Food Night goes Grilling

As you probably have heard, it’s a weeeeeeee bit steamy here in the nation’s mid-section. How do we combat the heat at Food Night? We stand over a hot grill, that’s how. Because when you move AWAY from the grill... the sauna that is the atmosphere doesn't feel so bad! Anyway, it recently occurred to me that we have not had ONE single grilled item at Food Night.* Ever. How is that possible?! That’s a Food Night fail right there.

*Not including the braised pork shoulder which gets seared on the grill prior to braising.

For grilling inspiration, Food Night looked to the best restaurant in St. Paul… The Strip Club.

(photo by Tom Wallace, for vita.mn)

When not Food Nighting, you can sometimes find me enjoying proper food and drink at The too-fabulous-for-words Strip Club Meat and Fish.* Chef JD does a killer little ditty there called “meat on a stick” that changes daily and is typically served with fun little accoutrements. Who doesn’t love grilled bites with accoutrements?! Inspired (and after standing over the grill, excessively perspired), Food Night fired up the grill on a recent Saturday that was so sweltering, even the wine was sweating...


*Suggestion – if you would like to experience a perfect Saturday morning… begin at the St. Paul Farmers Market, cruise across the Street to the Heartland Market to pick up Saturday dinner proteins and whatever else, then scoot up the hill to TSC for brunch while sitting at the bar. Bang. Perfection. See you there.

Hell, we even grilled the SALAD at Food Night!

So let’s do this; let’s see if Food Night can pound out a post a day for the next four days – one for each course at the recently completed Food Night on a Stick. Yes? Yes.


Grilled Summer Salad

Like lots of things at Food Night, what follows is ripe for your brilliant and learned improvisations. Whatever you’ve got and wanna grill and make a salad out of… be my guest. But I must say… the following was super summery and delish.

- Garlic Scapes (pictured above, get ‘em at the Heartland Market, Farmers Market, etc); blanched for 30 seconds, shocked in an ice bath, patted dry,
- English Peas (shelled, blanched, shocked)
- Cherry Tomatoes
- Brussels Sprouts, halved through the core, excess leaves removed and reserved.
- Herbs (purple basil, arugula, tarragon, lemon thyme, whatever you want)
- Cucumber broth (recipe follows)
- Shallot (finely diced)
- Lemon juice
- Maldon sea salt

1). Fire up the grill, and get it HOT. (Food Night uses a gas Weber that gets blazing hot). Season scapes, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts separately with salt, pepper, and olive oil.

2). Skewer the tomatoes (soak the skewers for an hour in water if they are wood), and grill the tomatoes long enough to just blister the skins a tad and soften partially. Toss Brussels sprouts directly on the grill, they will pop and fuss a little bit, turn once to mark and soften, and remove. Grill garlic scapes to desired level of charredness.

3). Sautee reserved Brussels sprout leaves in a modest amount of olive oil for a couple minutes over med-high heat, finish with a little finely diced shallot and a splash of lemon juice.

4). Combine tomatoes, scapes, sprouts, peas, and herbs in a large bowl. Drizzle with cucumber broth, olive oil, lemon juice. GENTLY toss to combine, and sprinkle with a dash of Maldon sea salt.

5). Arrange lovingly on a plate, and finish with your favorite cured pork product from Heartland Market… Food Night used the utterly insane Wild Boar Prosciutto. Get it while you can (it’s very limited) – that stuff is funky delicious. Garnish with sautéed sprout leaves, micro arugula, and a drizzle of the cuke broth. Or, don’t.

Cucumber Broth
- 1 English cucumber, washed, rough chopped
- Handful bright green herb(s) (parsley or tarragon work great, blanch and shock for brighter green color)
- Salt (enough to season the cuke)
- Handful of Ice
- Water (maybe a ½ a cup… enough to get the mixture moving)
- Lime juice (roughly juice of ½ a lime)

Combine all ingredients in a blender. Puree. Extensively. Strain if you must, but not required – really depends on how finely your blender can puree the food stuffs. I like it unstrained for use in this salad as it retains some body/structure and seems more like a salad dressing substance. If strained, I’d probably emulsify it with oil for the salad dressing (as you would vinegar for vinaigrette).

