Jessica

Cooking Lessons: The Perfect Steak

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We have moved days, instead of the second Tuesday of the month Cooking Lessons will now be on the second Monday of the month. It’s what seems to work best, I’m sure you don’t mind do you?

Back to lessons!

Being able to serve the perfect steak is a skill that every cook should know, unless of course you are a veggie person, in which case this post will still be a good read for you since the skills can be transferred.

My preferred method for cooking steak utilizes a good sear and finishes in the oven. I like this method because it produces a crisp crust and a perfectly tender and juicy inside. While I like a very rare steak this method allows for virtually any type of finish from black and blue to well done.

Personally, I tend to think that good steak is worth the price, especially if it’s going to be the star of the show. I prefer a well marbled, grass fed steak from a local butcher. The butchering process is very important to the flavor of the meat so having a good butcher is key. If you don’t have a preferred butcher just choose the best-looking cut you can find. It does take time to learn what is best, so just keep trying until you find something that you really like.

How to Cook a Perfect Steak

Open the steak up, blot it dry with a paper towel and let it sit out until it comes up to room temperature, about 30 minutes. This should help the steak cook more evenly.
Brush the steak with olive oil and then sprinkle the outside liberally with salt and pepper.
Heat the skillet only 6 to 8 inches under the broiler for 20 minutes.
Once heated carefully move it to the stovetop over high heat. Then turn the oven down to 375 degrees.
Place the steak in the pan and cook for 1-2 minutes, do not touch the steak during this time. Flip once and cook for an additional 1-2 minutes. The steak should be browned and a crust should start to form on the outside.

Move the skillet into the oven and roast until desired doneness. The chart below shows the best times for cooking to desired doneness based on thickness.

Thickness	1 inch	1 ¼ inches	1 ¾ inches	For ea. Additional ¼ inch
Rare	8 Min.	10 Min.	12 Min.	+1 Min.
Medium Rare	10 Min.	12 Min.	14 Min.	+1 Min.
Medium	13 Min.	15 Min.	17 Min.	+1 Min.
Medium Well	18 Min.	20 Min.	22 Min.	+1 Min.
Well Done	20 Min.	23 Min.	35 Min.	+1 Min.

Remove the pan from the oven and transfer the steaks to a cutting board to rest. Let stand for 5 minutes and place a small pat of butter (preferably herbed) before serving.

Cooking a great steak does not have to be hard or scary, these steps help to make it super easy and can be transferred to other meats such as roasts, and pork chops.

Now once you have mastered the skill of cooking a steak and making salad dressing you can very easily put together a simple meal of steak and salad without too much trouble. Add some fresh bread from the market and a glass of wine and you have a luxurious and fancy meal that will be sure to please.

Weekend Links

By Jessica

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Hi guys! in case you didn’t know (which you probably didn’t) Chuck and I have been in Italy for the last couple weeks. While I may have been traveling lately there are still quite a few things that I’ve seen on the internet that I thought you all may like. Also my brain is still in vacation mode, so there is no hope of putting together another post, but at least you know there will be fun travel pictures coming soon!!

On to the fun stuff!

Theres a new “Fixer Upper” coming to HGTV. When am I going to get a show about the Northeast? btw Northeast =/= New England… We have our own style.

For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds SO many thoughts. First if you can handle living at home then why not build up that retirement, save for a house. Extended living situations can be super beneficial.

This video. I mean whoa talk about a reality check. I’m currently wondering just how many clothes (and other things) do I actually need. Looks like it’s time for another capsule wardrobe project.

Why Cities can’t grow their own food. So much of this is true, but doesn’t every little bit help? What if the areas surrounding cities were farms instead of suburbs? What if people in the suburbs and country grew enough to feed the cities without shipping it thousands of miles?

And this video because Monsanto is a problem, because the right to decide if we want to eat and grow GMO’s should be our choice not the government or the corporations.

As for things I’ve pinned… Well I think you can tell that there is a theme going on here!

