By the time we’re done cooking I’m usually famished and don’t have much patience for photography and proper lighting is always an issue. But despite the poor quality of this photo I just had to share because our meal was extra delicious last night!

Sri, Dan, and I made steaks, a kale pancetta casserole, and mashed potatoes. We garnished the steaks and mashed potatoes with garlic herb butter.

I chose some tri tip steaks from Trader Joe’s because they were the cheapest option, around $10-12 dollars total for 3 nice sized pieces about 1” thick. I prepared the steaks using the method found here:

http://steamykitchen.com/163-how-to-turn-cheap-choice-steaks-into-gucci-prime-steaks.html

In summary, you coat the meat liberally with salt, add any other seasonings you might want (except pepper), and let it sit out for around an hour. Then you rinse the excess salt and seasonings off, pat the steaks REALLY dry (any excess moisture and you’re just steaming your meat, yuck), and then you can go straight to cooking or toss the steaks in the fridge for later. The theory is that this allows the salt to penetrate to the center of the meat and start unraveling some of those protein bundles which then can absorb and retain fat and moisture better making your meat extra tender and juicy. The meat doesn’t get too salty because of osmosis or something. I topped off our steaks with some pressed garlic and rosemary springs while they sat so that they would absorb those flavors as well in addition to the salt.

I got the idea for the garlic herb butter from that website as well. I threw raw garlic, parsley, and some sage in mine. Still tasting that garlic this morning! But it was delicious. It was really easy to do as well once I let the butter sit out for a while to soften up. I used saran wrap and a little wax paper for stiffness to help roll mine into a log.

Dan grilled the steaks on our cast iron griddle. They came out wonderfully, probably the tastiest steaks we’ve ever made! Very beautiful pink color in the center and nice and tender. I thought they were a little salty, but I didn’t mind because I like salt and they still tasted so delicious. However Dan and Sri didn’t think they were salty at all, and Dan is usually our salt-shy one. Anyway we’ll definitely be using this method again, I’ll just make sure to use a little less salt or perhaps let them sit for less time next time. It seems like you can use this method for other meats and poultry as well, can’t wait to try it with chicken!

We’ve made the kale pancetta recipe several times now.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/kale-gratin-with-pancetta-recipe/index.html

We all love it, but it always turns out a little too salty. I thought it was the topping at first (all the parmesan along with seasoning the breadcrumbs), but last night we didn’t add any salt at all to the topping and it was still pretty salty. So now we think the culprit is the pancetta. Next time we’re going to avoid using salt altogether in this recipe and just rely on the pancetta and parmesan to season their neighboring ingredients. But either way, still delicious.

Sri has the mashed potatoes down to a science at this point. Always yummy. Last week when we made the meatballs we had to clarify some butter and so had some milk solids leftover from that process. I was trying to figure out a way to use them and dumped them into the mashed potatoes. Man that was yummy! :) But the mashed potatoes this week were just as good, especially smothered in that garlic herb butter!