For this week’s disaster, I decided to go with what inspired me the most, steak. I’ve never made steak before. At all. I mean hey, everything I’ve made on this blog I never made before and it was my first time trying it. And yet, I always end up adding my own twist to it. Even so, I thought, “I can’t just make steak by itself. That would be boring.” So of course, the first thing I think of as a side is mashed potatoes. I flirted with the idea of using instant mashed potatoes. I know, GASP. I think that’s because my mom never made homemade mashed potatoes so I was just use to her instant ones. I uickly put down that idea because that would be like cheating, anything not made from scratch seems like it would be cheating. What’s the fun in instant? That’s boring. what do I look like featuring instant dishes as my main dish? *Mind you I said MAIN, because I definitely featured a Bertolli meal-in-a-bag in a past blog lol* Anyways, the decision was made, steak and homemade mashed potatoes it was.
As always, I looked around at different recipes. One I found out of a Food Network book called How to Boil Water. It called for broiling the steak. I think I have a broiler under my oven but I don’t trust SPC campus apartments enough to look into it. Anyways, I looked for a broiling pan in Shoprite but there were none so I decided to consult my mom. She told me I could pan-sear it instead. I knew this but it seemed like it would be a bit complicated being that I didn’t even have a recipe to tell me what temperature to have the oven on at and how long to cook it for. When I got home from food shopping, I looked in my book and saw there was actually a recipe for pan-searing steak. That book definitely came to the rescue. That was the only recipe I really used. As for the mashed potatoes, I just quickly looked over some recipes jut to see variations and figure out how to make it my own.
Ok, time to cook. I started off with the steak. I really thought making the steak would be the hardest part and the most time consuming but it really wasn’t. The mashed potatoes actually ended up taking wayyyyyy longer. Anyways, I got a small bowl, added extra virgin olive oil, ground pepper, grill makes spicy monterrey steak spice, picante pepper mustard, worcestshire sauce, and wisked it all together. This is actually my adaptation of the sauce for the broiler recipe. I dipped the steaks in the sauce completely and put it in the pan to cook. I ended up using most of the first batch on the first steak so I ended up making the second batch just from my head without measuring. Did I get the measurements completely right? No but it got the job done. This is what I wanted to be able to do as a cook, measure ingredients without using measuring cups and what not. I call this soul food; cooking from your head. Most people just think soul food is African-American dishes but I’ve definitely seen Italian, Spanish, and other people of different races make soul food being that they make it off the top of their heads. I guess you can say that correlates with the soul, depending on how into cooking one is. But I’ve diverted. I cooked the steaks like this, 4 minutes on one side, and 2 on the other. Then, I put the steaks in a baking pan in the oven at 450 for about 16 minutes…probably little more. Before the steaks were done, I cut up some green peppers, put them in the pan, put garlic and pepper on them, then put them in the baking dish with the steaks to continue cooking. And that’s all for the steaks.
NOW for the mashed potatoes. OMG it was so annoying to get the potatoes soft from boiling them. I took 4 potatoes, cut them up into cubes, then put them in a pot with salted water to boil. Wasn’t working. So I decided to drain the pot of the water, take some chicken broth made with garlic, and put it in the pot with the potatoes instead. Worked wonders. I kept the potatoes on the stove until the chicken broth evaporated. I helped this process go faster by using a technique I came up with while cooking it. I ended up taking the pot of potatoes and cooking it on it’s side so all the broth would drain to one side and get heated all at once…or atleast be more concentrated and exposed more to evaporate. Either way my technique worked really well. Then, I took the potatoes and put them in a large bowl. I took a stick of butter and melted it in the pot. I also cut up some fresh garlic and cooked them in the pan so they were roasted. I got this idea from my friend who brought it up while I was cooking. I added the melted stick of butter, the roasted garlic, garlic powder, pepper, and salt to the potatoes and mashed them up with a masher. This was the part where I had to keep trying it to see how it tasted and adding ingredients/spices to make it taste better. I guess I got that from when I was in culinary school and I would be on mashed potato duty. Overall, they were GREAT. The roasted garlic was the perfect touch. I also kept pieces of potatoes in the mix because when I think of homemade potatoes, I don’t think of smooth whipped potatoes. I think of instant potatoes when I think of smooth, whipped potatoes. The steak was spicy, which I loved. The green peppers went really well with the steak and they were flavorful. I loved this meal and I’m glad I finally know how to make them.
But don’t take my word for it. Watch my friend Matt taste test my meal for me.
Follow the Instructions 