Ahhhh, summer.
I think we'd all agree it's such a great time of year, and what's better than a perfectly cooked steak in the summer?
How about a nice cooked steak with a nice cool potato salad?
Better than that?
How about a nice cooked steak with a cool potato salad with scapes in it?
You want more!?
How about a nice cooked steak with a garden-fresh scape-and-pea-filled potato salad and a lettuce wedge with homemade ranch dressing with bacon crumbled on it?
More than that? Go fuck yourselves, cause that's some good summertime eating right there...
(Now you have to remember that this was last year, so some of the deets are a little fuzzy, but I remember this being a pretty good one, so let's get started, shall we?)
We start with an always-good-place to start where potato salad is concerned; with potatoes.
As I'm sure no one has ever seen one before, here's what potatoes look like.
Notice the "skin"on the outside. That's where all the nutrients are (if you listen to common knowledge that is).
Anyhoo, for these you cut them up into "same size-y" pieces and boil them in heavily salted water until they are cooked through, but not over cooked (a cake tester or knife should slide through and back out with no resistance, but not be mushy).
In the meantime, I took the hero of our story: The garlic scapes...
and cut them up into pea sized pieces:
notice I left my knife in the shot in case you weren't sure what you cut things with, and I also left the ends uncut for reference...
I'm so great.
So take those pieces and boil them in heavily salted water.
and then the most important step, and one of the biggest differences between home cooks and restaurant cooking; using an ice bath.
How much ice used was one of the biggest surprises for me in a restaurant kitchen (along with how much salt, and how much heat), almost every vegetable cooked went into huge tubs of ice water to stop the cooking and lock in the color and flavor. Most home cooks just don't have the ice making capacity in their freezer so ice baths don't get used that often, but it makes a HUGE difference in freshness of vegetables. Even roasted vegetables got par-cooked in hot salted water and then iced down before being sauteed or roasted a la minute at pick up. It's a trick I use often at home, and the best part is that you can reuse the same water to do all your veggies if you time out the order (green stuff with make the water green so do them last).
So with this done, I turned my attention to some fresh peas and gave them the same treatment.
I then combined the now-room-temperature-to-slightly-still-warm-but-not-hot potatoes with salt pepper, scapes, peas, and mayo (homemade if you have the time, it's toooootaly worth it!) and mustard with some fresh herbs and voila!
Yummy, garlic-y potato salad.
That went in the fridge to cool.
Whenever later, I brought the steak out to come to room temp (another very, very important step that often gets overlooked at home).
I seasoned it,
remember, lots of salt (most of it falls off when cooking) and LOTS of heat (you want a rip-roaring pan for a big piece of meat like this one if you want a nice crust on it, like I know you do)
I apparently used some sort of reddish "other" seasonings as well besides kosher salt. If I had to guess I'd say Spanish Pimenton (smoked paprika) was involved, as well as ground cumin possibly (maybe not though) and as always lots of fresh ground pepper...
Give it a couple/few minutes on one side, and flip...
That crust is so nice it deserves another look...
Oh yeah!
So when it's done (pretty rare to med rare in this case) you HAVE to let your meat rest (another thing home cooks don't do often or long enough).
See all those juices pooling on the top? Those get absorbed back into the meat and make it nice and juicy, just like good meat is supposed to be...
So apart from that I took a whole head of Romain lettuce and cut it into quarters length-wise, seasoned with salt and pepper and poured over a homemade ranch dressing (it's worth it) along with some crumbled bacon on top of it, to make this:
All and all it's adds up to a pretty good dinner (Thalia actually ate some of the steak, but Sage says it "taste like Muenster cheese")...
Sure garlic scapes weren't the "star" of the show, but they were there!
I mean, hey! What do you want from me!? I made you a nice dinner and all you can do is complain about the fact that I sold this to you as a garlic scape heavy dinner when in fact it's just a component in one of the side dishes!!?
Well, fuck you! How about that?
Jesus...
Whatever. I'll try harder next time, okay? I'm sorry I didn't live up to your lofty expectations. Can't we just have one quiet dinner without you rubbing my deficiencies in my face the whole time? Just one fucking dinner!?
Fine. You know what? It's getting late and I have a lot of dishes to do. So...
Yeah, I'll call you tomorrow or whatever. Maybe. I just don't know...
I mean, yes. I will call you tomorrow. I'm sorry, my feelings are just a little hurt right now, so I'm probably just being contumelious, but I really do need to start on these dishes...
No, no, it's fine. I'll just do 'em, thanks for offering though. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?
Till then, dickwads...
Till then...
n*
