I'm trying to 'wow' the best cook I know

Though I've done a good bit of dish washing over the past 60 years, I've never taken much interest in cooking and have only done it out of necessity when a better and more capable cook wasn't available. But I've been trying to learn of late and to be able to fix more than dishes made with venison or buffalo.

My reasoning is that I now work from home and my wife doesn't. In fact, she is usually gone from near dawn to near dusk. Anyway, I figured that if I could start something in the morning, over the noon hour or, at the least, before my wife gets home, I'd make her life a little easier.

As I've said before, my favorite dishes are those which can be put in the crock pot and forgotten -- and I am good at forgetting -- until late in the day. But some dishes just don't work well in the crock pot. I found that out when I tried a rice dish and started it around noon. By the time supper rolled around, the rice was more like mush than the wild rice I had started out to fix. Lesson learned.

Several months ago, we decided to purchase a quarter of beef through the locker plant in Southwest City. While most might eat the best cuts first and end up with the chuck roasts and ground beef, we did it the other way around because I was told by the kitchen boss not to put the good cuts in the crock pot; they need to be saved for something better. Well, we are getting down to the good stuff because the rest is gone.

I pulled out a package with a couple T-bone steaks last week but knew I might get in trouble if I dropped them in the crock pot, so I had to figure out how to fix them to make them taste, well, as good as T-bones are supposed to taste. The barbecue grill is probably the best answer, but I've been too cheap to purchase a gas grill and our old grill isn't in the best of shape. Besides, it seems I always get the briquettes too hot and burn the outside before I get the inside to a medium-well.

The Internet gallery of recipes offered a wide variety of suggestions and advice, much of which seemed conflicting to me, but I decided to bake the steaks in the oven first and then sear because I read that doing it that way will produce a more evenly cooked steak. And, if I baked the steak, I could also slice some potatoes, an onion and some vegetables and bake them too.

I peeled and sliced some potatoes, added some cut carrots, broccoli and cauliflower, and put them all in a bag with a little olive oil and lots of salt and pepper and shook the bag to get an even coating on all the veggies and potatoes before spreading them out on a baking pan and putting them in the oven at 425 F.

I trimmed the fat off the steaks and did the same with them, rubbing in the salt and pepper and some garlic flakes. After the veggies had baked about 15 minutes, I put the steaks in a lightly oiled steel skillet and covered it with tin foil to keep the moisture in. Yes, if I'm going to cook, I like rough and tough cooking utensils, so I've started buying steel pans and curing them for manly cooking. Anyway, I put the covered skillet with steaks in the oven, hoping I wouldn't overdo it and burn them.

Internet sites conflicted on baking temperature and times and I couldn't find a cooking thermometer in the kitchen to get the inside to about 150 degrees. Most suggested lower oven temperatures for 10 to 20 minutes, so I checked my progress a few times and, at first, turned down the oven temp to 300 degrees. It took longer than I thought, probably because I had put foil over the skillet and had a baking sheet of veggies on the shelf below.

Anyway, after about 30 minutes, the steaks were baked to only a little pink so I took them out, let them set and cool a little on a plate for 15 minutes and then heated up my skillet on high to sear them on both sides and around the edges. By then, the veggies were done too.

The results amazed me and "wowed" my wife a bit too. The steaks were juicy, tender and delicious -- my wife says even better than the restaurant we sometimes visit if we are hungry for a good steak dinner. My only mistake was being a little heavy on the pepper -- I opened the wrong side of the container and got a thicker dose than I had anticipated, but they were still good and no more peppery than some restaurants serve them. And the baked vegetables turned out well, too.

After that success, I'm trying to figure out what I can next cook to "wow" the best cook I know, my wife.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.

Editorial on 06/10/2015