Steak Frites – Annie Campbell

A classic American steak house dinner with house-made condiments and all the fries you can eat! We rented a commercial fryer, along with a six foot commercial grill, and the two provided a restaurant quality meal with all of the perks of our cozy patio. It is worth noting that people just love shrimp cocktail. They can’t get enough. I like to roast jumbo shrimp and serve them hot: crowd pleaser. Plus, the meal was made extra special with my latest discovery: bruised fruit deals at the farmer’s market! Barely squashed heirloom tomatoes, for eighty cents a pound, yielded fresh curried ketchup, and soon-to-be-tossed peaches became a peach bourbon bbq sauce. These, in addition to a rosemary aioli, were lovely dates for our fries. Amy and I (both huge lovers of condiments and dips) loaded them all into jars, which she labeled, and each guest got their own set…sort of like heaven. Greg was the master fryer and fries kept a coming, packaged in parchment cones that Amy (show off that she is) neatly sewed. The rib-eyes, creamed spinach and wild mushrooms all became somewhat of afterthoughts to those piping hot fries! Rounding out the dinner, banana cream pie, inspired by my friend Deirdre. On her suggestion, I made Magnolia Bakery’s banana pudding as the filling for my vanilla wafer pie crust: perfection (and I didn’t even know I liked banana cream pie!) For her musings on the recipe, click here.