Steak And Potatoes

Ahhhhh, yet another of my many simple pleasures of life !!

MEAT !!!!

Now, I really have in the past several years eaten a lot less steak then I used to.  It has just become far to expensive to have as often as I would like to have it.

But in this case, due to some good shopping skills and good luck, I was able to get this steak for only $4.00 instead of the packaged price of $8.00.

And as luck would have it, I found myself alone for dinner, and decided it was “Steak & Potato” time.

A nice bone in Rib Eye, nice and marbled.  Hard to believe that this steak goes for over $10 lb !!!

Real simple prep.

Black pepper and some garlic salt

Too lazy to go outside and fire the grill up, I think it would require cleaning the garage to find the grill anyway.

So, the kitchen mainstay of the cast iron skillet will do very fine indeed.

Ooooooohhhhh, a very nice sear and delightful crust !!!

Oh yeah, I said something about potatoes being involved.

Now at one time, those things may have been connected to a potato, but they get shredded, processed, pressed into a shape and “VIOLA”, Tater Tot.  I suppose that there is enough potato DNA there to legally call them potatoes for this post.

Also made a little compound butter with fresh garlic.

There were no survivors.

Veal Breast

Along with not having eaten very much lamb in my youth, the same applies to not having had very much veal.  I think I recall a few veal scallopini dinners when I was a kid, but I highly suspect that it wasn’t really veal.  But fast forwarding a few decades, I had a coupon at the grocery store for $4.oo off any meat.  I thought that it would be a great time to make a veal dinner so I got a 3 bone veal breast (at a fantastic price as well !!)

Outside on the grill in the cast iron pan.  The baby yukon golds will keep the meat company during cooking.  Very simple seasoning: oil, kosher salt and a little rosemary

A little side dish.  If I remember correctly, these were Texas Sweet onions that I grew in the garden.  This was about half of the crop.

About half way through cooking.

Proof of a Supreme Being: Meat and potatoes

Onions all done up. Yes they were very good.

My wife was not as impressed with the veal as I was.  I thought that it was very good.  Something I will definitely cook up again sometime.

Lamb Shank Masala With Potatoes

NOTE : Post was written almost three months ago.

When I was growing up, my family never ate lamb.  I don’t think  it was until I was about 23 when I found a piece of lamb in the markdown bin at the local grocery store and bought it.  If I recall, it was a blade chop.  I put it on the grill and cooked it.  When I ate it, I thought “This tastes funny”. Not the kind of “funny” that results in gastronomical distress, but just different “funny”.  It didn’t taste bad, but it was definitely something that you had to want/like to eat. (Same as goat !!)  My wife’s family is Armenian, and in the past 25 years, we’ve eaten lamb chops with them a couple times every year.

So I saw a couple of lamb shanks that were marked down at the grocery store (each one here cost about $3.00).

What’s the apple corer out for ???

Hollowed out potatoes.

NEW !! “Po-Tat-O’s”

A little olive oil and sea salt on the spuds and a Masala sauce (from a bottle) on the lamb shanks.

I was surprised with how much meat there was on the shank.  I thought there was much more bone in them.

I know that lamb chops and leg of lamb can be cooked “rare”, but since I was not sure about the shanks, I cooked them for about 40 minutes.

This dish turned out quite fantastic !!!

Now, I am going to have to finally try cooking a leg of lamb !!