Wednesday Night Steak

Haven't blogged in a while, so here's a quickie.

Picked up a book at the library that inspires me to learn to bake my own bread.  Stay tuned to see my adventures.

While picking up flour, yeast, cornmeal, etc to prepare, I grabbed a NY Strip.  It's a nice day, why not grill a steak on a Wednesday?

Lizzie the housemate returned from England just in time for impromptu steak and raved about my preparation.  I thought I'd share the joy.  I didn't take process pictures, as I didn't think to post about this until it was cooked.  And I can't tell you specifics on how long I cooked it, just a few minutes on each side until I guessed it was ready and it was!

Here's the magic part.  Salt the sucker with loads of Kosher salt.  You want so much salt you can barely see the red of the meat.  I read about this here:  How to turn cheap choice steaks into gucci prime steaks which has an explanation and cute little illustrations of salt crystals and rosemary springs invading the meat.  I guess I followed this to the T before, and did it by memory today.  Once I covered my 1"+ NY Strip with loads of salt, I coarsely chopped a couple heads of garlic and a twig of rosemary (from my 1 year old and still going strong rosemary plant, natch) and smushed it into the salt layer with a fork.  Then I used another plate to flip the steaks over and repeat on the other side.  Leave them alone for 45min.  Chop a potato or two into wedges, drizzle a bit of olive oil over top and bake at 400degrees for about 45minutes.  I'm pretty impatient, so I think only heated the grill for about two minutes with a quick spray of Pam before I threw the steaks on.  Here's the final product:

Steak, crispy wedges and a pool of Ranch dressing.  Mmmmmmm.  And the orange craziness is home brewed Thai Iced Tea, which is not as good as from a restaurant, but still pretty tasty.

And in case you're wondering? Perfect medium rare.

And yes, I am eating at the decoupage table in front of the TV.  Dining room tables are for dinner parties.

I picked up a cute nightstand to refinish, and found pics of something else I haven't posted yet, so house project posts will resume.  Currently I'm busy planning a neighborhood block party (there are over 300 hamburger/hotdog buns in my car) for Saturday to get people outside to socialize and also discuss the importance of filling out the Census.  Be counted!