Cooking with Cloudflare
The Internet has never been this tasty! Join us for adventures combining cooking with discussions of the tech that makes the web tick.
Transcript (Beta)
and we're live. Hi, everyone. This is Chaat. I'm your host of Cooking with Cloudflare.
My guest today, Wesley. How are you doing, Wesley? I'm good, Chaat. How are you?
It's nice to be here with you today. I'm great. Finally, finally. We've been talking about this since March.
I know, right? I know we were originally scheduled for last week, but last week was a pretty big week for you, Impact Week at Cloudflare.
And why don't we start with, so what do you do at Cloudflare? Sure. So I have an interesting job.
I am the product manager for the research team. So research at Cloudflare is a little different than our other teams.
We're focused not so much on revenue product or making new features, but rather how do we build a better Internet, right?
What are the fundamental technologies we're going to need three to five years out to help either build great new products for our customers or build new Internet standards?
So we work on a lot of different things. Post-quantum cryptography, zero-knowledge proof cryptography, next-generation Internet standards like ECH, Oblivious DOH, Oblivious HTTPS.
Basically, if it can make Cloudflare a billion dollars, break the Internet or break Cloudflare, it's probably on my roadmap somewhere.
There we go. Keeping us live, keeping us ahead of the curve.
That's great. I love it. That's the goal. That's great. And well, we met, I think a few months ago, virtually, of course, but as it turns out, we're pretty close by in the neighborhood.
I've had guests from our Austin office, but it's always great to be in a local time zone.
So we're both making dinner. And what's for dinner tonight?
So we're doing one of my favorite recipes I've learned how to do during the pandemic, which is Steak Diane.
Steak Diane is a really old school recipe. It's very New York steakhouse, 1920s, 1930s.
It's traditionally served tableside and it's traditionally served flambe.
So what it is, is a really thin cut to either filet or New York strip that you sear off really fast, take out of the pan.
Then in with all your pan drippings, you're going to make this wonderful, traditionally veal sauce, but we're going to be doing it with mushrooms and a couple other things that you'll heat up and you'll add the steak back into it and you'll light it on fire.
So it's pretty fun.
We light it on fire with Brandy. Well, you know, the fire is, that hopefully will make for good TV.
Yeah, the fire should make for good TV and we have a fire extinguisher just in case.
Oh, good, good, good to know. Question now, I know one of the ingredients that I saw on the list was a veal demiglace.
I was not able to secure that.
So I'm doing this without the veal demiglace as well. First, I love veal demiglace.
I think it's great. I would make it myself if I cooked more veal.
It's hard to find. There's a good butcher over here in Oakland, actually, right near Rockridge called Fair Brugge, which stocks it.
They're great for that.
That's actually where I went and got my meat today because like literally every Whole Foods or Berkeley Bowl I called was like out of either New York strip or out of filet.
It was wild. Wow. Right. Yeah. I went to Piedmont Grocery, my local and Piedmont Avenue and they had the, I think today I got filet mignon.
So I'm pretty excited about that.
Filet is the traditional meat that this is done with. It works really well because it's got that nice low fat content.
So it sears up really quick and it has just that perfect amount of tenderness that just goes so well with the mushrooms.
Oh man, I love cooking with mushrooms too. So in addition to the steak Diane, I had thrown out a couple ideas for a veggie on the side.
I got chard.
I think that didn't make your grocery list. Yeah, the chard missed my grocery list.
It was, I remember I was talking about this last Friday and just went one ear and out the other.
I have quinoa though. So I'm going to be doing that for my starch and veggie wise, I'm actually loaded up on extra mushrooms.
So I'm going to go a little heavier on the mushrooms in mine.
So instead of doing a half a pound of mushrooms, I'm probably going to do a full pound of mushrooms.
Sounds great.
Sounds great. Okay, cool. Well, at this point we have 55 minutes to execute.
So let's get to work. For me, I think, I know we're going to start on a number of things.
I think one of the first things I need to get doing for the chard, which actually doesn't take that long, but I do like to get the onions browning.
So I'm going to start with slicing some onions.
Now, what's the order of operations for the steak?
So the steak that I end goes like this. You'll want to have everything sort of prepped out.
And that actually just reminds me, I forgot to put all my sauces.
The way I like to do it basically is we start off with cooking the steak off.
We'll do about a minute per side or a minute and 30 seconds, take it off, put it on a plate, get some foil over on the side, and then we'll go through and we'll make the sauce.
So that will generally mean mushrooms going in, the Worcestershire sauce, a whole bunch of other things.
Once that's going, the mushrooms have sort of started to brown, release a little bit of their fluid, started to get some color on them.
Then we'll go through and we'll add the bourbon or your liquor of choice and light it off.
Fun. Fun. Well, I'm a Sagittarius, so I like playing with fire.
That sounds great. Likewise. Likewise. Yeah? When's your birthday?
December 7th. I have a great birthday. Everyone's pretty much convinced I'm the antichrist because I was born on December 7th, which is Pearl Harbor Day, at 9, 11 PM in room 13.
What? Watch out. I'm on the 14th, but the funny thing about Sagittarius is we seem to gravitate to each other, right?
Oh, it's so true. It's so true.
Yeah. My best friend from college is a Sagittarius. I feel like it all makes sense now.
