Tonight I (Max) cooked dinner for the family and made Alex’s favorite meal (steak, mashed baked potatoes and salad) because she had to do TWO middle school entrance exams/interviews today. She had a tough day and this dinner was a nice surprise. For dessert Alex and I (with an assist from our friend Wyeth) made Apples “Koster”. Apples Koster is our take on Bananas Foster, which we made last week. We liked the Bananas Foster, but the bananas were a little too sweet and the texture of cooked banana can be a little too soft, so we decided to try a variation. We essentially followed the same recipe as Bananas Foster but substituted apples for bananas. We also cooked the apples a little longer in the rum and butter because they are a little firmer than bananas. We added more cinnamon. We loved the result.
The dinner itself was straightforward but delicious: First I seasoned the steaks to provide a crust. Then I seared them for approximately 4 minutes on each side, and because they were so thick I put them in the oven to finish. Meanwhile, I washed 4 potatoes and baked them in the microwave for a total of 12 minutes,with rotations every 4 minutes. 2 were left as baked, and the others were peeled and mashed with butter. For the salad,we thought we would make the typical goat cheese, walnut and cranberry salad(with a base of arugula, of course) but halfway through the meal we found a fresh avocado and cherry tomatoes in the fridge and decided to make a avocado, tomato, goat cheese, walnut and arugula salad.
The full dinner: steak, potatoes and salad (and Koko hoping for a handout)
The ingredients…or at least some of them
Grilling the steaks (they were so thick, I finished them off in the oven)
Checking the meat
Prepping avocados for salad
Avocado, tomato, goat cheese, walnut and arugula salad
The steps of making Apples Koster:
Gather your the ingredients: apples, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and rum
Sautee apples in butter and assessing (thanks Wyeth) before the flambee
Add more brown sugar and the cinnamon!
Almost ready for the rum; apples are soft but not too soft
Lighting the apples! (carefully)
Serve the Apples Koster over vanilla ice cream
