FOOD
FROM THE HOME KITCHEN OF CHEF AARON
Here’s to Steak and Potatoes
E
veryone loves a steak dinner, and it’s easy to make an elegant one in the quiet of your own kitchen. The trick is high heat for cooking the steak and having whatever ventilation Chef Aaron solution your Egan house contains active and kicking before you start cooking — the proper
method will create a fair amount of smoke, but if you’re careful, you’ll get restaurant-quality steaks. Get hold of a good meat thermometer and learn how fast your stove and pans cook a steak. Never rely solely on times, but rather use reliable metrics like temperatures. 125 Fahrenheit is rare, 165 is well done, and the degrees of doneness go every 10 degrees of temperature in between. Also, roasting vegetables
STEAK WITH NEW POTATOES, ROASTED VEGETABLES AND MUSHROOM DEMIGLACE Yield: 4 full plated servings of food
They will take about 30-45 minutes to cook, so go ahead and do this first. 2. Clean the asparagus, and trim and quarter the radishes. 3. Spread the asparagus, the quartered radishes and the peppers on a sheet tray covered with baking parchment or foil. Drizzle the vegetables with the oil and shift them around to coat evenly. Season well with salt and pepper, and roast for 10-15 minutes, checking frequently and shaking the pan to allow for more even browning. 4. Pat the steaks dry, season them liberally with salt and pepper, and cook them to your desired degree of doneness — use a good thermometer to check that they’re where you want them. This shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes unless you got giant steaks that you want well done. Since there will be carry-over
Ingredients 4 steaks of your choice about 1 lb. salt-roasted new potatoes (recipe below) 1 bunch asparagus, trimmed 4 radishes, trimmed and quartered 4 small sweet peppers (shishito, sweet wax peppers, sweet minibell peppers, etc.) Olive oil Salt and pepper 1 cup Mushroom Demi-Glace (recipe below) Directions 1. Preheat an oven to 425°F. Heat a grill, grill pan, sauté pan or cast-iron skillet, and get ready to cook steaks in your preferred manner. Prepare the salt-roasted potatoes, as in the recipe that follows.
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like this concentrates their flavors and allows you to keep all the nutrients inside the food, rather than losing them to cooking water or poaching cooking, you’ll want to pull the steaks about 5 degrees from where you want them to be when they’re done. If you want medium-rare, 135 Fahrenheit, you pull the steak off the grill at about 130 or so, to account for carry-over. 5. When the steaks are done, pull them from the heat and let them rest on a plate or cutting board, for at least 5 minutes. Tent a piece of foil over them gently (we want to keep in heat, but not seal in steam so well we get condensation and lose our crust.) 6. When the vegetables are soft and lightly browned, remove them from the oven and set aside for plate-up. Similarly, take the potatoes out once they’re browned and cooked through (tender when poked with a paring knife.) 7. Plate up how you like it; I’d probably make a nice compact arrangement in the center of the plate with
liquids. Radishes, when roasted, provide a pungency and funk that works well with the strong umami flavors of the mushrooms and steak. the demi-glace flooding the front and on top of the steak. SALT-ROASTED NEW POTATOES This preparation of potatoes is wildly simple, and creates a surprisingly flavorful result. You can smash the potatoes flat, let them cool and deep-fry them for a crispy presentation, or leave them whole and serve them with lots of flavorful olive oil, flaky sea salt and black pepper, and maybe some fresh herbs. Yield: 6-8 servings Ingredients 2 lbs. fingerling potatoes Kosher salt Directions 1. Preheat an oven to 425°F. 2. Pour a layer of salt on the bottom of a sheet pan or high-sided baking dish. You want at least an inch of salt on the pan. Spread the fingerling potatoes over the
