Tenderloin with Pesto

I love steak. All kinds of steak. Tenderloin is a great cut, but, since it is so lean, it can dry out easily. It is my wife's favorite cut because it has so little connective tissue. But, steaks with more fat and tissue are more flavorful. Serving it with an herbed finishing butter or an oil based sauce, like pesto, helps keep this tender cut super moist and gives it great flavor.

Ingredients:

2 ⅓lb tenderloin steaks
salt
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp cashew pesto

Directions:

About 1/2 and hour to an hour before you are cooking your steaks, remove them from the fridge and liberally season each side with salt. This will let the meat come to room temperature which helps ensure an even level of doneness since there won't be any really cold spots. The salt keeps any undesirables from growing on the surface and pulls protein laden moisture to the outside which helps form the great crust you are looking for on any well seared steak.

10 minutes before cook time, heat a heavy cast iron skillet over medium heat. You want enough heat to get a good sear, but you want to make sure you have even heat. Cast iron does a great job of evenly dispersing heat, but it works best when it's put on medium heat and let to heat up slowly.

Preheat your broiler on high. Add the olive oil to your skillet and sear your steaks for 2 min per side, around 12 minutes total. Everytime you flip your steak try to position it on an unused piece of the skillet so you get maximum heat for the best possible crust.

Once the steak is well seared on all sides, place your steaks in the skillet under the broiler for 3-5 minutes. I recommend checking the internal temp at 3 minutes and removing the steaks when they are 5-10 degrees from your target temp.

Remove from under the broiler and spoon 1 tbsp of the pesto on each steak. Let the steaks rest, uncovered, in the skillet, for 10 minutes before serving.

I recommend serving with crushed fingerling potatoes and a good merlot.

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Week Off

Hey everyone, I know I just committed to posting in a more regular fashion, but I'm going to be taking this week off. Grad school just started, and I need some time for that and for building up my back stock of recipes for busy weeks. I'll see you all next week. Happy cooking!

Mango Lassi

Never let it be said that I don't love my wife. At the very start of this I made it clear that there were certain foods I don't like cooking with, but when your wife asks for a yogurt smoothie, you make her a yogurt smoothie.

A Lassi is a Indian spiced yogurt smoothie. It is something that is typically a savory drink, but it can be blended with fruit, like mango, to make it sweet. In India this drink is made with dahi, but that isn't readily available in the States, so plain full fat or whole milk yogurt is a good substitute.

Ingredients:

2 C frozen mango
½ C milk
½ C plain whole milk yogurt
¼ C honey
¼ tsp ground cardamom

Directions:

Add all the ingredients to the carafe of your blender and blend until smooth. Poor into a glass and enjoy. Optionally, garnish with mint and a cinnamon stick.

Beef Bulgogi

My mom used to make bulgogi for us a lot when I was a kid. I'd always loved it, but I wasn't sure how authentic it was. Recently, I finally got to compare it to the genuine article.

In the last year, I've been fortunate to make a great friend, Evan. He's a really talented artist. He's also, possibly, an even bigger foodie than me. I've been down to his neck of the woods a few times and we always go on some pretty fun food adventures. He's the one who took me to get my first taste of real ramen. Recently, we went to get Korean BBQ and I finally got to see how my mom's recipe compares to the real McCoy.

It turns out that her flavors are spot on, but the technique isn't. So, I took my mom's recipe, applied a more authentic method, and came up with something great.

Ingredients:

1 lb ribeye
4 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp fresh chopped ginger
2 cloves crushed garlic
¼ C chopped green onion
2 tbsp sesame seeds

Directions:

One of the defining features of bulgogi is very thin slices of beef. To make that easier, place your steak in the freezer for 1.5 to 2 hours., not enough to freeze solid, but just enough to be stiff. Cut into slices as thin as your knife will allow. Set aside.

In a tupperware or sealable container, combine the remaining ingredients. Mix well to combine. Add in the sliced steak and stir to thoroughly coat the pieces. Place in the fridge and let it marinate for 1-2 hours.

Heat a grill pan or skillet over medium high heat. Remove the meat from the marinade and reserve any leftover marinade. Sear the steak, 1 minute per side, and set it aside to rest. Pour the reserved marinade into a small saucepan, bring to a boil over medium heat, and reduce to a syrup. Pour the syrup over the resting meat and mix it with any juices from the resting meat so everything is nicely sauced. Garnish with more chopped green onion.

Serve over rice or in lettuce wraps. As with most of Korean BBQ, the sides make the meal and I suggest kimchi, kongnamool (Korean mung beans), or spicy pickle.

