60 Days of Steak: Weekend Extravaganza!

Clearly, as you all know, I'm a mad crazy weekend party animal. I live for the fast paced crowded noise of...other people, and rarely isolate myself at all. But even I sometimes admit I go too far. This past weekend was one of those times. Not only did I do a steak on Saturday, but I did ANOTHER steak on Sunday, and both of them 10oz strips. Barely into the new Jewish calendar and already racking up the list of things to atone for. But chaos is my milk and madness my honey.

Saturday Night Mashed Garlic and Irish Peas

The Meat

After the defeat of the last steak I did, I was worried about excess water retention boiling rather than cooking the meat. At least, that's what the article I had read lead me to believe since the grey mess I had fit the profile. Perhaps a little over paranoid about doing it again, I followed this said articles suggestion about massive over salting to draw out the water. In preparation this time, I smothered the poor piece of meat in a thick coat of coarse kosher salt on both sides following carefully the instruction, "as if a child had done it". Since my cooking skills rival that of your below average child, that was easy.

The internet is a tricky place and it's important to keep in mind that anyone can post whatever they like from their prison cell or asylum, perhaps as a mad-capped joke or revenge on society. It is my understanding that there is a heavy salting method that doesn't turn your meat into jerky but this article was a little vague about specifics. Specifics such as, how to accurately remove the waterlogged salt when you're ready to cook, or how much of it will burrow its way into your steak. But my luck sometimes astounds me and, though admittedly a tad on the salty side and a bit dry, it was not a loss. It was still a descent steak. Not my finest by any delusion, but not nearly as bad as it could have been in my unsupervised hands.

Also, when told to sear the steak the steak for 3 minutes each side then turn down to a "moderate" heat and continue to cook for ten minutes turning over every two minutes, keep in mind that "moderate" is a widely variously interpreted term. At least to me. Luckily, as I've actually been growing a sense of instinct toward these steaks, I caught right away that it was ready much much faster than ten minutes. It was indeed probably ready after the searing, but I caught it quick enough that there was some remanence of pink and juicy somewhere in the center.

The Mash

I do love garlic. It's no black peppercorn or anything, but it is a fine, fine piece of foodery. The Garlic mash for the topper was fun and delicious and barely survived my ADD. I read directions. Compensating for lack of experience, I treat all these recipes like fragile chemistry experiments while I gather an understand of what the hell goes on while cooking. But occasionally I read a word and my brain decides to process it as something else. Occasionally though, my cat like reflexes save the day. While this was not one of those times, a second attempt and thoughtful adaptation prevailed.

It seemed simple, Simmer the garlic in chicken stock (in my case broth since the deli counter at the store just made soup and didn't have enough stock left to sell), then peel the skin off, toss the broth and mixture in a blender with salt and butter and only slightly blend to retain texture like a heated jelly. Texture? Jelly? What the hell were they talking about this is pretty much garlic chicken soup.

Here's an important tip. 3 heads of garlic is a tad more than 3 cloves of garlic. This I do know, I just must have missed that word initially. Well, I didn't have 3 heads of garlic, in fact, I only had a couple cloves left. But cutting down using my own version of approximation, I was able to render the garlic mash in a 3 clove portion and it was good stuff.

Irish Peas

Nothing should have a title for containing a couple things I may have tossed on my peas anyway. It's like calling a rum and coke with a lime wedge a cuba libre. It always just felt silly when people asked for them. Peas are a wonderful and easy food. I have even made peas prior to this endeavor. These "Irish" Peas were peas tossed with butter, mint, salt and pepper without even a hint or wink anywhere in the directions to incorporate baileys or Tullamore Dew. While they were good and all, there was something amiss about them that took me a moment of silent contemplation to figure out.

I had forgotten the number one rule of peas. How could I be so foolish? Peas need a friend. Preferably a starch. Poor lonely peas. The mint and gang just weren't enough to make them sing. I had to find the peas a friend, but it would have to wait for the Sunday night citrus and potato ho-down.

The Sunday Night Citrus and Potato Ho-Down

I like oranges, lemons, grapefruit, limes, all that jazz, and I've been wanting to get them together with the steaks since this all began. Starting to play with marinade's, I found a "spicy orange" one that seemed to fit the bill for now. Since it was an overnight marinade for both the meat and the red peppers, I prepared that before the Saturday night steak since by now I've learned that when I've finished one of these meals, I'm done for the day.