Oh, yeah. Well, this is great too, because I know we've been talking about getting this together for a while, and I'm so happy we finally got this on the books.
It's nice to not... Traditionally, when I do Cloud4TV segments, I'm talking about super esoteric technical things.
It's nice to be doing something a little bit more fun and playful than just talking about cryptography all the time.
Yeah. I remember when Matthew Prince first put out the idea of like, hey, let's do Cloud4TV, soliciting ideas.
He put out the idea of like, hey, a cooking show.
And I was like, I've been talking since college about having a cooking show.
Doing a cooking show? Yeah. Exactly. So here it is, like a realization of a dream.
Now, FYI, I'm cutting these onions. I like to cut it in half, and then I slice them really nice and thin, so they caramelize a little more quickly.
That's the way to do it. Wesley, where are you from? I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, actually, home of the Gators.
Yeah. My parents all have all of their terminal degrees from UF.
I was born into my college sports program. I did not get to choose it.
So one of the things I heard about Gatorville is something about bats.
Is that true? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The bat house, it's famous there.
It's not famous outside of Gainesville, but it's famous inside of Gainesville.
So the University of Florida has a huge campus, massive campus in the center of town.
And that campus happens to include a lake called Lake Alice. And IFAS, which is the farm school, has a working farm on campus.
And everyone predominantly despises mosquitoes.
They hate mosquitoes, right? And so what IFAS did is, I don't know, I think 40 years ago, they set up their first bat tower, which is a giant coop for bats.
It has about 20,000 or 30,000 bats in it, right? And they built another one.
So every night at dusk during the summer and fall, when you go out, you can go there right at sunset, and you can watch 40,000, 50,000 bats fly out of the bat house.
Ah, I see. Yeah, it is a wild experience. That all is making sense now.
Now I get it. Yes, that's probably why you've heard of the bats, as it relates to UF.
Right, interesting. Now I just connected the dots.
FYI, I'm from Buffalo, so I'm representing here. I'm about to burn up with my Asian Flair apron that I got from Cloud Flair.
Oh, that's dope. It's super cool, right?
Look at this. Ah, I got to convince the LGBTQ ERG to do an apron. Yeah, oh yeah, right?
Yeah, I think there's one of these for Asian Flair and for Desi Flair.
Yeah, I think Asian Flair and Desi Flair both have the aprons, which is great.
I think what the design team has done for not only building the branding around the ERGs, but also just building the hyper on the ERGs has been such an important thing.
Okay, let's see here. So I've got my quinoa going. That water is going to get rolling here in a minute, which is going to be great.
You know what? I think I've been on mute this whole time.
Wait, you've been on mute for the video? Yeah, for the last 10 minutes.
I just noticed that I was on mute, unless I just pressed it.
I've been able to hear you, obviously. Right, so that's why I don't understand if I was on mute.
If you guys missed everything, sorry about that. I guess we won't know until we're actually...
Well, we're live right now, but when I see the rebroadcast, we'll see.
But for those... Well, here we go. So Chad, here's the good news, right?
I believe that we don't record the stream, we record the Zoom link, right?
Because the Zoom's got the recording button going on.
So when we go back, if we were muted, we'll just have Fallon hot swap out the file that was recorded by the stream system and replace it with the Zoom recording.
All right, Jason, Fallon, you hear that? You guys are on the hook, making sure that we can catch all that earlier stuff.
I'm going to use some ghee, which I like for the flavor, with my chard.
So I'm going to start off... Actually, sometimes I like to start it without even putting anything in there.
I'm just getting started.
What's the first thing, like when I transition from my onions to the steak, what's the first thing I should be doing?
The first thing we're going to do is put butter and olive oil into the pan.
And you want to get that...
I like to start them from a dead temperature so they come up nicely and you don't brown the butter too quickly.
The other important thing too is just to have all your various condiments, because this thing has a lot of crap that goes into it.
So there is some flexibility.
Traditionally, steak dine-in calls for a hot sauce.
It is nebulous on what the hot sauce should be. I'm using Tapatio, and I'll use old-school Worcestershire sauce.
And then I like to use sort of a creamy sort of Dijon, but a lot of people like to use stone ground too.
It's up to you. Yeah, and I like to use a whole grain Dijon.
Also, being lazy, I'm using pre -chopped garlic, but I will be chopping my own shallots.
My favorite knife, which I adore.
I'm not sure if you can see the patterning on this, but I love this knife. That looks like carbon steel.
It is not carbon steel. The only carbon steel knife...
Actually, I take that back. I don't have any carbon steel knives right now.
Not because I don't love my roommates, but because carbon steel knives being left in water is very bad.
So all the knives I currently have are stainless steel, but this is a really lovely single bevel from Bernal Cutlery, who's my favorite knife store in San Francisco.
I'm a bit of a knife junkie. You need a good knife.
You do. You do. And then, particularly for all your vegetarian friends, it's like, you know, I also have an entirely just veggie knife as well, which is always fun.
So, you know, it keeps things separate and keeps things clean.
So let's see here. I'm going to turn this quinoa down and put that on the top of it.
Let's see here. So... I got that started. I also cracked open a beer, so...
Nice. Good move. I like that plan. Great. Now I'm going to start up. Now, for my start, I was going to use some couscous.
I just get something in a box. This is actually pretty good, right?
