Valentine's Day Is Coming Up!

Valentine's day is coming up in a little more than two weeks! Of course, my sister and I have reserved for the spot for each other as each others valentines. Usually valentines is based on chocolates, and love, and hugs, and all of that mushy stuff. This year, since I pursued cooking to a higher level, I've decided to create a fabulous dinner for her. My sister also enjoys cooking herself, which means that she wants to help me out. As a cook myself, I don't like to cook with others and I like to do all of the work myself because I feel more accomplished if I do.

My sister was thinking along the lines of a Filet Mignon with Cabernet Reduction sauce. This recipe has a beautiful look to it, as the color of red wine reduction is a pretty dark red.

It would actually be great if I could replicate the picture perfectly. A steel pan is suggested instead of a non-stick pan. The little bits of the steak that sticks to the pan is the foundation of the sauce, and the term is called "fond". The fond would dissolve into the Cabernet Reduction sauce, which is actually called deglazing. When the pan is deglazed that means other ingredients for the steak can be thrown in. 

I've learned about the multiple temperatures in cooking a steak. I prefer steak to medium rare to rare, but I only cook my steaks rare with certain types of steaks. I have found this out by going to multiple restaurants before I started to cook. The most common steak that I found that needed to be rare was a New York Strip Steak. I always order this steak rare, because the medium rare still tastes to dry for me. And for the Filet Mignon, I would have that cooked to medium rare. 

Here's a basic temperature chart for cooking steaks: 

If it's possible to read, it just gives the description of how the steaks are cooked, saying how red and tender they are. I have never cooked any steak to the level of it being blue rare, because I think that is way to undercooked. The blue rare steak practically looks like it came out of the grocery stored, and slightly seared in a pan on the stove. It also really depends on the steaks thickness, because some cook quicker than others. All the temperatures vary a little bit from the chart above, but it's mostly accurate. 

I was happy when I found about the temperature chart. I had no idea about it before, and there's also temperature charts for different types of meats and poultry. My mother actually doesn't use the temperature of the meat at all, but instead slices down the middle of the meat. That is another method to do it, but all of the juices flow out of the steak that way. I have started using a meat temperature thermometer. It was convenient because we already owned one, but no one used it for whatever reason. 

I did actually cook my own steak recently! I was very happy with it. It was a medium rare cooked steak that was drizzled with a garlic butter sauce. At first, I messed up the sauce. It consisted of garlic powder, minced garlic, and butter. It sounds really simple, right? But I didn't have any garlic powder, because the one that was in my spice drawer was two years old! Now, I tried to use the powder at first but I physically could not shake it out of the container. So, as it stuck to the plastic container, I used garlic salt as it's substitute. The only bad part was that I added to much garlic salt, and it was disgustingly salty. The first attempt was a fail, and tasted horrible. Then I redid it, added more butter, and seared the minced garlic in it. The smell is absolutely amazing and lightly salted the sauce with garlic salt. This time it tasted delicious. Then I made a simple packet of couscous, and placed the steak over it. I poured the sauce over the steak and the couscous. I was proud of this recipe :) 

I'm not much of a photographer. Next time I am going to try to take a better picture of it, and the sauce went over to the side a little bit. All together it tasted really good. I enjoyed dinner that night very much.

As an improvement, I'm going to cook the sauce correctly and sear the steak in the sauce instead of pouring all of it on the steak. This way it would be more flavorful. I'm really excited for Valentine's Day this year (as I usually am not), but I can't wait to cook for my sister! I'm going to upload the pictures on my blog that day or after it.