Bison Hanger Steak with Baked Sweet Potato

I got a bison hanger steak at the Eastern Market while I was home last weekend and seared it with some salt, pepper, and garlic oil. I also baked a purple sweet potato to go with it.

Cherry Pie

I'm not going to give a recipe for this one, it's my own secret. My parents think that they have the correct recipe, but they don't have any of the last 3 or 4 modifications I've made :D. I'll tell you that the top crust is oat based, though.

Swordfish

A seared steak.

A second, breaded steak

Tonight, I made swordfish steaks. They were seasoned with sea salt, pepper, and old bay, and seared in avocado oil. The first steak was a little boring, so I breaded the second one in a liquidy mixture of water and corn flour. This one was SO GOOD.

Morning Brownies

Yesterday I wanted to make brownies with a coffee-cheesecake layer on top. It turns out that I didn't have any baking powder or cream of tartar - only baking soda. I tried to correct for this by adding some extra instant coffee to the batter with some baking soda, and they turned out fine. I also didn't have any white flour, so I used white whole wheat instead. In retrospect, I should have adjusted for this and put in less flour, as the batter was very thick.

The cheesecake topping, however, was a little bit more difficult to salvage. I didn't have an electric mixer and I didn't want to beat cream cheese by hand, so I put the cream cheese on low power in the microwave until it was very soft. This resulted in a pretty liquidy batter without much trapped air, since the sugar dissolved into the cream cheese instead of cutting air pockets. I had been tasting things along the way for a while at this point, so I needed someone with a clean palate. The other two people in the room repeatedly agreed that it needed a much stronger coffee flavor, and soon I had dumped in the entire bottle of instant coffee. While this ended up making a very tasty brownie (if you like coffee), it also means that each individual brownie has the equivalent of one cup of coffee in it - thus the name Morning Brownies.

Due to the extra thickness of the brownie batter and the decreased thickness of the cheesecake batter, They wouldn't really swirl together. In the end, they turned out to be very tasty, with a very dense, chocolatey brownie and a light cheesecake topping. I'm sorry, but I don't have a recipe for you at this time.

Steak and Arepas

Nothing fancy here. Sirloin steaks were on sale so I bought a few. I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and garlic oil, then seared it on high heat with some avocado oil. I tried to cook some arepas in the same pan at the same time, but our lounge burners are so weak that it probably took more than 20 minutes.

Steak, Onions, Rice, Beans

I don't really know what to call this. I cubed a sirloin steak, marinated it in half a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, and threw it in a pan with onions. Meanwhile, I cooked some brown rice in the rice cooker. When the rice finished, I dumped the steak/onion mixture and a can of black beans into the rice cooker on its keep warm cycle.

Chili

I was in charge of doing most of the cooking for my dorm's super bowl party this weekend, which basically meant that I had to cook chili for over 40 people. On Saturday, I made a beef stock to use in the chili. I really can't express how much better homemade stock is than store-bought stuff. Not only does it actually taste of something other than salt, but it's also cheaper and doesn't require that much effort. All you have to do is get some bones and veggies, roast them (optional), and then simmer them in water all day.

Marrow bones and mirepoix after roasting

Simmering stock

I meant to make several extra quarts of stock to freeze and use later, but unfortunately when we were unpacking the groceries, we left a package of bones out of the fridge so all 2.5 quarts of the stock had to go into the chili.

Sunday was a lot of work. I had to chop 12 onions and cook them in several increments since I don't have a large saute pan, which took a while. Then, I had to cook 12 pounds of ground beef in four separate increments, draining as much fat as I could from each (we got cheap 73/27 beef). Those two things took seemingly forever, but the preparation was mostly done at that point. The stuff I made was loosely based on Emeril's recipe.

That's a 3-gallon pot of chili.

I didn't really like it but others seemed to have. In the end, only half was eaten, so that should tell you what my dinner is on Monday.

The vegetarian chili.

Oh, yeah, I also made a vegetarian chili for the vegetarians of the dorm. I wasn't very happy about that, but at least it turned out alright. I have a rather large disdain for vegetarians (excluding those who have been advised not to eat meat by a doctor). I'm not going to go into it here other than to say that meat is really good - eat it.