Use as directed above. And with seafood. And in your favorite Hendricks Gin cocktail.*

*YEAH. Definitely use with Hendricks.

A Very Spring-tastic Food Night

Food Night. Spring. Spring + Food Night. What an opportunity!! Ramps. Asparagus. Peas. Eggs. Mushrooms. Oh, and Durden is in the house (literally). The outdoor dining zone is in play…

So please, witness what happens when Spring and Food Night collide....


Spring Orgasm Soup is what we called this. And full disclosure… Food Night got that terminology from Dan Step. This Spring, when all the ramps and asparagus and greens started appearing at Heartland, Dan sent me a text to the effect of “It looks like Spring had an orgasm in here!”. That slayed me, so I retained and reused that here. Yes, Food Night is so eco-friendly, we even reuse clever wordplay. So what... we've got here... is...... asparagus (blanched and shocked), English peas (ditto), ramp greens (ditto), parsley (ditto), all vitamix'd with a little half and half, and lemon. Silky springy goodness. That vitamix is a life altering apparatus, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. (Thanks again Mpls Auxiliary Chapter!!)


Pasta. Pasta is never a bad choice. Unlike milk, which yes… is sometimes a bad choice. But this time Food Night tossed a bit of white wine into the dough, to great success. The pesto was a little disappointing – I mean it worked, but I was efforting this (HIGHLY encourage you to check out that link… really). If anyone knows how to get pesto to look like that… like it’s had cream added to it… please let me know. My right arm is now twice as strong as my left from all the mortar-and-pestling, but my pesto did NOT look like that. Sure it tasted fine, delivering fresh basily and pine nutty goodness, but let’s just move on.



Chicken confit. Pea puree. Seared oyster mushroom. This....... was the REAL DEAL. One of the best things ever at Food Night. Just ask Alex. D-Step taught* Food Night the mushroom technique – mushrooms, tossed in oil, roasted in a 375ish oven until they have some color (10ish minutes? Maybe more… free country remember), then finished in a HOT pan with butter, hit with some fiiiiiiiiinely minced shallot and garlic, finished with a healthy pinch of fresh herbs and a tablespoon or two of lemon juice. So literally the time from when the mushrooms enter the pan until they are done (if your pan is HOT enough…) is like a minute. Bang. That just happened.


*And apparently Adam Vickerman taught Step that technique... you want to cook (good) mushrooms like this is all I can say.



Hash. Smoked lamb shank (via Heartland), duck confit (via Food Night), fingerling potato, oyster mushroom, fresh herbs, brussles sprouts. Pea puree. Couple bacon lardons. And a perfect sunny side up egg. Looks good enough to eat, right? We thought so….



*We really aren't doing the pea puree justice here. I think Food Night first-timer Scott said "I could eat this stuff like yogurt". Yes - what he said.

To drink? This ......happened........



It's been a debate here at Food Night Home Offices... how much to really say about wines? Because after all, how interesting is it to hear about a wine that someone else drank? It can be informative, it can be interest peaking, it perhaps can even be mildly entertaining. But Food Night thinks... maybe less is more when it comes to the wine frothing at the mouth? So let's just say two things about this incredible wine...

1). The Dunn 2000 Howell Mountain (in Food Night's opinion) was vastly superior to the 2005 Clos Des Papes Chateauneuf du Pape, which we also (thoroughly) enjoyed that evening. And the '05 Clos Des Papes was not exactly Yellow Tail, seeing as how it earned Wine Spectator's "Wine of the Year" distinction in 2007. So... there's that.

2). The Dunn drank like high end bordeaux, and was consistent with the two prior Dunns we've had (the 1992 while on Food Night Field Trip, and the 2001). It was decanted for 10 hours prior to consumption, and drank perfectly. It probably elicited between 10 and 20 "Holy S&%t is this stuff amazing!!!" type comments during it's consumption from various consumers. Rich, full bodied, balanced, with a minty/eucalyptus tinge that we found very appealing, and a finish that I think I'm still tasting a week later.

Let's leave it at this - if Food Night was stranded on a deserted island, and could have a lifetime supply of one domestic CABERNET producer's wines (thus eliminating Calera from consideration....) dropped from a C-130 onto said island (a likely scenario, obviously)... Food Night would request Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernet.

