HOW TO: make the best fucking steak

Alternate titles for this post:

How to make a perfect steak
How to get a restaurant-quality steak at home
Put away the steak sauce

- - -

This is a 10 oz New York Strip Steak that cost six dollars at the grocery store. One way to look at that is that you could spend anywhere from $30 to $50 for a NY Strip at a steakhouse. Another way to look at it is that you can spend six dollars getting a "value meal" at McDonalds.

First step, getting the steak out of the fridge and letting it come closer to room temperature sitting on the counter. I start by rubbing the whole steak in olive oil, a little salt and pepper. Also, right away I get my pan up a hair past medium on the stove.

While that's resting, I start cooking the asparagus. I'm using frozen spears, turn the oven to 425, cover in a drizzle of olive oil, bit of balsamic, salt, pepper, and whatever else seasonings seems appropriate. Goes in the oven.

Once my pan is hot and pour some more olive oil in the pan, and in goes the steak.


Boom! Now we're cooking. Literally. I don't touch it for 4-5 minutes. What's neat is that by looking at the side, you can see it cooking. My goal is to get that juicy, bright pink medium center with a nice crust on the outside. If that's not your goal, you could do a variety of other things, including finishing it in the oven, under the broiler, whatever--I believe what Alton Brown says, "If you like your meat well-done, you don't like meat."

So I flip it over, and you can see in this next picture how you can see the meat has cooked through on the (now) top side. After I flip I like to give the side that was just cooking and crusting a nice coating of seasoning salt and montreal steak seasoning.


The way it works out, is that by the time I get a good crust on the outsides, it's just about cooked how I want it. For fun, I put about half a pat of butter in the pan, and let the meat cook in the butter for 30 seconds, and then repeat on the other side. Just for that final color and taste.

Then I remove it to the plate. SUPER IMPORTANT STEP: I let it rest for at least 5 minutes. It works out that the asparagus has been in the oven for about 15 minutes now, so it's almost done.

So I take a little bit of white wine, pour it in the now empty steak pan to deglaze it, and add the asparagus. I let that cook for a minute or two, to absorb some nice flavor and color of the wine and steak drippings.


Now it's time for plating. Here comes the money shot.


Boom! Look at that crust. Look at the pink center. But wait there's more. Let's cut that bad boy open. Here's what it looks like, halfway though the meal.


Juicy, pink center and crust on the outside. Asparagus that tastes delicious and provides a nice, earthy contrast to the meat. So good. I did the same treatment last week with a 12 oz ribeye and they both turned out perfect.

homemade lasagna

It's not a how-to, you just layer and bake.

Ingredients:
half of a box of no boil noodles (box costs 1.99)
tub of ricotta (2.99)
pound of italian sausage (4.99)
tomatoes for sauce (2.99)
shredded parm (2)
peppers (1)

So it did cost $16, a little steep for homemade fare. But I did get 8 man-sized dinners out of it, so economical in the long run. Turns out it was a little too saucy, not enough ricotta, and I wish I had kept the foil on the whole time because the top layer was a little crusty for my taste.

the joys of a blt and auto-levels

(1/20 - f5 - ISO2000)

Above is a BLT. Minus, of course, the T. Who likes tomatoes? Anyways, great sandwich, and great looking. But last night I discovered a one-second photoshop tip that turns the above picture, into the below picture. It's called auto-level and I think it's quite an improvement.

italian food goals

I'm reading Heat by Bill Buford. The result is that I have goals of some Italian foods that I would like to learn how to make in my lifetime. I've already made my own pizza and my own all-purpose pasta/pizza sauce, but both of those are very Americanized.

Here are some dishes to learn over a lifetime:

• braised short ribs
• fresh handmade pasta
• a ragu bolognese (or this one) (or the one from this book that I own) i would choose beef, pork, and pancetta (over egg pappardelle)
• carbonara recipe from the Hazan book
  
• a ravioli

homemade pizza throwdown

On Saturday, I made two homemade pizzas. It was a Throwdown!

First up, I made my own crust using this recipe. I topped it with Trader Joe's pizza sauce. Then I sliced half of a 8oz. ball of Trader Joe's fresh mozzarella and topped half with pepperoni and all of it with peppers and onions.

It was barely edible. Hmmm, perhaps that's the wrong way to start. It looked like pizza. It sort of tasted like pizza. Basically the crust was really bad. Doughy, and bland, it was not suitable for guests. The sauce, also bland. It added nothing. But the cheese and toppings were fresh and delicious.

So armed with that knowledge, I kept the same toppings, but this time used Trader Joe's pizza dough and my own personal recipe for Italian sauce.

Here's what it looked like covered with the remaining 4oz. of fresh mozz: (you can see my homemade pasta sauce next to it)




Here's what it looked like right before I put it in the oven, topped with a 3-pepper blend, onion, and 1/2 pepperoni.



And here's what it looked like after it was finished baking:


The verdict: the cheese and toppings are right on. I could have tried using shredded mozz, but the fresh stuff really popped with flavor. The sauce...made all the difference. I gotta say , my homemade sauce (that I used last night to top angel hair) works just as well on pizza as it does on pasta. As for the Trader Joe's ready to bake pizza dough? It was pretty good. Not great enough to say I won't try other crust options, but it did make a damn good pizza. Mrs. Hoagie Central approved.