A excellent, relatively quick dinner– Grilled steak, onions, and peppers. A fiery, fruity salsa made from grilled/blistered rocoto peppers, olive oil, lime juice, and salt. And tortillas also cooked on the grill as an experiment….
Starting each tortilla on a cast iron skillet for a minute gave it a skin on the bottom that prevented the soft masa from drooping down through the grating– then I transferred each tortilla to the grill, making it easy to quickly cook 4-6 in parallel.
After years of successfully cooking steak in a traditional way (salted a few hours ahead of time, then high heat on a grill or a skillet on the stovetop followed by a 5-10 minute rest), I gave the “reverse sear” technique a try.
The general idea is to bake / roast the steak at lower temperature until it’s almost done, then sear each side on a hot grill. The slower, lower-temperature approach should gradually and uniformly cook the meat, while the sear browns the outer layer for flavor which maintaining the juicy center (especially on a thick steak).
After trying this a few times, a simple weeknight compromise in the level of effort that works for me is to set up a grill for indirect cooking (fire on one side, steaks on the other) at around 275, roast the steaks with the lid closed until they’re at 115-120F internal temperature (20-40 minutes depending on thickness), take them out to rest while I open the vents and crank the grill up to high temperature (500F), then sear a minute or so on each side (final internal temp 125-130).
The end result of the best attempt– beautifully done, tender, and delicious:
I wouldn’t say I’m a convert to *always* cooking it in this way, or am convinced it automatically makes a better steak– but it works well and does give a bit more latitude in the timing, where plus or minus 1 minute doesn’t rapidly take you past medium-rare.
In the future I’m curious to combine this with some fruit woods as a way to lightly smoke a steak, since it’s in the grill for longer than a traditional hot-seared steak.
From earlier this summer, a bowl mostly picked from our little urban raised-bed garden: Armenian cucumber, tomatoes, blistered Padron peppers, sliced jalapeno (along with a soft-boiled egg and some sardines).
I wish I ate like this all the time.
Our first basil harvest put to good use on a summer evening.
How to cook thin ribeye steaks? Rub with salt, pepper, and juice from crushed garlic cloves, let sit 10 minutes, preheat a skillet over high heat with a little beef fat, then cook quickly (just over 1 minute per side), remove to a plate, and let rest under tented foil before slicing.
Melting a pat of butter + goat cheese on top is optional. As is eating with lentils and romanesco in front of a roaring fire and jealous dog.
I have mixed luck with soup, but this weekend I made the best lentil soup I’ve had. And no, that’s not intended to be damning-with-faint-lentil-praise — it was delicious.
I used The New Best Recipe for initial inspiration (their key insight being sweating the lentils first), but also made some changes:
I cut two strips of bacon into pieces and cooked them until done but not crispy.
I sauteed two minced shallots in the bacon fat (with the bacon still in) a few minutes until translucent, added 3 cloves of crushed garlic, 2 bay leaves, a crushed dried nora pepper from Tierra Farms, and about 1tsp of whole cardamom seed, turmeric, and cayenne powder, a little black pepper, and sauteed/toasted that for a few minutes.
I sorted and rinsed a cup of lentils, then added them to the spices (without any other liquid) and cooked them for about 8 minutes on medium, stirring. This was the “sweating”.
Then I added about 1/4 cup of cooking rice wine, 2 cups of chicken stock, 3 cups of water, brought them to a boil, then turned it down to a simmer and cooked for about 20 minutes– the lentils were tender but not mushy or falling apart. I fished out the bay leaves, then used an immersion blender to blend a small amount of the soup.
Finally, I tossed in a whole head of spinach (rinsed and de-stemmed), and gave it 2 minutes in the simmering soup to slightly wilt.
At this point, it was already good, but I squeezed a quarter lemon’s worth of juice into the bowl before eating and it was even better (addition of something acidic had worked well when I made black bean soup). I also chopped up some stale bread I had.
Great success!
Using the new pressure cooker to try to make beans quickly:
A mix of classy-looking anasazi beans and white navy beans from Tierra Farms, soaked for about 12 hours, drained, then combined with 3 cups water per cup beans, half an onion, two bay leaves, two dried guajillo chiles, a few garlic cloves. Pressure cooked for 15 minutes (from the time the steam started escaping), which it turns out was longer than needed– they were very soft by the end of this.
At the same time, a few slices of bacon, a diced onion, and a few cloves of minced garlic were fried, then mixed into the cooked beans along with a shredded head of red kale, some paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper, and simmered for another 20 minutes or so. Good, though it could have simmered for longer. I’ll see how it is after sitting a day.
Also part of dinner: squash (butternut squash cut in half, rubbed with sesame oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted at 400F until soft– about 30 minutes. Kept in the fridge for a day, then reheated and mixed with a bit of maple syrup), a steak (seared on a stovetop grill), salad (spinach, pomegranate seeds, olive oil, white balsamic vinegar), Acme sourdough, tea, wine, and chocolate. A simple feast with friends, from about an hour of evening-cooking effort.
Helping a friend work through his CSA on a cold and somewhat gloomy evening:
Soup of sauteed onions/garlic/carrots, kidney beans (white and black, half mashed), chicken broth, sage, parsley, and roasted garlic precooked sausage, simmered together for 10-15 minutes. Then a full head of shredded escarole was added for another 5 minutes (covered). And hey, the rest of the soup actually managed to keep the escarole in check and mask the bitterness.
Roasted broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage (I’d never tried roasting cabbage– crispy/soft and delicious).
Wild rice.
The CSA box this week was potatoes, onions, celery root, beets, sprouts, and kiwis, so continuing my CSA-inspired-dinner-with-one-or-more-friends Tuesdays: Shepherd’s Pie!
I’ve always been a sucker for shepherd’s pie, and this was a very simple version, but it turned out especially well. The bits of diced beet were a nice touch.
Apparently I’ve been on a steak-cooking kick— three times in three weeks?
I shopped at Olivier’s Butchery for the first time today, and picked up a grass-fed filet mignon. Sure, not cheap per pound… but $9 for what ended up being one of the better steaks of my life isn’t bad compared to going out…
Prep counter: steak covered in black pepper and a little salt on both sides, green beans, baby broccoli, sunflower sprouts (all from the CSA box), and shallots.
After heating some olive oil and peanut oil over medium heat in a cast iron skillet, I dropped in the (thick) steak:
After four and a half minutes on each side, I took the steak off and let it rest under a foil tent (does that actually make a difference?) for 5 minutes, while I lightly steamed the beans and baby broccoli and made a pan sauce:
Here it is: pepper-crusted filet mignon (medium-rare) with a simple pan sauce and three kinds of green vegetables:
Very good!
The Robot Must Eat 