Yes... it's that good. Easily.

Goat Cheese Ravioli

Clearly you have been perfecting your duck egg pasta dough technique. So now, it is time to turn said sheet of silky succulent pasta into a goat cheese carrying apparatus. Also known as “proper food”.*

*Ever watch Jaime Oliver’s “Jaime at Home” TV show? I don’t think he is making new episodes anymore, but I believe it is being rerun on Cooking Channel now. It is completely reflective of why I’m such a massive fan of his, and probably where my Jamie Olive man-crush was born. If I could cook and/or eat and/or have a beer with and/or share an apartment with one “celebrity” chef, it would be Jaime, hands down. Anyway, I heard him say as he was finishing making something that “this is proper cooking”, and now “proper” is my favorite cooking adjective. By far. Feel free to incorporate it into your everyday vocab as I have done. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Goat Cheese Ravioli

1 duck egg pasta recipe
Egg wash (1 egg beaten with a tsp or two of water)
Soft goat cheese (such as Donnay)

1). Lay sheet of pasta on a floured work surface. And flour a sheet pan or other “landing zone” for your finished raviolis

2). Dot the pasta sheet with roughly a tsp of goat cheese. Place goat cheese on top half of the sheet, as shown, as you’ll be folding the bottom half over it.


3). Brush egg wash between the cheese, and along the top of the sheet. Egg wash will help make a good seal, serving as pasta cement, if you will. Mmmmmm, pasta cement.

4). Fold bottom half over top half, and seal. Work from the folded side of the sheet, forcing any air out the top. You are essentially molding the soft pliable pasta around the dollup of tart goat cheesy goodness.

5). Divide into individual raviolis using a knife, ring mold, or preferably this $5 pasta wheel (best $5 gift I ever got). Transfer to afore mentioned floured landing zone.

Here is where you also have a chance to gently squeeze out any air pockets, and make sure all 3 sides are sealed. The most important thing here is a good seal. If there is a smidge of air trapped in there, don’t stress.

6). Plop into heavily salted water that is GENTLY boiling until done. Usually a minute or two. Or, freeze, and they go from freezer directly to the water.

I tossed these with a little diced carrot, sunchoke, and butter.


Proper cooking.

Game Changers

Diner commentary at the Food Night table (pictured) has always led me to believe that the seared scallops at Food Nights past have been up to par.

And looking back, I honestly do think they were pretty good. But Food Night isn’t satisfied with “pretty good”. So in a quest to turn that culinary par into a birdie (or better), Food Night tried something new with the seared scallops this time. The results? I’ll let this picture say a thousand words………


I mean………… THAT is how you sear a scallop! End. Of. Discussion.

Food Night actually has a bit of a foodgasm every time it looks at that picture. I may even go to Sears and get wallet sized copies of that picture made and pass them out to strangers on the street, like some people do with pictures of their grandkids. And you think I’m kidding…

I guess what I’m saying is, this scallop searing methodology “tweak” was a bit of a GAME CHANGER. And actually it was only one of TWO game changers that transpired at “Food Night – Quack Edition”.

Game Changer #1; The shockingly simple scallop searing scenario.

Game Changer #2; DUCK CONFIT. Please witness….


Food Night is a bit ashamed it took this long to confit some duck. You know how sometimes when you are reading the letters to the editor of your favorite magazine, and someone writes in to say something like:

“Dear Sports Illustrated, it was actually Sven Blimpenberg and not Hugo Richalds that scored the game winning goal for Canada against Greenland in the Frozen Tundra Cup in 1962”.

And after printing the correction letter, the editor usually follows it with a “SI regrets the error”. Well, Food Night regrets the error, and will be confiting the bejezuz out of many fowl legs in the weeks and months to come.

And you should too! Therefore, Food Night is gonna show you how. That is…. if succulent, moist, rich, tender, literally falling off the bone goodness like this…



… would be of interest to you. And if it isn’t, well… I don’t know how to help you. You’re on your own.

