BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

As you are all well aware, E K  and I celebrated our 22nd anniversary on Halloween this year. Many of you already know there is a long and involved story behind the courtship, wedding, and our forgetting that costumed kiddies would be knocking on our door during the ceremony – the ceremony and reception were both held at our house. For those of you who may be new to this blog, you can read about it here (if you so desire) – The Mahwage Blogs

The other thing you long time readers know is that I am the cook in the family and that the kitchen is my domain. On our anniversary we usually go out for dinner, but sometimes circumstances dictate that we stay in for the evening. Such was the case on this recent Halloween 2009.

But, stay in or no, we are talking about Evil Kat here and a celebration of my 22 years of indentured servitude to her redheaded evilness, so obviously dinner needed to be something special or terrible and horrible things would happen to me.

So, I fixed a dinner fit for an Evil Redhead and all was good. After said meal,  being ecstatic that I would live to see another day, I posted the following Facebook status update:

Much to my surprise comments were flying left and right with folks jokingly begging invites to my house. However, among the comments were also requests for the recipes, and one of them came from Reverend Alicia Lyon Folberth who wanted to know if she could include them in an upcoming cookbook being produced for her temple.

Since many of my dishes are created spur of the moment, I didn’t necessarily have a recipe at hand and wasn’t quite sure where to start, especially since a good portion of this particular meal relies simply on knowing how to cook a steak. However, after ruminating a bit I managed to jog my memory enough put something on paper for her. And, since there were many others who won’t have access to the cookbook proper, I thought maybe I’d post the recipes here.

Besides, if her supreme evilness decides she wants this again I might need to refresh my memory with my own blog…

E Kay’s 22nd Anniversary Dinner

Irish Whisky Marinated Ribeye Steaks with Crab, Feta, and Herb Butter
Grilled Vodka-Lime Portabello Mushrooms
Steamed Broccoli

(Serves 2 – adjust ingredients as needed for larger group)

INGREDIENTS:

2 Good Quality Trimmed Ribeye Steaks – I prefer Black Angus, dry aged

2 Large Portabello Mushrooms

1 Large Head Fresh Broccoli

1 6 oz Can Lump Crabmeat (Unless you have access to fresh)

1 4 oz Container Crumbled Feta Cheese

1 Large Head of Garlic

Sun Dried Tomatoes

1 Fresh Lime

¼ Lb Sweet Cream Butter (1 Stick)

2 Tbsp Sweet Cream Butter

Olive Oil

Worcestershire

Vodka

Pepper Vodka (Optional)

Bushmills Irish Whiskey

Dark Brown Sugar

Salt

Pepper

Paprika

Basil (Dried)

Onion Powder

INITIAL PREPARATION:

The following should be done 2 to 3 hours prior to cooking

For The Crab-Feta Mixture –

Soften ¼ Lb (1 stick) butter. Drain crabmeat and place in bowl with softened butter and 4 ounces of crumbled feta cheese. Add dried basil, 2 minced garlic cloves, 1 Tbsp minced sun dried tomatoes. Mix until fully incorporated. Refrigerate.

For The Portabello Mushrooms –

Remove stems and gills from mushrooms. Clean and rinse in cold water. Pat dry. Place in bowl. Add juice of one lime, 2 minced garlic cloves, and ¼ cup olive oil to cup and mix well. Pour over mushrooms, seal bowl and refrigerate.

For The Broccoli –

Rinse, chop into florets, peel and chop stem. Rinse again, drain, refrigerate.

For The Ribeye Steaks –

How far ahead you do this step is entirely dependent upon the level of flavor you are seeking from the whisky marinade. I suggest 3 hours, however, I have done it at 30 minutes for a milder flavor or even as long as 8 hours for a stronger flavor.

Mix 3 Tbsp dark brown sugar with 4 ounces Bushmills Irish Whisky. If necessary, microwave for 10 – 15 seconds in order to gently warm and fully dissolve sugar. Place steaks in a shallow dish and Spoon one fourth of the mixture over steaks. Flip steaks and spoon another one fourth of the mixture over them. Reserve remaining Whisky marinade. Cover and refrigerate steaks unless you are going to be cooking them right away.

COOKING:

Remove all items from refrigerator 30 to 45 minutes prior to cooking.

Place broccoli in steamer basket and steam in covered pan with 2-3 inches of water. OPTIONAL: Add an ounce of pepper vodka to the water as well. Melt 2 Tbsp butter. When finished steaming, drizzle broccoli with melted butter, salt and pepper to taste.

Heat a grill pan or stainless steel skillet and add 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil. Using tongs, sear mushrooms in hot oil, approximately 5-7 minutes per side. Remove mushrooms to shallow dish. To the hot skillet add remaining marinade from bowl and 2 ounces vodka. Deglaze pan. Allow to reduce by ¼ and pour over mushrooms.

30 minutes prior to cooking drizzle both sides of ribeye steaks with Worcestershire. Season liberally with onion powder and paprika. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with remaining whisky marinade. Preheat Oven to 500 degrees or use broiler if you prefer.

