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.

Steak Fajitas

Tonight we had steak fajitas, brown rice and refried beans. The night before I marinated a 1 lb skirt steak in the Goya Mojo marinade. When t got home I got my brown rice going and heated the grill, one side on high and one side on low. For my veggies I used 1/2 red pepper/ 1/2 yellow pepper, 1/2 red onion, 2 whole jalapeños, a few grape tomatoes and a few whole button mushrooms. I placed all in a bowl, added a little olive oil and S&P and coated them. I placed the vegetables on the grill on the low side, closed lid and let them roast for about 30 minutes, turning often. You are looking for nice char marks on the veggies. 10 minutes before rice was finished cooking, I placed the skirt steak on the high heated side of grill and seared it for about 3 minutes on each side. I removed the veg, placed back in the bowl and added some Mojo sauce and covered. I continued to grill the steak for an additional 3-4 minutes until medium rare. I removed the steak and let it rest for 10 minutes. While the meat rested, I opened a can of refried beans, put in a bowl and nuked for 1.5 minutes. I also grilled a few small flour tortillas for about 30 seconds per side and I removed them to a plate. I cut the roasted peppers and onions into thin slices, and left the toms and shrooms whole. I served the meat with the veggies, (shrooms and toms on the side) in the warm tortilla and avocado sprinkled fajitas, rice and beans with a little shredded cheddar cheese. That's all there is to it, easy and little clean up, that's what I love about grillin. Try it and let me know what you think. Bon Appetit.

Grillin' and Chillin'

OMG!!!  Tonight I was inspired by this crazy salad (which isn't a salad at all) that I had at the Acapulco Mexican Restaurant down the road.  Anyway, the salad consists of grilled peppers and onions, beef, chicken and shrimp.  I took it up an notch and added some chorizo sausage that I grilled too.  I think the picture explains it all.  Absolute yumminess.  Anyway, this is how I did it.  I took 1lb of chicken tenderloins, 1/2 lb beef sirloin steak, cut into thin strips, 6 large shrimp, 1 chorizo sausage, and 1 red pepper, 1 grn bell pepper, 1 jalapeno and 1 red onion and just cut them into large pieces.  I found this awesome marinade in the mexican section of the market, it's made by Goya.  Anyway, I placed each protein into separate large plastic bags and the veggies into a plastic bag and just evenly poured the marinade into each of the 5 bags.  I also liberally sprinkled cumin into each bag and I let them marinade for about 1 hour in the refrigerator.  In the meantime I turned my gas grill to low and let it heat up.  I placed my grill pan on the grill and I let that heat up as well.  I started grillin the veggies and the chorizo sausage first since they take a while to cook through.  As those were grillin I placed my chicken tenderloins on the grill, honestly they only took about 10 minutes took cook through.  I removed the chicken and then placed the beef on the grill and those only took about 5 minutes to cook thru and removed them.  I then added the shrimp and grilled them about 2 minutes on each side.  At this point my veggies and chorizo where cooked thru.  I cut my chorizo into slices and had everything on a sheet tray and we could pick what we wanted.  While everything was grillin I cooked up some basmati rice in chicken stock and tsp of turmeric and cooked up some of my pinto beans that I had frozen.  This was so much fun to do and everything tasted great.  I will definitely do this again.  You should try it, it's so easy.  I think the key is too keep your grill on low heat, so you don't overcook the protein.  Awesome Eats!!!

Steakhouse Steaks

Steakhouse Steaks

Not Your Granny's Pressure Cooker

Got Pictures!!  First I preheated my oven to 400 degrees, 2nd heated my newly seasoned cast iron skillet on med high heat for about 5 minutes. I took 2 beautiful beef tenderloins about 2" thick and brushed all sides w/ canola oil. Dipped all sides in a mixture of s&p, about 1 tsp kosher salt and 2 tbs of fresh ground black pepper. Placed them in skillet and seared all sides for 2 mins each. At about 5 mins of searing my kitchen was becoming very smokey, exhaust wasn't keeping up, so I had to open window and back door. Next time will heat skillet on med. After searing placed skillet in the oven and continued to cook until temp reached 135 for med rare, pulled from oven and let rest 5

minutes. In the meantime, I used my pressure cooker to cook some greens beans w/ Yukon gold potatoes. I love my pressure cooker, it's a WMF. If you've never used one you should try, but that's another blog. Long story short everything turned out perfectly, but I will have to let you know how the cast iron skillet cleans up. Never put a hot cast iron skillet in water until it's cooled- it will crack on you. Check out this link for WMF