Girlie Party + Thai Beef & Noodles May 4, 2008

Last night was the third installment of our Sex and the City girlie party! The first one I held right after I started grad school (circa 2005) and the second was in February as a “who cares about V-Day - I love my girlfriends! night.” It was about time to flex my “mad” (haha) baking skills! We ate all (well not allll) of those lovely desserts, I made a steak thai pasta dish from tyler florence for dinner and we got our sex and the city fix!

Check out the cheese plate and dinner recipe below…

I got a small wedge of the saint azur blue cheese and a soft cow milk cheese (like a brie…whose name escapes me…crap!) from wegmans and they were so tasty with my pepperidge farm crackers and fruit.

Onto our meal! The picture looks insanely strange, and the meat might be a little overcooked, but it was still more than edibly delicious

Ingredients:

3 strip steaks (brought to room temperature and seasoned well with s&p)
pint and a half of cherry tomatoes
big handful of arugula
1.25 lb vermicelli pasta
1/4 cup roasted peanuts

Sauce:
1 thai bird chile (which weighed nothing and would not register on the scale at wegmans!)
another big handful of arugula
cup (?) of olive oil (I kept eyeing it to make the sauce a bit thinner)
1/4 cup roasted peanuts
1 tsp salt

Directions:
1) Heat 2 count olive oil over medium-high heat until it smokes in oven proof pan. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and get a big pot of water ready for pasta. Add steaks and cook a couple minutes on each side so that it is nice and browned!
2) Move steaks to the sides of the pan, add cherry tomatoes, a splash of evoo and some salt and pepper and cook for a minute to get those tomatoes heating up.
3) Place pan in the oven and cook for 10 minutes.
4) In the meantime, put sauce ingredients in blender and get pulsing!
5) Cook pasta (3 minutes), drain add to large bowl. Add extra arugula, cooked cherry tomatoes, and peanuts to bowl and then cover with sauce and stir well! (very well…especially when you make too much pasta!) Serve a portion of pasta onto each plate and then top with slices of beef!