Recipe: Rib-Eye Steaks with Spring Mix, Pear, and Blue Cheese Salad

Tonight's dinner menu:

Rib-Eye Steaks

Spring Mix Salad with Pear and Crumbled Blue Cheese

Roasted Potato slices
Sopapilla Cheesecake

I have definitely mastered cooking chicken. One of my goals is to master cooking beef. In the past times I have tried to cook it, it usually ends up being tough or overcooked. But the only way I am going to learn to cook a great piece of beef is to keep trying to cook it. Tonight, I think, I finally came to that point. I’m getting closer, not quite there, but almost, so close.

Rib-Eye Steaks

4 8-9 ounce rib-eye steaks (each about 1 inch thick), trimmed

Coarsely cracked black pepper

Olive Oil

I used a grill pan and poured a little drizzle of olive oil and turned the heat up (to medium-high) till the pan was smoking hot. I seasoned each steak with salt and pepper, and placed the steaks in my square grill pan. I cooked each side until I couldn’t see any red meat, about 4-5 minutes per side. My hubby likes a well done steak. I tend to like mine a little pink in the middle. Once the steak was done to our likeness I put it in a dish to let it rest.

Potato Slices
3-4 Russet potatoes, sliced

Olive oil

Seasoning salt

Herb Mix

I took some russet potatoes, scrubbed the outside and sliced each potato on my mandolin so the slices were thin and would cook evenly. I took a rectangle baking sheet and added a piece of aluminum foil to the bottom, drizzled olive oil on the foil (so the potatoes wouldn’t stick), added the potato slices so there were no overlaps, drizzled a little bit more olive oil on each potato slice, sprinkled with seasoning salt and herb mix and put them in the oven at 450 degrees for 20 minutes.

Spring Mix salad with Crumbled Blue Cheese and Pear

Spring Mix lettuce

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 tablespoon Sherry wine vinegar

1 tablespoon minced shallot

1 ½ tablespoon honey

1 small ripe pear

1/3 cup crumbled chilled blue cheese

I had a Spring mix of lettuce I added to a bowl. I added the blue cheese, and pear on top of the lettuce. In a small mixing bowl I combined the oil, vinegar, shallot, and honey. The very last thing I added to the salad is the dressing. You don’t want the salad to get wilted and soggy before it is served, so this is really the very last thing you do after all the other dishes are ready.

This dinner was a HUGE success.  The only thing left was a little bit of steak. My husband is still oohing and awing about how satisfying and delicious dinner was. The flavors in the salad were so delicious and complimented the potatoes and steak perfectly. The steak was absolutely tender and juicy, however a little more red than I liked, but I made sure that hubby’s steak was not pink. His steak was even tender and perfect for him.

What a very exciting feeling about dinner.

The end results of dinner!

To top it off I made Sopapilla Cheesecake. This is the most easy, unbelievably yummy cheesecake ever!

2 cans Pillsbury butter crescent rolls
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese (softened)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup butter (melted)
Cinnamon and Sugar

Unroll and spread 1 can crescent rolls on bottom of an ungreased pan.
Combine softened cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla.
Spread mixture over crescent rolls.
Unroll and spread remaining crescent rolls over mixture.
Spread melted butter over the top and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes.

It's that simple.

Delicious!