This would be... ...particular rhyme or reason about why you should do something differently.
Okay, so here we go.
I've got my quinoa going. I am going to very quickly just do a bit of prep here.
So I like to have all my things for steak, Diane, ready to go, including my green onions and my shallots, just because this thing cooks fast.
All right. I'm all for it.
Good stuff. So I have my onions going. They just kind of go. So now I'm going to go back over here and start doing some dicing.
Perfect. Yeah, I will. How much garlic do I need in here?
You know, my rule of thumb for this whole recipe is just do tablespoons, you know?
Tablespoons. Tablespoon of this, tablespoon of that.
I mean, you know, sometimes it calls for like ...let's see, I'm just looking at the recipe here.
So like one tablespoon of finely chopped scallions, two teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, you know, one garlic clove mince.
I just grab a tablespoon and do tablespoons.
Where's my fancy spoon, actually? I have this great spoon I also got from Bernal Cutlery that I'm absolutely in love with.
A fancy tablespoon?
Somewhere. Yeah, it's really interesting. It's a cooking spoon. There it is.
So it's called a Jasterra spoon. And what's interesting about it is a couple things.
So like people love to go hunt old traditional silver spoons for their kitchens.
So this is the best of all those worlds. What it is, so it's a measurement of a flat tablespoon, right, in the Then it has this wonderful tapered edge around the side so that you can get this really great pouring.
The edge is also really, it's not serrated, but it's very defined on the edge, so you can use it for scraping, which is great.
Long handle, super ergonomic, great cooking spoon.
That's great. Oh, by the way, I love the nails. What color are we sporting today?
Oh, so I was at a party this past weekend, so this is sparkly purple. I love it.
I usually do the toes, but that's good. All right, so I always go with one of these things.
You know, pretty standard, you know. Oh, yeah, no, those are great.
Roundness, because I just, I feel like with those flatter ones, I don't know if I'm spilling it or wearing it.
So by the way, Jason, let us know that we weren't on mute, so.
Oh, perfect, great. I didn't think we were. I'd be like, that'd be a weird feature to have not implemented.
Thanks, Jason. All right, so yeah, I imagine he would have told us.
He would have pinged me and just said. Yeah, I feel like somebody would have noticed.
Right, yeah. Or we would have been getting chatted all the time.
It's good to know that somebody's watching, because I sometimes wonder, like when we're doing this live, you know, who's watching?
Because I know we're on the repeat, you know, or we're a communicator or something.
Well, what's fun is that, you know, in the beginning part of the pandemic, I would actually do sort of weekly cooking shows just here at my house with my friends.
And, you know, well, we had them dial into the Zoom call, and it was really fun to do that.
I can't believe it's taken us this long to do it. I was saying, you know, right before we hopped on the air that this is actually going to be kind of fun to look at these different shows.
And you could probably tell in what time of the pandemic did we have the show.
Oh, yeah. Because I haven't gone to the barber since the pandemic started.
Yep. And I feel like for me, I have a couple different increments of when I was at the barber based on the lockdowns.
So we can definitely tell by my hair and my beard what part of the pandemic we were in when crap was going live.
Do you go to a barber in Oakland or Berkeley? You know, I sometimes alternate, but I finally found a barber I really like in San Francisco called the District Barber.
They're great. Hey, you know, there was a barbershop open up, like, right next to the office.
Did you notice that? Yeah, People's Barber. Yeah.
Yeah, People's is great. I used to go there all the time when I was working at Atrium.
They would be my Friday beard trim spot. Right on. All right. Let's turn the fan off.
I'm stirring my onions. And onions don't really require much attention.
You can just let them go. Oh, yeah. You can just sort of hate not have to pay any mind, which is nice.
I'm just chopping this up here. I'm moving to the shallots now.
Nice. I'm just finishing up my shallots. This is one small shallot. So I guess I'm going to use, like, should I check this out?
Wesley, should I use? I would just use, yeah, use half of the big one or the full.
Yeah, that right there is perfect.
That's what I'm using. Right. Great. I've often found shallots a little goes a long way.
I remember I worked for a time at this place in San Francisco that was right next door to, I can't remember the restaurant, but it was on, it was near New Montgomery.
And every day around four o'clock, you would have the smell of fried shallots.
Oh, so good. So I used to work at the Snapchat office back when it was a black site, Silver Snap in San Francisco, and it was at 440 Pacific Avenue.
And that was right next to Quint in Petonia.
Yeah, that was. And we had a door that led to the alley where they would smoke and we would smoke.
Not saying that I was smoking, mother.
But it was fun. You get to meet the chefs, you get to hang out with the team over there.
And it's just the smells coming out of the kitchen were just legendary.
Right. Yeah, I think that would be the most devastating thing of COVID is to lose sense of smell or taste.
I know I couldn't. Oh, God. That's what scares me most about long COVID in some ways is just that whole idea that you lose the ability to smell.
And then obviously that just really affects your ability to taste too, because so much of our taste system is built into how we smell.
Right. I actually read a story a while back about a food critic who lost his or her sense of taste or smell that COVID had to retrain the senses.
And I was just like, God, that would just suck.
I mean, it's a whole new type of PT that we have to do now, right? I mean, there's going to be a whole physical therapy industry built around just that idea of retraining people's sense of smell and taste.
