How to cook a very tasty and tender steak

If you want a really savoury and tender steak, you must to cook it at very high heat and quickly.

Do you know that brown and shiny part on cooked meat? That’s the resoult of chemical reaction called “Maillard reaction” which makes the steak really tasty. Maillard reaction is proteins caramelizing and for achieve it, we need a 140° or more cooking temperature.

If we have steack in refrigerator, put it in the fridge for all night long to defrost, and take it out at least one hour before cooking for eliminate moisture.

Moisture it’s not good for caramelizing because we need 140°, and water doesn’t surpass 100°, so if you don’t eliminte moisture it could jeopardize caramelizing.

In this recipe I used some hamburger that I bought at the market. Before put them in to the frypan salt them on both sides, but not put pepper because that will burn, you can put it after cooking.

Turn on the gas at maximum heat and pour a bit of oil, let it warm and after two minutes (more less) put the hamburger on frypan. Once it’s cooking, flip it every 15 or 20 minutes for control temperature.

Cook it for one minutes and thirty seconds or two minutes, but if you have a kitchen thermometer it’s the perfect way to know when the steack will be ready, 50° in the middle are good for a rare steak.

Sponge cake (no baking powder)

Ingredients for a 24 centimeters diameter bake pan:

430 gr eggs
260 gr sugar
170 gr pastry flour
85 gr potato starch

Directions:

First of all put eggs and sugar into the mixer and whip them until showed in the video.

When you add sugar on eggs, don’t leave it whitout mixing, because sugar dehydrate egg yolk and it makes clump. So make sure to mix them for a few seconds with a tablespoon or whip them quickly if yo don’t want to jeopardize your sponge cake. In the video I show when it’s ready.

Meanwhile they are whipping, sift flour and potato starch.

When the batter will be ready add on it flour, potato starch and mix them with a spatula or a tablespoon moving it bottom up. Mixing by hand coul be lose incorporated air, and this movement gain more air (check the video for more details). We don’t use baking powder in this recipe becouse it’s the original Italian Pan di Spagna, so we use simply the air instead of baking powder.

Then butter the cake pan and flour all the surface, after that get rid off the excessed flour.

Add the batter whitout beat cake pan on working surface for not loose air, it will livelling by itself while baking.

Bake it for 45 minutes at 180°, and put a knife between oven and it’s door. That’s a very important tip because it let steam go out and so the sponge cake will be more raised and softer.

Once cooled I suggest to cut out the brown surface, because it is a bit dry.

If you want to preserve it you can close it in a plastic bag and store it in a fridge until one month maximum, after that you can put it ina a refrigerator.

Apple Pie recipe

Dough’s igredients:
1 medium egg
550 gr pastry flour
200 gr butter
100 gr sugar
80 gr water
10 gr salt

Filling’s ingredients:
1 kg peeled golden delicious apples
100 gr sugar
40 gr cornstarch
20 gr lemon juice
4 gr powdered cinnamon

Directions:
Add in the mixer tender butter, sugar, salt and mix them toghether.
Pour water and eggs in two or three times into the mixer. Don’t worry if the ingredients won’t look uniform, that’s fine.
Then add all the flour and let it mix for a few minutes.
Keep the dough and put it on a baking paper foil, push it down for make a thin shape and then store it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. You can also make a rounded shape but it will cooled in more time.

Now let’s talk about filling.
While the dough is cooling in the refrigerator, peel the apples, get rid of the core and then weigh until they will be one kilo. To enhance this weight you should need about two kilos of not peeled apples.
Cut the apple flash into little cubes (we don’t need regular shapes), put them in to a very large bowl, then pour the lemon juice, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and mix it very well.

After that the dough should be ready, so take it out of the fridge and start knead it for a bit to make it malleable.
Divide it into two parts and start work it with rolling pin, cover the baking pan and make a lot of holes with a fork.
Then put over it the apples and put on the filling some butter flakes if you want.
Cover on top with the second layer and join it with the other layer using you fingers.
Finally make some characteristics cut un top with a knife.

Bake it for 15 minutes at 200° and then other 30 minutes on 180°, covering the edge with an aluminum foil.