A Dieter’s Nightmare

Last night’s dinner was bad.  Unhealthy bad.  But it was really really good too.  Yummy good.  Now, I am not on a diet, but I do try to eat healthy.  Well, last night, I threw all of that to the wind.  I hate to admit it but my husband gets most of the credit for this meal.  So what did we have?  Steak covered in a creamy garlic and parmesan sauce.  Our sides were potato salad and pasta salad.  That’s right NO veggies.  I wanted to make a salad but I figured if we were going to be bad, we may as well be really bad.   

So the sides we picked up pre-made from our local market when we got the steak.  We chose New York strip.  That is typically our steak of choice when cooking at home, or a top sirloin.  For me, those seem to be the best value for the price.  I let the steak get to room temperature on the counter and then gave them a good helping of salt on both sides.  Then they disapeared to the grill and my husband worked his magic.  Usually that is all we do to steak and it is fantastic.  And everyone always asks what our secret is.  Well there it is.  Salt.    

Tonight we decided to do something special.  The sauce is brand new – an idea born while shopping.  His original idea was a garlic and cheese crusted steak.  Then he decided it would better to just have the sauce on top. 

I started by grating about 2 cups of the parmesan cheese.

 

 I apologize for the low quality on the pictures.  My brother-in-law “borrowed” my camera so I am making do with my camera phone for now. 

Then I was told to mix it with the heavy cream already on the stove.  (I did a lot of the cooking but I was really just following instructions).  We had the heat on medium low so the cheese slowly melted and nothing burned.

I minced 3 cloves of garlic and mixed it with everything else.  And then we added a couple tablespoons of butter.  You can see the butter melting here.  And the darker spot there?  That is the sherry he decided to add last minute – no more than a ¼ cup.  That is optional.  You could also use white wine if you have some open.  We also put in some fresh ground pepper. 

 

And I just kept stirring.  And stirring.  And stirring.  Until the steaks returned from the grill.  The sauce started pretty liquidy (I don’t think that is a word).  But as I stirred, it started to thicken up.  This would make a great fondue with just a little extra time on the stove or some flour to thicken it up even more. 

 So here it all is served up on our plates. 

Mmmm.  It was so good.  I made a special trip to the gym today after that heavy dinner but it was so worth it.  We will have to have this again….hmmm, maybe dinner tonight?