All right, well, I've got my shallot here.
I've got my shallot. I've got some garlic. And let's see what else I need.
I need some scallions. Green onions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least I can only need one, huh?
Yeah, you don't need a lot. Interesting. Okay. So much of this recipe is not about the amount of stuff that you're working with, but rather the flavor profile that you mix them together with.
Got it. That's what makes Steak Diane such a legendary dish is the way that the—it's a lot of the caramelization and the heat.
Because what you'll see in the recipe is that we're going to do a couple different things with the pan.
We're going to have heat on at times.
We're going to have heat off at times. And the flambe itself is really important too, because that adds just a different degree of caramelization and flavor and smoke.
Right. Table side. That's really interesting. I've—how do they do that?
Do they, like, literally bring out a burner? Yeah, they bring out a burner on a cart.
Wow. I've had table side Caesar, and that's pretty good. Same concept.
Same exact concept. So now I've added a little bit of the—a little heat to my onions.
Turning it down just a little bit. And stirring them around. I'm using a wok, which is because—I'm going to make two bunches of chard, right?
And the chard shrinks, right?
So here we go. Look at that. It's coming together. Nice. That's awesome.
Yeah, my quinoa is just now starting to finish up. Hmm. So you seem like you're as into food as I am.
Like, what's your food history? Like, how did you get into cooking or eating or—?
Um, it's an interesting story. Um, I grew up in the Boy Scouts.
My parents were big scouting. And I think that was—and I also had a family that—we weren't, like, super foodies, but we were very much into food.
Um, and cooking good food.
And the family has a lot of recipes. Like my grandmother—well, great-great -grandmother's fried shrimp recipe is truly legendary.
Um, and same thing with my mother's fudge recipe. So, like, there were a couple of signature things that you just learn how to do growing up.
But then being in the Scouts, you know, one of the major things you have to do to get your ego, which I did, was get your cooking merit badge.
And yeah, um, I was—I've been good at, like, patrol-sized cooking.
So what I mean by that is, like, you know, cooking for eight to ten people has always been much more natural for me than cooking for one or two.
Um, and I've just found it easier and faster to deal with that. So it took me a long time—I've been a good cook for a long time.
I even went to SF Cooking School, their recreational group, um, in 2017, did their cooking fundamentals program.
Um, the difference, though, is that I never really found time to cook because I was always, you know—I'm a big event producer in San Francisco.
I've got a very active, like, Burning Man social life, stuff like that.
And I just didn't—there was just never time to cook.
Um, then the pandemic happened. I cook every day.
How about that? Um, and, you know, cooking, you know, for a lot of people, I think if pandemic baking became their hobby, pandemic cooking became mine.
Right.
I'm gonna make one more round of quinoa because I don't think I have enough.
I'm gonna do this again. I'm gonna do this with two cups of quinoa and more cups of water.
Were you cooking for yourself tonight? Or you got a— Um, I have, um, it's an interesting mix.
I've got some friends coming over. Nice. We're gonna have the first round of this.
And then, uh, one of my roommates will also enjoy the first round.
And then I think we'll have some leftovers for another roommate of ours who isn't getting home until later.
Right. And there may also be another dish prepared this evening, um, that my roommate is doing, which will be a, uh, what is it?
It's a halibut in a harissa and rose sauce. Ooh, tonight, right?
Yeah. Wow. That's like, uh, another show. My house eats relatively well. That's great.
Yeah. We, we love to cook in this household too. My wife's a great cook.
I should probably have her on the show. Um, yeah. I haven't done that yet. I know.
I know. I, well, you know, my tradition is I, I invite, uh, a someone from Cloudflare to show me a dish.
Right. It's a great way to learn new, new dishes and, uh, uh, and meet people at the company.
Right. So it's a great way to meet people at the company.
Yeah. So right now I am, trimming my shard. Nice. Oh, that shard looks so good.
And then, and you could eat this, the stems of the shard, but I sometimes find it bitter.
I don't like them as much personally. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So this is almost right.
I'm just going to chop it. And when it's ready to saute, in fact, I could probably do that at any point.
Um, what's our, okay. So we're at 35 minutes, which is plenty of time.
I understand. Perfect. Yeah. No, we're, we are right on schedule for where we want to be because the steak Diane is not going to take very long.
Um, let me see here. I'm going to put a couple more things. We're going to need on my side, need a plate and I'm going to need some tinfoil over that plate.
I like to make my tent for my plate before I start cooking. Oh, that's a good idea.
So tell me, what are we doing and why? So we want to keep the meat hot. So what I'm doing here is I've got a plate and then I've got this tinfoil.
Then all I'm going to do is just go around the side here and just sort of pinch it down and sort of pop it up.
And then you put it inside there. Yeah. Yeah. We'll put like, when we take the meat off the pan, we'll just put the meat under the tinfoil.
Got it.
All right. That way it'll provide a place for the meat. Yes. Okay. And you said there's a sauce, right?
So a dish like this that has a little depth to it is good.
Yes, that's perfect. All right. I'll put that to the side now with my shard here.
The other thing I like to put in my shard is I just throw in a few cloves of garlic.
I just crush them and throw them in. Nice. I love it. Yeah. Get a new clove of garlic.
A new clove of garlic. Here we go. Okay.
