Steak feast again

I won a bet recently with Khoi and the prize was for USDA prime ribeye steak (lucky me). We usually like trying new recipes, but the last time we made these dishes, it was so good that I insisted we do it again. (Also because I didn't get to take pretty pictures last time, so I wanted another chance.)

"DRESS THE BOARD" RIB-EYE STEAK
Recipe by Jamie Oliver

Ingredients

• 2 rib-eye steaks, about 1" thick
• Salt and pepper
• Rosemary sprigs (2 sprigs per steak)
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Dressing the board: 1 bunch of fresh mint, 1 fresh red chili, 3 cloves peeled garlic, 1/2 lemon, 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Heat skillet over high heat for about 10-15 minutes (cast iron is best but I used an anodized aluminum  skillet since I don't have a cast iron and it worked fine). While the skillet is heating, season the steak liberally with salt and pepper on both sides. Pull rosemary leaves off the stems and push them into the meat, then set aside to let it rest while you prep the board.

Finely chop the chili, mint, and garlic on a wooden board.

Squeeze lemon juice and olive oil over the chopped herbs and mix well.

Drizzle and rub both sides of the steak with olive oil immediately before searing. When the pan is hot, put the steak into the skillet (don't mess with the steak while its cooking!!) and cook each side for 2-3 minutes until beautifully browned. Be sure to protect your hands with oven mitts and turn the exhaust on because it'll be smokey!

Dat sear tho

Transfer the meat to the wooden board and coat with dressing. Let the steak rest for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

We actually only made one steak (cutting the recipe above in half), and used our second steak for steak fondue. 

Creamy mushroom sauce for dipping

Wasabi cream sauce also for dipping

Cooking a steak cube in hot oil

The spread: "dress the board" steak, fondue with two sauces, salad, and store-bought coleslaw and potato salad. We feast like royalty puhaha.

Yangnyeomtongdak (Korean Fried Chicken)

Deep frying is a recipe deal breaker for me, usually. I feel guilty loading my food into a large vat of oil, so that by the time it's time to nom, I'm often not hungry anymore. It's also a tad dangerous to have so much hot oil in the kitchen, and it's annoying to dispose the oil afterwards, so when I see a recipe that involves frying I usually just skip it. This recipe however is too good to pass up. Also, Khoi did most of the work. All I did was lend a hand here and there, and then pigged out >:D

KOREAN FRIED CHICKEN
Recipe slightly adapted from Maangchi

Ingredients

• 3 lbs bone-in legs and thighs
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup potato starch powder
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sweet rice flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 egg
• 6-7 cups of canola oil
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/3 cup ketchup
• 1/3 cup agave syrup
• 1/4 cup gochujang (hot pepper paste )
• 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

Night before: prep your chicken by rinsing it clean with cold water, and then tossing with 1 tsp ground pepper and 1 tsp salt (this helps draw water out from the chicken). Refrigerate until you're ready to cook.

When ready, add 1/2 cup potato starch powder, 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup sweet rice flour, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1 egg to the chicken. Mix well with your hands to coat completely.

Prep your oil for frying by adding 6-7 cups (about 2 inches) of canola oil to a large, high-rimmed pot. Use a thermometer to heat up your oil to around 350F, which should take around 7-8 minutes on high heat.

Add your chicken pieces to the oil and fry for 10 minutes. After this time, remove the chicken pieces from the oil and let rest for about 5-10 minutes.

 (We fried up some steak cut fries while waiting for the chicken to rest ^^)

Return the chicken to the oil (after we removed our fries of course) and fry for an additional 10 minutes.

 

While the chicken was frying, we made the sauce by heating up 1 Tbsp of canola oil and 4 cloves of minced garlic in a pan, then adding 1/3 cup ketchup, 1/3 cup agave, 1/4 cup gochujang, 1 Tbsp apple vinegar. We let it simmer on low heat for about 7 minutes (being careful not to burn the sauce) and then turned off the heat to wait until the chicken was done.

 Double fried chicken, done and ready for sauce (I stole a drumstick to nom on without sauce at this time...)

Add the sauce to the fried chicken and toss.

 Plated Korean fried chicken, ta da!

We garnished the chicken with sesame seeds, and served it with cole slaw and fries (with sriracha mayo) for sides.

The chef is so pleased with his work, as he should be :)

Beef and Bacon Pie for Game of Thrones Premiere

Last Sunday, we had a Game of Thrones premiere party. Because we're nerds, there was themed food from the Feast of Ice and Fire cookbook. Everything was great, but the beef and bacon pie that Khoi and I brought was over the top. I need to start eating healthier...

BEEF AND BACON PIE
Recipe from A Feast of Ice and Fire

Ingredients

• 12 strips of bacon - I used an 8" cake tin for my pie, so if you're going to use a larger tin then I recommend more strips
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 carrot, cut into small chunks
• 1/2 medium potato, cubed
• 1 1/2 lb chuck steak or stew meat, cut small
• 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup beef broth
• Salt and ground black pepper to taste
• Large pinch of dried rosemary or other savory herbs
• 1 pie crust (I used half a box of frozen Pillsbury refrigerated crust)

Preheat oven to 400F. Weave bacon strips into a tight lattice on a foil-lined cookie sheet with an edge to catch the grease. Bake for 15-20 minutes until bacon is crispy. When ready, remove bacon from oven to cool but leave the oven on to bake the pie later.

While bacon is cooking, make your filling. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat, then add onion, carrot, and potato. Cook until onion is softened.

Toss beef with flour until each piece is coated. Add beef to the veggies and stir over low heat until brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in any extra flour and cook for a minute longer.