The Marinade was a blender full of orange zest, orange juice from the the ones I just zested, vegetable oil, garlic (yes, a couple cloves not heads or bulbs), soy sauce, crushed red pepper, cider vinegar, and salt. Side note: blending till smooth is much easier than slight blending to leave texture (freaking mashed garlic still haunting me).

Sure, it's enough marinade for the intended 6 steaks, but eh, what can you do. I'm not going to mess around with cutting stuff down all willy-nilly yet. Quartering a large red bell pepper sounds easy enough I didn't even think about it till I was standing over it knife in hand. This time the internet proved to be my friend. Who would have thought there was specific technique to it? Not I certainly, though I should have assumed since sometimes cooking can be a tremendous pain in the ass for those of us just breaking new ground. It didn't end up mattering anyhow as you shall see shortly.

Once I had the steak and peppers in a pan with the marinade, I covered in the fridge and moved onto Saturday nights affairs. To read more about Saturday night, scroll back up to the top and start over.

Robinson Bar Potatoes

Finding a suitable mate for the left over peas changed my side plans for the sunday meal and I found them some fantastic sounding potatoes. Everything this weekend with the exception of the marinade, came from Cree LeFavour's book, "The New Steak". This scalloped potato variation was apparently invented by her father to sooth cold January Idaho nights in the guest ranch.

It involved slicing red potatoes into 1/8 inch discs, and in a large, shallow oven pan that has been greased with a cut CLOVE of garlic and then butter, layering them barely overlapped into three layers. In between each layer you add slight bits of Comte cheese (which he was very specific about) kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. And yes, I did find a horrible, dirt cheap mandolin finally, but fear not for my fingertips, there's a thing you put over the vegetables and I have a better one arriving for me soon.

Once those layers are complete you pour in heavy cream so it nearly reaches the top (though sternly warned not to let it go over the top), dot a little butter and ground nutmeg and bake.

So, here's what happened with the potatoes. When they say large shallow oven pan, apparently he must mean one you can sleep in and not just the rectangular one I have opposed to the square one. I believe I had half, if not more, of the potato slices left after panning the used ones. This normally wouldn't be a problem for me except we're getting into baking here which of all my weak culinary spots, is my weakest.

After 30 minutes at 400 degrees, most of the cream should have been absorbed by the potatoes and the top nicely browning. But, mine were swimming. You see, the directions called for a certain amount of butter to grease the pan, and it did say thoroughly grease it. I didn't know I'd have so many potato slices left after this pan when I was questioning why I had to use so much damned butter to line it. But what do I know right? Also, the little bits of cheese on each layer seemed minute enough, like just for a touch of flavor, but in fact, it was twice as much as was supposed to be used in what I considered a "large" pan. So perhaps the cream had a bit of trouble absorbing into the potatoes amongst all the extra melted butter and cheese.

So it wasn't out of the oven looking as subtle and crispy as the picture would have suggested it did. It was still damn, damn good eating. Plus as an added bonus, I made a nice comte cheese sauce that worked well with...everything really. And yes, as I have a physical this week, I did try to drain off what I could of the butter/cream soup from the potatoes all the while my inner chubby, rotten toothed child kicked and screamed.

The Steak

This was another recipe made for grilling, particularly where the nice large quartered peppers are concerned. But I still don't have any charcoal. I should really get on that. So, trusty cast iron it was. But something remarkable happened. I didn't refer to any directions where the steak was concerned. I just had an understanding of how how the burner should be for the sear, how far to turn it down to finish, and for how long all of what of that was happening for. In the end, the steak was a perfect medium rare. I even just kind of knew when it was done settling afterward though inclosed in an aluminum foil tent. And not only that, but for someone who doesn't really like red peppers, realizing they were big and not being grilled, I cut them into strips and at the appropriate time put them in the pan with the steak to cook. And more amazingly, I liked them. I'm racking that all up to possession, a certain alignment of the stars or tides or something and it's certain not to happen but once every twenty years. Oh, and reheating the peas. I wasn't sure what to do without dragging the microwave out since I don't use it, and the oven was already bust making soup, so I just put them on the warm plate in the foil tent with the steak and that worked perfectly.

Here it is, and dig that fancy red pepper weaving