Let's see here. I am also going to want... I've got this neat little, you ever seen one of these things, Wesley?
Let's see here.
Oh, what's that? Check it out. You insert garlic, just roll it around. What? No.
Yeah. And it pops them up. Where did you get that? I know. I have no idea. I gotta ask my wife.
Yeah. I want one of those. I need that in my life. I hate peeling garlic.
Totally. It just does a great job. Yeah. Just going to squeeze it out.
It makes it so easy. Yeah. It's a simple concept. I don't know who thought of that, but basically it's just a rubber tube and the rubber sticks to the peel and just sheds it.
Huh. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. You probably have a show dedicated to just kitchen gear, right?
Yeah. Right. It's so true.
I mean, I have so many... Do I have a fun kitchen gadget lying around? Besides my spoon and my knives?
No, but now I'm remembering to grab my barbecue lighter.
It's not too much a kitchen gadget, but I got to believe that everyone needs a Thermapen in their life.
A knife and a good Thermapen. I just got one. I just got one.
It's funny because I was actually looking for a digital thermometer just for like, do you have a fever?
Because all our thermometers really suck in.
So when I look it up, I got the first thing that popped up was a... Are you talking about one of these things?
Like basically a digital thermometer? Yeah. It's super similar.
Yeah. So Thermapen makes the thermometer. But yeah, any good digital thermometer is...
Everyone's got to have one because I know so many people that just have the traditional round thermometers or the insert ones that are analog and they just don't do nearly as good a job or nearly as quickly.
Right. So now, FYI, I put the garlic in here with the onions.
You can see they're starting to caramelize and now I'm going to take some salt.
I probably should have done two onions, but oh well.
It's fine. You'll survive. I'm wondering if I'm going to do this in the cast.
No, maybe. I'm debating. No, I'm just going to do this in my regular stainless steel pan.
Oh, another thing I think that's super valuable for every kitchen.
I have a big pair of kitchen chopsticks. These are great. Oh, cool.
Yeah. These make turning meat so much easier. Interesting. Yeah. So now I just put in a little bit more ghee.
I'm just going to toss this around. Right. And I'm just going to put a little water and then it will just basically steam within here and then it'll be done.
I mean, this stuff cooks so much. And now you can see why I use the wok because there's just so much volume.
But when it's done, it's going to look like I can hold it.
You're going to have a fistful of it. The same thing happens when I do spinach.
It's like, you know, I have an entire pan full of spinach and I get done with it and I cream it and it's like, you know, a golf ball size.
Right. So now I just have that going. I'm going to cover it. And that is good.
OK. And meanwhile, I think I'm pretty good on all my other ingredients. Perfect.
Likewise, I've got everything out and grabbable for me. So you're ready to do this?
Give me a second. Can you give me the checklist of all the things I should have handy?
Totally. OK, so let's see here. Let's start off. You got butter. Yes, I have.
I got I got some room temperature unsalted butter. Perfect. Extra virgin olive oil.
Check. You got your meat. Yes, I got I got my meat. I got like four three oz patties of filet mignon.
Perfect. I cook with this stuff. I never cook filet mignon.
Great. Well, this shit's going to cook real fast. That's your biggest thing, is that filet cooks quick.
So we're going to do 45 seconds on a side.
OK. Yeah. Not even like no. OK, salt and pepper.
Salt and pepper. OK. Perfect. Shallot. Check. Garlic clove. Check.
Mushrooms. Oh, mushrooms. OK. I did not yet cut my mushrooms. Perfect. Good. You want to just you want them like this.
You want like a quarter of an inch. OK, give me a second.
How many should I do? You want you want like a you want a quarter of a pound of mushrooms.
Six. OK. All right. All right. Here you go. So I will quarter inch these and then then I'll be good once I do.
Yeah. What else besides the mushrooms?
All your sauces. So you get your cognac or your brandy. All right. Let's see here.
What do I have? I have or whiskey. French brandy here. Perfect. Great.
Perfect. I was just saying that brandy is one of those things I never think I'm going to use.
And then, you know, lo and behold, here we are.
Right. Right. So. OK, so I got the brandy.
Perfect. Dijon mustard. Yep. Check. Heavy cream. Yep. Check. Worcestershire sauce.
Yep. Check. Scallions. Check. I'm not using parsley, but parsley.
I got parsley. Perfect. And then hot sauce. Oh, hot sauce. Tabasco. Yeah.
Any hot sauce will do. I'm doing I'm using Tapatio. Tapatio. Interesting. OK. That's my personal preference.
You know, you can use Tabasco. It's up to you. All right.
All right.
And then I'm almost done with this mushroom here. Perfect. Oh, looks like I'm done.
OK, good. I'm done with everything. Do I have to prepare the meat anyway?
No. Salting it or anything like that. So did you get those fillets cut thin already?
They're about. I don't know what it is.
That's that's like about a three quarter inch. Yeah, perfect.
Three quarters of an inch should be fine. I'm doing mine slightly differently.
I've got some really I've got really thin cut New York strips, which is slightly different.
But this is it works for the way the prep goes, because three, four inch fillet medallions is perfect.
OK, I want to make sure that we do yours for about a minute on each side.
So we're going to give you one second to stir this around and.
And just to show again what happened, like, look at that.
