Without fail, Tyler always wants to help (I use the world 'help' loosely) when it's a Carmine's night. Whether it's with me doing the cooking or Aaron with the chopping, he takes it very seriously. It didn't take long, however, until helping wasn't enough. Driven by the insatiable need for power, that all four-year-olds have, he wanted control of the kitchen. He wanted to be Head Chef Walker. Well, this town might be big enough for both of us, but my kitchen was not. Something had to be done.
I gave him domain over the kitchen table. With a big bowl, mini wire whisk, cutting board, plastic knife, and scraps of leftover ingredients, he was set. Now we were both happy.
The happiness was short lived. You know how you never realize there's an "off" smell in the house until you've left, breathed actual fresh air for a few hours, and then come back home? Well, that's what happened the day after I implemented my chef solution.
At first, it was just a faint weird smell, where you can't really decide if it's remanence of yesterdays cooking or maybe the house just needs to be aired out. By day two it's no longer a faint weird smell, it's growing into something ugly. The problem is finding the cause. You start walking from room to room like a blood hound, sniffing the air. No luck. The smell is in every room. You can't ignore it and hope it will go away, and swearing about it doesn't help, so you spray every oder neutralizer you have and hope for the best. Seems to work for the people in the commercials, right?
Day three. Did someone die in this house? I did a quick headcount - Aaron's at work and all three kids were accounted for. You'd think with something this potent you'd be able to walk right to it, but it had permeated the air and was not going away. I laid down the law - no friends or electronics until we found the source of the smell. It worked. About five minutes later I hear arguing and Tyler crying, "Nooo! That's my Carmine's dinner!"
Chef Walker had apparently been saving his bowl of cut up onions and garlic, aka: his Carmine's dinner, in the back of a cupboard. He's lucky he's so cute.
Although...I should probably point out that some people believe cutting an onion in half and leaving it out during the flu season will prevent anyone from getting sick, not to mention that garlic wards off vampires. Who knows, maybe Tyler saved us from a flu infected vampire that could have wiped out our entire family.
While Tyler had been preparing his vampire flu remedy, I was preparing our Sunday night Carmine's dinner. I decided to do a little grilling.
Carmines: Porterhouse Steak with Peppers and Onions (pg 179)
While Aaron was really excited about this one, I was a little nervous. I have never grilled steaks before. Not because I haven't wanted to, more because Aaron loves it and when he's happy, I'm happy. Or something like that. Regardless, steak is tricky for me because I don't like a lot of pink in the middle, and there seems to be a fine line between not a lot of pink and dry and chewy. But this book has not let me down yet, and I figured tonight would be no exception.
To start, I browned the garlic and caramelized the bell peppers and onions. I love bell peppers and could stop cooking at this point and be perfectly happy. The rest of the family - not so much. Pity.
Next I start to prepare the meat. I've never bought steaks before. It's either ground beef for taco's or a chuck roast for the crockpot. After what must have seemed like a ridiculous amount of time bent over looking at different steaks, an employee came over and asked if he could help me.
I said, "Yes, please. I'm trying to find a 36 to 38 ounce porterhouse steak, with the bone still in it because I need to use the bone as part of the presentation when serving it. I know porterhouse has something to do with a fillet and sirloin steak, because it says to cut those into slices, but I don't see any bones with the fillet or the sirloin."
To his credit, at least he didn't laugh at me as he took the pre-packaged fillet steak out of one hand and the pre-packaged sirloin steak from the other hand and put them back in the case. He then gave me a quick lesson on what a porterhouse steak was and how to pick one out. Who knew the porterhouse steak WAS the fillet and sirloin steaks combined? This steak business is very tricky.
It was time to start grilling. I had my doubts on how how the meat would actually taste because the seasoning was so simple.
True to form, the book guided me step by step on how to grill the meat perfectly. I love that. I had no idea, when grilling steaks, you should only flip them once and when you take them off the grill you should let the meat rest before serving.
The down side to grilling in the winter is it's dark by 6:00 PM. No worries, the phone has a flashlight function. And yes, I'm wearing rubber gloves in the video. I can't help it, touching raw meat weirds me out. Besides, if I stopped wearing them, what would my friends mock me about? Don't answer that.
I usually post a picture of it all put together, with a my little chalk board showing the name of the dish, but the children (I'm totally including Aaron in this instance) were way too hungry to wait for me to do all that.
Suffice it to say, they were not disappointed. The onions and bell peppers were amazing and the steak was unbelievably flavorful. Why do I doubt you, Carmine's???
When I asked each one what they thought of the meal, they all agreed...best steak ever!
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