I Cooked! (Sort of...)

Progress on Previous Plan

Below is the three-part plan I created in my last blog entry along with the progress I made 
on each one.

1. Since I have read about Spanish cuisine but didn't get a chance to cook anything, I will be 
doing that over the next two weeks. One of my mentors will be in town for Spring Break from 
college, and she offered to cook with me. If you knew anything about my cooking skills, you'd 
know that this will be quite an undertaking. ✔ Completed!  After quite a bit of research on
recipes, my mentor (Lindsey) and I decided to make Carne Asada. We made it on 3/9/17. In
reality, my mentor did pretty much all of the work, so it really turned into me TASTING authentic
Mexican (rather than Spanish) cuisine. Here is the recipe from the website Simply Recipes 
that we used:

Carne Asada Recipe

Print

• Prep time: 10 minutes
• Cook time: 20 minutes
• Marinating time: 2 hours
• Yield: Serves 4-6

If you don't have a grill you can use a well-seasoned grill pan or a large cast iron pan on the stove-top. Heat on high to sear and then lower the heat to finish cooking. Make sure to use your stove vent, searing the steak this way can smoke up the kitchen! If you want, before adding the steak to the marinade, reserve a couple tablespoons of the marinade to drizzle over the finished carne asada to serve.

Ingredients

Steak:

• 1 1/2 to 2 pounds flank or skirt steak
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Marinade:

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 limes, juiced (about 2 Tbsp)
• 2 Tbsp cider vinegar
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin seed (if have whole, toast and then grind)
• 4 garlic cloves, minced (4 teaspoons)
• 1 jalapeño chile pepper, seeded and minced
• 1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, leaves and stems, finely chopped (great flavor in the stems!), about 1/2 cup

Fixings (optional):

• Chopped avocado
• Lime wedges
• Corn or flour tortillas
• Thinly sliced radishes
• Thinly sliced lettuce
• Pico de gallo salsa

Method

1 Marinate the steak: Whisk to combine the olive oil, soy sauce, lime juice, vinegar, sugar, black pepper, and cumin in a large, non-reactive bowl or baking dish. Stir in the minced garlic, jalapeño, and cilantro. Place the steak in the marinade and turn over a couple of times to coat thoroughly.

Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1-4 hours or overnight (if using flank steak marinate at least 3 hours).

2 Preheat grill: Preheat your grill for high direct heat, with part of the grill reserved with fewer coals (or gas flame) for low, indirect heat. You'll know the grill is hot enough when you can hold your hand above the grill grates for no more than one second. (You can also use a cast iron grill pan on high heat if cooking on the stovetop.)

3 Sear steak on hot side of grill: Remove the steak from the marinade. Lightly brush off most of the bits of cilantro and garlic (do not brush off the oil). Place on the hot side of the grill. Grill the steak for a few minutes only, until well seared on one side (the browning and the searing makes for great flavor), then turn the steak over and sear on the other side. 

4 Move steak to cool side of grill: Once both sides are well seared, move the steak to the cool side of the grill, with any thicker end of the steak nearer to the hot side of the grill. Test with a meat thermometer into the thickest part of the steak, or use your fingers (see The Finger Test to Check the Doneness of Meat). Pull the meat off the grill at 115°F to 120°F for rare, 125°F medium rare, 140°F for medium. The meat will continue to cook in its residual heat. Note that lean flank steak is best cooked rare, while skirt steak can be cooked well without losing moisture or flavor because it has more fat marbling.

5 Tent with foil and let rest: Place the steak on a cutting board, tent with foil and let rest for 10 minutes.

6 Slice steak across the grain of the meat: Use a sharp, long bladed knife (a bread knife works great for slicing meat) to cut the meat. Notice the direction of the grain of the meat and cut perpendicular to the grain. Angle your knife so that your slices are wide and thin.

7 (Optional) Serve with grill toasted tortillas: Warm the tortillas (corn or flour) for 30 seconds on each side in a dry skillet or on the grill, until toasty and pliable. Alternatively, you can warm tortillas in a microwave: heating just one or two at a time, place tortillas on a paper towel and microwave them for 15 to 20 seconds each on high.

(Optional) Serve with pico de gallo (fresh tomato salsa) and chopped avocados.

Read more: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/carne_asada/#ixzz4ba7kXGvx

Here is the flank steak being cooked. We are fans of cilantro, so we probably went a little overboard with that. 

So I know I said I was going to do the cooking, but at some point my mentor took over. Based on my history in the kitchen (yes, there has been a fire...), this was probably a wise move for her.

Final product! This was absolutely delicious!

2. I will continue with Duolingo. The next categories I will work on are more pronouns, 
numbers (I feel like that should have been done sooner in the program...), and past tense 
verbs. ✔ Completed! I completed object pronouns (3/7/17), numbers (3/8/17), and started 
past tense verbs (3/16/17). Duolingo is getting more difficult. I guess that's the idea, but I'm 
finding that I can go through lessons quickly but not retain much. For example, I'm not sure I 
truly understand past tense verbs. I can answer the questions and complete the lesson, but I 
don't think I could construct sentences properly on my own. Here is a screen shot of part of 
the past tense verb lesson.

See, this is too easy. First of all, Duolingo capitalizes the word that is supposed to be first, so sometimes I don't even think about what the word is. Then for the rest of the sentence, I have a 25% chance of getting it right if I simply guess. I feel like it's too easy to complete the lessons. 

3. I will use the flash cards I received from Ms. Jessup as a supplement to Duolingo. 
✘ INCOMPLETE. I have not yet used the notecards from Miss Jessup. There are so many that
I'm overwhelmed by them! I hope to get to them over the next two weeks.  

Progress on Items Not on Previous Plan

In addition to the above, I also did 3 more lessons on the YouTube channel Learn

Spanish Step by Step. I completed Numbers 0-20, Colors, and Greetings and Goodbyes on 
3/10/17. I'm actually enjoying it. The lessons are short - just a couple minutes long. The 
progression of the lessons makes more sense to me than it does on Duolingo. I plan to use this 
more moving forward.

This is a screenshot of the Greetings and Goodbyes lesson. The lesson was a minute and a half.

I also did some research on 3/6/17 and learned that I will never get to 100% fluency on 
Duolingo! It's not a thing. Most sources I read said to basically ignore the fluency percentage 
because it can be discouraging. My fluency hasn't changed significantly according to Duolingo, 
but I've accomplished quite a bit. 

As I mentioned, I did quite a bit of research on 3/3/17 to determine which recipe we would 
make. Due to my lack of experience in the kitchen, I needed something pretty easy. Many 
of the recipes were very complex and time-consuming. Carne Asada was an easy and tasty 
option!

New Plan

My plan for the next two weeks is as follows:

1. Continue doing lessons in Duolingo to include finishing Past Tense Verbs, Present Tense 

Verbs 3, Infinitive Verbs 1, and Future Tense Verbs. (That's a lot of verbs!)

2. Continue doing lessons in Learn Spanish Step by Step on YouTube. I want to at complete
Lesson 5: Days of the Week, Lesson 6: Months of the Year, and Lesson 7: Seasons. 

3. Finally, I will read the chapter on Spanish Lifestyle in the book I checked out from the library.

I'm looking forward to continuing to learn Spanish. I'm about 
90% certain I'll be heading to Mexico this summer, so I will be 
putting it to good use!