Make-up Post: Seared Steak w/ Wine Mushrooms.

I've been sitting on this post for about a week or so, trying to pick apart where I went wrong.

I had this great idea.  I'd sear a steak, and then create a pan-sauce for the mushrooms.  Sounds great, and I did eventually figure out how to do it (see previous post).  But this attempt...

I think now that my big mistake was using a stainless-steel pan.  Stainless (I now know) conducts heat more efficiently than non-stick, which I'd used before.  The result was a LOT of smoke, and a burn across the bottom of my pan.  No sauce to be made there!  I'd chosen the stainless pan because I wanted all the little bits that you don't seem to get as much of with a non-stick pan.  A cast-iron skillet would possibly have been a better choice, but I don't have one of those yet.  So anyway, the steak was well-seared, but still medium-rare on the inside.

OK, so there is no fond for the sauce.  Well, there is, but it's all burned, and will likely taste pretty nasty.  What to do?  I'm still working with this idea of a wine reduction, so I pour about a half-cup of wine into a pan, and start boiling.  Note to self: never stick your face directly over a pan of boiling alcohol.  Anyway, the wine reduces, and I drop in the mushrooms and some chopped garlic.  As I saute, I add a little more wine, because I notice that I'm running really low on liquid.  The result was tasty, if not what I expected.  The mushrooms absorbed an intense wine flavor.  I don't know that I'd want to eat a lot of them by themselves, but they did complement the steak.

Not my best-ever dinner.  Fortunately, Scott likes his steak crispy on the outside and medium on the inside, so I got away with it, even if the house did smell like smoke for a day or two.

Garlic Bread

Last night was a much simpler meal -- just spaghetti and sauce.  We had a little leftover bread from Tuesday night's feast, though, so I figured I'd try my hand at garlic bread.  It was surprisingly easy.  I took a few big spoonfuls of butter, and melted them down in the microwave (25 seconds at 50%).  Then I stirred in a heaping tablespoon of chopped garlic.  This left me with a bunch of liquid butter -- very tough to manage.  So, I got out a second bowl, and half-filled it with ice-water.  I set the bowl w/ the garlic butter in the ice water, and stirred until it just started to thicken.  Then I let it sit while I squeezed four slices of bread out of the remaining loaf.  By the time I had the bread sliced, the garlic mixture was just about perfect -- still spoonable, but not particularly runny.  I spooned the butter onto the bread (being careful to keep it away from the edges), and popped the slices into the toaster-oven.  The result was pretty good.  I want to try a version topped with mozzarella, but I think that will require use of the broiler.

Lemon-Pepper Stir-fried Steak w/ Mushrooms and Spinach

A week or so ago my wife bought a ton of frozen beef from a door-to-door salesman. There were a wide variety of cuts, and given how much we eat in our house, she probably saved us a good chunk of change. So far, everything has been pretty good.

On Tuesday, I took three of the lemon-pepper steaks from this collection, and cut them into 1/2-inch slices. Then I heated a stir-fry pan, sauteed up a little chopped garlic, and cooked the sliced steak. I removed the steak from the pan, added a little leftover wine that had turned to vinegar, and reduced it just a little bit. Then I dumped in a box of sliced baby-bella mushrooms, tossed them in the sauce for a minute or two, added a little more wine, covered the pan, and let them steam for about two minutes. This all got dumped into a serving bowl. The last stage of the meal was wiping out the pan, adding fresh oil and about a tablespoon-and-a-half of garlic, and sauteing some spinach.

There were no leftovers.

Two things:

1. Cooking with frozen meat is a real challenge for me, because it means I have to plan my meals a couple of days ahead of time, so the meat has time to thaw. This is not my strong suit. I tend to be more of an "it's-3:00-what-am-I-making-tonight?" type of guy. Oh, well, I guess it's good discipline, and it is easier on the budget in the long run.
2. This meal represents my first real success at cooking without ever once referring to a recipe. I was particularly pleased with the way the mushrooms came out. Pan-sauces rock!
   

Eggs Experiment

I found this in my feeds the other day, and wanted t give it a try.  I cut down the amount of onion somewhat, because the red onion I had was pretty big, and had to short the garlic, as well, because the @#$&#$ bulb I bought the other day turned out to be no good!

The result was... ok, but not great.  The siracha gave it a nice spicy finish, but it needs something on the front end.  Maybe a little pepper?

Ginger-Honey Chicken

I made all three part of this recipe today, thinking that I'd have lots of leftovers. Of course, some friends showed up. So much for the leftovers.

I burned the chicken just a little bit. Guess medium-high on my stovetop is higher than on the Publix Test Kitchen stovetop. Still, it came out pretty well. Very ginger-y, with just a hint of sweetness, perfect with a class of white wine.

The real winner here is the vanilla rice. This is the first time I've made rice not in the rice cooker, so I approached it with some trepidation. But, I followed the recipe, and covered the pan with aluminum foil for the simmering phase, and it came out just fine.

Catching up...

OK, I've been slacking on this blog for the last couple of weeks. Not sure why, but let me catch up a little.

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Tuesday is Heroes Night. The show actually airs on Mondays, but Scott games and I fence on Mondays, so we always watch it on Tuesdays (how we lived before DVR's, I'll never know). Most of the time, our friend Amber comes over to watch, as well. So it's a great excuse to work on some cooking.

Two weeks ago, Amber and I finally came up with a decent chicken stir fry. I started by using thighs, rather than breasts. That was an experience in itself, since I couldn't get boneless, and had to de-bone them myself. I am happy to report that there were no bits of finger mixed in with our chicken.

We ended up soaking the chicken in the leftover sauce from an earlier attempt, and that made the difference. Good Stir-fry!

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So, my wife says to me on Saturday afternoon that there is ground beef that needs to be cooked up that day, knowing that I had a friend's graduation party to go to that evening. So I decided to brown it with some chopped onion and garlic, and simmer it for a while in some jar spaghetti sauce. It was... ok, but it needed something, so I added a good solid handful of oregano, and that did the trick. We were able to eat off of that for a solid week!

Goulash with Caraway Seeds

When I was a kid, my mom used to make something called "Hungarian Goulash."  It was delicious.  This is not that recipe, but it's still pretty good.  To me, the interesting thing about this dish is that it's a multiple-technique recipe.  You start by browning the meat, and then you add the spices, veggies, and so forth, and stew it all for about an hour and a half.  Once again, the new Dutch Oven comes to the rescue!

I decided to make this because this weekend is a little more scheduled than normal, and I wanted something I could make on Saturday, then throw in the fridge and re-heat on Sunday.  Also, it's been cold (Florida-cold, not real-cold), and goulash is a great homey cold-weather dish.   As luck would have it, tonight was also one of the rare occasions that all four of us were home for dinner.  Sometimes, everything just works out perfectly.