So that just totally reduced in size, right?
Oh, yeah. It just drops down. I'm shutting off the heat. I just got to add some salt and pepper and should be good.
Brilliant. All right. So now we've got the veggies prepared.
Wow. We're we're knocking this out. Nope. And that's this is a great recipe, too, because once once the prep is done, this thing just goes.
So let's see here.
Where is my pepper?
Oh, there it is.
Salt, pepper.
Pepper. Jet, I'm ready to do this whenever you are.
OK, so let me just resituate this section here of my kitchen.
So I'll give everybody the view of the of the. So here's my setting of all the stuff we need.
Here's the we're ready for action. All right.
Perfect. OK, so the first thing to do is I start with a cold pan and I just put in olive oil.
You know. OK, the recipe calls to measure it, I put in about enough to just lightly coat the bottom of the pan.
The other thing you're going to do is you're going to put about a tablespoon of butter.
Oh, also, OK. So putting in some olive oil.
Just to coat the bottom. Yep. And that should do it. Yeah, I just throw in a nice big old knob of butter to it, too.
OK. And then like a tablespoon, you said?
Yeah, that tablespoon. Give me a second. It's about half of what's here.
OK.
You have a spoon of butter. Perfect. And now I just gently just get that rolling around in the pan.
This is just a cold pan, right? Yeah. Well, so now I would get the heat going under it because what we want to do is we want to start the butter and the oil from a cold pan.
I don't add I don't like adding oil and butter into a hot pan just because you can't control it as well.
Got it. So I've got my pan over about I've got my pan over medium heat and I'm just slowly starting to work the butter and olive oil mixture together here.
You have gas? Yeah, I use gas.
Yeah. Did you hear that? I don't know if it's a regulation or something, but I don't know if it's specific to California, but new construction, housing, residential, with the exception of like, you know, commercial spaces like a restaurant.
Yep. Have to use electric. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a mixed feeling about it.
Like, don't get me wrong. I like the beauty of gas. I like the feel of gas.
Induction cooking is absolutely the future. The only thing I can't do with an induction cooktop yet is wok based cooking, but they're working really hard on getting an induction wok system set up.
Right. So we just get the butter and the olive oil melted nicely here, get them rolling around.
And then once it's predominantly melted, we want the pan over about medium high heat, because what we're going to do then is we're going to lay in all of our meat.
Now, you asked earlier about, you know, do we need to do any prep to it?
The answer to that question is no.
But what I do is I salt and pepper the meat once I put it into the pan.
Okay. So when I lay down each strip, I salt and pepper it. Okay. So I like to salt and pepper both sides.
So what I might do is salt and pepper the one side that I'm going to put face down first and then put them.
Yeah. Yeah. That works for me.
Yeah. Okay. So what kind of salt do you like to use? So right now I'm just using standard kosher salt.
That's what I primarily cook with. I have two finishing salts, though, over on the table.
I've got a, I've got a normal finishing salt. And then I have a, um, how do I even describe it?
It's this sort of, uh, you can hear at the Morton's box.
It's the smoked sea salt. Ooh. Yeah, it's really tasty. Because I'm a big finishing salt pan.
And I use Maldon. Um, nice. Okay. So I've got the one side salted and peppered.
So now we just weigh in the meat. Okay. Here it goes.
You're timing it, right? Yep. Alexa set a timer for one minute. Oh, yeah.
Right. Doesn't it just sound good? Oh, it totally does. Yeah. Now I'm going to put some salt on it too.
Yep. Now this becomes the base of our sauce, which is really great.
All these wonderful juices and trimmings that are going to come off this meat.
Now I can't hold all of mine.
So I'm doing this in two rounds. So once this timer goes off, I'm going to flip them and we'll do them for another 30 to 45 seconds.
And then I'm going to do another round of meat.
Okay. So now this is, I am now at 12 seconds, 10.
And then I got, I'm going to get ready to flip this, right? Yep. Yep. You're going to flip them.
Alexa, how much time on my timer? Uh, three, two, one, zero.
Flip. Yep. Flip them. Alexa set a timer for 30 seconds.
Three seconds. Okay. Yeah.
You may want to do yours for maybe 45. Alexa stop. Okay. Just because yours are a little thicker.
Okay. Okay.
And then after this, I'm going to take it out and put it in here.
Yep. And then cover it with tinfoil.
Cover with tinfoil. Got it. All right. Okay. Wow.
Great. Okay.
I hit 30 seconds. Perfect. Give it another, give yours another 15. And then I'm going to just do one more round of mine.
What I would often do is just put your on low heat while we wait for me to finish hearing off this other set of mine.
Alexa stop.
Yep. I'm taking off. I'm taking them out now. Perfect. All right. All right.
Now I'm going to cover it and turn the heat off. I'm going to cover this with tinfoil.
Yep. So everybody can see what I'm doing right here. The benefit of the audience at home or wherever you're watching.
Okay. And keep that heat off there for another couple of seconds while I finish off this round with me.
Meanwhile, I've got my couscous getting ready to go. Okay.
I'm turning my latest round right now. And then my couscous, I'm just, just a basic boxed couscous.
Pretty good. You know?
Oh, no. Basic boxed couscous is amazing. Right? Okay.
Now I just shut off the heat. Stir this in and then I let it basically let it sit.
