i really am going back to my vegetarian ways, but as a sort of last supper, i grilled up some black pepper crusted filet with a red pepper goat cheese sauce, crab cakes with sauteed spinach, baby artichokes, crispy roasted red and yellow new potatoes, and some sea scallops for dennis....this was after making dennis chicken moscato (chicken marsala only with moscato wine) for lunch; after making it, i really wished i would have taken pictures, so when dinner time came around i made up for it...
these are baby artichokes, the produce man was so happy i was buying them, he came over and put a manager's special 99 cent sticker on there for me. this made me very happy, even happier than the artichokes themselves.
i've never worked with fresh artichokes before and in retrospect i shold have peeled off more layers...anyways, start by cutting off the stem
next cut off the top
now cut them in half, and put them in a bowl of water with lemon juice until you are ready to use them
in a saucepan, combine some butter (NOT margarine) and a little olive oil
now add some garlic..i'm lazy so i use prechopped stuff packed in water...ignore all the spillage that occured on the stove...
add some sea salt and grind up some fresh black pepper...then i added some white wine
soon they will look like this:
i found some beautiful, tiny little red and yellow potatoes at the store, so roasted potatoes seemed like a logical companion.
quarter, half or whole - just make sure everything is the same size. if i'm roasting, i rinse with water and pat dry.
since my dishwasher is broken, i try to take shortcuts as possible...such as putting aluminum foil in the bottom of my jelly roll pan. then i coarsly ground a bunch of black pepper and tossed in some seasalt before drizzling with a touch of EVOO (sorry RR haters) and some of my new favorite use on everything condiment.
at this point, the logical thing would be for me to show you a picture of them coming out of the 450 degree oven where they had been roasting for the past 20 or so minutes...but apparently i failed to take a picture. so here is one of my dog looking cute instead...
i love a good garnish, especially when it has something to do with things i love, like red peppers and goat cheese.
take a jar of red peppers packed in water, which can be purchased for 99 cents at big lots btw, and toss them into your food processor, along with EVOO, black pepper, garlic and crumbled goat cheese....
when you are done, pour in a sauce pan with a little butter and more goat cheese, and simmer while you are getting everything else ready....run a spatula through it every once in a while to make sure it doesn't stick because that would be unforgiveable.
i should have mentioned that the first thing you want to do is lay out your steaks for at least 20 minutes. to me, any steak that isn't filet just isn't worth eating...unless maybe it is london broil. select a nice bright red piece and don't be afraid to ask your meat counter guy to let you smell it...you sniffing his meat may be the highlight of his day.
my grill has a "sear" setting on it, and if yours does too - now is the time to use it. fire that baby up and let it get good and hot - like 500-600 degrees. this is also something you want to do at the beginning.
grind a crap-ton of black pepper and some sea salt into a dish, and roll your filet around in it...i just did the edges primarily but this isn't a fussy thing - however you want to do it works. sprinkle it liberally with sea salt, if you are eating this meal, then worrying about the sodium at this point is like peeing in the ocean.
there are lots of great seasonings and marinades out there for meat, and if i was using a tough cut like a london broil, then heck yeah i would be marinating it for hours or even overnight...but since i'm using filet, all i want touching my meat is black pepper, salt, and a firey hot grill.
try not to raise the lid much, unless you are taking a quick picture like this one
then clamp the lid down, and depending on your preference for raw flesh, leave it until you are ready to flip because i cannot stress this enough: ONLY FLIP/MOVE IT ONCE! i was using a pretty thick filet so i left it for around 5 minutes a side, but in retrospect it could have just been cooked for 4....we like our filet on the rare side of medium rare.
now i also made dennis scallops but i don't fuss with those much, mainly because i dont' like to eat scallops i've made myself..it grosses me out. but here is a picture of them sitting in some vinegarette and black pepper and wine, waiting to go on the grill when i have 6 minutes left becuase they need only about 3 minutes a side.
after all that i realize that this was a before the marinade pictures. sorry.
i also mentioned crab cakes....i didn't make these, i just purchased them from the seafood counter. to cook them, you want to use a non-nonstick skillet so they get a good crust on them. I realized all my skillets were nonstick so i used a saucepan.
you also want to use a butter/olive oil mixture but just a bit so they aren't greasy. then pat them off with a papertowel before you plate them up. I topped mine with just a little sauteed spinach and drizzled them with the red pepper sauce.
when your steak is done, pour some more red pepper sauce on your plate, and plop that bad boy down, don't move him for something like 7 minutes or all the juice will run out and you will be sad. i topped mine with goat cheese and more red pepper sauce - did i mention i love it?
my finished plate looked like this:
my husband's reaction looked like this:
max's reaction looked like this:
and now our arteries look like this:
2 comments:
from now on, i'm comin to your house for dinner.
The meat-sniffing comment nearly made me douse my computer in Coke Cherry Zero. Thank you for that.
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