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Kyle’s 32nd Birthday!

I hope you are are enjoying this holiday season! December is a busy month for me. Holiday parties, Kyle’s birthday, and Christmas! I love every bit of it!

Today is Kyle’s 32nd birthday. Happy birthday, Kyle! He wanted to celebrate tonight with a steak dinner. We will be celebrating with friends on Saturday night. Kyle cooked the steak since I’m inexperienced with red meat. Kyle is going to share with you the process of making it. It was probably the best steak I’ve ever had. Moist,  juicy, and flavorful! I don’t eat a whole lot of steak but this was soo good. Since I live in a little ole apartment I don’t have a grill. I thought that was the only way to cook steak, I was wrong. I will let Kyle tell you here in a little bit.

Other items on the menu:

Fiesta Ranch potatoes, Salad, and sautéed mushrooms and onions.

I’m good at making salads so I got to chopping. Smile

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For the potatoes I chopped them into quarters and coated with olive oil.

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I then coated the potatoes with a fiesta ranch packet.

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I baked them in the oven for about 20 min. I tossed them a couple times before they were done. They were yummo!!

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And now I’m going to let Kyle share with you….

 

Ok, let’s talk steak.  I have grilled steaks numerous times but what with Mona living in an apartment and all, grilling was not an option.  Well, I found a pretty simple recipe for cooking steaks at allrecipes.com  The recipe called for filet mignon but I went with a New York Strip instead.  So, the cooking process goes like this:

Place a cast iron skillet or oven safe pan in the oven and pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees.  While the oven is heating, coat the meat in 1 tsp of olive oil and then cover both sides of the meat with a coarsely ground salt and pepper. 

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When the oven has reached 500 degrees remove the cast iron skillet and throw the meat directly into the skillet and sear each side for 2 minutes. 

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Next throw the skillet back in the oven and cook the meat for about 5 minutes.

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Once the meat is cooked place it on a warm plate and loosely cover with foil, it’ll cook a little more on its own. 

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If you like you can whip up an easy sauce while the meat is resting.  Just take a 1/2 cup of red wine, I used a Cab Sauv, and pour it into the skillet that you cooked the meat in and heat over medium, scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to get all the browned bits to mix in with the wine.  Boil the wine until you have reduced it to about 1/3 cup, remove from heat and mix in 2 tbs of butter. 

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Cut the meat into thin slices, spoon a little sauce over the top, serve and enjoy.  That’s it!  Your kitchen will get a little smoky but your taste buds will thank you.

 

Me (Mona) again! It did get really smoky in the apartment but nothing that opening some windows wouldn’t fix. Overall, dinner was wonderful!

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