Okay.
So I've got my quinoa here. Great. Okay. So now I'm going to pull. And FYI, we got 16 minutes.
So I think we're pretty good. We're right on schedule. Okay.
Let's see here. Oh, it looks good, man. Oh, look at that. Oh, yeah. There, there, there.
Okay. So now what we're going to do, make sure that we've got our nice meat and tinfoil.
I'm going to turn this down to low heat. What we're going to do.
Put it to low heat. Yeah. Put it to low heat or moderate heat in this case.
Okay. And what you're going to want to do is just add your shallots and garlic, right?
Our goal now is to brown our shallots and garlic fragrant. Now this is going to only take us about 30 seconds.
So question, when does the, when do the mushrooms go in?
Once we get the shallots and garlic put together, that's when we'll do the mushrooms.
Okay.
So garlic and shallot. Yeah. I would just give those mushrooms. Sorry. Give, give those, give the shallots and garlic a nice little roll around the pan, get them into the pan dripping, get that pan sauce.
You know, our goal here is to get some flagrant, basically.
We want to smell them. Okay. Once we can start smelling everything, that is when we're going to move over to our mushrooms.
So for those of you at home, you can't really smell this, but my goodness, butter and garlic and shallot is just genius.
Yep. Okay. So now that we've had it on here for about, you know, 30, 45 seconds, um, we're going to add our mushrooms.
We're going to add our what?
Add our mushrooms now. Add the mushrooms. Okay. So, you know, try to get, you know, I am not following Julia Child's rule here.
I am crowding my pan, um, which is traditionally a big no-no for French mushrooms, but we don't care because we're about to douse this stuff and a bunch of other things.
So about two minutes on the heat.
Um, okay. So the mushrooms are like sponges right now. Cause like now all the butter is, uh, and olive oil is kind of gone.
Yep. That's what we want. Yeah. Yep. We're going to add a bunch of other liquids to this pan.
That's going to make everything great.
Okay. Got it. Yeah. Cause I was like, wow, this looks kind of dry now.
I'm going to flip the mushrooms, I guess, just to even out. I just turn them a little bit, you know, just give them a couple of flip throughs.
Right. All right.
Well, I'm waiting on my mushrooms to sort of start softening up here. Um, I'm going to move the rest of my quinoa into my bowl.
Wow.
All right. Yeah, this, this whole recipe just smells amazing once you're done with it.
So the mushrooms are kind of big.
I don't need to cut them. Like, even though I cut them a quarter inch thick, I don't have to cut them smaller.
No. Okay. We want steakhouse size mushrooms.
All right. Yeah, you're right. Remember the mushrooms are also like that char earlier.
Those mushrooms are also going to reduce. So I'm just doing a little bit of cleaning while I go here and just getting some water in that pot to help stir it down.
So what I like to do, you know, just keep giving those mushrooms a roll around, you know, we're looking for them to get a little soft.
That's what we're looking for. Mine are almost there.
So now comes the part of the show where we should warn our viewing audience that we won't be playing with fire.
Um, that we are not trained professionals and you should not do what we do.
Um, now the secret to this basically is alcohol, letting it steam up and then hitting it with the match, um, or your kitchen torch.
Um, how much do I need? Um, not a huge amount, like about a shot.
No way too much. Way, way too much. Um, like what's the recipe? Yeah. So the recipe officially calls for a quarter cup.
So yeah, that's more than a shot. So yeah, do a quarter cup.
All right. And I'm using, this is where I do this stuff here, right?
Uh, let me see. Yeah. Yeah. That stuff right there. So I'm just going to finish off this bottle of, uh, of Woodford I've got here.
Um, whiskey. Yep. I like whiskey for this.
Um, okay. So the mushrooms are softened up. Give them one final stir.
I'm going to turn my foot on to high. Okay.
So before we do it, I, I need to have my, my, uh, cooking wine and my flame, right?
Yep. Okay. So this is the action shot here. Okay. Yep. The money shot.
All right. I'm watching. So I take this or into the pan.
Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Here I go. I'm doing it. They just give it a nice little stir, right?
Okay. Here I go. I'm excited. All right.
Here I go. I'm taking my Perfect.
All right. Flame. Give it a five count. Now hit it. Yeah. Hit it. Whoa. Yeah.
It's satisfying. Man.
Geez. I've never done this. Yeah. So now those mushrooms are going to start softening up.
Um, as you see, your pan is actually starting to get a little bit wet again, because the mushrooms are starting to release their moisture, right?
Yeah. Okay.
Okay. Then let it flame. I don't have to blow it out or anything. Yeah. No, just let it plan out.
It'll just run out of fuel on its own. Um, so now what we're going to do is we're going to add the, uh, we're at the mustard and the cream.
Okay. So grab your heavy cream.
How much do I need? Let's see here. Recipe calls for fourth of a cup of heavy cream, a quarter cup of heavy cream.
Okay. Yeah. A quarter cup of heavy cream and then two teaspoons of Dijon.
So I'm just gonna, I just eyeball my heavy cream, to be honest with you.
Okay.
Heavy cream. Nope. We're good. My wife just asked if you need the fire extinguisher.
No. Give it a nice big helping of Dijon there. Okay. So how much, how much Dijon?
Two teaspoons. Two teaspoons. Okay. Two teaspoons of Dijon. One.
