Food journal number 50: Sunday steak

It's time yet again to resurrect the Food Journal. Though we've been cooking and menu-planning like never before in the new kitchen, I've sadly been a bit lazy to take photos and write. That's going to change now though. In the next few months, expect to hear about our attempts to eat more fish. I'll also allow you to take a peep into our lunchboxes. That's the plan.

This entry though, has nothing to do with fish or lunchboxes. It's about our Sunday steak, our weekend specialty. We've been cooking variants of this since forever, but each time I eat it I still think it's a better version of the last.


The meat is the star of the show, but even there we're tried variations. We've tried this dish with entrecôte, sirloin, and lately – the cheapest cut still good for this purpose in these hard times of rising meat prices – nicely-cut parts of the chuck (a.k.a fransyska). Flat iron steaks are sold in our City Gross grocery in trays marked "American BBQ tray", and the butcher said they were good for both grilling or frying into a steak. As the steak dinner is very filling, we divide the flat iron steak between the two of us (we cook it whole and cut later). This is more than enough steak because the cut is bigger than your two palms together. If the meat is frozen – which some probably will be if, like us, you buy a whole tray of meat – remember to let it slowly defrost over a day in the refrigerator and let it warm to room temperature before frying. This results to better steaks than ones defrosted over a few hours on the kitchen counter.

As supporting cast to the meat: salt, pepper, a pinch of dried thyme, some crushed garlic heads. You also need foil and balsamic vinegar.


The variation that follows is what we've been having recently, which took inspiration from various Gordon Ramsey shows. The garlic, thyme and generous butter tricks are all from Gordon Ramsey shows. Thanks for the tip, Gordon. We love our steaks so much we can't really see a good reason to want to fly to your nearest restaurant in London.

Here's what we do:

1. Salt and pepper the meat generously. Repeat: generously.

2. Meanwhile, heat a cast iron skillet until very hot, and put in a splash of oil with low smoking-point (peanut oil or canola) together with a generous cut of butter, about 40 grams. Continue to heat the pan until butter has browned.

3. Fry one side 2.5 minutes, occasionally pouring the melted oil on top of the steak, where you have also put some thyme (dried or fresh) and the crushed garlic (See the picture above). After the time is up, turn the steak. Remember to take the garlic away first so that you can put it on the newly cooked side to pour butter on it again. The garlic is just there for flavor – not to be fried.

4. Have some aluminum foil handy! After the steak is done, wrap it shut in foil to let it rest on a plate for a while. It's supposed to reabsorb the moisture and the flavors that way.

Note: Yummy steaks are medium-rare. Anything more cooked than that is a sad gray excuse for steak. If you have thinly sliced meat cuts, the cooking time has to be lowered as well. Google "steak cooking time" if in doubt.

5. Next: don't wash the pan yet! See those things stuck to the pan? Those are tasty stuff! Dissolve them by pouring a dash (about a tablespoon) of balsamic vinegar to the pan – another trick we learned from surfing about steaks online. The product is a nice sauce for later. And no, it doesn't taste like vinegar.

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Though the meat is the star of the show, we always always have steaks with the same tried-and-tested things: Green salad with some lemon juice and Sta. Maria Italian spice mix. Boiled potatoes, usually with the washed peels on. Crème fraiche, lovely with potatoes. Fish roe, "the dot on top of the I", to be put on top of the potatoes.


This fish roe is the common, cheap alternative to sturgeon caviar, and comes from a ridiculously ugly fish called lumpsucker (stenbit). With these things on your steak, your Sunday dinner is complete. Vegetarians beware: if we serve you this, you might convert.

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Animals take over Chernobyl

Sorry I haven't been around for a while. For the past weeks, there just hasn't been too much to write about in my new routine life. I jog sometimes before work, I go to work, go home in the afternoon. Sometimes I have class, and often I read school stuff even on the weekends. I tell myself that I should find a place for blogging in my new routine and write about everyday stuff. After all, there are nice events in the workaday week too – I just need to sit down and write about them.

One thing that found itself in my new routine though, is TV-viewing. I don't like aimless channel-surfing, but I do watch some shows on a more or less regular basis now. Gordon Ramsay shows are a favorite – even his Kitchen Nightmares is oddly inspiring – and I also like to watch the Swedish home-renovation programs on a regular basis. Weekly, I also look forward to watching Robinson and Wipeout. Robinson is an ala-Survivor Swedish reality show that, for this year at least, is set in uninhabited islands in Palawan. Wipeout is a Scandinavian francise of an American show with the same name, where participants go through an obstacle course reminiscent of that in Takeshi's Castle.

From time to time too, there are great documentaries on TV, one of them I want to write about now. I saw it on TV the other day and we thought it was so good that we watched it again on YouTube yesterday. It's a 2008 Dutch documentary whose English title is Chernobyl: Life in the Dead Zone.

The show isn't about the pros and cons of nuclear energy as much as it is an exclamation of wonder that wildlife can thrive where humans can't. Since humans have evacuated the radioactive village, nature has taken over, the forest had reclaimed the land, and the area had seen an increase in biodiversity that baffle even scientists. Elk, bear and wolves live peacefully without threat of human hunting – because all of the animals are radioactive. The narrator describes it to be a bittersweet tale: the animals are undisturbed in their sanctuary but will remain radioactive for centuries.

At the heart of the documentary – and the reason why I love it so much – is a tale of a domestic cat family who had been abandoned by their owners long ago but survive in the wild, in abandoned houses. It's a really dramatic tale worth your 40 minutes. And maybe it will keep you busy until the next time I blog.

Click on the links to see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 of the show. Full screen recommended (click on the square icon on the bottom-right of the movie screen).

Till next time, I hope this film keeps you glued to your seats!

I interrupt my studying for...

... food! My new cookbooks have arrived in the mail!

Annas pajer (Anna's pies), with recipes for both savory and sweet pies, and Sju sorters kakor (Seven sorts of cakes), a bestseller baking book in Sweden.

I've been drooling over these cookbooks for half a year now, and since this month is booksale month in Sweden, I could finally buy them at the price I'm willing to pay for them (I considered buying them in the store, but I saved 100 kronor buying them online during the sale).

Anna Bergenström of Annas pajer writes food articles in magazines and was a food journalist for the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. We tried and tested her recipes from two other books (on Swedish and Mediterranean food respectively), and since we are in a quiche-phase right now – they're easy lunchbox food – I think we'd be trying out one of her pie recipes soon, too.

But the other cookbook, Sju sorters kakor, is the one I'm really excited for. The small book is award-winning, but not snobby. Far from it – it has roots in real people's kitchens. In 1945 and after the war, people were poor, supplies were rationed, and for this reason, they have not been baking cakes and pastries. To change this, a national cake-and-pastry recipe contest was held, which brought in 8,000 entries from around the country. The winning recipes and the runners-up got published in the book, which also became an instant success and was immediately sold out. Another contest was held for the book's second edition, which also became a success – and in total, the book has been re-published 19 times and 3 million copies of it has been sold in a country of 9 million people.

Although it's called "Seven sorts of cakes", there are recipes here for dessert buns of all kinds, rusks (crunchy biscuits), danish pastry, small cakes, roll cakes, cookies, layer cakes, no-bake cakes, gluten-free and low-sugar cakes. And the appeal is that all ingredients can be found in any well-stocked Swedish grocery store. In fact, the later editions have also made a point to include other recipes when more ingredients became imported into the country. Yum, my first pastries book and I can't wait to start baking!

The distracting picture when you turn the cover

...Okay, back to studying!