Date Night = Steak Night

I love to have date nights at home for a number of reasons:

1. It is much less expensive
2. If you cook together, you get double date time.
3. You can get dressed up or hang out in pajamas, it’s up to you.
4. Did I mention that it is way less expensive?

 

For our date night last night, we had steak, because Kirk LOVES steak. We also had a delicious mushroom in red wine sauce, mashed potatoes and oven roasted asparagus and grape tomatoes.

 

Here are some tips and tricks for this particular menu:

 

Steak: I always, always, always put my steak on the counter and season it at least an hour before I grill it. Putting cold meat on a hot pan just makes it tough. That hour also lets the salt, pepper and garlic powder get into the meat.

 

Mushroom & Red Wine Sauce: There are a few things I’d like you to remember about the sauce.

1. Use a red wine that you would drink with your meal to cook with. When you reduce the wine and beef broth, the flavors of both intensify, so don’t intensify something that doesn’t taste good!
2. Don’t salt the mushrooms when they are cooking. The beef broth has sodium, which intensifies when it reduces, so skip the salt. The first time I tested this sauce, I salted the mushrooms and the sauce came out super salty.
3. I love this so much that I put some on my mashed potatoes. It’s kind of a funky color, but it tastes delicious!

Oven Roasted asparagus and grape tomatoes: This is super simple and delicious. My tip here is simply to try it.

Mashed potatoes: overcook them a bit so that they mash well. An undercooked potato just gets gummy when you try to mash it.

 

Here’s how I did it:

I put out the steak one hour before I wanted to put it on the grill pan. I seasoned it up with salt, pepper and garlic powder. After an hour, I put a little olive oil into my grill pan, made sure it was hot and put in the steak. I did not touch the steak for 5 minutes, turned it over and cooked it for another 5 minutes and then turned the stove off and let it sit for 10 minutes while the asparagus and tomatoes were roasting.

For the mushrooms, I cooked them in butter and a touch of olive oil in the little non-stick skillet that I use for eggs. I added a touch of dried thyme and let them sauté until they were a lovely golden brown. I then added ½ cup each of beef broth and red wine until the sauce was reduced by ½.

The asparagus and tomatoes just get laid on a sheet pan with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder and roasted for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.

The potatoes are boiled to very tender, drained and mashed with butter and milk that I’ve let sit out and come to room temperature.