I've cooked many dishes in my life, but I've only done a few steaks, so when L brought home a couple round steaks left over from a work event I took it on as a worthy challenge. For the principal recipe, I took on "Herb Swiss Steak," as published on About.com. Following the advice of another website, I asked L to salt the steak about an hour before cooking. I think this is good advice, but be careful to wash the salt off thoroughly when the hour is done- the first steak came out a bit on the salty side. The recipe called for oil, salt, pepper, tomatoes, onion, celery, marjoram, thyme and garlic powder. I made a few substitutions, throwing in oregano and garlic cloves in place of the marjoram and garlic powder. We had some leftover hot green peppers, so I popped those in the mix. I also doused the steaks in wine shortly before cooking. I fried the vegetables first, then cooked the steak under them. Overall, the results came out quite tasty. I was helped by the fact that this was a fine steak, thin and capable of cooking thoroughly in a couple of minutes. The celery stalks were very thin, which made for better cooking than the heavy stalks contained in most dishes. To tenderize the meat, I used a lazy method, batting it with the spatula as I cooked, helping to soak in the spices.
For vegetables, I went with a yam, pepper and carrot stir-fry recipe I found on Home Chinese Recipes. I can't recall trying this dish in any Chinese restaurant, but it fit the flavors I was looking for (from the picture I'm wondering if the recipe writer doesn't mean yams at all, but "shanyao," sometimes called a Chinese yam but containing a flavor that is quite different). Anyway, for our dish I went with a sweet potato, carrots, green pepper, light soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and wood-ear mushrooms, basically following the recipe exactly (except for perhaps the yam issue-personally, I think the sweet potato made for a much better fit with the carrots than shanyao would have).
This vegetable side also came out quite well- though I could have dispensed with the wood-ear mushrooms, which didn't seem to offer much, either in sightliness or flavor. Then again, I'm not a mushroom guy.
The following night, I met with less success in the kitchen. A couple months ago, I made a superb macaroni and cheese dinner using one of those instant packages (no really, it was great, amazing what enough pepper and basil will do). In America, these packages cost a $1 or $2, but in China they cost 25 or 30 RMB (about twice as much). Instead of paying that, I thought, why not just mix my own cheese and noodles? This week's macaroni was made using: fusilli pasta, sharp chedder cheese, shredded monterey jack, parmesan, salt, pepper, and cooked in a mix of butter and olive oil. For a sauce, I added some basil pesto and wine. My taste buds tell me the pesto may have been the odd man out, but whatever the case is, the result was not as tasty as I would have liked (and shamefully, not even as good as the instant pack). Costwise, it didn't make much of a difference, saving only a couple RMB at the most. Time to stock up on those instant packs!
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