Ministry of Intrigue

I know that I usually write about geekery and tech here, but I do occasionally walk away from my electronics and live in the physical world. This is categorized, appropriately, as a “good thing“. Certainly my girlfriend, friends and family appreciate it. So I thought I’d share with you something from my adventures in meatspace.

I love to cook. I don’t set aside time for it often enough, but I love preparing an elaborate meal that will be enjoyed by others. I collect recipes and cookbooks, although I only rarely refer back to them. Most of my cooking is more like improvisational theater based off of a half-remembered premise rather than a scripted scene, and I rarely record what I come up with, preferring to rely on memory and creativity when I revisit a particular dish. That being said, I did whip up a steak marinade last night that was delicious enough to share with others. It’s not the most elaborate or original recipe in the world, but quite good.

Please note, measurements are not exact, as I’m just estimating on some of them. When I’m cooking I tend to go with “what feels right” rather than a numerical value. I made this marinade for two thick-cut steaks, a ribeye and a New York strip. You may need to adjust the amount of marinade depending on how many steaks you are preparing. You will certainly need to double this if you intend on doing more than two steaks at a time.

Also note that you will want to have at least two bottles (I prefer the widget bottles) of Guinness on hand for this recipe: one to include in the marinade and one to drink while you grill the steaks.

Marinade Ingredients

• 4-5 cloves of garlic (minced very fine, or through a garlic press)
• 5-6 Tbsp of brown sugar
• 7 Tbsp of soy sauce (or more to your taste)
• 1 12 oz. bottle of Guinness

Preparation

Mix the marinade ingredients together in a glass dish or bowl that will be large enough to hold the steaks, but small enough that the marinade will actually cover them. If the marinade doesn’t cover them completely, you can occasionally flip the steaks to ensure that the meat gets fully soaked.

If you wish, you can grind some sea salt onto each side of the steaks and rub it into the meat before placing them in the marinade, but that is a personal choice. I personally like to do it, although I doubt it has a huge impact on flavor after you factor in the marinade itself. Be careful not to overdo it though, just use a little salt. After all, the soy in the marinade already provides plenty of salty goodness.

If you are not going to have time to marinate the steaks for at least 3-6 hours, you can pierce the steaks repeatedly with a fork before placing them in the marinade to help it soak into the center of the meat. This is a bit of a cheat, but if you only have about two hours of marinating time available, it will help. The steaks will increase in tenderness the longer you marinate them, so if you can, try to let them soak for at least four hours. Also, unless you have some highly advanced immune system or just decide to tempt fate, always marinate your meat in the refrigerator.

When you are done marinating the steaks, grill them to your personal definition of perfection. Personally, I prefer to have steak that is prepared medium to medium-rare, but feel free to char them to smithereens if you prefer.

Serve the steaks with your favorite sides. Personally, I don’t think you can go wrong with some potatoes and broccoli, but use whatever you prefer. If you still have some left, drink Guinness with the steaks, or lieu of that, a nice red wine.

As I said, it’s not an especially elaborate or unusual recipe, but it is quite delicious. I know that I will be playing with variations of this marinade for some time to come.

Enjoy!

Just so you all know, it is extremely difficult to eat a cinnamon roll and look professional at the same time. You either pick it apart and end up with frosting all over your fingers, or you attempt to bite the roll whole leaving you looking like some sort of manchild with a face smeared with sugary paste.

“Cinnamon roll! Cinnamon roll! Me likey the sweet roll!”

It’s actually pretty embarrassing.

That is all.

I am amused.

The Isthmus Daily Page, which is the digital version of one of Madison’s free weekly newpapers cited my entry where I wrote about my short trip to the Taste of Madison. (Although they didn’t get the link to my blog correct.) The funny thing is that in collecting blog entries they were obviously looking for positive reviews, but my entry was intended to be more of a “meh” reaction to the event. The reason this is particularly funny is that instead of posting a brief snippet of a sentence they included my entire paragraph about the experience including my comments about small portions and general overpricing of the products, and mine is probably (while maybe not an out and out negative review) certainly the least positive of the tiny bits and pieces they pulled from other sites.

Of course, in all fairness, I was pretty grumpy when I went to ToM, and my sandal disaster didn’t endear the experience to me.

Once, many years ago I made potato gnocchi, because I desired their deliciousness. And they were yummy, but I swore to myself that I would never make them again. Why? Because unless you plan to spread your meal preparation over two days, it takes several hours to produce the meal, and it is really a lot of work during the entire process. It isn’t a couple hours of work where you can just walk away and check on things occasionally, it is constant cooking activity. I had decided that no matter how good they were when I was finished, I would not go down this path a second time.

And then…

I was out and about with a coworker and some of his friends, one of whom turns out to be a big shot marketing executive for a restaurant chain. She was mentioning how they were going to be adding gnocchi for a limited time in the upcoming season. All of us present, quite intoxicated, began professing our love of gnocchi, and my mouth started to water thinking of it. Ever since that night, I have been craving those little potato dumplings, and today I caught myself looking through cookbooks trying to determine what kind of sauce would be the best to go with them.

I’ve eliminated any tomato based sauces as I am a little bored with them right now, but I am also not a fan of white cream sauces. I’ve been toying with an orange cream sauce that I made once, which was absolutely delicious, but the flavor is vague enough in my memories that I am not sure. In my searching I came across a delightful looking recipe for linguine with scallops in an orange sauce, and now I am wondering if I could combine gnocchi with that or if that would be overkill; distracting too much from the scallops.

Well, there is really only one way to find out, and if I actually finish this shopping list I will have kissed the rest of my day goodbye.

UPDATE: Picked up the ingredients and whatnot, but I think I will have to wait on the gnocchi. I think it would really over do everything, and if I make those dumplings I won’t be able to eat until ten at night or so. I think I’ll save everything up and make a day of it tomorrow to produce a nice meal. After all the shopping and organizing I really just don’t feel like cooking.

Post-cooking: I tried the basic scallops & linguine in orange sauce and it really didn’t work for me. It was okay, but I like an orange sauce to be much thicker/creamier than the recipe I used produces. I’ll try to think of some ways to fix it, but this experiment goes in the “Well, at least I learned something” pile.

It reminds me of a saying my dad taught me whenever he and I were working on something together. “This should work. And if it doesn’t, we will always think it should have.”