Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Edible Disaster

I'm easily distracted.

Look, that dog has poofy tail, etc., etc..

This can be a problem when preparing dinner.

Like last night.

I decided I'd pull out a steak for dinner. The thing about deciding this at 6pm is that it needs to thaw somehow. On goes the oven, out comes the cast iron and foil.

But I'd also received a box full of cables from the nice delivery person (I assume they were nice, as I'm not the one who takes deliveries). Contained were 3 cables that I'd been waiting for to once again enhance my home theatre experience. So, with the steak thawing in a warm oven, I pushed back the unit and got to work. Cables hooked up, testing commenced. Hmm... that isn't working. Try something else. That works. But why not the other? Back to the other... still not working. Figure it out and stick with the second option. But now the remote needs to be reprogrammed. And while I'm doing that, there's those other things I wanted to fix on it. Wasn't I doing something else?

SHIT! Steak! 2 hours later!

Steak is thawed, warm, and looking a bit grey. It's not cooked, due to the incredibly low heat, but it's on its way. Too late to make it simple and good, so a marinade has to be rushed into production because this baby's going to get cooked.

Waste of a nice piece of meat... sigh.

So comes together a marinade. Vinegar, horseradish, dijon and smokey mustard, ketchup, hot sauce, piri-piri sauce, honey, worcestershire, sundried tomato + hemp pesto, oil. Steak gets sliced and dumped in. Inside is still red at least.

As it soaks, potato is cut up, onion sliced, garlic mashed, and fried potatoes are begun.

Relax a bit, now that dinner is on its way. Combine half a dozen types of fruit (raspeberries, blackberries, pineapple, cherries, grapes, banana) with some sugar and a splash of citrus for dessert. Let it sit in the fridge.

Heat up another cast iron pan for the steak. Not the grill as usual, due to the marinade and desire to not spend all night scrubbing sticky marinade from between raised parts.

Vegetable oil, olive oil, and butter. Steak goes on and sizzle and spurts. What the hell, all the marinade goes in too. Toss in some onion and garlic and it's damned near a stew.

Cook away.

Remove meat. Crank heat on marinade to reduce. Dish potatoes... something's missing.

Vegetables!

Grab broccoli, steam in microwave.

Pour sauce on meat. Plate broccoli.

Dinner is served.

It wasn't what I'd originally wanted. The marinade was sweet and acidic, but not overpoweringly so. Had just a bit of spice too. All-in-all, salvaged, but not fantastic.

Filled the hole though.

Then I notice my remote was still plugged in... programming not quite finished.

1 comment:

lightning36 said...

Astin = MacGyver of culinary arts