John's Marinated Steaks, John's Crispy Roasted Potatoes and IL Buco-Style Kale Salad

Today's post is a triple whammy. I realized two things while meal planning for this week: 1) I hadn't blogged in a bit and 2) I was short a meal for the week and was out of motivation. And that is how tonight's dinner was born. I skimmed through the book and found a nice medley of recipes that were sure to be winners. That being said, this will likely be a longer post than most - but I'll compensate with extra photos. I feel like everyone wins here. 

To start, me and the hubs had a little kid-free day and evening yesterday so we took that time to see a movie and do a little work around the house. You know, married people stuff. The evening ended with us jumping on the trampoline whilst drinking from a bottle of champagne and the hubs throwing up. 

So this morning when I realized I needed to marinate the steaks, I was simultaneously eating Chinese food to get my life right again. 

Fat steak in a little bowl

Because the bowl I chose was not quite big enough, I flipped the steaks after a few hours to ensure no steak was left out of being marinated. I'm fair like that. I feel like I should note here that this recipe is very easy to half. My small family can get by with 2 steaks instead of 4 - one for me and the boys and the other one for Collin because steak=manly. 

Once dinnertime rolled around, Collin was in charge of the grill while I tackled the potatoes and salad. I don't use the grill and have no desire to learn how, but I feel like I've touched on that before so I'll move on. 

The first thing I made were the croutons. Oh, man did those start out fun. I bought a nice, crusty bread maybe 5 days ago when I did my grocery shopping only to find that it had molded yesterday. I. Was. Pissed. I had to throw the entire thing away and made sure to curse the ever living shit out of Kroger in the process. To top it off, when we went to HEB to get the steaks I forgot to buy more bread. So today I guilted Collin in to going to the store to buy me more bread, which he did even though I could tell he absolutely did not want to. Once I had the bread, it was smooth sailing.

Good thing I made these first: I got to snack on them the whole time I was cooking.

This made an absurd amount of croutons. Way too much for the salad, unless you prefer your salad to be half salad, half croutons. Then this was probably perfect. They were delicious, though. However, since I am the only one who likes croutons in this freaking house I knew that the excess would likely be thrown away. It doesn't make any damn sense. Collin will eat toast, but doesn't like fucking croutons. I really just can't even get into that right now because I could go on forever. UGH.

The salad calls for Kale and you have to dunk it in boiling water for a few seconds before you submerge it in ice cold water. Then she stresses how important it is to dry the Kale as much as possible. So, I pulled out my trusty salad spinner and spun that Kale like you wouldn't believe. I spun at least 6 times and then put Collin on spinning duty for a while. I was so certain that this would be the driest Kale in all the land. HA. I could hear the Kale laughing at me while in the spinner because, although no more water was spinning out, the Kale was still very moist. Slick to the touch, even. I was baffled and didn't know if this was dry enough or if I should continue. I decided to blot with paper towels, just to be safe, and wouldn't you know - there was no water blotting onto the paper towels. What kind of game was Kale playing here? What kind of sorcery does this Kale entertain? Unimpressed, I decided that enough was enough and if the dressing didn't stick then so be it. 

 As you can see, it all worked out in the end. 

Now the first bite of this salad left my mouth puckered. The lemon flavor was entirely too strong and I had to choke back a cough. When paired with the croutons it tones down a bit, but if you're a crouton hater like my husband there's really nothing to be done. The leaves also feel a bit....thick...as you eat it. I can't describe it, but your teeth will have gotten a workout once you get through this salad. Here comes the strange part: I found myself unable to stop eating this. I would still tone down the lemon next time, but the tangy dressing paired with the garlicky croutons was irresistible.  

The potatoes required a bit more prep what with all the chopping and what not. She markets these potatoes as being crispy and I could not be more down with that if I tried. I love a nice, crispy hunk of potato. 

This photo is not at all relevant, but I thought it would make a cool picture so I took it.

Basically, you chop up a bunch of stuff and throw it in a bowl and when you're done it will look like this:

She has you pre-heat some oil in the oven and swears this is the secret to crispy potatoes every time. I get that. Oil crisps things. Makes sense. Either way, I couldn't wait to pop one of these in my mouth and hear the satisfying 'crunch' that only a crispy potato can provide. 

There they are. Browned and waiting.

I scaled the sheet and picked what looked to me to be the crispiest of them all and tossed it in my mouth...and was met with a soft potato. Soft. Not crispy. As a matter of fact, nothing about these were crispy. They were good, don't get me wrong. we enjoyed them and ate them up like nobody's business...but if you're going to market something as crispy and get my hopes up then you better damn deliver. To this day I have to say that the BEST crispy potatoes were made for me by my brother. It was the morning after we had spent all night drinking and playing board games. He threw these potatoes in the skillet with some sizzling oil and they were the most amazing things my taste buds have ever encountered. Salty and crispy heaven. His secret? Worcestershire sauce. You may take that information and do with it what you'd like, but I'll never go back.

Alright, Folks. We've reached the main event: the steak. She gives you a detailed description on how to cook the steak in the book, and I tried to get Collin to read it but I think we all know how that went. You can't tell a man to follow a recipe on how to cook a damn steak. I think all men are born with this information, actually. She gives you a little mini recipe on how to transform the steak marinade into a steak sauce, so I did that and it was easy enough.

Without steak sauce

With steak sauce

This steak was freaking delicious. Collin commented several times on how great the steak sauce was and I had absolutely zero complaints. This was amazing. Even the four year old ate it with ease - and that's a feat nowadays. I would recommend this recipe over and over again and it is just that good. I actually regret not getting 4 steaks because there is no more left. We ate it all. It's all gone and that honestly makes me a little sad. It felt like Christmas when all the presents have been opened. Mostly because it will probably be that long before I spend that kind of money on steak again. In the meantime, I still have chocolate and that puts the smile back on my face again. Anyway, food coma time.