Cranked - $25 Steak Night

Everyone loves a good steak... and everyone loves a steak night. We've walked past the sign at Cranked, Leederville a million times, noticing their $25 steak night on Thursdays, and thinking it looked like a good deal. When Botanica was fully booked for their $10 steak night, we decided to give this one a go! We didn't need to book, when we rang up the woman on the phone didn't take our name or anything, she just told us to come down. When we got there, it wasn't that busy at all, so easy to get a table.


We both ordered the steak, which comes with a loaded stuffed potato, onion rings, and sirloin steak with red wine jus - an added bonus, you get a middy of their tap beer (which is Little Creatures Pale Ale I think) or a glass of house red/white wine.


Drinks came out pretty quickly, and our food came out after about 10minutes. I got the white wine, and I cant remember what it was, but it tasted pretty standard for a house wine. Nothing special, perfectly drinkable, but not something I sought after...

Our meals looked good - I would have liked a bit of salad but hey, it wasn't advertised so there you go. Our meals looked the same, aside from the fact that S had a bit of his steak that wasn't even close to being cooked. Raw as raw can be, I poked it and it was cold... Hmmm...

Aside from that, our meals were both good. S had a bit of sinew in his steak and I didn't really have any but on a cheap steak night you come to expect that. The steak was still tender and didn't feel like you were chewing through leather like you sometimes get! The steaks were of a good size and both were cooked really well (aside from that raw bit!)

The potato was stuffed with bacon, onion and fetta, and was really tasty. They didn't get stingy on the fillings, it had generous chunks of fetta, which added a welcome hit of salt and creaminess. After my last experience at Cranked, I was expecting the potato to be less than generous on the fillings as I had found with my omelette, however I was happy to be wrong!

The onion rings were my favourite bit though! Big chunks of red onion, crumbed and fried, they were delicious when used to mop up the red wine jus, crunchy and sweet. The onions didnt have a raw flavour at all, and they weren't difficult to eat at all - sometimes you bite into them and end up getting all the onion coming out of the ring. Not so here! 

I'd go back for sure. There wasn't much of a vibe there, it was pretty quiet compared to breakfast times, but we both enjoyed our meals, they were a good size and mostly well made!

This weeks dinner menu!

Ive gone down a bit of a different road this week, in terms of what I'll be eating... I actually planned what Ill eat and made a list for it. It didnt take me too long really, and I tried to choose recipes with ingredients that I know I already have and am keen to use up (like mustard, potatoes and halloumi).

So I went for the shop today and found that I bought much LESS than I usually buy, because I had some direction in what I knew I needed, rather than buying a heap of things I MIGHT want to use... I spent about the same amount that I usually spend, but I think this had alot to do with a few extras I bought that werent food related.

What I've decided to eat this week is:
1) Seared lamb with hummus and pine nuts
2) Mustard pork chops
3) Double potato and halloumi bake
4) Warm Bean Salad w/ bread
5) Crispy chicken w/potatoes and tomatoes
6) Welsh Rarebit

The first 3 are from nigella.com and the last 3 from Jamie Olivers book, Jamie at Home, but I dont have a link to the welsh rarebit sorry!

I had the lamb tonight for dinner, and it was really nice! Ive decided that I quite like hummus, ever since I had it at the Subiaco Hotel in Perth. It was served with pickled vegetables and dukkah bread - it was the hero dish of the night, it was deceptively good! Anyway so my first attempt at making hummus went fine, I dont have a blender but you really dont need one... Just took a quick step into the old days before there were any appliances and everything was manual labour! The hummus was great, its really easy, though I never really thought otherwise, but its definately something I'd make again! Now, the recipe calls for pomegranite seeds, pinenuts and dill... I hate dill (due to an unfortunate incident with salmon with dill sauce resulting in food poisoning), there was no pomegranite at the market (not in season Im guessing!) and pinenuts were insanely expensive (cheapest I found was $7 for a little bag... hmf) so I skipped all those aspects. It wouldve been an amazing dish with the pinenuts and pomegranite, though they werent available so I made do... The lamb i changed a bit to use what I had, which was lamb shanks. I put sealed them first in a pan with S&P and a sprinkle of cumin, then into the slow cooker, set on high for however long it took me to get to the shops and back (where I do my shop is 40mins away...). When I got home the lamb was almost ready so I left it a bit longer until I couldnt pick the shanks up to turn them over in the slow cooker, without bits of meat falling off the bone! I flaked it all off, mixed it up with the hummus and some extra cumin, S&P and ate it! I was pretty hungry so I didnt manage to get any pics of it, but next time I make it Ill take a pic and hopefully itll have the little pomegranite bombs of flavour on it!!

Ill report back on the others during the week as I make them, but Im looking forward to a delish week!!

PS this is about 45mins after Ive eaten dinner, followed by a little tub of yoghurt with mango - I feel really satisfied by this meal and dont feel like I need to eat anything else! I often feel like something else after Ive eaten dinner but not tonight! All teh chickpeas have done me good :)