First Dinner of 2011

So I was sitting around last night (I've been doing a lot of that since I had knee surgery on Monday), and I was thinking that I wanted to cook something. I have been doing a lot of reading and writing about food lately, but had not cooked in a while. So I went off to the store, and saw some good steaks. I picked up some mushrooms and filets, and decided to cook some of the meal I had last posted about. This way I get to enjoy the food, and give you a more visual break down of my process. There won't be any scalloped potatoes (I went with baked potatoes instead), and I also made a salad and not asparagus.  So here is a detailed breakdown of how I like to prepare filets and a red wine mushroom sauce.

 Make sure you clean all of the mushrooms before you start to cut them. I choose four different mushrooms for this meal, and just picked what I wanted at the time. I also like to have a lot of the sauce so I take at least a pound and a half of them, this time they came in right under two pounds.

When you are done cleaning the mushrooms, try to shake off as much of the water as you can. Mushrooms are naturally  moist so they will sweat a lot of water when you start to cook them, and don't need any more as it will just add to your cook time. When you have them as dry as you can then start to chop them up so you have some good size slices, but not so big that they are too overwhelming.

Just as I had said, the mushrooms come first. Get a good pan that they can cook down in, and add some butter and oil. Bring it up to heat, I use a medium to medium low heat, and then add your garlic.

Once the pan is nice and hot, throw your garlic in and let it soften and brown. I am pretty generous with the garlic, and I urge you to do the same.

 While the garlic sets up for a minute or two, make sure that you have your meat out so that it can come up to room temp before you start to cook.

I also had some seasoning prepared that I put on the steaks. This is all a matter of preference. If you like it simple then you can't go wrong with the tried and true combination of fresh ground salt and pepper. I went with some salt, pepper, onion powder, a little bit of johnny's, and then some cayenne. This looks and sounds like a lot, but I do not put it on the steak until about 10 minutes out from when I'm going to throw it on the pan, and I brush a good amount off. Even if you are a little heavy on the seasoning most of it will get seared off when you throw the steaks on the 500 degree pan.

When the garlic is slightly browned and getting soft throw all of your mushrooms into the pan and let them sweat out all of their moisture.

There will be a large mound of them at first, but you will see that they will begin to break down right away. Stir them occasionally so that they do not burn on the bottom of the pan (this won't be much of an issue at first due to the amount of water that will be coming out of the mushrooms.) Make sure that your oven is coming to temp with the cast iron pan in it.

When most of the moisture has evaporated then its time to add the red wine. I add more than the recipe asks for, and let it reduce since I really enjoy the taste of the red wine in the mushrooms.

At this point the oven should be ready to go, and your steaks should be seasoned and at room temperature. So clear a spot on the range, and turn the burner that you are going to use on high heat. Grab the pan out of the oven (be very careful), and put the pan on the burner.

Take the steaks, and put them directly onto the pan. There is no need for any oil. You want the steaks to get a good sear. Let them sit with out disturbing for about 3 minutes before flipping.

Flip them and let them be. Let the steaks sit, and then transfer them into a baking dish that has also been in the oven. Right about this time the mushrooms should be ready for the cream. The timing depends on how much wine you used, and the heat you have them on, but when the wine has reduced substantially then add your cream.

I just eyeball the cream, but as you can tell from the picture above I am not shy. I let this reduce, and as it goes down I add little splashes of red wine. The steaks will only take 6-8 minutes to be ready, so they will probably be ready before the mushrooms are. This isn't an issue since you want the steaks to rest for around 10 minutes, so you will have plenty of time once you pull them

Pull the steaks and let them sit. This is when I usually get everything else pulled together. You should be ready to turn the mushrooms off soon after the steaks come out. So finish up the other parts of your meal. In my case it was taking the salad out of the fridge, and the baked potatoes out of the other oven. The mushrooms should have reduced and thickened quite a bit by now.

Pull them from heat, and serve.

The mushrooms should compliment the steak really well, and they will also taste good with the potatoes. The steak should be tender and juicy. It was a really good and easy meal to throw together. It took me a little less than an hour to make the whole thing. That is including the prep work needed, so you can make a pretty decent dinner in a rather short amount of time. The results will be great, and any guests you have over will be signing up for the next meal you make before they leave.