Rib-Eye Steaks with Garlic and Rosemary

I think I mentioned recently how much I love the Stinking Rose Restaurant Cookbook. This weekend I decided to try to recreate the ribeye, which Travis and I have had at the restaurant several times. It was absolutely the best steak I have ever cooked. I made it with some cauliflower that I roasted with olive oil, sea salt, and garlic, and then I took some leftover french bread and made garlic bread from it so that Travis would have something to eat besides steak, bless his veggie-phobic heart.

For the steaks, you will need:

2 large cloves garlic, halved

4 (10 ounce) rib eye steaks (I used two and halved the rosemary but not the garlic. What can I say? I like garlic!)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 springs rosemary

1/4 cup dry white wine

2 tablespoons butter

I also didn't halve the wine/butter, I just made a bit extra sauce. You also need a cast iron skillet. I guess you could use a different kind of skillet, but why would you?

1. Rub the cut edge of 1 garlic half around your skillet.

2. Set the skillet over medium heat. Lightly sprinkle the steaks with salt and pepper on both sides and add steaks to the skillet. Place all the garlic and a sprig of rosemary on one side of the skillet to add a hint of flavor. (I had to do the steaks in two batches because they wouldn't both fit in my skillet, so I used one garlic clove and one rosemary sprig in each batch).

3. Cook steaks on first side for 3-4 minutes, then turn and cook another 6-7 minutes for medium-rare (for a 1 1/2 inch steak). Once rosemary and garlic begin to brown, remove them from the pan.

4. Transfer steaks to a warmed plate. Add wine and butter to the skillet, stirring to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. When the mixture starts to bubble, remove from the heat and drizzle over the top of the steaks. Serve immediately.

Best. Hot Dog. Ever.

Okay, so maybe I could just be thinking best hot dog ever in the heat of the moment, but it was a really good hot dog. It's Tuesday. I've been feeling sort of sick, so I was super drowsy (in spite of the insanely strong coffee that I had at breakfast). But it was food truck day! I couldn't decide what to get, but I settled on something simple: The Greasy Wiener truck. I will now list the amazing things about this hot dog:

1. it is deep fried

2. it is wrapped in bacon

3. with this enormous thing of fries, it cost $6. I could barely eat all the fries.

I've also had the Iggys from Greasy Wiener (mini burgers on Hawaiian rolls) and they're pretty great as well. So, all in all, it was a good day.

Cappuccino Muffins

I was looking for a new muffin recipe to try, since I generally make chocolate chip or lemon poppyseed, and I found these! It's a Cappuccino Chocolate Muffin - you can find the recipe here.

They're really delicious, and they're supposed to freeze well too, which is nice. The coffee flavor isn't too strong, and it's soooo good with the chocolate chips. I really can't wait to have these for breakfast at work this week. I recommend heating in the microwave for a few seconds to get the chocolate to melt some.

Trout with Garlic Lemon Butter

This was sort of an interesting meal experiment. It's based on a recipe from The Stinking Rose Restaurant's cookbook. It's possibly my favorite restaurant, and I've really gotten to love cooking out of the cookbook at home as well.

But, I say this is based on the recipe because nothing went quite according to plan. The recipe in the book is actually for Lemon Baked Salmon with Garlic Caper Butter.

However, that's not what actually ending up happening. I apparently looked at the wrong week's sale ad today for the grocery, so they didn't have the salmon that I thought would be there. But, there was some fairly nice looking trout. I'm also not in love with capers (and the jar in my fridge looked a bit off, so I tossed them. Upon retrospect, they could've actually been there for years). Finally, I decided to be bold and not really measure a lot of stuff. So this is what I did.

I tried to bring about 3/4 a stick of unsalted butter to room temperature. It sort of worked. I actually put it in the microwave for a few seconds as well. I then mixed it with the juice from half a lemon, a tablespoon of white wine, and two (albeit very large) cloves of minced garlic. I folded in some fresh parsley and then added salt and pepper.

Then I put the trout in a baking dish and added 1/2 cup of water. I put the trout in the dish and spread some of the butter mixture on each fillet (I think about a tablespoon on each) and then topped it with some slices of lemon. It baked on 325 for about 15 minutes. I wasn't sure it was done, so I bumped up the temperature to 400 and baked it another 5.

It's served on some leftover egg noodles from last night. I put another tablespoon or so of the butter mixture in a saucepan and let it cook for a few minutes (since the garlic was raw). Then I just tossed the leftover pasta around in it. The noodles did originally have some butter and parmesan cheese on them, but this butter addition definitely helped. On Friday night they were far too bland.

It was really quite tasty, but the garlic was very strong on the fish. I think it would've been nice to cook the garlic a bit first. Some roasted garlic cloves in the butter would be great as well. I liked the butter mixture so much that I saved the leftovers to do something else with later this week. Maybe just put it on fish again, who can say?

ICBC: Cardamom!

This is one of the blogger challenges that I skipped a few weeks ago. Cardamom was ridiculously expensive at the grocery, and I just couldn't quite bring myself to buy it that week. But, this week I managed to find a smaller and more reasonably priced container. I didn't feel like doing something sweet (I still have muffins to make), so I decided to try Cardamom Chicken and Rice. I found the recipe on the Food and Wine website. It was pretty easy.

The recipe actually called for chicken legs, but I couldn't find any leg/thighs still attached. So instead, I got some bone-in chicken breast halves. I rubbed the chicken with some canola oil and seasoned it with cardamom, salt, and pepper. It roasted on 375 for about 50 minutes I think.

In the meantime, I had to work on the rice. I needed 2 1/4 cups chicken broth for 1 1/2 cups of rice, but I forgot broth at the store and certainly didn't have time to make my own. I did have some chicken bouillon though, and so I made about 2 cups of that and added another 1//4 cup of water (it seemed a bit strong/salty). I sauteed some shallots in oil (the recipe called for onions, but I thought shallots would be nicer, and I was totally right).

Then, I stirred the shallots around in the oil/shallot mixture until all the rice was coated, added the broth and about a teaspoon of cardamom, and brought to a boil. Like really any rice, once it's at a boil, you cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Let it stand for 5, then fluff it and serve.

It was so good! I was very proud of having used cardamom in both dishes. Travis didn't like the rice much, but he did enjoy the chicken so it all worked out.

ICBC: Tomatoes!

I wasn't sure what to do for the ingredient this week, tomatoes. I love tomatoes, but especially in the summer, I usually just eat them marinated and raw. So good. But I wanted to try something different, and I remembered that in the Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook, there is a recipe for tomato pie.

It's actually really easy. Prebake a pie crust, layer 4 peeled and sliced tomatoes, about 10 chopped basil leaves, and some chopped green onion. Top with a mixture of shredded cheddar and mozzarella mixed with mayonnaise. I think I could have used slightly more cheese or slightly less mayo, I'm not sure which. But, the pie was delicious.

I also learned a ridiculously easy way to peel tomatoes. It was craziness.

Fun Weekend/ICBC Pause

My dad came out to visit LA this weekend, so I did not finish the blogger challenge for last week. I'm planning to do coffee and maybe even cardamom this week!

In the meantime, here are some beautiful macarons from Europane Bakery in Pasadena and some sea salt caramels from Little Flower Candy Company. They're all really quite delicious.