So, two game changers, and we haven’t even BEGUN to discuss the wines of the night! Some were new and unique, some were familiar favorites, and then there was this guy… the winner of Best-In-Show for the evening…


*This seems like a good time to mention that, obviously, someone that knows what they are doing with a picture taking device was in attendance at Food Night. That would be Dan Stepaniak, the very same Dan from Heartland that provided the incredible duck product for “Food Night – Quack Edition”. THANK YOU Dan for your excellent contributions, culinary and otherwise, to Food Night!

To sum up; in the coming posts, we are going to revolutionize your scallop searing skills. We are going to build on your duck egg pasta making skills (that you have no doubt been practicing) via goat cheese raviolis AAAAAAAND via course #4 at “Food Night – Quack Edition”, dubbed Duck Three Ways...


*Come on, I can’t show you ALL the photos yet!!! But I can tell you, Duck Three Ways was located in the plates above, about 10 seconds after that picture was taken. And, I dare say, it was the highlight of the evening’s food stuffs.

So have a look at the menu for “Food Night – Quack Edition”, and your server will be along shortly to take your order…

Heartland Duck Charcuterie
procuitto, sausage, duck fat fried chipotle ciabatta

Soup
tomato, roasted red pepper, guajillo chile, foie gras buttered crouton

Scallop
braised fennel, chipotle salsa, orange zest, hedgehog mushroom

Duck Three Ways
duck egg pasta, duck confit, foie gras butter

Sweets
Goat Cheese Ice Cream, Mocha sherbet



France
Louis Latour, Pommard-Epenots, Premier Cru
2005

Chateau Pichon Longueville, Comtesse de Lalande, Pauillac
2002

Leroy, Bourgogne Blanc
1998

Domaine des Remizieres, Hermitage Blanc, Cuvee Emilie
1999

Italy
Le Are, Amarone della Valpolicella
2000

Casanova di Neri, Pietradonice
2000

Parusso, Barolo, Bussia Vigna Munie
1996

Antinori, Guado Al Tasso
2001

Australia
The Standish Wine Company, "The Relic", Shiraz, Viogner
2006

Clarendon Hills, Old Vines Grenache, Kangarilla Vineyard
2002

Other
Sutter Home, White Zinfandel
1993?!?!?

Food Night - Quack Edition

Before we get to the deets on how to turn the duck egg pasta you've no doubt perfected into a succulent goat cheese transportation device, I thought you might be interested that...

FOOD NIGHT is happening tomorrow, March 5th!!! Yes, I know, it's a big deal. Food Night shunned it's day job today to prep and shop and generally freak out about the menu, which... if things go according to plan... is really going to be special and rather thematic. Thematic in two ways...

MARCH 5th FOOD NIGHT THEME #1;


Yep, Food Night is throwing down a mass quantities of DUCK. Now, Food Night knows what you are thinking; "Wow, cute duck! But, isn’t this a new protein for you, Food Night? Have you ever cooked duck before?". And the answer is "Yes, that is a cute duck and his name is Fritz, and he was unharmed by Food Night. And no, of course I've never cooked duck before." But I was inspired and encouraged by, you guessed it, Ruhlman. Ruhlman basically said I was insane if I wasn't confit'ing duck. And since I'd basically jump off a bridge if Ruhlman told me to, I thought I better get on this duck confit thing.

But there was a problem... where do I buy duck? Grocery store? Um, no, not gonna buy frozen Donald legs from the grocery store. Nope. And no, not gonna mail order some Quacker legs from D'Artagnan. Doesn’t seem right, poultry via mail. So what does one do when one lives in Mpls/St. Paul and one wants duck stuffs? One goes to theme #2...

MARCH 5th FOOD NIGHT THEME #2;


Heartland Farm Direct Market! This place is transforming the way I shop. The proteins they pedal are so pristine, perfectly portioned, and properly procured, I cannot walk in there and leave without grabbing something to throw in the cast iron skillet. And it just so happens that they offer duck stock, too. And duck eggs. And duck prosciutto. And duck fat. But Heartland is more than a duck emporium, sometimes you can get things like wild boar chops, or the most succulent and tasty beef tenderloin you've ever had… (you remember how to cook beef tenderloin, right? Thought so.)…..


…and a million other things like house made sausages and other cured meat treats that reside in their glass case of food-emotion!!!....


