Is My Message Getting Through?

This past weekend, I had a fine adventure of cooking.

I'm not exceptionally great at it - I have a decent sense of 'oh fuck this is totally burning' and 'well it looks like that's about done' and 'these would taste pretty okay together.' Once you start throwing around braising and basting and stuffing and fluctuating temperatures, it gets a little too hairy for me.

So I underwent a small challenge when composing the, ahem, high-class menu for my girlfriend's birthday this past weekend. I knew I had to deal with both vegetarian and decidedly non-vegetarian people, so I had to make two entrees - and in fairly large quantities.

Here's what I ended up making:

* roast potatoes
* arugula salad with peaches and blackberries
* vietnamese dipping sauce with steak and romaine
* corn tomato and basil chowder - nytimes link
* baked apples

Some of these were thoroughly stolen. I was planning on doing something more ambitious with the apples, but I didn't end up having time.

The one that is thoroughly my own is the Vietnamese dipping sauce. At least, I think that's its national origin. Here's my take on it:

1/3 cup fish sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
4-5 large garlic cloves
3 tablespoons sugar
6 hot peppers (your choice of variety - I use chilies, they are rad)
1 head of romaine lettuce
1 1/2 pounds of steak (I usually use sirloin)
1 1/2 cups of rice

Conjure yourself a fair-sized dipping bowl. Pour the fish sauce, lemon juice, and sugar in. Mix thoroughly - taste and make sure you've got some acceptable combination of sour, sweet, and salty going on. Mince the garlic and the peppers and add them to the mix. Make sure that you're not adding too many peppers - that can make this sauce somewhat of a masochistic food otherwise.

Cube the steak and grill it - I usually leave it somewhat rare.

Cook the rice.

De...frock? the lettuce, leaving the leaves intact.

Procure yourself a plate for the steak, a bowl for the rice, and a plate for the lettuce leaves. Wrap steak and rice in lettuce, dip in sauce, eat, repeat. This is probably proportions for 2-3 people.

It's super-awesome, I promise. It's also relatively fast - the longest thing is going to be cooking the rice.