Pan Seared Sirloin

April 23, 2021

Happy Friday. I made it through Thursday at work unscathed however, the car fire on my way home extended my stress level for an extra thirty minutes. S what did I do first thing when I got home? Yes, I opened a beer, turned on some music and started cooking. I did this all just before Jennifer walked through the door chatting on her phone to our wonderful friend Nancy. Now I know most people would read that very sarcastically but the truth is Nancy is indeed a very sweet woman. The kind of friend who bakes Hamentashen for Purim and leaves them on your doorstep. This while being in stuck in isolation because of COVID-19. Now if you don’t know what Hamentashen is don’t be surprised, neither did I at first. In the simplest of terms it a yummy cookie eaten during Purim. I will get us the recipe… Shhhh.

So last night was Pan Seared Sirloin. I began by marinating it and putting two potatoes in the oven to bake. As I waited and cooked the other dishes, the steak soaked up the flavors of the teriyaki. I kept busy by slicing up three onions and frying them up in the pan, as I was going to make the steak. It dawned on me that I had mushrooms I had forgotten to make this weekend when our friends came over. I cooked the onions separate from the mushrooms (Jennifer is not a big fan of mushrooms), but I imagine that if you were to cook the mushrooms and the onions together there would be a fantastic amalgamation of flavor. Here is the recipe for Peppers, Mushrooms and Onions. Although Jennifer does not eat them she makes a great stuffed mushroom on Thanksgiving. Go figure?

As the mushrooms cooked and I tossed them in a bit of butter. I trimmed the ends off some fresh string beans. These too were also left uncooked form the weekend. We might as well have a vegetable tonight, right? They went right into a small pot I had with boiling water, in a process called blanching.

Time to cook the steak! I dried it off, because as we all know a wet steak won’t turn brown even when added to a hot pan with oil. It steams on the juices then. It does not look as pretty when does. I never thought I would ever be calling a steak pretty. Hmmm, maybe appetizing word be a better word here.

I seared the steak on both sides and placed it under the broiler on the oven to finched. It came out medium rare. I gave Jennifer the end cut as she like her meat a little bit more well done.

When the steak reached a temperature of 135 degrees, I moved it from the pan to a plate. I let it rest a bit on a plate before I sliced it up. I served it with some of the teriyaki marinated I used to deglaze the pan with alongside the potato with butter, string beans, onions and mushrooms. Jennifer did like the string beans although I have to admit they needed to cook one more minute. They tasted a little too “green” to me.

Another successful meal behind me and one day closer to cooking things from my recipe book. I have to be honest I’m not quite sure how I’m going to handle that yet. It’s just a lot of recipes and they are just organized in a large five hundred page word document alphabetically. My second book is more of a cookbook but I only just started writing that (only two recipes in). Somehow, I have to find a way to combine the tow of them here and present them to you all.

That’s the real challenge isn’t it? It will be the daily showing of a brand new cookbook as its written in 365 days. Can it be done by an amateur like myself?