meat and bones

while we were brunching in the afterglow of our hollywood sign hike a few weeks ago, my friend y4m was dropping some serious raves about a thomas keller recipe she'd tried out of his ad hoc cookbook.  "it's SO good," she said.  "you've gotta try it!"

delicious meat, roasted to perfection after being rubbed with a blend of spices for an overnight stay in the fridge?  uh, sh-yeah.  but as i'm far too cheap to spend the cash on a copy of this cookbook, i turned to the google and easily found the recipe i wanted.  one trip to the grocery store and i was all set.  i massaged those spices all over that roast, wrapped it tightly in some plastic wrap, and stuck it in the fridge.  i realize that uncooked meat generally looks pretty gross.  i don't care.  i love meat.

the next day, i pulled it out and followed the instructions - first searing the meat on both sides and adding some other magical ingredients, including some very thinly sliced lemons.  thank goodness for our awesome shun knives.

then into the oven it went.  yes, i totally macgyvered a "roasting rack" in my pan - that's one of my smaller cooling racks for cookies.  heh.

i actually should've left it in the oven a bit longer, because as i sliced it up and got closer to the middle of the roast, it was pretty red and bled like a damn stuck pig.  d-oh.  totally my fault for getting caught up in emptying my DVR queue and losing track of time.

luckily, it tasted fantastic - everything y4m had promised it would be.  and because the center slices were so rare, it heated up nicely as leftovers the next day.  i'll definitely be doing this one again - on another night when i have more time to work with.

oh, and check out these super cute cookies i got to do for a sweet little girl's 2nd birthday.  said sweet girl loves puppies, so it was easy for her mama to figure out what theme to go with for the party.

of course, the teen snickered and snorted as i got to work on doing the contrasting outline.  yes, yes, they do rather resemble double-sided peen.  okay.

but i was pleased with how they turned out, after flooding the surface with ivory-colored frosting and then piping the birthday girl's name on in purple.  a little pawprint in hot pink to match the outline over the "i" was the perfect finishing touch.

see - they didn't end up looking like big mutated dongs after all, right?