How to cook a steak

So I have never attempted to cook a steak. It has always been intimidating for some reason. So I decided I was going to buy some steaks and learn how to make them finally. So I googled it. I found several recipes for the cut of steak I had, Tenderloin Steak, and picked the one that looked best. Turned out it was perfect. I made good steaks! Yay!! And it was actually reallllly easy. Now that I know how easy it is, I will be making them more often! Here is how I did it.

How to cook Beef Tenderloin Steak

1) remove the tenderloins from the refrigerator 20 minutes before cooking to bring them to room temperature.

2) Pat the tenderloins dry with paper towels. Sprinkle generously with salt and fresh ground pepper. Massage the seasoning into the meat.

3) Rub oil on the outside of the steaks.

Cooking:

1) Heat the skillet over medium-high heat to scalding, until a drop of water sizzles and dances on the skillet. Put 1 T of oil into the middle of the skillet and swish it around to cover the cooking surface. Heat the oil until it begins to smoke.

2) Place the tenderloins in the middle of the skillet. With your fingers or tongs, move the steaks around in a circular motion to spread the oil. Sear the steaks for 2-3 minutes. Use tons to flip the steaks and sear the other side for 2-3 minutes. This searing causes proteins in the steaks' surface to interact with the sugars, creating a flavorful crust containing hundreds of different-flavored compounds.

3) Lower the heat to medium. Cook for and additional 7-9 minutes total, flipping the steaks occasionally, for medium rare or medium. Cook the steaks to 125 Fahrenheit for rare, 130 for medium rare and 140 for medium. The steaks will continue to heat after you remove them from the skillet.

4) Transfer the steaks to a plate and cover them loosely with aluminum foil. Allow them to rest for 10-15 minutes. This chances their flavor and gives the juices time to distribute evenly through the tenderloins.

5) De-glaze the skillet with 1 T butter and 2 T water. Heat the skillet over medium heat and scrape the bottom of the skillet with your spatula to loosen any charred remnants. Reduce the liquid a little. Drizzle the  liquid over the tenderloins. 

Coconut milk cream

I am sure everyone has seen the pin on pinterest about refrigerating a can of Thai Kitchen coconut milk and making cream with it? Well I finally made some and it turned out delicious!!! You really have to try this. It is especially good with strawberries. The original blog said they use a spoonful in their coffee in the mornings, but I haven't tried that yet. It all got ate up with the last of our strawberries. lol This is a yummy, healthy, and clean alternative I will be using many times in the future, I am sure. 

Coconut milk cream. 

Very simple really- stick a can of Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight. Take out and once you open the can the top will be full of thick cream. Spoon that out into a mixing bowl, leaving the watery juice in the can. Sprinkle in some cinnamon and a little vanilla and whip up with a whisk. (Next time I am putting it in the mixer with my wire attachment to see if I can get it fluffier) I also added a dash of cane sugar to mine. You can play with it to get it how sweet you want. If you drink smoothies for breakfast save the juice in the bottom of the can and add it to your smoothie. 

Scrambled Eggs with Ricotta

I had heard someone mention putting fresh ricotta in scrambled eggs to make them creamy once and have wanted to try it since. Then I made my own fresh ricotta and then it was like everywhere I looked there was someone talking about scrambled eggs and ricotta. So this Sunday I decided to whip some up since I was making some ricotta for another dish anyway and I had some other goodies in my fridge and pantry I needed to use up too. So I scrambled some eggs, mixed in some ricotta and added some onion, cheddar cheese, and tomato. It was delicious. I may never make plain ole' scrambled eggs again. Just like any omelet what you can add to it is up to you. Endless possibilities. But the ricotta is the key. Yummm. 

Scrambled Eggs with Ricotta

From: Me

6 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 cups fresh ricotta 
Green onion, diced
Tomato, diced or cherry tomatoes halved
1/2 cup shredded cheddar
salt and pepper to taste

Mix 6 eggs with 1/2 cup milk and scramble in a frying pan as usual. Once eggs are cooked, but still hot, mix in the ricotta, onion, and tomatoes. Toss until all ingredients are heated warm. Add shredded cheddar and toss until melted, serve while hot. 

Chunked Baked Potatoes

I make this ridiculously often. Because potatoes are such a quick and easy side dish and everyone likes them. I have been trying really hard to have potatoes on our menu a lot less and other varieties of veggies a lot more, but it seems you can never totally escape the potato. This is a super easy way to have potatoes fast that aren't smothered in butter and cream and all that. A much healhier option. You can season these however you like. 

