Have you ever been faced with the dilemma of cooking a nice meal for company on a week night? What to cook? How to cook it quickly? What do I have at home already? (We all know a couple of hours in the store after working all day usually means dinner isn’t being cooked at home.) Last week this was my dilemma.
First question: What do I have at home already? This is where is pays to know what you have in your refrigerator and pantry. (It also helps to have teenagers at home to ask, but this time I wasn’t so lucky.) I didn’t want to cook the quick meals that feed my family for company, not that they lack taste (of course they taste good, I’m Fine Mama!), but I wanted a nice meal for company. I sat at my desk at work and mentally went through my refrigerator, pantry and cabinets. I remembered that I had four ribeye steaks in the frig. My original intent had been to grill the previous weekend, but it was darn hot and I never got around to it. So I decided we were having steak for dinner. Easy to cook, pretty quick. But I was feeding six people and had four steaks. Dilemma: How to make it stretch?
I decided I would get back to the question of how to feed six people with four steaks and moved on to the side dishes. Again, I mentally went through the pantry and remembered I had five microwave “baked” potatoes I could cook. (You know the kind you buy where the potato is sealed in plastic wrap and you “bake” it in the microwave.) Again five potatoes, six people… I’ll figure that out in a bit. (See a pattern here? Lol)
I mentally continued through my frig and remembered the bags of spinach I had purchased over the weekend. I had an “aha!” moment as I went through the ingredients for the yummy spinach salad that I like and I realized (cause I knew what was at home) that I had most of the ingredients at home. Sweet!
So, I had a menu but a menu with challenges. Four steaks, five potatoes, six people. As I thought about it I realized that I could twice bake the potatoes. That would give me 10 servings of potatoes instead of just five and I decided that instead of cutting steaks in half or trying to divide them evenly, that I would grill them and slice them. That was it! I had my “company meal.” I made a quick list of what I need to pick up on the way home (and believe me it was a short list) and I was set.
This is where I usually get home, after a stop at the store and find that someone at home (usually my kids) has eaten one or more of the things I thought I had available to use. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case this time. (Saved by the “I don’t feel like cooking” attitude of teenagers. Lol)
I fired up my grill, starting microwaving my potatoes, and slicing the ingredients for my salad. (I might add that while I was outside with the grill I put on my big girl shoes and killed a really big and nasty spider. Not with my shoes though. Notice super woman cape blowing in the wind here.)
Once I was inside again (dang spider!), I gained composure (and washed my hands, of course) and proceeded to season my steaks. I seasoned the steaks with McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning and nothing else. I let the steaks rest and come up to room temperature and let the seasoning “sink in” to the steaks.
The evening went quickly from there. I put the steaks on a nice hot grill and left them. Sliced my potatoes in half and scooped them out. Mixed them according to the recipe and filled the potatoes shells with the mixture. Pause on potatoes… Flip the steaks. (That’s right one flip, no more) Back to the potatoes: top with shredded cheddar and the extra flavor of crisp bacon. (Yeah, I cooked bacon too. Remember this was a “company meal”.) Put the potatoes in the oven, made the salad dressing according to the recipe and took my steaks off the grill to let them rest. Tossed the salad in the dressing, took the potatoes out of the oven and with a nice sharp knife, sliced the steaks and the bias.
The end result? A delicious, and relatively quick meal, that was elegant and tasty. It was enjoyed by all.
Live well, eat well, enjoy…
Cyn aka Fine Mama
