Meat & Potatoes

Tonight nothing complicated.  We all grill, we all make baked potatoes and we can all do a salad out of a bag, Right?  If you don't know how, let's get started.  Preheat your oven to 425 for your baked potatoes.  Then take your 10oz russet potatoes that have been scrubbed clean and dried and coat them with EVOO and Kosher Salt, when your oven reaches temp., bake them for 40-45 minutes.  The salt and oil will give the skins a crispy coating.  After my potatoes finished I placed them in my warming drawer and then I preheated my grill to med high heat.  I also made the bruschettta, which is just a crunchy bread toasted and rubbed with a fresh garlic clove, drizzled with EVOO and sprinkled with S&P.  I usually do these in my panini press, but you could do them on the grill or in your toaster.  Your are looking for grill marks or a golden brown appearance.  I had 2 3/4" strip steaks seasoned with Kosher Salt and lotsa fresh ground pepper and a little EVOO to coat both sides of each steak.  Be sure to let them sit out on counter for 10 minutes or so, just to bring them up to room temp.  I then placed my steaks on the grill.  Grilling time is based on thickness of steak and how hot your your grill is.  For these steaks I grilled one side for 3 minutes over med/high heat, turned them over and grilled for an additional 2 minutes I also added a tsp of butter atop each one to finish them off, and I then removed them from grill and let them rest 5-10 minutes.  While those were resting I just opened a Caesar Salad Mix and of course added some more fresh grated parmigiana reggiano cheese, sliced red onions and fresh ground pepper.  Voila!  The steaks were cooked to a perfect medium rare and required no addition seasonings. the potatoes were crunchy outside and fluffy inside and enhanced with some unsalted butter and sour cream, the bruschetta was crunchy and well the salad was "a salad from a bag", but OK.  Tonight just the simple meat & potatoes, but still really good.