So then, uh, we're just going to, so now we're just going to stir that all around, right?
I'm on the Worcestershire. So how much Worcestershire do I need? Oh, we don't do the Worcestershire yet.
Both on the Worcestershire. Uh, stir it. You want the, you want the cream and the mushroom and the mustard in first.
And then we're going to cook that for about a minute.
Okay. So I'm just stirring around the mustard.
Wow. This is starting to come together. Wow. Got eight and a half minutes, dude.
Yeah. I would just, I would get over it too and just smell it right now because it should smell amazing.
That's great. Okay. Good. Okay.
So now, you know, once that cream starts to bubble a little bit, we're going to go through here.
I just take the Worcestershire sauce and I'm going to give it, you know, an eyeball testing.
Okay. You know, it officially calls for two tablespoons, or sorry, two teaspoons.
I just sort of eyeball the Worcestershire generally.
Okay. And then let's see here. So the scallions in person, that's our final figure.
So I would This is also a great time to, uh, add your scallions in. Right.
Not that much.
Okay. Right. Okay. And then finally, I would do is grab a tasting spoon and just get a little taste of it.
Um, cause we're going to, we're going to season it with salt and pepper to taste.
Okay. First I'm going to put in some parsley here.
Chop up some parsley. So tasty.
Mine's a little acidy, so I'm going to give it a shot.
I'll give it a little bit of, I'll give mine a little tapatio.
This is where I had a little Tabasco. Yeah. A little Tabasco.
I, I, you need the hot sauce to, to, uh, taste basically. And I am feeling stupid.
I don't remember where I put my pepper. Salt. Where's my salt? There it is.
So, are we putting the steak back in here at all?
Yeah. The steak is about to go back in.
Um, okay. So now I would take your meat, put it all in the juice because our goal now is to reheat it and to finish off any final cooking.
And then I just absolutely put the steak in this lovely sauce that we just made.
Okay. So now I can just put the steaks back in, huh?
Yeah. Put the steak back in. All right.
Steaks are going back in with all the juices. Also add any accumulated juices you've got in that pan.
Yep. Okay.
And go ahead and just pour, pour that sauce on, on top of it. Yep. Or don't put the sauce on top of it or put the steak back into the pan first.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Now just now we'll get that sauce all over it too. Yeah.
Just roll it around, get it all nice and coated in there. This looks good, dude.
Well, we have four minutes, four and a half minutes, so that's enough time to probably plate this thing.
Yep. And I'm just going to plate one.
I'll save the others for my family. And, uh, wow, look at this. Great. So when you have this table side, it must feel like a show.
Oh yeah. No, totally. I mean, this is all about statement cooking, right?
Um, it's about, you know, showing off and using the fire and really feeling like you've got a, uh, a connection to your ingredients.
Okay.
Four minutes. So I'm going to, uh, can I start plating? Yeah, go ahead. All right.
Take one. Sauce action.
I still think I would like mine to be more liquidy.
My sauce. You know, you can always add more cream if you want, but you just let it cook down.
Mm-hmm. Here's my cous.
Nice. Nice. Fluff action here. Okay. Chard.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. Oh, that looks amazing. Oh dude. You know how it tastes.
So after we go off the air, FYI, look, we've got to hang out for a little bit here.
Oh, totally.
Totally. All right. Cause, um, oh man. Yeah. It just looks great. Yeah. Look at that.
Everybody. All right. Now I'm going to get a little bit of the, uh, steak salt pepper, just in case.
Nice. Right. Well, we got two minutes. It's plenty of time.
I'm not going to rush. We're right on time. We, we, we hit the mark perfectly.
Oh, perfect. Amazing. Right. That's the thing about the show that I really like.
It's kind of feels like a game show in a way because you got 60 minutes guy execute, you know, and we gotta be quick.
We gotta be efficient. I like it.
So, uh, how's your plate coming along? Oh, it's not coming along yet. I'm about to pull.
I'm just going to pull a piece here in a second because I am waiting on the rest of my dinner party to show up and I'm going to put them in a moment.
Well, I, if you don't mind, go ahead. I'm going to cut one of these here. So, Ooh, this is mine's on the, it's on the, on the medium rare side, which is like it generally.
So here it goes. Get a little mushroom action sauce. Mm.
Oh, that's satisfying. And the trick with this too, is if you want the steak to be more done, just throw it back in the sauce and the pan and cook it more.
Yeah. I'll probably do that with a little bit more cream.
Yep. Um, that's what I would do. You know, if you want it to be creamier, go add some cream back to it, throw the steak back in the pan, cook it off a little longer.
That'd be great. Right. Um, my, um, couscous here or my, uh, my shard.
How's that? That's good. Yeah. Nice. Nice colored meal. We got a balance here and you know, you can do it.
It looks pretty Tuesday night dinner. Yeah.
Right. So great Tuesday night dinner. We have 20 seconds left. So let me just sign off.
I just want to say, thank you so much, Wesley, for sharing this menu.
And, and, uh, this has been great fun. I'm so glad to execute. I know me too.
I've been looking forward to this for days now. Right. All right. Well, this is a steak, Diane, uh, shard and couscous.
This is chat and Wesley signing off for cooking with cloth.
Thanks everybody. Thanks everybody. Bye.