Small Space Vegetable Garden Designs

By Jessica

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I’ve been doing my best lately to get you guys excited about gardening, sharing my own updates, helping you get started and telling you why you should start a garden if you don’t already have one. After a few comments and discussions I thought it might be a good idea to give you some garden plans. Once you start doing some research about gardening it’s pretty easy to fall down the rabbit hole of information, You know when you realize that certain veggies do or do not grow well next to each other, and that certain things need more sunlight while others need way less of it.

It can get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly, I know.

To help boost your confidence in starting a garden I put together a few different types of small gardens. I kept things simple and pretty straightforward using what I have learned goes well together under difference conditions. All of these gardens are relatively small but I truly think that it’s important to start small. This keeps you excited and stops you from getting overwhelmed in the beginning.

The first three gardens shown above are all 4’x4’ or 16 square feet. I think this is the perfect size garden to start out with because it gives you plenty of room to try a variety of plants but isn’t so big that you will get lost. All of these gardens use the square foot method of gardening since this is my preferred method right now.

The design furthest to the right is a standard kitchen garden that gets roughly 8 hours of sunlight a day. It is set up so that the vine beans will not shade out the other plants. I think it’s also important to mention that oregano and chives are perennials and will come back every year if they are not dug up. Finally, I placed carrots and onions (beets, and turnips in the shade garden also) toward the middle of the garden because they take longer to come to harvest while many of the others will be ready to harvest sooner. This prevents the gardener from having to reach over other plants to harvest.
The Salsa garden is the perfect garden for areas that get a lot of sun and are very dry. Again the tomato plants are placed at the back of the garden to prevent over shading the other plants. In this garden, there are no perennial plants however garlic is a nonstandard plant for this garden. Garlic can be planted in the fall or the spring. Fall planting typically yields a larger bulb, so spacing for fall planted garlic should be 4 per square foot, and spring planted garlic could be 9 per square foot since it will produce a smaller bulb size. Similarly different varieties of garlic will produce different size bulbs so be sure to read the package instructions.
The shaded kitchen garden is designed for those who only get 4 or less hours of sunlight. Many of the plants in this garden will thrive in cooler shaded areas whereas they will be hindered by a hot and sunny location. Again Chives are a perennial and will come back every year.

The gardens shown above are unique types of gardens that are perfect for small spaces and apartments.

The deck border garden is meant to be on a deck or fire escape. This prevents the gardener from having to build a trellis for the peas since the railing can be utilized.
The corner herb garden is perfect for a first time gardening since more than half of the plants are perennials. The only annual plants in this garden are the basil, parsley, and cilantro. Dill, rosemary, and tarragon can also be perennials depending on your location. Here in the northeast, they are typically annuals, but on mild winters, I have seen both tarragon and dill come back the following year.

The final two gardens that I designed are perennial hedges or trees. These are some of the best gardens to start with because they are the lowest maintenance. They are great to separate you from your neighbors or to tuck in along the edge of the property. While not everything in these gardens is edible they can still provide food and pretty flowers while being almost no work at all.

The first garden is a small fruit tree guild. A guild is simply a grouping of plants that are meant to benefit each other as they grow. All of the plants in this garden are perennials, meaning once they are planted they will come back every year. The only input that’s really needed here is weeding, mulching and occasionally thinning out the overcrowded plants. The only really suggestion that I have is to plant this with the strawberries facing the sun. Lupine can be very tall and may shade out the other plants. It does however, make a beautiful background for this garden or along a fence or home. The edible plants in this garden are the fruit tree, nasturtiums, salvia, clover, and strawberries.
The second garden is a blueberry hedge guild. The edible plants in this one are the blueberry bushes, cloudberries, and parsley.

Any of these gardens would be a great place to start your gardening journey. They are of course subjective to your own personal tastes and I would be happy to help anyone design a garden or answer any questions.

Happy gardening!