Chunked Baked Potatoes

By: Me

small bag new potatoes (or 4 russet potatoes) chunked, skin on. 
3 T olive oil
1 T dried parsley
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 T dried chives
salt and pepper to taste

Toss all in a large bowl, pour into a 9x13 baking dish and bake at 400 for about 20-30 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. 

The above is my super fast version, I really like to use fresh parsley, diced up an onion, and use 2 or 3 garlic cloves and fresh chives. So you can switch out the "quick" ingredients for fresher if you like. You can also add to them all kinds of things to change it up or to use up things you have in your pantry. The other day I had some baby carrots in my fridge so I tossed them in with some onion. I have added some cheddar cheese, black olives, diced green onion and crumbled bacon in the last 5 minutes of baking time then dolloped with sour cream... lots of possibilites. 

The basic version of this makes 6 decent portions and breaks down to 167 calories per portion.  

Slow Cooker Cinnamon Apples

Can't remember where I found this, but I am pretty sure it was from pinterest.... as most of my recipes are lately! This was super easy and delicious, plus it was really decent calorie for a dessert, plus it is super healthy.

Slow cooker cinnamon apples

1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup walnuts
2 T butter
1 tsp cinnamon
4 apples, cored
1/2 cup apple juice or cider

Preheat crock pot on high. In a bowl mix maple syrup, walnuts, butter, and cinnamon. Pour apple juice/cider into crock pot and place the cored apples in. Spoon the mixture into the middle of each apple until full. Cover and cook for 3 hours or until apples are soft and start to collapse. Serve warm. 

You could serve these with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and they would be delicious, but they are fantastic by themselves. It breaks down to 262 calories per apple. Plus it makes your house smell FANTASTIC. Low cal, healthy, delicious, easy, and house smells good.. can't get better than that. 

Avocado Dressing, Chicken Salad

I found this recipe on a blog via pinterest. I decided to make it with what I had in the pantry, which was most of what the original recipe called for, and tuna instead of chicken. It was delicious. The dressing part of this recipe is the best part. I have a zillion ideas for it bouncing in my head as soon as I trasted it. It was great with the tuna, diced tomato, onion, and diced avocado on toasted bread. You could do the dressing, avocado, diced tomato, onion, and chunked chicken and toss it with pasta. I used the dressing alone instead of mayo on my sandwich today for lunch. Put it on tacos, enchiladas, nachos, anything mexican it would be perfect for. Use the dressing as dressing on wedge salad. Use it as a dip with tortilla chips. You get the idea. It's fantastic. And the best part is compared to oh say ranch dressing at the store.. it is remarkably low calorie! 12 calories per tablespoon compared to 70 in a tablespoon of ranch, even the light ranch has 40 calories per tablespoon. The nasty fat free ranch is 15 calories per tablespoon. And the avocado is not only fresh and better for you- it tastes WAY better than fat free or low fat dressing. Plus it was super easy to whip up in just a few seconds. The recipe below is how I made it, click the link to see the original recipe. 

Avacado Dressing / Chicken Salad

From: Framed Cooks

Dressing: 
2 avocados
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup diced onion
1 T dried parsley
juice from 2 limes (about 2 T) 


Salad: 
tuna, drained (or chicken as the original recipe calls for.. can use anything you have on hand) 
1 avocado, diced
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved (or a larger tomato diced) 
1/2 red onion, diced

In a food processor blend all the dressing ingredients until smooth. Toss dressing with salad ingredients and enjoy on toasted bread, tossed with pasta... endless possibilities. 

UPDATE: I made this last night with chicken and poured it over nachos. Just some good tortilla chips with shredded cheddar, stick it in the oven (or microwave) to melt the cheese then I globbed the chicken salad over the top and spread it around. It was delicious! 

Low cal cupcakes

I am sure everyone has seen this recipe on pinterest, but I tried it today and it is really good! So I wanted to add it to my blog as a "tried and true" recipe. It is a great way to feel like you are cheating without consuming a ton of calories. I made strawberry cupcakes, but you can make any flavor cake mix you like. Make sure you check the box and break down your calories yourself because it will most likely vary from box to box. Also you can use diet soda, but I just cannot do it. I hate the taste and the stuff that is in diet soda is just plain scary. So I didn't use diet. You can also use lite cool whip, but I didn't this time. Plus using the regular cool whip and the regular soda added 10 calories per cupcake.. so not a significant difference. I also used Sierra Mist because the ingredients list is a lot less frightening than that on the other brands. (I mean... it IS soda.. but ya know..) 

