Steak frite

Last night I made this for dinner. Steak, French fries and yummy salad. Then I watched two rented movies. Ahhhhhhhh
Here's what I did:

Fries
Usually people freak out over the thought of frying but I like to make my own fries and it's pretty easy. I use a wide skillet, so I don't have to use too much oil since I never know how to best dispose of it afterwards. I cut the potatoes with the skin on because it's yummy that way and make sure the fries relatively the same thickness and size. This is not just an anal, Martha Stewarty thing, it's essential in making sure they cook at the same rate. The oil has to get pretty hot, but once it's heated you might want to turn it down a bit so it doesn't smoke. This is highly unlikely if you use canola oil. For heavens sake, don't use olive oil! It has a much lower tolerance for heat and will burn if it gets too hot. I learned this somewhere, but notice it most when I try to make popcorn on the stove and all I have is olive oil. It pretty much always burns the popcorn. Anyway... toss the fries in and wait until they're golden on the edges. They get brown quite quickly after this, so be ready to remove them if you don't like dark fries! Work quickly, but carefully- you don't want to burn yourself. To get them out I use my pasta scoop. It's pretty amazing at grabbing the little guys and draining off a lot of the oil. (I'm the queen of using things for reasons other than what they were designed for) You should let them cool on a plate with a couple of paper towels underneath, just like you would bacon. Sprinkle on the salt. Then try to wait until everything's done to gobble them down- good luck with that!

Steak
Super easy!!!! Rub her with salt and stick her in a fry pan. Get both sides... to your liking. My steak happened to come with a peppered edge. I got it because it looked like a good cut, I didn't really want the peppered edge, but it turned out to be good! You could do that yourself, if you wanted.


Salad Dressing
I'll just do dressing because you can figure out on your own what you want in your salad, right? For dressings lately I've been doing a little bit of mustard, vinegar, salt/pepper, a dash of chili powder and finally olive oil. Put them all together and then shake or stir. The mustard acts as an emollient to keep everything together. I like the added spice of the chili pepper, especially with arugala in my salad! Spicy city! You can use lemon instead of vinegar, that's nice too. (Did you know that olive oil looses it's good-for-you qualities once cooked? It's really good to eat it in dressings or on bread then, isn't it?) Make sure your greens are dry so the dressing will stick to them. Salad spinners are good for that or you can do this little trick I learned from Martha- place your wet greens in a clean dry towel, draw edges together and then whip that sucker around!! I do it out the window...would Martha approve? I don't know, but I don't want my house covered in water!! It works really well!