Today we didn’t have school so we had time to make a special meal for our dad.  We wanted to try to recreate one of our dad’s favorite dishes from when he lived in Texas: Chicken Fried Steak.  We also were in the mood for chocolate ice cream despite it being super cold outside so we made that from scratch.  For sides we had mashed potatoes and a kale/avocado salad.

The first step was to make the chocolate ice cream batter (because it needs to sit and chill in the fridge for a while).  The ingredients for this simple recipe are brown sugar, white sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, heavy cream, vanilla and milk.  You combine the dry ingredients and add the milk and vanilla, then you slowly pour in the cream…then you whisk it until all the lumps disappear.  Then you let this sit in the fridge for a couple hours. Pop it in the cream maker and voila…amazing tasting chocolate ice cream. (Also, it’s really cool to watch the cream being whisked into the chocolate mix…click here for that: HERE

For the Chicken Fried Steak, we bought thin sliced top round steaks and then got to tenderize them by hammering them with a meat hammer…that was fun!

After we got out all our agression by pounding the steaks, we dipped them in a batter of seasoned flour and sauteed them in a mix of butter and canola oil.  (Max and I set up an assembly line to dip the steak in the flour mix, then into egg/milk, and then back into the flour mix.)

We made mashed potatoes as a side, a lot of gravy to go with the steak and a chopped kale and avocado salad.  We had never really made gravy before so it was interesting to brown the flour in the oil/butter left in the pan and then add milk.  Ours was a little to thick but it was our first time.  Next time we will remember to save some water from the potatoes we boiled to thin out the gravy.

Anyway, dad loved the chicken fried steak.  We liked it too but honestly we like chicken fried chicken better.