Steak Dinner

People are always asking me cooking questions: how much to make, how long to cook it, etc.  This is all well and good until they ask me about cooking meat. I may know a little more than the average person about cooking meat, but that is mostly because of a cooking-methods class I took (so many years ago by now!).  I almost never cook plain meat, like, for example, a steak.

As far as I can remember, I have eaten five beef steaks in my life.  There may have been one or two more, but I'm not positive.  The first was at a Girl Scout camp thing when I was maybe 10 or 11.  The second was when I was dating Evan, and we had surf and turf at a restaurant for a business Christmas party.  The third was a steak dinner I made for Evan when he visited me (that steak was way overcooked!).  The fourth was when Zach and I had a free meal/night at a hotel for a Christmas present from brother and sister-in-law.  And this brings us to the fifth and most recent.

We went to Zach's grandparents' "farm" (aka "cabin" (house) and tons of land), and they were getting ready to grill some steaks when it was time for us to leave.  They sent two frozen steaks along with us, and a few days later, we had our fancy dinner.

Medium-rare (let's be honest, they turned out to be medium) steak with mushrooms and onions, baked sweet potato with cinnamon butter, and roasted asparagus.  And a frond of dill for decoration.

Zach's brother has been learning the art of vinification and had given us two bottles of "amber red" recently.

Jeremiah wine!

One must (obviously) follow a steak dinner with dessert.  We had cheesecake and decaf coffee.

Served on our fancy Turkish tea set

 The cheesecake was far from homemade, alas.  Zach wanted cheesecake on our vacation, and the only spring-form pan I have is huge.  We realized it would be cheaper (and less caloric) to buy a small one instead of make a huge one.  We put homemade rhubarb preserves on top, so I guess it's slightly homemade.  And you can't ignore those amazing homemade chocolate swirls on the plate.  Nothing says fancy like chocolate swirls!

So, there's the story of our steak dinner.  I'm going to try to mix some new meals in with the old ones, so that I'm not always looking at ancient, blurry photos, trying to guess what we were eating back in the day (there are a lot of meals that involve whole wheat pasta and spinach salads.  A lot.).

Not Much to Say About This One

 Whole wheat linguini with yellow peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, and greens.  Tomato salad with onions, cucumbers, and balsamic.

Choose Your Own Adventure

This picture makes me crave iced tea.  It may also make me crave the other things in this picture, if only I could figure out what they are.

Whole wheat penne with:

a) chicken thigh with Cajun spices

b) chicken breast with Cajun spices

c) pork chop with Cajun spices

d) chicken thigh with generic Susannah spices (probably paprika, garlic, black pepper, salt, thyme)

e) chicken breast with generic Susannah spices

f) pork chop with generic Susannah spices

g) none of the above

I'm going to go with d or g.

Spinach salad with:

a) onions, gorgonzola, and dill

b) onions, feta, and dill

c) onions, weird pieces of apples or something, and dill

d) none of the above.

Probably a, perhaps in a lemon dressing.  I'm not sure why the dill is there; it throws me off a little and makes me wonder what I might have put with the chicken/pork/other.

All I know for sure, is that I probably should have added a soft-boiled egg somewhere.

Entering the Era of the Soft-Boiled Egg

Once upon a time, there was a couple who really liked to eat eggs.  In particular, ones with runny yolks.  One day, they realized that they had never soft boiled an egg, which seemed unbelievable at first, given their love for runny-yolked eggs.  Once they had tried the first one, they continued to have soft-boiled eggs added to many of their meals.  They took blurry pictures of these meals, and posted them to a blog months later, after they had pretty much forgotten what the meals were.

This is one such meal:

It appears to be a spinach salad with chick peas, tomatoes, and probably onions.  And a nice, glistening, soft egg on top.  Next to the egg, there appears to be a pale rectangle of some sort.  Feta?  Chicken?

And next to the salad, there is what is likely an Uzbek hot dog without the hot dog: chewy white bread warmed in the microwave, slathered in mayonnaise and spicy ketchup, and filled with Korean carrot salad (left over from the Russian party)  (<-- I made a link!).

Mmm, that "hot dog" was good.  The salad was also, though if I recall correctly, this egg was more medium-boiled.  It took a few tries to get the timing right.