Surf and Turf Dinner with a side of noodles?

This is the look our dog Chia gave me last night as I was preparing dinner.  She stuck to me like glue hoping I would accidentally drop just a tiny morsel of food for her to grab before I could pick it back up.  Ah, but unlucky for her I was making steak and salmon, and no way would I drop that on the floor.  (lol) 

It was a one pan dinner, so great in the cleaning department!  First I seasoned the steak, a sirloin, with salt and pepper.  I like to keep things simple.  I have seasoned it many ways in the past including with steak sauce, garlic salt, seasoned salt, mixture of soy and worchestershire sauces, oyster sauce, ... but salt and pepper is still my favorite.  I put a little bit of extra virgin olive oil in a heated pan and gently laid my steak in it.  I like my steaks rare to medium rare, so it only takes about 4-5 minutes of each side.  My cousin, Tony, taught me that if the steak feels similar to the cushy part of my palm under the thumb, then my meat is medium rare.  I love this tip because in the past I've always either over cooked or under cooked. 

For the sides, I usually make caramelized onions, garlic spinach, and mushrooms in butter and red wine sauce, but I wanted something different.  I was craving potatoes, but when I went to the market, I found these super fragrant tomatoes on vines.  I never noticed them before.  Size-wise they are between a roma and a cherry tomato.   I bought a few vines full and am so glad I did.  I had sliced them in half and cooked them in the pan around the steak during the last few minutes of cooking.  No seasoning, no oil needed, they just soaked up the steak juices.  They are SO sweet and tomato-y.  WOW!  I don't know if I would put them in soups or pasta dishes since they are almost like a fruit, but it was a pleasant surprise.

After I finished cooking the steak and tomatoes, I sliced a Yukon gold potato, seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme, and e.v.o.o. and threw them into the pan.  It was a bit laborious to cook in the pan, I could have fried them or stuck them in the oven, but I was going for less cleaning.  In the end it wasn't too bad.  It took maybe 10-15 minutes to cook all of it.  If I had thinner slices, it would have been done much faster.

So now onto the salmon.  Same as the steak, simple salt and pepper, but this time at the end of the cooking I hit it with a few squeezes of lemon juice to cut out any hints of fishy-ness.  And done!  So quick and easy... 

Oh, but D had other plans for me, he was feeling noodle soup for dinner.  I guess one pan clean up was too good to be true.  I started to protest, and he said he would make it, so I had to jump in.  His concoctions usually leaves a BIG mess and an even bigger tummy ache.  :-P  So I threw a pot of water onto the stove, pulled out any "leftover" veggies from past meals, and found some scallops, black forest ham, and pork dumplings.  Once the water boiled, I tossed a handful of Chinese noodles and the dumplings to cook for a few minutes, and then threw everything else in.  I seasoned it with a little salt, white and black pepper, and some chicken bullion.  Done!

Oh, but Chia looked so sad not having had anything to sweep off the floor.  Plus everything smelled so good.  In the end she didn't get any sirloin, but she did get a gourmet meal of turkey and veggies with gravy from Natural Choice dog food.  :-P 

Cleaning Out the Fridge

Yesterday I was going through the fridge trying to decide what to cook for dinner.  I had already taken out some pork chops to grill, but didn't have anything to complement them.  I had a variety of veggies on hand but there was just a little bit of this and that (5 stems of asparagus, one onion, a handful of mushrooms, a quarter head of lettuce, a couple stalks of green onions, half bunch of cilantro, two jalapeno peppers, two cups of blueberries, and leftover blueberry puree).  I needed to go grocery shopping so badly, but didn't have the time, and my hubby was STARVING.  He then said he was craving noodles, so grilled pork chops (I was thinking of making an onion, garlic, mushroom sauce) were out of the question.  

Lucky for me I found two tiny packets of pickled vegetables at the very back of the fridge (something I don't even remember buying that's how far back it was).  I decided to make pickled vegetable with pork noodle soup.  The pickled veggies are not what they sound like.  They are not sour like a cucumber pickle, they are more like cured veggies (I think it's cabbage) since they are salty and a little spicy.  It's called ja choi in Chinese which directly translates to fried vegetable.  I really don't know if they are fried in the preparation though.

I started a pot of water for the Chinese noodles (which I had three opened boxes... I'm starting to realize where my storage shortage is coming from), and another pot heating up chicken stock with a handful of cilantro.  I cubed up the pork chops, marinated it with a little bit of soy sauce, and browned them in a wok and set them aside.  Then I chopped up all the veggies I had in the fridge added a few garlic cloves and stir fried like a crazy woman.  First I put the onions into the wok to caramelize a little, then added the garlic, jalapeno, and mushrooms for a few minutes before stirring in the pork and pickled veggie and finally the asparagus and green onions.  The ingredients are full of flavor so the only seasoning I needed to add was a dash of black pepper.

Now I needed to assemble the dish.  I put a handful of noodles in the bowl, a few pieces of lettuce, some of the stir fry, and topped it off with the soup.  It sounds like a lot of work, but it took me less than 30 minutes, including cleaning the pots, to get it all done.  This dish is also great with rice, or prepared with chicken, beef, or tofu.  It's traditionally only uses onions and the pickled veggies, but it's also tasty with celery and other sturdy vegetables.  It was perfect for cleaning out our fridge.

Now I had to figure out what to do with the left over blueberries that I had gotten for the Father's Day cake.

D doesn't eat blueberries (he'll pick out the blueberries in a blueberry muffin), so I was left to either eat 2 cups all by myself with a side of puree, or find a recipe to incorporate them with what I have at home.  

I found a recipe for blueberry crumb cake in the 2002 Martha Stewart Holiday Baking magazine.  I didn't have enough blueberries, sour cream, or butter, but I substituted the puree for the 1/4 cup shortage of sour cream and half the blueberries in the batter (I saved the rest for the crumb topping).  I used what was left of the butter for the crumb topping which was only about 1 1/3 stick).  I had to bake it for an extra 15 minutes than what was suggested (equaling to 55 minutes).  I couldn't find the exact recipe on Martha's website, but this is a pretty close one Classic Blueberry Crumb Cake.

I know in baking you should never stray from the recipe, which I've learned the hard way more than once.  But as you can see from this and past posts I am sometimes fairly relaxed.  This time around I was lucky.  The cake came out very yummy and not too sweet.  Now I just have to convince D to give it a try and get in some much needed grocery time.