Food Night has shopped the living hell out of Heartland recently, buying this, trying that, eating this, cooking that. And when you frequent a place enough, sometimes you strike up a vibe with the people on the payroll. So when a spot at the Food Night table recently opened up, I offered the vacancy to Dan at Heartland. And I’m happy to announce that Dan will be joining the festivities on Saturday! Dan has contributed a pile of knowledge and product to this Food Night table, and we are fired up to have him dine with us.

This Food Night also has an "A" list of Haskell's folks coming, so the wines are guaranteed to be completely ridiculous. And in case anyone brings a small child, Food Night's resident pediatrician Dr. Tom will be on-site.

PLUS - courtesy of said pediatrician and the rest of the gang at the Minneapolis Auxiliary Chapter of Food Night, this marks the first time Food Night has had THIS little beauty at its disposal....


As you can see, things are shaping up quite nicely this Food Night's Eve. We are churning out a menu full of new flavors and ingredients… stop back soon to see how it shakes out.

How to make Fresh Pasta

Fresh pasta is a staple at Food Night. Why? It’s easy. It’s economical. It’s delicious. It’s wine friendly. It’s incredibly versatile. It’s the star of the show, or it’s a perfect background vocalist. It cooks up quickly. Need I go on?

And for cripes sake, you can make fresh pasta with two ingredients… eggs and flour. TWO ingredients are all you technically need, so yes, you can do this. And you SHOULD do this, which is kind of the whole point of whole post. Not only is the end product incredibly satisfying and delicious, but making fresh pasta quenches your inner child’s fingerpainting and play-doh mashing desires. It’s fun to get your hands into your food – assuming you have clean hands, of course.

So here is how Food Night has been making fresh pasta lately. I say “lately” because until recently, Food Night would use chicken eggs to make fresh pasta dough. After all, nothing wrong with a nice organic free range chicken egg, right? However, on a recent trip to the incredibly inspiring and wonderful Heartland Farm Direct Market* in downtown St. Paul, Peder recommended these duck eggs to me...


That night, I put them to use in a fresh pasta dough. How did it go? Well, I haven’t used a chicken egg to make pasta since.

*Post coming on the Heartland Market. If you live in the Twin Cities, and you like to cook (and if you are reading this I have to believe at least ONE of those things is true…… ) you simply must go to Heartland’s Market, pictured below. More later.


What follows is what I’m calling Food Night’s recipique* for…

*Recipique [Res-eh-PEAK] – a combination of the words “recipe” and “technique”, meaning that the recipe amounts should not be taken TOO literally, and that there is probably as much importance in the “HOW” vs the “how much” part of the recipe. If we wanted to be exacting here, we’d weigh everything and give you an exact recipe featuring X grams of egg yolks and Y grams of flour, etc. But, alas, that has not happened here. Thanks for understanding. Plus, this recipique will make you think and read and react to your dough. And it’s how I imagine little Italian grandmothers made pasta dough. So channel your inner child and your inner little Italian grandmother and make some pasta from scratch already.

Duck Egg Pasta Dough
1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
3 duck egg yolks, procured from Heartland’s Market
1 whole duck egg
3 finger pinch salt
Small drizzle olive oil

NOTE; If you must, use chicken eggs. If the yolks are normal sized chicken egg yolks, toss in an extra one. The duck egg yolks are quite substantial. I’ve never seen a chicken egg yolk as big as one of these duck egg yolks. Food Night wants you to make fresh pasta, because you CAN. So don’t let a lack of duck eggs stand between you and your fresh pasta.

1). Mound flour. Make a well in the center of the mound.


2). Place remaining ingredients in the well.


3). Using two fingers, bust up yolks, and stir with said fingers, incorporating flour into the mixture gradually. If you are simultaneously taking pictures of this process, it would help to either grow a third arm, or have someone else take the pictures. Either is fine.


Continue incorporating...


4). THIS STEP IS BASICALLY THE KEY TO THE ENTIRE PROCESS. Hence, the capital letters. They signify “importance”.

After you combine most of the flour into the eggs, the mixture should be getting thicker, and resemble something like this...