Add broth, salt, pepper, and rosemary. Mix well and simmer for 10 minutes until a gravy forms. Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool. At this point I did a bit of taste testing and the only word I can use to describe how it tasted is...medieval.

At this point, hopefully your bacon lattice is done baking and has cooled slightly. Using your pie tin (in my case, cake tin) as a guide, use a sharp knife to cut around the pan until you have a circle of bacon lattice.

I wanted to snack on the bacon edges that I cut off in the previous step, but instead I cut it into smaller pieces and added it to the pie filling. What great self control I have.

Line pie tin with dough, and add filling. Since I used the full recipe for the filling but my tin was smaller, I had lots of leftover beef filling to snack on later. Trim your crust to leave a 1 cm edge.

Flute your pie crust, directions here! Bake until you can see the filling bubbling around the edges, and the pastry is cooked, about 40 minutes.

Ta da!

My mulled wine! Like a warm, spicier Sangria.

Karen made Sansa's lemon cakes.

Yang's Tyroshi Honeyfingers

My plate, with our pie and Sister's Stew by John. Don't worry, I had seconds plus plenty of wine and desserts ^^. We couldn't get our HBO Go to work until 10:30pm, so lots of pigging out happened in the hour and a half we waited...

Bulla bulla vallecula

Finally done w/ exams! Chicago here I come :) I'm a tad too excited to fall asleep, hence a quick blog post.

I made Jamie Oliver's Chicken in Milk one night while procrastinating for finals because a writer on The Kitchn deemed this the best chicken recipe of all time...which I beg to differ. It tasted fine...but the milk did this weird curdling thing so the sauce's texture was pretty gross to me. I ended up straining the broth so that the curds would be gone, and it was much better :) There are definitely better ways to cook chicken...

Steak and Ramen

A few posts back, I mentioned that we had an extra rib-eye steak which I had ambitious plans for. The poor little dude has been sitting in the freezer for awhile and was getting restless, so good thing these plans just happened.

Rib-eye steak, cooked Momofuku-style using the recipe here. The flavors in this rendition are very classic, and while I liked Jamie Oliver's recipe more, you really can't go wrong with either.

Dressed-up ramen, using this tutorial for very basic guidelines. I know it looks like a ton of veg but there's a heaping pile of meat and noodles hidden just beneath. I should invest in a set of bigger bowls so that my ramen would look prettier. What I did:

• Noodles: boil up shin ramyun noodles according to package instructions (minus a minute or so since you want to undercook them a bit), then run under cold water and drain. You won't be needing the included sauce packets, so toss them. 
• Protein: stir-fry some thinly sliced beef, onions, and garlic in sesame oil with a bit of salt.
• Broth: add chicken broth, soy sauce, cooking wine, miso paste, and chili oil to a pot and bring to a boil. When adding the miso paste, remember to mix a few tablespoons with a little water to thin the paste before stirring it into broth -- otherwise it'll be clumpy if you add it in directly. Add bok choi, thinly sliced carrots, and an egg if desired.
• To serve: turn your tap on the hottest setting it can muster, then run noodles under the water. Transfer noodles into separate bowls, add protein, then spoon on broth, vegetables, and egg. Top with sliced green onion and cilantro for added cool points.

I have exams coming up, so no more elaborate recipes for awhile for Helen :( Looking forward to spring break though, big plans...

Steak, steak, and more steak

Khoi acquired three USDA prime rib eye steaks from Costco so we got to try some recipes that I've always wanted to attempt. Check out dat marbling, so beautiful. Cooking is definitely my favorite way to procrastinate.

One of the steaks received the Jamie Oliver treatment, prepped in the style of "dressing the board." For the steak, salt and pepper each side liberally and stick rosemary leaves into the meat. For the dressing, use a wooden cutting board to dice up a fresh red chili, a fresh bunch of mint, and 3 cloves of garlic, and drizzle in juice from half a lemon and 2 Tbsp of evoo.

Prior to searing the steak, rub on some olive oil. Make sure to use a heavy bottomed pan and heat it to the highest setting on your burner, then sear each side for 2-3 minutes. Transfer to the board, coat with dressing, and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Look how pretty it is.

A second steak was diced into small pieces for steak fondue, served with three sauces: bearnaise, a Bourguignon alternative, and a wasabi cream sauce. We have it pretty good considering how we're students who practically get to feast like kings.

That steak though...seriously ridiculous. There's one ribeye left and I have wonderful plans in mind...

Till

Till is one of my favorite restaurants in the Columbus area, and it also happens to be only a couple blocks away from my apartment. My roomie initially recommended it to me, so I visited for dinner once with a friend. My lamb burger that night was so good that I went back for dinner again the next day. Aside from the lamb burger though, their dinner menu is a bit pricey and very vegetarian/vegan-esque, but their brunch menu is marginally more affordable and more meat-centric.

Cranberry shrub, on the house with a Yelp check-in. The first time I went, I asked them if it was a plant and they gave me a weird look. The drink is just fruit or veg puree with sparkling water and simple syrup. This is my third shrub that I've tried (others were beet and ginger) and it's the best flavor so far.

Duck hash. I felt so crazy fancy for eating duck for brunch. The duck was perfectly cooked with delicious gravy, and the hash had pieces of pork rinds that gave it an awesome crunch.

Chicken fried pork. This is the best rendition of chicken and waffles that I've tried -- I'm usually disappointed when I order the dish. There's really no chicken, it's just pork but prepped like fried chicken, with french toast instead of waffles. Only complaint was that its a tad too fatty for my liking, but still phenomenal.

Till

247 King Ave

Columbus, OH 43201

(614) 298-9986