Being that this is a long weekend, I decided to make some really special dinners. I got Real Simple for March this week and in the mag there was a recipe for steak.
Disclaimer: I love steak, but as you can probably gather from this blog, I rarely cook meat. Not that I don’t love meat, its just more expensive and takes longer to cook. I love steak, especially a nice filet. If I’m eating a filet I like it to be fancy and expensive. Preferably paid for by my parents or a date. Thus, I almost never make steak. But, why not try something new?
The recipe is steak with a potato salad. I start off the potatoes in salted water. Once the water boils I reduced the heat and cover. Let the potatoes cook for 20 mins until cooked through.
Then I started the steak. I seasoned the meat with salt and pepper and added minced garlic (the recipe didn’t call of it, but I love garlic so why not?). I put a dollop of olive oil and then cooked the steak for 4 to 5 mins on each side (so that the meat would be medium rare).
Ok, so it seemed easy enough. I followed the instructions and thought everything should be fine. I had the fan going over my stove and noticed that there was some mild smoking. By the time the 5 mins passed for the first side I noticed that my apartment was oddly smokey (it smelled good, but didn’t look so great). Suddenly my apartment was really smokey! I opened the sliding glass door. Luckily the fire alarm didn’t go off (the ultimate cooking disaster). Not sure that’s actually a blessing though. So, if my apartment was full of smoke there would be no alarm? This made me a bit uneasy but I continued cooking.
Izzy, looking a bit uneasy
Can't win them all
So, I forged on and the steak actually turned out pretty good. I think that the steak smoked so much because of the garlic. After I took the steak off I worked on my salad. Instead of bib lettuce I used spinach, because that’s what I had on hand. I added herbed goat cheese, instead of blue cheese, salt, pepper, olive oil, and cider vinegar. Once the potatoes were done I ran cold water over them and then mashed them with a fork in the salad.
before the potato
And despite the minor smoke crisis, I think it turned out pretty good! I may have cooked too many potatoes for the salad but I can always eat more potato. I’m a hearty German Midwesterner. If there is something we know how to enjoy it’s potato salad.
The meat was perfectly done and so good. Its amazing how just salt, pepper, and garlic can make meat so flavorful. The potato salad was also pretty good and so simple. I am having a love affair with spinach and the vinegar gave the salad a flavor. I don’t usually use cider vinegar in my salad, but now I think I will have to start. I would probably not make this salad if I wanted to represent good, old fashioned German potato salad, but it was pretty delish.
I like this last picture… Izzy is on a low carb wet diet and has rejected all the beef that has been presented to her. However, when I make human steak she is instantly interested…
This is almost as bad as the muffin snatching incident from last month…
The menu mostly consisted of tacos and other small plates. I ordered two tacos and the sliders. I had read that the portions were small so I ordered a lot.
The taco on the left is tamarind duck with toasted almond, pickled beet salad and the taco on the right is smoked chicken with green curry, napa slaw. I preferred the chicken but the duck taco had tons of flavor. The maderian oranges really topped the flavor off nicely.
The sliders were also pretty good, although I got full and only had one. The bun was like a soft butter roll with a red sauce that was similar to ketchup but so much better! It also had pickles and pork. So delicious! I will hit this truck up again when it comes to UCLA!
Left Coast Contessa 