Cooking with Nick: Loaded Guacamole Steak

Walking into a supermarket with the intention to make dinner on the cheap can be quite fun. It's a bit like walking into a fully stocked industrial workshop and allowing your fingers to run across all the tools hanging from the walls, igniting your imagination with whispers of invention.

Then you re-enter reality by passing through that terrible threshold of the kitchen door and realize that you still have to perform the arduous act of cooking; pitting your own total lack of skill against the vision of bounty in mind. This is a skill that can only be improved on through iterative failure, and so fail I must.

Tonight's menu consists of lemon basted steak medallions in spicy garlic guacamole mixed with sun dried tomatoes and layered with melted Holland cheese.

For this - my first adventure in cooking abroad - I wanted to merge my California spirit with the culinary muse of Amsterdam by layering a creamy guacamole over steak and Holland cheese. This is a pretentious way of saying that I noticed that Avocados were cheap at the local supermarket, found some discount low quality beef, and had already been seduced into buying a log of really excellent cheese.

Ingredients you'll need:

Some amount of cooking oilF
Too many Avocados
1x Garlic bulb
1x Package of what you really hope are steak bits, written in another language so you can't tell if there were any special preparation instructions.
1x container of peppered sun dried tomatoes
1x Lemon
1x Fresh chili pepper
1x Log of unpronounceable mystery cheese that smells terrible but tastes great

All of this together will cost you about 10 euro. Except the cheese-sausage-thing, which will run you 11 euro alone. Worth it.

Tools you'll need:

1x Massive kitchen knife that could be easily be brandished in a murder mystery. Why bother with constantly switching between other puny knives when you can have just one that cuts everything just fine AND can defends you against zombies?
1x Dubious hostel community frying pan that looks like it has survived at least two tours of duty through the Middle East.
1x A bigger mixing bowl than the one you actually have available to you. Don’t worry if half the meal ends up in the sink as you stir.
1x Stove top with no discernible markings on the dials to indicate what temperature you've set it to, or if you've managed to turn it on at all.
1x Flat plate. You don't want a busty plate for this. That would be a bowl.
1x Fork. Just a fork… Any fork really. Except don't use the one that you’re currently thinking of. That would end poorly for all of us.

Steps:

Give up on cleaning the dirty frying pan and lube it with oil prior to heating up its relationship with the stove.
Turn stove to what is hypothetically its highest setting and set the pan on top. Chemistry happens when you let those two sit together for a while.
Set the mystery steak bits aside on a plate and squeeze a lemon over them. Let them wallow in their lemony juices for an amount of time roughly equivalent to your attention span.
Slice through the avocado's thin yet sensitive skin, remove the pit and scoop its innards into the mixing bowl. Liberally squeeze lemon juice all over and mash it viciously with a fork until it smears into a creamy emerald paste.
Pry off the garlic's skin and snap off the pepper's neck. Chop them both up into itty bitty bits. If you hear tiny screams for mercy, ignore them and remind yourself that plants aren't morally significant. Sweep the veggie debris into the mixing bowl and squeeze in some more lemon juice, just for good measure. Don't forget to include the chili seeds! Oh, and throw in the tomatoes too while you're at it.
Cut the cheese-salami-thing into very thin slices. You're doing this after the veggie stuff because the cheese will inevitably get your knife all dull and goopy.
Pan should be sizzling by now, so throw your meat bits into the center of the pan where the oil will have pooled the least. You want the meat to sear almost immediately, not simmer in oil. As the steak cooks, squeeze some more lemon juice over them. The time it takes you to finish squeezing is about the length of time you should let them cook. Flip each bit as soon as you're done. Squeeze again and pull the steak out of the pan and onto your plate. The meat should be pink in the center and grey/brown on the sides.
As soon as you get all the steak bits on your plate, throw the cheese on top of them and hope the steak is still hot enough to melt the cheese a bit. If not, oh well. It'll taste the same regardless, so all you've really failed at is being pretentious.
Stir your creamy green goop a bit and plop it down on top of your cheesy mystery meat.
Walk around your hostel with your aromatic dinner in hand pretending to look for a good place to sit while quietly enjoying the jealous eyes of lookers on.
Feel full half way through the meal, realize that the avocado won't keep overnight, and force feed yourself the rest of your plate while morosely telling yourself that you'll just skip breakfast tomorrow.