Grillin' season!

Not that we stop grilling during the winter: but with the lack of snow, the warmer, longer days, grilling is much more in full swing. Excepting the baked sweet potatoes [and steak sauce], everything for last nights dinner was grilled. I have felt as though I have been 'slacking' on meals lately (light, easy), and this was a wonderful full-filling dinner.

First up: Steak. I don't recall exactly what type of cut it was, but we bought it fresh from the market that day (rather inexpensively), and simply seasoned it with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. We let it sit, uncovered in the fridge for a couple of hours, then rubbed it with olive oil right before grilling. Simplest is best!

Next up: Veggies. Mushrooms and Sweet Potatoes. As I mentioned before hand, the potatoes were not grilled. Simply pricked with a fork, and thrown into a 400 degree oven for around 40 minutes. The mushrooms were grilled after being de-stemmed, and brushed with garlic infused olive oil. They came out perfect, though we thought they lacked seasoning. It turned out the 'steak sauce' complimented the mushrooms better than the steak! I personally believe basting mushrooms with butter and Old Bay seasoning is the best way to go for grilling them (thanks to my peeps in West Virginia for teaching me that!).

Finally: Fruit. Quite frankly, the best way to have pineapple, is grilled. Just straight cut up and grilled. Especially if your pineapple tastes a little tart raw, grilling brings out the hidden sugars. Mmmm, I can't get enough of it! Grilled pineapple will be served in heaven, I assure you!

Additional: Sauce and Drink. A byproduct of hosting a wine party, is having half drunk bottles of wine filling your fridge. A novice wine drinker brought a [red] Shiraz to a white/blush only wine party... That wine was thus disqualified from judging -but free game for after! In order to 'clean out the fridge' we had the Shiraz with dinner. It turned out to be quite a nice surprise, complementing the meal perfectly! It is entitled "ASS KiSSER", from southern Australia [2007]. It's label, with a red and cream colour scheme, and cute donkey that has lipstick lip prints on his butt, is hard to miss if you want to give it a try.
The sauce I made was a recipe from Bobby Flay. It has a subtle spiciness to it, but almost overpowering in it's flavours. Don't get me wrong: I will make this often, and we loved it -the thing is, the steak was grilled so nicely last night, we didn't need anything to help it along taste wise. It did enhance the mushrooms amazingly, and even tasted good on the pineapple! True story! Please, give this sauce a try, and let me know what you think. Here's how to make a half batch, which is plenty:

Bobby Flay's Steak Sauce Mayonnaise:

1/2 cup Hellman's mayonnaise
1 1/2 tbsp. Molasses
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 tbsp. whole grain Dijon mustard
1 tbsp. prepared Horseradish
1/2 tbsp. Ketchup
Kosher Salt, and freshly ground Black Pepper

Whisk all ingredients together in a medium bowl. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour [before serving] to allow flavors to meld.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My attempt at a pretty cake... I said 'attempt'. It tastes good at least! Chocolate 2 layer cake with my mom's recipe for confection sugar frosting.

For dinner we had rib eye steaks that we aged, sauteed shiitake mushrooms with scallions and butter, and red potatoes done in the skillet with garlic, rosemary, and butter. The wine was a Pinot Noir by Cavit.

Aging steaks is easy, but I don't know how much it really adds to the meat. I think 4 days was too long this time, and we do better with just the overnight age. The ultimate goal of aging meat is for better flavour. To achieve this, the meat must loose excess moisture and should end up weighing about 1/2 of what it did when you purchased it. I prefer my meat nice and juicy, so an overnight age tastes better to me personally. The biggest thing to remember when aging is to replace the paper towel under the meat every day, and allow plenty of air flow. 

The steaks as we bought them

Aging the steaks in the fridge day 2

Day 3 of aging 
(I flipped the lower right steak bottom side up for the picture to show the difference better)

Day 4 of aging

By day 4 (the day we cooked them) you can really see the difference. They did end up weighing almost 1/2 of what they did when we first bought them (due to the diminished moisture content). We also salted the bottoms of the steaks on day 2 in order to help wick out moisture. It's important to always keep the same side down while aging.