Sunday lunch: recipe source hodgepodge edition. I’ve gotten some new cookbooks and magazine issues, so I’m mixing and matching!

1. Rare Roast Beef with Fresh Herbs and Basil Oil (Food and Wine, March 2011)
Rare beef actually grosses me out because I feel like it’s about one step away from being raw. So I baked this until it was about 125 degrees instead of the 110 called for in the recipe, and the roast eventually climbed to 140 while it rested. It still ended up pink, soft, juicy, and delicious.

2. Pommes de Terre Sautées [Pan-seared Potatoes] (Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Alfred A. Knopf 2010)
The famed Julia Child cookbooks arrived a couple weeks ago, though I haven’t cooked much out of them yet, because just looking at a recipe makes me have a heart attack. So much cream! So much butter! Yikes. This side dish seemed innocuous enough that I decided to try it. The process involves evenly searing Dutch potatoes in—what else—butter in order to prevent them from sticking to the skillet while you cover and cook them the rest of the way. This results in an amazingly tasty and tender potato. Peeling all of them to be as round as possible, however, is a gigantic pain in the butt.

3. Arugula Salad with Almonds and Parmesan (Everyday Food, June 2010)
After listening to a friend’s multiple rants about her inability to find arugula where she lives, a cosmically comical turn of events led to me staring at a salad aisle completely devoid of arugula. Curse you, cosmos! So I replaced it with spring mix and added some cucumber.

4. New York-Style Crumb Cake (Martha Stewart Living, March 2011)
Very good, but very rich—so. much. butter.—and the blueberry jam variation I chose to do made it quite sweet. Next time, I’ll use fresh berries to cut down on the sugar. The richness and sweetness made this cake last four days, something utterly unheard of for dessert in this house.

5. Lemon-Mint Tea
Having some leftover fresh mint and lemons that needed using up, I whipped up a quick lemon-mint tea:

4½ cups water
⅓ cup sugar
1 tbsp loose-leaf black tea
juice of a couple lemons (~¼ cup)
a few sprigs of fresh mint

Combine 2 cups water and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Add tea and mint sprigs, let brew for a few minutes. Strain tea into a pitcher; add remaining water and lemon juice. Refrigerate and add ice for iced tea.