Blog #3 - Beef Day!

Today was quite eventful as well as we were introduced to many of the ways to cook. There are two categories: dry and moist. Dry consists of roasting, baking, sauteing, frying while Moist consists of steaming, poaching, and simmering. Chef Lyons's favorite method of cooking is braising, which is a combination method of sorts, where you first sear the meat to give it a good crust then let it simmer with some liquid in the oven. When we first arrived, we immediately started off with knife work. We prepped medium-large diced potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, and herbs to go along with the short ribs that we would eventually braise. After, we rolled our short ribs in herb infused flour and seared it in the frying pan for 10-20 secs on each side. Then, we added red wine and beef broth to elevate the flavor. We cooked the vegetables before adding the liquids, and eventually, everything went in the oven for around 3 hours. For lunch, we made beef stirfry. We each had a packet of skirt steak that we would transform into the stirfry. First, we cut the steak into little strips, and marinated it with a ton of different sauces and seasoning, the most potent being Thai sweet and sour sauce. We never measure in Chef Lyons's kitchen, so we just throw everything into a mixing bowl and hope the marinate tastes good (which it did)! Because the package of steak was so massive (1 lb), we cooked the meat in two portions. After cooking the meat and setting it aside to rest, allowing the juices to marinate in the hot hot steak, we added a bit of olive oil and cooked the peppers and onions, which we had sliced earlier. We made sure to let the onions and peppers carmelize, so we let it cook for around 5-7 minutes. By the time the steak had rested, we combined everything into the pan and let the flavors go into the veggies, too. Meanwhile, Chef cooked steamed rice in the rice cooker and once everyone finished their stirfry, we ate a delicious stir fry! In the afternoon, Chef took us to the Asian market to look at different vegetables and sauces we wouldn't find at Heinens or Giant Eagle. Certainly, it was an eye-opening event for Jacoby, but Tim and I already knew most of the goods sold there. By 2pm when we got back to Chef's house, our short ribs were done and we brought the entire thing back home as dinner for our family. At this point in my journey, I'm starting to realize Chef Lyons is probably the funniest and most cynical adult I've ever met. I will miss him dearly after projects are over :(

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