Like you, Job and I are human and we cannot perfect every delicacy that we make. We have been trying so desperately hard to create an amazing steak dish with no success.
First we tried to make some horseradish steak tips with mashed potatoes and broccoli in October…
Although it looks pretty good, they were less than appetizing and super tough and over-cooked, and the potatoes were not quite cooked enough. The only thing that worked was the sauce the meat was cooked in and the broccoli. Well we thought we had learned our lesson with cooking steak and wanted to take another go at it.
We went to C1000 (another local grocery store) and bought some peppered steak that looked beautiful. We were both really excited for this dinner.
As sides, we decided again broccoli and potatoes would be good. (We bought 10kg of potatoes at C1000 because they were buy one get one free 5kg bags for about €3.)
We steamed the broccoli which was the easiest part of the meal.
We worked on the potatoes throughout because potatoes take forever to cook. Before Job got home from work, I got to work on the potatoes. We chose four large potatoes to work with.
I wasn’t quite sure what sort of thing we were doing with the potatoes, so I asked Job, and he told me just to peel them and we would figure out when he got home what to do next.
He arrived home shortly thereafter and sliced the potatoes into 1/4 inch thick disks.
From there, we placed them into a pot of water and waited for it to boil. We let them boil for about 10-15 ish minutes, until they were slightly tender, but not soft enough to make mashed potatoes.
While the potatoes were boiling, we made a garlic bread… I know this sounds ambitious, but we just bought one of those prepared breads that you stick in the oven… It held us over while we continued to cook our potatoes.
Next we drained the potatoes and let them sit to dry for a few minutes while we prepped a frying pan.
We heated the pan up with some hot oil and then proceeded to put the potato disks into the pan. Basically you want to coat the pan with potato disks. 
Add oil liberally so that the disks sort of fry up and turn a golden brown color.
(^^Action Shot^^)
When they are cooked to your desired soft or crispiness, remove from frying pan and shake with seasonings… salt, pepper, what have you.
Next we moved on to our steak.
(They’re gorgeous aren’t they??)
Now mind you… neither of us, especially me knows a whole lot about steak or cooking steak, and Job has had a few successful forays into cooking the meat. We heated and added the meat to the skillet, no oil (before Job put the meat in the pan he added some salt and pepper for taste) He cooked them on both sides… (I really don’t know the timing as I wasn’t in the kitchen for this part, but would guess about two minutes each side,) and then removed the steaks from the heat and put them in aluminum foil while we got the table ready. Usually the steak cooks for a few minutes after you remove it from the heat… That is what we learned from our first foray when we cooked our steak tips to what looked like a perfect medium, only to find out that when we cut into them when we sat down to eat, they had cooked themselves into a well done… very tough and chewy.
Well we made sure not to cook these for too long and when they were done, they looked about a medium rare after sitting in the foil for a few minutes, so we put them on the stove for a few more minutes just to get them to a nice medium.
The really did look as though they had been cooked perfectly, but alas as we cut into them and took our first bites, they were so hard to chew and were just not pleasant to eat… Job and I have had some damn good steaks and this was not one of them. The pepper crust it had on the edges was also very spicy. It was just not enjoyable.
The potatoes and broccoli on the other hand were very enjoyable. The potatoes were basically disk shaped fries, and were very nice paired with ketchup, or as the dutch do, mayonnaise (I’m not a huge mayo fan.. so I stuck with the ketchup) and we also had some apple sauce.
At this point, I think we’ll both be taking a break on cooking steak until we have more knowledge… or go to a restaurant to eat it there.
Let us know if you have any steak cooking tips in the Suggestions tab or send us an email at thetravelingspoonsblog@gmail.com !
The Traveling Spoons 