At this point, use your hands and a pasta scraper to collapse the well, sort of cutting the flour into the wet mass that is forming …


… and form a ball with the dough, leaving say a scant ¼ cup of extra flour on the board to add to the dough if needed. Understand that as you form this ball initially, the dough will be sticky, so it helps to have a pasta scraper to remove wet dough from your fingers and the board to add to the ball.


IMPORTANT: Don’t force more flour into the eggs than the eggs want. If you are making ravioli, I like the dough to be a little wetter, more flexible. If you are just making noodles, the dough can be a little drier. But, it’s ALWAYS ALWAYS easier to add flour to a wet dough than it is to add moisture to a dry dough.

If your dough is quite wet, add some of the leftover flour here. You are looking for a ball of dough that is workable (not so dry that it resists kneading). Once you gather it all up it should look something vaguely like this…


5). Flatten out the ball of dough with the heels of your hands, then form it back into a ball, and repeat. Again. And again. And again. And..... again. This process usually takes several minutes. In the summer, sweat forms on my brow. This is not cooking for sissies. But you aren’t a sissy so, no worries.

Maybe you need more flour here too, could happen. Has happened. Read... and react. As you knead, the dough should begin to take on a uniformly smooth texture and appearance. What you are after is a smooth dough…


… that passes the “spring back” test. As in, when formed into a ball that looks like the above, if you drag your finger across the dough, does it “spring back” into shape. If it doesn’t, if the dough just sits there like a stuck pig when you poke it, knead some more, understanding that you basically can’t overwork the dough. If the dough is relatively lively, elastic, and bounces back fairly well, you are done. Wrap the dough tightly in several layers of plastic wrap, let it stand on the counter 30 minutes (or in the fridge for up to a day), then move on to the final step.

6). Pass the dough through pasta machine.


I use a pasta scraper to segment off about 1/3 of this ball of dough. Trying to pass much more than that through the machine tends to get unwieldy as the pasta sheet gets thinner and thinner and longer and longer. Flatten out that chunk of dough you separated with the palm of your hand, then pass it through the pasta machine according to your manufacturer’s instructions…


I finish on my machine’s #6 setting of the thickness (or would it be thinness…). Setting #8 is the thinnest setting on my machine, if that helps at all. #6 seems about right for most pasta applications.

If you lack a pasta machine, you get to roll it out by hand like your inner little Italian grandmother (let me know how it goes, as I’ve never tried it).

At this point – you can cut your sheets in to whatever shape noodle you want. Boil them up in heavily salted water until al dente (which will only take a minute or two) and toss with your favorite sauce/oil/fixins/what-have-you.

Or, you could make………


UP NEXT; Goat Cheese Ravioli

Pan Seared Beef Tenderloin

The polls are closed. The votes are in. The winner has been notified. And the latest Storm of the Century is due to pummel the Twin Cities later this week.* So I thought before the world as we know it ends (again), it would be a good time to pound out the deets of Food Night Nation’s recipe request…

* I honestly have no idea where we are going to put any more snow here. I really don't. Can someone please hit the "no vacancy" sign or something? We are full. No more room at The Inn for aaaaaaany more snow this winter. Mkay?! Great.

Food Night nation loves it some beef, apparently. Can’t say I blame you, as this preparation is a tasty as it is easy to prepare. You can go all minimalist on this bit, or you can dress it up with garnishes, fresh herbs, blue cheese, etc. But all you really need as far as equipment is; a cast iron skillet, a sauce pan, and some heat. And look at you, you’ve got ALL of those things!

And in all honesty, what you do BEFORE you begin cooking is about as important (if not MORE important) than what happens once you put pan to flame.* What are these important pre-cooking things? I count three…

*Or pan to electric coil, or pan to ceramic stove top…


Pre-Cooking Must Do #1). Buy good beef. Goes without saying, right? But more specifically, we are looking for perfect little cubes of beef tenderloin here. And if you are planning on cooking more than one, you want them to be EXACTLY the same size. Otherwise they won’t cook at the same rate, will they. So have your butcher cut you nice, even, chunks from the center of a tenderloin. Yep, the center, not the ends where the tenderloin tapers down to something too thin to cook properly. We are looking for a perfect cube-o-meat here. And how about buying your meat from a reputable source, too. Humanely raised, happy cows make the best steaks.

