The Real Man's Dinner

I showcased the dessert of the birthday guy, but I thought we should just briefly show the main course. It was amazing. My dad should get the feast of a king for his birthday right? Prime rib. We don't see much of this around here so we wanted it to be perfect. I think it was cooked to supreme perfection, seasoned and given the full magnitude of the gardener's bounty. Starting with his own grown onions, herbs and spices.

We used the recipe from Food Network's Guy Fieri for Dry Aged Prime Rib Roast (www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/guy-fieri/) for the dry aging process as well as the seasoning his directions are superb!. Adding of course some of our own tweaks. To the spice blend we added 1T of fresh ground fennel seed to the rub as well as using 2T of fresh thyme instead of the dry. In the Au Jus, we used 1/3 cup tomato paste in place of the wine, as we don't cook with wine here.

One of my father's specialities, is fresh grown corn. It wasn't until my adulthood that I really came to a full appreciation of the fact that as a child I could just walk out the back door and pull a fresh ear of corn right from the field, husk it and plunge it into boiling water. It couldn't be more sweet and perfect! Mom preserved an immense amount of the bounty from this summer in freezer bags. So I was giddy to use some in a homemade corn pudding. My recipe:

8 cups fresh or frozen corn, off the cob

1 cup heavy cream

2T fresh chopped thyme

1 tsp crushed garlic

1T flour

1 package Boursin garlic and fines herb cheese

1 tsp fresh ground pepper

1 tsp fresh sea salt.

Combine all ingredients and bake 375 degrees, 45 minutes in a 9 inch by 13 inch casserole, covered.

Dad grew a huge amount of buttercup squash this summer. Not to be confused with a butter-nut squash. This is a different breed. They are the size of a medium pumpkin, but fully ripe are green. Pumpkin could probably be used for this recipe. This one was about 3 lbs. In the Fall they harvested so many of these squash that he took a large amount to the food bank. Mom had to winkle this information out of him. He's just that way. He knew that our family wouldn't use the full amount and he wanted to give back.
I wanted to make an amazing "something with this home grown squash. So we used my mom's homemade Danish Medisterpolse. I'm having a problem getting the computer to do links today, but she makes this at Thanksgiving and then freezes it in mass. I have her recipe here on my blog in November. To 1 lb of her sausage we added 1 granny smith apple, cored and chopped, 3T bell pepper, 1tsp fresh thyme 1/2 lb fresh crimini mushrooms, chopped, 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Saute 10-15 minutes.

Stuff the sausage stuffing in the buttercup squash. This squash is roughly the size of a basketball. No dribbling this...except I dribble spittle when I drool. Wrap the whole thing in heavy foil and place on a sheet pan. Bake 375 degrees 2 hours.

At service, remove the foil. Place it on your head to avoid alien mind control. Or, just throw the foil in the trash. Cut the squash down the sides about 3/4 the way with the filling just staying piled in the middle. It's an amazingly dramatic presentation.

Yes...the kids will eat it too. The Mini Professor thought it was heaven.

There you go.