Recently

By Jessica

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Where did may go? Like really? I feel like it was all a blur.

I did a lot of foraging this month as seen on Instargam. I feel like spring is the easiest month to forage in the Northeast there are so many things in season that it’s actually hard to keep up with them all.

I also got a nice start on all things gardening (also more gardening here). Aside from getting the vegetable garden going. Momma Chuck gave me about a million flowers to transplant at my house. I’m excited to see them all fill in over the next couple years.

It was about this time last year that Chuck and I closed on our house and in a fun turn of events some of our close friends just closed on their first house. I’m super excited to see what they do as they settle in. It will be fun to have another friend to chat about house projects with.

Unfortunately, my aching shoulder did hold me back form hiking and working out, but I am on the mend and looking forward to getting into it in June.

Spent on Groceries in May: $189.97 (remember there was a week spent away so lots of eating out)

Total for the year: $1,045.56

Cost of Garden Supplies 2016: $209 (3 cy of mulch + garden dirt + some plants)

Venison with Morel Sauce

By Jessica

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Since spring has come Chuck and I have started to make walks around the yard a regular habit. It usually happens when we get home from work or on Saturday mornings before breakfast or even just randomly throughout the day if we are home. It’s a great way to look and talk over the projects that we have going and see how the garden is doing. It’s also a really great time to talk and reflect about the day ahead or behind or days far into the future. We have a lot of future plans to talk about between the two of us.

It was on one of these walks that we first stumbled across what looked like morels. Having never picked them without my dad around I sent one home with my mom to make sure before we harvested some. When we bought our house it was surrounded by trees that were owned by our neighbor, who had them removed shortly after we moved in, leaving behind a thick bed of wood chips from the process. These morels were found all along the edge of our property where the wood chips ended. I’m wondering if the small forest (she said it was something like 150 trees) was home to a well-developed morel colony and if these are all that could make their way out from the suppressing wood chips. I suppose we will never know, but I’ll take what I can get from my own back yard.

The first few morels were just sautéed up in a pan with some oil to see what they tasted like, and the second round was put into this dish. I made this meal on a whim last Sunday since it was one of the few nights that Chuck and I had alone together, we decided to have a kind of date night in. We cooked fiddleheads and morels from the back yard, micro greens from the garden, and venison that Chuck got last year. If only my potatoes had gown last year (and not gotten water logged) then all the main portions would have come from our own two hands. Creating a meal from things completely at my own hands is something I would like to make a regular occurrence one day and a goal that I’ve had for a very long time. We are getting closer every day and I’m so excited about that.

Venison with Morel Sauce

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 40 mins

Total time: 50 mins

Serves: 4 servings

Ingredients

5 tablespoons of unsalted butter, seperated
1 ½ cup chopped fresh morels
1 large shallot, chopped
1 lb venison roast, steak or loin
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of pepper
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup venison, beef or vegetable stock
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Salt to taste

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a large, oven proof skillet heat 1 tablespoon of butter over medium high heat. Add the morels and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until they have released all their water and continue to cook until the water has reduced. Add the shallot and sauté for another 3 to 4 minutes, stirring often. Remove the vegetables from heat and set aside.
Wipe out the pan and add 2 tablespoons of butter to the pan.
Generously season the meat with salt and pepper. Then place the meat in the pan. It should sizzle on contact. Sear the meat until a brown crust forms (about 2-3 minutes each) on each side.
Remove from the stove top and place in the oven to cook for 15 to 20 minutes for rare to medium rare.
Remove from oven and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes.
While the meat rests return the pan to medium high heat. Add the final 2 tablespoons of butter and allow it to melt. Add the flour and stir well to make a smooth sauce. Deglaze the pan with the broth, thyme, and pepper and stir until well combined, scraping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the morel shallot mixture and any liquid back into the pan and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the morels are heated through. Stir to combine and remove from heat.
Slice the meat and serve atop the morel gravy immediately.

Jessica

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