Autumn is here. I’ve found that fall is my favorite time to make food, because so many of the things I really like to make fit better into an autumn cuisine. I decided to kick off fall with a good steak. T-bone steaks were on sale, so that was a good start. I’ve always thought that T-bones and Porterhouses were the same thing, except that T-bones were served at truck stops and Porterhouses were served in fine dining establishments. Turns out, there is actually a difference. They’re more or less the same cut, but just from different sides of Bessy, so that the T-bone has a smaller filet section than the Porterhouse.
Beverage(s): Rye Bourbon Manhattan and Mad Dog Spanish Red Blend
Appeitzer: Scampi-stuffed tomatoes
Main Course: Porterhouse au poivre with Dijon portobellos
Sides: Rosemary Potatoes Romanoff and asparagus with espresso-almond butter
Rye is the grain that is primarily responsible for 2 of the greatest consumable delicacies: the perfect manhattan and an authentic reuben sandwich. One is named for a booming metropolitan island and the other for a son of Abraham – neither have anything to do with rye. The rye Manhattan is becoming popular again because of Mad Men – a positive, unforeseen consequence of the hit. Just for the record, Breaking Bad is a better drama than Mad Men, all things considered. However, popularizing crystal meth is not as cool as bringing back the Manhattan.
I know that a dry cabernet is the wine that goes best with steaks, but I didn’t really feel like paying more than $10 for a bottle. I really try not to buy cabs less than 3 years old. I’m not trying to be elitist, it’s just that cabs are such a big grape, that they need a few years to mellow. You don’t have to spend $50 for a good one, you just have to look a little harder. The thing about Spanish wine is that they pretty much all go well with food, in fact, they go better with food. It’s also very rare that I get a Spanish wine I dislike, so this was a pretty easy choice.
I’m pretty excited about the stuffed tomatoes. (You can spot the filling in the picture to the right of the wine bottle.) I wanted to make a surf n’ turf meal, and I had some shrimp in the freezer. I was just going to chop up the shrimp and cook it scampi style, but then I realized I could make it look like shrimp cocktail, so it would be very confusing for me when it came time to eat. This is essentially a mix of bruschetta and shrimp scampi. The mixture consists of shrimp pieces topped with a little bit of parmesan cheese before baking.
Potatoes Romanoff has a special place in my heart. You can trace back my enjoyment and adventure-focused cooking to my first ever episode of potatoes Romanoff. My mom used to cater dinners for our church all the time when I was growing up. Being too young to drive and too chubby to run long distances, I became my mom’s assistant in the kitchen. I was probably 10 or 11 and I helped my mom make this potatoes Romanoff recipe for 300 people. Right as I got done spreading out ungodly amounts of potatoes smothered in sour cream, onions, and cheese I realized I had never had this for dinner before. I inquired of my mom when she had made this before, because why would you make something for 300 people that you’re planning on spending eternity in heaven with when you haven’t made it for 3 people. My mom told me she had never made it before, but how could potatoes in sour cream and cheese ever be bad. Truer words have never been spoken – in fact, my mother found them in the Gospel of Mark. I decided to stay true to my myth of potatoes Romanoff and change it up a bit. I forgot to get sour cream, so I turned to the staple of Greek yogurt and added goat cheese and rosemary. How could it be bad? It wasn’t.
The asparagus was a successful combination of several failed attempts. Almonds were cheap, so we bought a good handful and I roasted them in my toaster oven. I have this handheld food processor that I was going to use to make almond butter, but a part came loose, so it wasn’t working. Enter the coffee grinder. It was free of ground coffee, but I thought, why not add a little ground espresso to spice things up. In hindsight, I would use a shot of espresso, because almond butter can use a little liquid to make it better to spread. So the asparagus doesn’t look too pretty, but it was tasty (and I think it sounds cool).
I borrowed an idea from my serving days for the steak. My former restaurant, Max & Erma’s, had a filet they served on top of grilled portabello mushrooms with a Dijon butter sauce. I thought I would combine the mushrooms and Dijon. I mixed some butter and mustard with spices and then had Emily spread it over the portobella slices. I put in some capers as well to add some green and start thinning out the refrigerator for the move. I sautéed them until cooked and my steak topping was done. They were good, but I would like something a little bit saucier to go on top of the steak.
Au poivre is just the fancy French way of saying “obscene amounts of pepper.” I think Williams & Sonoma sells an au poivre spread for like $15. That’s the best part of being rich – you get to waste money and be stupid. I’ve found that grilling a steak is not always the absolute best way to cook steak. With a thick steak on a bone, cooking it in a cast iron skillet has worked really well.
You sear the outside (about 2 minutes on each side) and then throw the whole thing in the oven for a few minutes. It’s like Julia Childs meets Laura Ingalls Wilder.