Lo-cal cupcakes

From: Pinterest

Any flavor cake mix you like
2 cups (16 oz.) lemon lime soda (sprite, 7up, sierra mist..) 
cool whip

Combine cake mix and soda and beat with mixer. Pour into greased cupcake pan and bake as directed on cake mix box. Once cooled "ice" with cool whip. 


You can garnish with fruit such as a slice of strawberry if you are making strawberry flavor, lemon zest if lemon flavor.. you get the idea. This made 24 cupcakes for me, and this is how the calories broke down in my case- 

cake mix- 1,700 calories for entire box
Soda- 140 calories for 16 oz. 
Cool whip- a 2T dollop on top (which is a lot) is 25 calories. 
Total calories- 1,840 (minus coolwhip) 
divided by 24 cupcakes- 77 calories, plus cool whip is 102 calories total. 

If you used zero calorie diet soda that would make them 95 calories (with cool whip) and if you used lite cool whip it would be (if memory serves me..) 92. 

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi

  This is a recipe I saw on my new favorite cooking show, Extra Virgin, on The Cooking Channel. I had never heard of fried sage leaves and I just had to try it. I know it doesn't sound like it would be good, but they were delicious! Especially with the spinach and ricotta. My 2 year old loved them so much, he kept snatching them off everyone's plate and asking for more. Who knew? This was a really easy recipe that turned out delicious and definitely something different from the every day. I didn't make my own ricotta in this one because I knew I was making this before I had made it and knew it would be good, so I had already bought ricotta for this, just in case. I can't wait to make it again and use fresh ricotta in it! 

Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi

From: Extra Virgin cooking show

2 lbs (3 bunches) fresh spinach

2 egg yolks

16 oz. ricotta cheese

6 T shredded parmesan

4 T butter

2 handfuls fresh sage leaves

Dip spinach into boiling water for one minute to blanche. Roll into balls and squeeze out all water. Chop into small pieces.

In mixing bowl add 2 egg yolks, ricotta, parmesan, salt and pepper. Mix all together with spinach and start rolling into balls about 1 inch in size. Place spinach balls into 9x13 pan. When done add a thin pad of butter to top of each gnocchi ball and sprinkle with parmesan. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

While that is baking, melt half a stick of butter and a little olive oil in a frying pan. Add fresh sage to butter and oil and cook until sage browns slightly. Pour butter and sage over baked gnocchi and serve hot.  

Fresh Ricotta!!

OK So I came across this recipe and thought, oh how I would love to make my own cheese! I decided to start with the simplest one I have collected and that was definitely the ricotta cheese. I would love to make mozzarella too.. but that's another day. What I would really like to do is make this with raw milk, real buttermilk, and real cream. But since I don't have any of those right now...I made do. This was so simple I was really shocked. I may never buy ricotta again. I bought a big container of ricotta for a recipe I am making later this week because I didn't want to rely on this recipe turning out good. So I did a comparison taste... there is no comparison. Even the really good ricotta at the store, tasted bland and flavorless after tasting the one I made. So easy and so delicious. I don't use ricotta often, but when I do I will make it myself now!! 

Fresh Ricotta

From: Framed Cooks

4 cups whole milk
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup heavy cream
salt

1. Line a colander with several layers of cheese cloth (3-4) and set it in your sink. 
2. combine milk, buttermilk, and cream in sauce pan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil until cooking thermometer registers 185. If you don't have a thermometer, keep an eye on it to see when the curds (solid white parts) are mostly separated from the whey (cloudy liquid). This will take about 10 minutes. Stir a couple of times during the boiling process. 
3. Remove from heat and using a slotted spoon, scoop spoonfulls of the curd into the cheesecloth-lined strainer, sprinkling with salt every few spoonfulls or so. 
4. Let the ricotta drain for about 5 minutes and then taste to check consistancy. If you like it drier, drain more. If you like it moister, stir in a tablespoon or 2 of milk. This ricotta is best used right away, but will keep a day or 2 in fridge. 

*Note this made almost 3 cups of ricotta.