I peeled and chopped 6 small potatoes and boiled them until they were soft. At the same time, I warmed up a cup of milk in a pot, after adding two big garlic cloves, peeled and smashed flat. I also added some pepper, mostly because it looked too white. I moved the drained potatoes (and some thick slivers of butter) to a plastic mixing bowl and used my hand mixer to whip them, slowly adding the garlic milk (take the garlic cloves out!) until it was the right consistency. I didn’t end up needing the whole cup of milk, but it’s always safer to have more than you need. Next time I’ll just put the butter in with the milk and let it melt, because I had little butter chunks left in the potatoes. The garlic level of these potatoes was exactly right for me, but I think maybe the addition of smashed roasted garlic would enhance them.
For my steaks, I just plopped them into a very hot, buttery frying pan and left them for about 5 minutes before flipping them and leaving them there for another little while. I’m not sure exactly how long I cooked them, because I kept thinking I needed one more minute. It’s very hard for me to tell when they’re done enough and not overdone. These ended up on the medium-to-medium-well side, and I would have preferred them not quite as done, but they were still very tasty. Next time I’ll just use the cooking times suggested in my cookbooks for various levels of doneness and stop doubting them. They just never seem long enough to me, and the steaks don’t seem to be cooked enough when my time is up. Maybe it will be good for me to just follow instructions completely for once!
I’m learning. Slowly. I will master steaks eventually.