As always, if you enjoy my work and want would like to support me and my blog, please consider subscribing to me on Patreon. My subscribers have already helped me get rid of ads and get some snazzy business cards!

On Comfort Food

I've made plenty of comfort food in the course of this blog, from meatloaf to meatballs, donuts, grillswith, and plenty of drinks. But I have a confession, none of those are my true comfort food. Since I claim to be a foodie, you might think that my comfort food might be something unorthodox or off the wall. No, it's pretty much the exact opposite of that. My ultimate comfort food is hot dogs, blue box mac and cheese, and cinnamon applesauce.

To most people, comfort food is something that is easy or at least familiar, high in fat or carbs, so it makes you feel warm, full, and comfortable. But, for me, comfort food also has to tie into a memory of eating that gives some measure of peace.

My comfort food is my comfort food because it is the food that most clearly brings me back to memories of my father. My dad was a horrible cook. He used to tell me that his version of gourmet cooking was a hot dog, split down the middle, with a strip of bacon, and wrapped in a slice of American cheese. When my mom went out of town, dad would do his best and make mac and cheese, boiled hot dogs, and apple sauce. It was his attempt to serve a balanced meal that didn't take much work or involve too much cleanup.

If you follow my Patreon, you'll know if been working on a project to make a viking shield for myself to take to the Renaissance Faire. It's just the kind of wood working project my dad would have been proud of me for doing and every time I hit a snag or get frustrated I feel his absence more and more. That, and the upcoming anniversary of my father's passing, has him on my mind a lot recently.

So, as I made my plate of hot dogs, mac and cheese, and applesauce, I thought I would share with you all why that meal, more than any other, is what I turn to when I'm feeling stressed, panicked or overwhelmed.

Summer Fruit Punch Beer

So awhile ago I saw a recipe for this that was really not well thought out and I decided that I needed to rectify it, because I like the concept. This is a really great drink for some last parties at the end of summer or for tailgating through the fall. It's sweet and fruity so some people will inevitably call it girly, but something that is refreshing and easy to drink is something we all should be able to enjoy.

I've called this a summer recipe since it focuses on summer fruits, but plenty of other fruits would work great and could go into plenty of seasonal varieties.

Ingredients:

2 C sliced strawberries
2 C blueberries
3 peaches, skinned and cut into bite sized pieces
⅔ C sugar
Summer Shandy*

Directions:

Combine the berries, peaches, and sugar in a large container and stir to coat everything evenly with the sugar. Store, covered, in the fridge for about an hour so the sugar can build a heavy syrup.

Scoop ¼ cup of the fruit and syrup into the bottom of a pint glass or tulip glass and carefully pour on the summer shandy. Store any leftovers in the freezer, makes a great way to keep your beer cold without diluting it.

*I think a summer shandy works best with this recipe, but a great alternative would be a Belgian style white beer (witbier) like Blue Moon. It also works really well with an Agave IPA. A light lager or pilsner would do, but you'll miss out on some of the more fruity flavors.

Cheesy Roasted Garlic Bread

I actually first started roasting garlic to make this bread. I can't believe that it's taken me so long to put this here. It was a few years ago when my fish monger Adam suggested a variant of this bread, but I think it has been perfected here.

Roasting garlic gives it a much deeper, sweet flavor, so despite how much garlic is in this, it's not as harsh as garlic powder based breads.

Ingredients:

3 bulbs of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 stick of butter
½ tsp of salt
1 loaf of soft crusty bread like ciabatta or batard

1-2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese*

1 tbsp shredded parmesan cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450. This is a good toaster oven recipe since we aren't dealing with large amounts

Cut the tops off each bulb of garlic so that the cloves are exposed. Rub the exposed garlic with the olive oil and wrap in tin-foil, leaving a little spout for steam, and roast for an hour, or until the cloves are caramelized.

Remove from the oven and let them cool until you can handle them before squeezing the caramelized cloves into a blender. Add the salt and butter and blend until creamy.

Slice your loaf open into halves and then into quarters. Spread an equal amount of the butter mixture onto each piece before sprinkling each piece with mozzarella and parmesan. Place the slices on a cookie sheet lined with tin foil and grill under a broiler set on high until the cheese is bubbling and starting to brown.

Let it cool and set, but enjoy it while the cheese is still good and melty.

If you enjoyed this recipe and want to support me and my content, please consider subscribing to my Patreon.

*This bread can be as cheesy as you want it, but if you pile too much on the cheese will simply melt off.