How to cook the perfect steak

Every meat eater loves a good steak. But I bet most people find it hard to cook steaks to perfection. I know I did. If you're not a skilled chef, how do you know whether your steak is rare, medium rare or medium without cutting into the meat? There are probably not a lot of people who want their steaks well done. Overcooked steaks, to me, are a waste. If I want meat to be well done, I'll buy a cheap stewing cut. But how do you make sure you don't overcook your expensive grass fed steak?

One method of determining this, is using your hand, like described over here. That's great, but the problem with it, is that by the time I figured out if the firmness of the steak is indeed the same as the firmness of the muscle at the base of my thumb, the steak is usually overcooked. Maybe I'm an idiot, but this method never worked for me.

Coconut flour

Using coconut flour for baked goods is great, but I don't use it a lot because I think it's quite expensive. Dessicated coconut is a lot cheaper, but the problem with it, is that it can be too course for some recipes.

A reasonable solution to that problem is to just take some dessicated coconut and put it in a food processor. Or you can use a stick blender to grind it into a finer consistancy. If you have an old coffee grinder you don't use for coffee anymore, that will probably work fine as well. It won't be as fine as the flour, but it's good enough to use for most cakes or pancakes.

How to keep lettuce fresh and crisp

picture courtesy of thekitchn.com

Usually, I grocery shop once a week. I think it's cheaper this way. I plan the menu ahead and don't buy more foods than I need. Okay, hardly any more... Most foods are kept fresh easily in the pantry, fridge or freezer, but I always had a problem with lettuce. I eat lots of salads and usually buy two or three heads of different kinds of lettuce at once. But even when I kept them in the crisper drawer in the fridge, they would still go limp after two or three days. A friend of mine, who's a restaurant chef, knew a solution.

Tallow

Tallow is one of the best fats to cook with. In the olden days, it was easily available, but thanks to the low fat maffia, I can't find it in supermarkets anymore. Big bummer, but I know my way around a kitchen, so I decided to make the stuff myself.

Victory is mine!

Never in my adult life have I bought a whole coconut. I remember my mother occasionally bringing home a coconut and then my dad had to open it with al kinds of tools (or maybe it was just one tool, I can't remember clearly, but it definitely looked like a lot of work). I guess that intimidated me a little into thinking that opening coconuts was a lot of work. Or at least required a lot of muscle (I also believed my dad was very, very strong) or tools.

Last week my eye suddenly caught a coconut in the supermarket. Of course they sell them since forever, but my intimidated-by-whole coconuts-mind probably just never really registered them. I would just buy canned coconut milk or desiccated coconut, but never a whole coconut. But this time it was different. I decided there and then, in the supermarket, at the fruit and vegetable section, I was going to buy this coconut and I would conquer this ancient and childish fear of cracking that nut!