Steak + Jammy Tomatoes

Instead of working on wedding stuff, such as printing out my wedding menu, I decided to start a website to publish my "recipes." This is officially the first entry.

I have made a lot of dishes since starting my cooking side quest on instagram (@tophnguyen). However, I never recorded any of the recipes. I do this thing where I just throw a bunch of stuff that looks good into a dish and hope for the best.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. This is a dish I whipped up in 30 minutes after a shift at work for my dad. It was inspired by a few other creators on instagram. It's definitely not new, but it's how I make it.

Ingredients

• Your preferred cut of steak. I went with a "kobe" style cut. Whatever that means.

• A small to medium package of cherry tomatoes

• Salt

• Black pepper

• White pepper

• Water

• Olive oil

• Optional: garnishes of your choice or rosemary for the steak

As you can tell... this is a very simple recipe.

Steak

Everyone knows how to cook steak. Here are few essential things to consider when making a solid steak (in my opinion)

1. Let it sit at room temperature before cooking

2. Medium rare... please do not do well done lol

3. Use a thermometer

4. Let it rest

In detail...

I let my steak sit out at room temperature. This allows for more even cooking. If it's cold, the outside will get burnt but not enough energy has dispersed throughout the cold steak to cook the middle. You end up getting overdone edges with a raw interior.

I usually let my steak sit out with salt for at least 30 minutes.

Heat up a pan with oil and plop the steak down. I am a "flip once" steak kind of guy. Do what you want. Just make sure you get some of that nice browning on each side.

Cook until your thermometer reads 130 degrees. Is a thermometer really worth it? YES. It will make your cooking more consistent without wasting much time. You know what does waste time? Biting into an cold steak and having to reheat it.

Medium rare is about 130 to 135 degrees. Taking it off the pan at 130 degrees allows the residual heat from resting to bring it up to 135 degrees.

Resting is the most important step. Allowing the steak to sit out allows the moisture and juice from the steak to suck back into the meat (pause).

My general rule with resting: leave it out resting for as long as you cooked it on the pan.

For this dish, I kept my steak plain. If you want to go the extra mile, you can baste the steak with butter over rosemary to get that rosemary smell to it. Or, you can season the cutting board with rosemary and butter and cut your steak over it.

Cut the steak up and plate it over the jammy tomatoes, which is the other half of this dish.

Jammy tomatoes

Take a small container of cherry tomatoes and drop it in a pan. Add some water and oil. Slowly bring the heat up.

Once the tomatoes soften up, CAREFULLY use a fork and smush the tomatoes. Breaking it down like this will convert it into a jammy texture. The lectins in the skin will act as a coagulant to give it its jammy consistency (I think lol).

After slowly boiling off the water, the tomatoes will develop a more jam like consistency. At this point, you season to taste. In general, I drop in some salt, black pepper, and white pepper to taste. White pepper is worth having in your pantry (in my opinion). You could season with some sugar but I think the tomatoes are sweet enough. You don't want to overdo it and make an actual jam for your PBJ sandwich.

Plating

This is simple. I pour my jammy tomatoes in a plate. Then, I stack my steak in rows over the tomatoes. To add a fancy touch, you can garnish with some microgreens and drizzle some fancy olive oil over the meat.

If you want to watch my instagram short on this meal, click the link here.