Steak on the barbie

How do we at Casa York celebrate sunny skies, the start of spring, and college hoops to die for? With steak, silly!

Grilled New York Strip with Steakhouse Sides

What I used:

• 2 steaks
• 1 large onion
• 4 or 5 cloves of garlic
• Worcestershire
• Pepper sauces
• Salt & black pepper
• 2 large potatoes
• Butter & sour cream
• Salad fixins

I believe in honesty in blogging, so there's a hint of confessional in today's post. Pretty much nothing turned out just right for this meal. Thankfully nothing turned out inedible, either. On to the run-down...

While Doug was washing up the breakfast dishes (I am so spoiled), I got the steaks started marinating.

 Thin-cut New York strips

On sale, these babies were $2.25 apiece. Hooray for affordable luxuries! First I lightly salted and peppered both sides. Then I smashed some garlic cloves, and rubbed them on the surface. I tossed in about a half an onion, coarsely cut, and added some celery seed and cilantro.

Note: marinates are a great way to use vegetable scraps, if like me you don't have compost collection. Celery leaves, bell pepper seeds, and lemon peels often make their way into my marinates. I didn't have any of that stuff on hand this particular day. Just throwing it out there.

Next I added the liquid ingredients.

 Artistic? Or just off-center?

A few splashes of Frank's Red Hot and green Tabasco went right on the meat. Then I poured Worcestershire around the edges, until the bottom of the dish was covered. I added enough water to bring the liquid level with the tops of the steaks.

Cover and pop in the fridge.

We watched basketball for a few hours before I started the potatoes. I scrubbed them in cold water and set them on squares of aluminum foil. Here's where things started coming apart. Queen Forgetful over here keeps forgetting to buy proper coarse salt. So plain old Morton would have to do. While the potatoes were still damp, I poured salt into my palm, and rubbed it all over the skins.

Aaand, you can't see the salt. Awesome.

Rolled 'em up nice and tight, put 'em in a baking dish, and popped them in a 350° oven. Mishap #2. I checked them after 30 minutes and they weren't getting done at all. Cranked it up to 400° and sulked. I was freakin HUNGRY already! Soon, it was time to start the grill.

You see what I have to put up with?

All I did, was politely suggest, he ought to hitch up his britches before I took his picture. I was trying to be nice, and not broadcast a carpenter crack on the internet. Sheesh.

Anyway, this little portable gas grill is an old friend to me. But Doug has never used it. We had a big charcoal grill in Kentucky that we opted not to bring along. We like our little cottage, but it's got no porch, i.e., no place to keep a big grill out of the rain.

I cut the rest of my onion into slices. Mishap #3. I've also grown accustomed to the big old charcoal grill, and I sliced the onion way too thick for the portable.

Time out, mmmmm... grilled onions...

Once the onions were about half-cooked, we added the steaks. I strongly advocate grilling onions alongside meat. Maybe it's inside my head, but I swear it improves the flavor of both. While the meat was on the grill, I put together a couple of salads.

Spring mix, sharp cheddar, & garlic croutons. Also, tomatoes for me!

The onions started getting black on the outside. Doug took them up. The steaks got to medium-well. Doug took them up. I pulled out the potatoes from the oven, and? Still. Not. Done. Argh!!

So he put the steaks back on the grill and turned the heat down to low. We enjoyed our salads and stalled a little more, but before long the steaks were threatening to over-cook. Screw it. Let's eat. The damn taters had been in the oven an hour! Surely, they must be ready...

Funny, it doesn't look like a poorly cooked mess...

Here's when I actually realized I'd cut the onions too thick. Black on the outside, raw in the middle. Crap. And the taters? A shade too hard inside. Double crap.

Oh well, live and learn. Next time I'll try 425° for the baked potatoes. And cut the onions thinner. And wait a little longer to bring out the meat.

In spite of all this, the well-done steaks came out tender and juicy. Thank you marinate! And thank you Douglas, for happily eating your sub-standard dinner without a complaint.

Chops, beans & fries

We eat a fair amount of pork chops around here. They're affordable, easy to fix, and reasonably low in fat. I'm posting one of my favorite meals today, and hooray for that. This is supposed to be a food blog, after all.

Dinner: Pork chops with gravy, green beans, and grandpa's home fries

I start with the green beans. Admittedly, proper Southern green beans involve a whole day on the stove and a ham hock, but this is the abbreviated version.

Fresh veggies make me so happy.

In this photo, from left to right:

• 1 lb. green beans, washed and snapped
• 1/4 cup or so of sweet yellow onion, cut in strips
• 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
• 2 green onions with the bulbs removed

Across the top there you can see a couple of potatoes and a tomato. We'll come back to those.

Uh-oh, gotta back up!

I fried about a half a pound of bacon earlier today. That grease plays a vital role in this dinner. If you want to try it without frying up the bacon, just get into your drippings can. Wait. You don't have a drippings can? That rush of wind you just felt was the South's collective gasp.

Just kidding. You can use your favorite vegetable oil, shortening, or store-bought lard for all the fat that follows.

Okay, so I took about a tablespoon of bacon grease and put it into a medium saucepan. Turned the heat on medium and let it get good and hot. I also put medium heat under a shallow skillet with the rest of the grease, and started heating up the cast iron on medium-high heat. That's three burners going -- getting intense now!

