheese shop. It's called Bergfex, a cheese I'd never heard of until yesterday. It's made in Styria, a state in southeast Austria. My cheese guy called it the "poor man's raclette." He also noted that it may be best used with a grilled cheese or a melting cheese. I ignored his advice and served it simply with some sourdough bread. I think my cheese guy was right, however, it was certainly a very interesting cheese eaten plain with bread.



For a salad I used some of the red romaine from the farm with the farm scallions, goat cheese, crushed pecans, and some of the remaining dried Michigan cherries.





For the main course I got a top loin steak from Simply Grazin' Organic Farm. I hate to join the throngs of insufferable people who bruise themselves by patting themselves on the back so hard about eating grass fed beef so I will leave it up to your imagination to decide how this beef was fed.



I accompanied the steak with boiled potatoes, truffle oil, and butter. Also I picked up some more fantastic local sea scallops from Bedford, New Jersey. I asked my scallop monger if he had any shells he could give me and he happily handed over a shell which made for a great presentation. He then commented that he'd been waiting all day for someone to ask him for a scallop shell. I was pleased that I could assist in ridding him of his excess shells. The woman who rung me up thought that I was getting the shell because I was a shell collector. I didn't bother trying to explain.



For wine we had some Goats du Roam which was a sufficiently inexpensive and humorously labeled wine to delight our palates.



Jen's birthday is tomorrow. Generally I make her a fruit tart. Tonight I didn't have time so I picked up this fruit tart at the store. After I arrived home Jen, the meddler that she is, grabbed the bag concealing the tart and picked it up, tilting the tart 90 degrees and destroying the wonderfully constructed fruit topping. This caused me to have to reconstruct the tart in the kitchen prior to bringing it out. As you can see, it was not a perfect reconstruction.

Jen likes to be very nosy around the time of her birthday. It is my greatest challenge in life.