Tonight's Menu
- strip steaks on the grill pan
- onions and baby bella mushrooms sauteed in butter
- new potatoes roasted with thyme
- fresh green salad
I hate them. Seriously.
Ahem.
The potatoes were an experiment. I parboiled them for 15 minutes or so before tossing them in a baking pan with some EVOO, salt, pepper and dried thyme and chucking them in the oven at 450 degrees F. I honestly don't know how long they cooked altogether -- I stuck them in right before I started the mushrooms and onions, stirring them a bit and shaking the pan every 5-7 minutes or so. They were quite tasty but didn't get as crusty as I would have liked.
Bah, humbug!
5 comments:
Potatoes: try Michael Chiarello's (sp?) recipe for taking small potatoes boiling them, lightly crushing them then crisping the outsides in a shallow frying pan with hot oil in it. Our family swears by it (and almost never at it!)
On the megamarts-mess-up-steak-buying issue, gaaaawwwwdd, doncha just love the south? Wouldn't you think that the stores in Texas (!) at least would get all this right?
N.
And actually, on the potatoes issue here, try cooking the new potatoes on a slow boil for 20 minutes, then slathering them in butter and fresh mint --- yummy, and had our guests last night coming back for more and more (until the potatoes were all gone, including those I was planning to use for Saturday morning home fries!)
N.
That first method you describe is how we do our "chuffed" potatoes, only we use butter instead of oil. (Er, I am not using the royal "we"; the boy helps me make them.)
They are ALWAYS yummy, but I get a little bored with them. And also our stove burner configuration is such (number and btu-wise) than I really needed to finish them in the oven in order to cook the steaks and the mushrooms/onions on the stovetop.
I have GOT to get a six-burner stove.
Ah, the six-burner stove: we redid our kitchen two years ago, and decided that we couldn't afford to put in a new stove at the same time, and so we are stuck with the standard low btu GE gas stove (at least it is gas!) I've occasionally had the opportunity to cook on a high-btu stove, and the difference is amazing:: especially for things like wok-cooking.
We end up having to write down timetables of who is going to cook what when whenever we entertain --- and make compromises about some things being cooked earlier than we'd like.
I do potatoes like that on the grill, but I don't parboil. Just take one of those tinfoil "pans", put some EVOO on the bottom. I add crushed garlic, cilantro, and some onion salt (there are people who live here with hunk-o-onion issues).
Cover with tinfoil, and give them about 45 minutes when I have them on the middle rack of my grill at Med. Less time and a turn involved if they're on the grill proper.
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