Pre-Cooking Must Do #2). Only room temperature meat goes in the pan. Or, perhaps I should say, meat that is right out of the fridge definitely does NOT go in the pan. Why? Think about what would happen if you took a frozen cube of meat, and tried to cook it. You’d get done/burned outsides before you had properly cooked insides. So give your steaks that you lovingly procured the proper treatment. Take them out of the fridge, sprinkle each with a little salt, and let them take a 15 or 20 minute nap on the counter prior to cooking. Your patience and planning will be rewarded.


Pre-Cooking Must Do #3). Use cast iron to cook your beef. A properly seasoned cast iron pan will give you a fabulous sear on the outside, and can go in the oven if you need to cook your steaks a little longer after you have seared both sides.

One more bit of knowledge for you before we get to the recipe… do not try to sear 17 steaks at once. When searing, the steaks enjoy a bit of elbow room. They don’t want to be all touchy-feely with the neighbor steaks, as they are a bit anti-social. Don’t try to change them, that’s just how they are. So just make sure there is plenty of unclaimed real estate in the pan during the searing process. Food Night usually only sears 4 (maaaaaaaaaybe 5 if Food Night is feeling really daring) tenderloin steaks at a time in its 12’’ cast iron skillet, if you must have a number.


Pan Seared Beef Tenderloin
Serves 2

- Two 6oz beef tenderloin steaks, of equal thickness/size/proportion, seasoned with kosher salt, rested at room temp for 20 minutes
- Oil (peanut if possible, canola/veggie otherwise, not olive oil)
- Butter
- Fresh Thyme (optional)

Heat your seasoned cast iron skillet to med-high heat. On my stove, this means turning the heat to medium, and letting the pan sit there for roughly 10 minutes. The objective isn’t to get the pan SCREAMING hot, but hot enough to make the steaks really sizzle (but not burn) when they enter the pan. Flick some drops of water into the pan, and when it sizzles vigorously, you are ready to proceed.

Toss a tablespoon or two of oil in the pan. If your oil immediately burns (you'll know if it burns...) your pan is too hot. Cool down the pan a bit, wipe out the burnt oil, and begin again. Add steaks to the pan, and sear on first side undisturbed for approx 4 minutes...


Turn steaks to opposite side (look at the killer krust you just kreated!!!!), toss in a few tablespoons of butter (more the merrier)…


… plus the optional sprigs of thyme, and sear 4 minutes.* While steak is on this second side, tilt pan and baste with butter/thyme.


*NOTE; These 4 minute times are not set in stone. Use your eyes, ears, and nose… if the steaks are burning… turn them (and turn the heat down). If they aren’t properly caramelized at 4 minutes, up the heat a bit and leave them in a bit longer. Simple.

How do you know when your steak is done? Use your finger (NOT your knife). Pressing down on the top of your steak while it’s in the pan should resemble pressing your finger against your cheek* for medium-rare. You do want your steak medium-rare… right?!

*The cheek on your FACE, please. Come on now.

If your steaks are too thick to cook solely on the stove top, you can slide the pan into a 450 degree oven. Once you’ve reached the nirvana that is a lovely medium-rare, take your steaks out of the pan and place them on a plate covered loosely with aluminum foil for 4 minutes or so. Once done, cut steaks in half, serve with red wine sauce (see below), blue cheese, and a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt. Don’t forget the Maldon.


Red Wine Sauce
1 cup good quality red wine*
1 cup stock (chicken, lamb, beef, pork, turkey, squab, rabbit… whatever)
Butter

*When we say “good quality” red wine, we mean use something here that you would enjoy drinking. If you use crappy wine, reducing it is going to concentrate and magnify its crappyness. So choose wisely, and drink the rest of the bottle with your lucky dining companion.

Combine stock and wine in small sauce pan. Reduce until it thickens slightly, you’ll be left with ½ cup or so, give or take. Remove from heat, whisk in a few pats of butter one at a time. Taste, and season with salt and/or lemon juice as needed. Bang. Done.


Time to revel in your greatness with said dining companion.

If you try this, let Food Night know how it goes! Toss out any questions in the comments too, and the Food Night staff will answer them to the best of our ability.