Remember those potatoes? While the pans are heating up, start slicing them into thin rounds. A fancy mandoline makes it super-easy. But I'm a cheapskate so I use my trusty chef's knife.

See if the grease is hot enough with a shake of black pepper. If it sizzles, it's ready. Toss the onion and garlic into the saucepan to sweat. Once the onion starts getting caramelized, add the green beans.

Toss gently to coat the beans.

Add about a half a cup of water and a handful of chopped green onions. Cover, and reduce the heat to low. You can pretty much forget the beans after this, except for occasional stirring.

At this point, I add about a tablespoon of sesame oil to the cast iron. I just love the flavor sesame adds to the pork chops and the forthcoming gravy, but just about any oil will do the trick.

Now we return to the taters. Carefully add them to the skillet in a single layer and sprinkle with seasoned salt. Also, turn on the oven to its lowest setting, and get a casserole dish ready.

Give the skillet a gentle shake to coat the taters' tops.

Put any remaining slices in a bowl of water to keep them from getting black. While they're cooking, turn the slices after a few minutes so both sides get brown around the edges. If they start curling up like potato chips, reduce the heat a little.

As the potatoes start getting done, take them out of the skillet, put them in the casserole, and put the casserole in the oven. This way they'll stay crispy and hot until you're ready to serve.

Add more slices as space becomes available. A word of caution, though: if they've been soaking in water, be sure to blot them dry with a paper towel or lint-free cloth. Adding water to hot grease is an awesome way to start a kitchen fire. We prefer to avoid that...

So yeah, the main course, eh? After all this the pork chops are like falling off a log. Tilt the cast iron around a bit to spread the oil evenly. Lightly salt and pepper the raw chops, then gently place them in the skillet. Make sure they're not touching each other or the skillet's sides.

Pork chops turn kind of white as they get done. Look for that white color to get about halfway up the sides. At that point they should be nice and brown on the bottom, and ready to turn.

 

This picture was supposed to show you the nice brown color. Damn.

Give the chops a few minutes to get brown on the other side, then sprinkle the pan and the chops with, oh, maybe 2 tablespoons of flour. Sorry. I'm a dash-of-this pinch-of-that kind of cook. Then add about a quarter cup of water. Go easy on the water -- it's way better to add more if your gravy gets too thick. Trying to add more flour to a too-thin gravy? Lump city.

 

By this time, I have to focus on not drooling right in the pan.

Stir frequently to keep the gravy from sticking and/or forming lumps. I like to add a little soy sauce here, instead of extra salt. It creates a nice brown color and fabulous savory flavor.

Phew! By the time the gravy is good and thick, the chops will be cooked all the way through. Both potatoes should be fried, and the green beans tender-but-firm.

Oh yeah! I forgot that tomato! During some down time I diced about a quarter of it, strictly for this lovely salad:

 

You know, to counteract all that bacon grease...

And here's the finished meal. Know how I judged its success? Doug didn't speak a word during dinner. Which, we totally ate at the table! Uncharacteristically grown up for us.

 

Proper chefs would totally hate on my messy plating.

I hope you can see why I like this meal so much. If anybody out there tries it, I'd love to hear about your results!

No Promises

My efforts at blogging always start out with such good intentions... I think of stuff to say for a while. Then all at once I realize it's been 6 months since I posted, and anybody who might have been reading has no doubt (rightfully) given up.

This time, I'm on a big cooking kick. I've found so much joy in learning to fix simple dishes from fresh ingredients. I feel better, my husband feels better, we've both lost a little weight and just can't fathom going back to a diet of prepackaged processed crap. As a bonus, we're spending about half of what we used to on food.

It would be nice to centralize and share my growing collection of recipes. Also, I kind of hope I can be an inspiration. Cooking from scratch sounds hard. Dirty. Unpleasant.

Okay, so it can get a little dirty -- just this week I slung mashed potatoes all over the kitchen with a hand mixer. Dang. That never happens with dry taters from a box. Oo, but they're so much tastier! Totally worth it! 

Basic Mashed Taters

• Peel 4 large potatoes and cut them into chunks.
• Put the chunks in a big pot and cover them with water.
• Add salt, put a lid on the pot, and set over medium/high heat.
• Bring the water up to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until you can cut through the largest chunks with a spatula.
• Drain the water (save it if you're a gravy or chowder fan -- the starchy water makes a lovely thickener).
• Put the cooked chunks in a large mixing bowl, add a stick of butter and about a cup of milk.
• OPTIONAL: Add more salt, black pepper, garlic powder, shredded cheddar, sour cream, chopped green onions, parsley -- whatever turns your crank.
• Start the mixer on low speed and work your way up. If the taters look dry or aren't mixing easily, dump in more milk.

(This is where I went awry. I was in a hurry so I jumped right in on high speed. Presto. Potato volcano.)

• Keep at it with the mixer until the potatoes are your ideal consistency. I like them a little lumpy. Some folks prefer smooth.
• Serve with extra butter, sour cream, chopped green onions... You get the drift.

This recipe makes about 6-8 generous servings (depending, of course, on the size of your potatoes).

It ain't rocket science. And it doesn't have to be gourmet, either. What I've learned in the past few months is, if you use fresh ingredients, and stick to simple combinations, it's almost impossible to screw it up.

All it takes is courage!