Quickly sear steaks in cast iron or all metal skillet, approximately 3 minutes per side. In the center of each place a generous dollop of the crab-feta-butter mixture. Place skillet in oven or broiler and cook to desired level of doneness.

Allow steaks to rest 5 minutes before serving.

Quickly, while meat is resting, separate oil and grease from the liquid in the skillet (I have a separator cup I use). Discard grease and oil. Place skillet over high heat, return juices and 1 ounce bushmills to pan and deglaze. Reduce by ½ and pour over steaks immediately before serving.

Notes:

Multitasking is a pre-requisite, as you will end up doing all of the above simultaneously.

Mix tall vodka tonic with twist of lime for your spouse and one for yourself.

Eat your dinner.

Clean up kitchen.

Hand out candy to trick or treaters while working jigsaw puzzle with wife and daughter.

Have pre-purchased Ben ‘n Jerry’s for dessert.

You will likely have some of the crab-feta-butter mixture left. I generally will use it for a crostini or on crackers.

More to come…

Murv

The “interwebz” can do some strange things. It’s almost as if the damn thing has taken on a life of its own, which I suppose kinda makes old Al Gore a “Doctor Frahnkensteen” of sorts. (Okay, okay, I know… Gore’s quote was taken way out of context, but the joke worked… gimme a break. I’m actually writing this way early in the A.M. and my caffeine system isn’t up to snuff just yet…)

Anywho, the thing here is this – there are just some places on the internet that seem to have become a multi-headed monster doing whatever it damn well pleases. Social networking sites for instance. In this particular instance, Facebook.

There I was, ditzing about on FB, taking care of my necessary social networking marketing schtuff. E K was at her desk behind me, fiddling about with her own FB page, updating the world on her adventures in grocery shopping and slapping a coat of polyurethane on the O-spring’s chest of drawers.

Yeah, truly exciting stuff there… (Hey, sometimes it’s good to be boring…)

So, anyway, I did a quick refresh of my page to see what was going on and the screen went all willy nilly, flashed a bit, sent some gibberish scrolling around, then settled back into my “Facebook Wall.” Everything looked relatively normal except for one minor – well, actually major, IMHO – detail.

Now, just by looking at the picture on the left you might not see the problem. In reality, it looks pretty normal. In fact, it looks extremely normal. And, if it weren’t for the fact that I happen to use a link that generally resides in that box, I might not have noticed the problem myself. However, on the night in question, after perusing my wall I was going to go have a look at someone else’s wall. Namely, the halo wearing half of The Evil Redhead.

Yeah… I was going to go look at Kat’s page, and the easiest way for me to get there is to click on the link under relationship status, because normally it looks like the picture on the right.

But, it didn’t… It looked like the one above.

According to Facebook, I was still married, but to whom was the question. I checked my info tab and it claimed I was married, but my spouse was a mystery.

Figuring this was just some bizarre glitch, I hit the search box, looked up Kat’s profile – which ostensibly was still there – and clicked on the link. My screen flashed, went blank, then my FB newsfeed appeared. I cocked an eyebrow, grumbled, then tried it again. Same thing.

“Hey legs,” I called over my shoulder. “Did you unfriend me on Facebook or something?”

“No,” she replied.

“Did you block me?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

I grumbled a bit more as FB repeated the redirection each time I clicked, then I answered her. “I can’t get to your page.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I don’t know what that’s all about. I didn’t change anything.”

“Let me try something,” I mused aloud.

I went down the line, clicking on several of our mutual friends. Each time I did so, either I was redirected to my newsfeed or told that this person’s page was no longer available.

Grumbling even more I mentioned this to E K. Of course, she promptly began to click on those links herself.

“I can get to Johnathan’s page just fine,” she announced. “And Tracy’s…” A few more clicks sounded. “And Anastasia’s…”

“But I can’t,” I said, perplexed. “Are you sure you didn’t accidentally add me to your block list or something?”

“I’m sure,” she replied.

Just to be thorough I clicked on some of my other friend’s pages who were not mutual between The Evil Redhead and me. No problem at all. Surfed right to them without so much as a brief pause. I cleared my cache just to make sure it wasn’t a phantom page. They still worked.

I logged out of FB, shut down Firefox, restarted it, cleared cache again, logged back into FB, and checked my page. Nothing at all had changed. No matter what I clicked I was no longer married to my wife, nor could I get to mutual friend pages.

“Well,” I sighed a lament. “It would seem that Facebook has divorced us and you got to keep all of our friends.”

E K giggled, of course.

By now it was pushing midnight and well past my bedtime, yet I was still clicking about on my page because I had no intention of signing the divorce papers, virtual or not.

E K clicked off her monitors (she has two, being the multi-tasker she is) and pushed back from her desk. As she rose to head for the bedroom she said, “I think you should just give up for the night.”

“But, it says I’m not married to you anymore.”

“Get some sleep,” she told me. “Maybe you’ll be married to me tomorrow.”

I guess I’ll have to start checking the calendar on the fridge in the kitchen to see which days I’m married and which days I’m single.

Better yet, maybe I’ll just check Facebook…

More to come…

Murv