steak, pigeon peas

Steak fried the usual way for just a few minutes on each side in a cast-iron pan with the burner set to medium high. 

The idea was to make tiny biscuits and float them on a heavily sauced pile of beans. The tiny biscuits turned out a little larger than intended, but Boy, they sure are good. This is so easy to pull off, I urge you to give it a go some time, like NOW, just so you can see for yourself what a snap it is to produce wonderful homemade biscuits for your family, your better half, your significant other, your main squeeze, some bird or bloke you picked up you'd like to impress, yourself, your dog. 

* 1/2 cup flour

* two pats cold butter

* 1/2 teaspoon sugar

* 1/8 teaspoon salt

* 1 grind pepper

* 1/2 teaspoon mixed Italian herbs

* 1 level teaspoon baking powder. (this is a lot of baking powder for this mass of dough)

* aprox. 1/4 cup heavy cream or milk drizzled in to bring the dough together. 

I should say the liquid part is a bit of a trick. The baking powder needs liquid to activate but not so much that it's a goopy mess. Just do the best you can to form little balls. Pour some cream or milk into the bowl used for the dough and roll the balls in the cream or milk to coat them all over for a final touch, or not. These could have been smaller or they could have been larger, any size will work. I used the countertop toaster oven (actually a combination microwave convection oven)

Aren't they adorable? They taste really really really really (4 reallys) good.

Pigeon peas. I never  made pigeon peas before and I hesitated because the picture of green pea-like beans put me off. I imagined something like lima beans. Gandules does not mean pigeon in Spanish. The word for pigeon in Spanish is pichón, or paloma, which is the word I learned for "dove." La gandul is colloquial for lazy, loafer, and idler, and botanically the word for pigeon pea. It's usually made with rice, but I just recently made beans with rice so I wanted to do something different.

I almost didn't show this picture ↓ because it's basically sludge with bumps. A simple roux sauce was started with garlic powder, curry, and cayenne, S/P. Beef stock and cream were added to the desired viscosity. Then finally the beans. 

Okay, here's the thing. I got this t-bone steak for nearly half price. Check it out, Check-It-Outers, and behold the amazing price reduction. It didn't occur to me until I opened the package that the bottom tip is cut straight off, the whole bottom third, in fact. I didn't notice until I tore into it that the tenderloin portion had a bone in it where one usually does not find a bone, and a mean streak of fat running through both sides that are ordinarily clear of such streaks. Still, it was more like a porterhouse than a standard t-bone, but the likes of which I have never seen before, and without its finial tip.  I tried not to hold all that against it while I savagely tore into it like an unmannered beast, but I did then realize why the thing was reduced. And they're gonna have to wake up PRET•ty ear•ly in the mor•ning to pull this one off on ol' Chip again.