The hubby and I have a tradition, if he works later than me but will be off in time for dinner then I will surprise him with dinner. He gets to choose either a theme or a protein, or sometimes both. Once he chose Moroccan and I made this weird stew with raisins and cinnamon, definitely not my favorite. He asked for Cuban another time, I wanted to make Cubano sandwiches so bad, but I was (of course) on a diet at the time so made some funky shrimp and rice dish. No matter what the request is, it is always a lot of fun. He gets to anticipate what his strange request will manifest into, and I get to spend my day between customer calls searching Epicurious.com for an appropriate recipe.
Well, last night hub was working on the ambulance, so he would be off an hour after me. That means we get to play our fun foodie game! Yippee! His choice: beef. I eventually made him choose a theme too, because beef was far too broad. So the final theme ended up: beef that is light and summery. Anxiety set in the second he said beef. I don’t know what it is about beef, but unless it’s ground, I’m not touching it. I had never cooked a steak in my life. I figured I would cop out, make some meatloaf, or meatballs, or something along those lines….but then I decided I would take the bull by the horns! (Is that inappropriate to say when talking about steak?)
I decided for the first time in my life I would conquer the steak. A little background here: I was a vegetarian, vegan, non beef eater, etc in the past. Beef was always my last go to protein. When I met the hubby, he changed my ways. He’s quite the carnivore and he cooks a mean steak. I liked him so much, I didn’t tell him until many steaks later that I didn’t eat red meat, and by that point, I did eat it and I loved it…but I still wouldn’t cook it. Until last night….
Three hundred and sixty two recipes into Epicurious.com and I found the perfect recipe! I was going to made Vietnamese grilled steak with noodles. I went to the steak aisle at the grocery store and bought the steak. I got home and started to freak out. I don’t know how to BBQ and I can’t cook it in a pan because that’s weird. So, I did what I thought was best, I busted out the cast iron grill. The noodle salad was a breeze to make: I chopped tons of mint and cilantro, mixed together the dressing, tossed in the noodles and voila! But then the grill was hot and I had to make the steak. Why did I get myself into this? But I manned up and I did it. I may have smoked out the entire house though. My fireman came home probably thinking the house was on fire, there was so much smoke in the kitchen and dining room. I had to open all the windows and doors! Little did I know the cast iron isn’t supposed to be on high….oops!
In the end, it was amazing! The steak had those pretty little grill marks. It was a perfect medium rare and I even remembered to let it rest! Dinner was amazing and hubby was totally surprised…and I don’t think it was just from the smoke filled house! I always looked at cooking steak as a big scary man thing…but I’m not so scared anymore. I regulated on that steak and I am fully prepared for my next foodie challenge! Try our foodie challenge sometime with your spouse…makes you think outside the box…or the bun…or the meat…or your comfort zone! J Let us know how it goes.
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