Cook of the Month: With a name like Garlick, he has to cook
Family classics and Food Network faves inspire this dad in the kitchen
Tom Garlick didn't start cooking for real until he graduated from Buffalo State College and found himself living on chicken wings and salad.
So Garlick went home to West Seneca. He plundered a tome of recipes handwritten by his mother, Elizabeth Garlick. He copied down the instructions to family classics that fed him growing up: Vegetable soup, spaghetti sauce, nothing too complicated at first.
Then Garlick started watching cooking shows.
"Once you get the Food Network," said Garlick, "you start watching that stuff, and you get ideas."
These days, Garlick, The News' Cook of the Month for October, takes pride in making most of his family's meals in his Amherst kitchen for son Zac, 16, daughter Grace, 13, and his wife of 18 years, Lorey Schultz, a WIVB-TV reporter. He confers with Lorey about the week's meals, does the shopping and cooks four or five nights a week, said Garlick, an Erie County deputy clerk.
He has been the family's chief cook since the Garlicks both worked at WIVB, he as assignment editor and operations manager. He took a buyout last year, but when Lorey was shooting stories and might have to work into the dinner hour to do a live stand-up, Tom usually could get home and start dinner.
The Garlicks enjoy a variety of standards during the week, like spaghetti and beef vegetable soup modeled on Tom's ancestral recipe. Weekends are "my experimental days," he says, for trying out a new recipe that's caught his attention, or making a restaurant-caliber meal that undermines the need to go out for fine food.
He'll admit to some misses, like the dish of scallops in a Thai sauce that took an hour to make. "Not worth it," said Garlick.
For every miss, though, there's a dish like his steak au poivre with mustard sauce, assembled years ago from various Internet recipes and honed to perfection. He likes to serve it with twice-baked potatoes enriched with Velveeta, pulling off the feat of simultaneously pleasing four disparate palates.
"[Daughter Gracie] loves them, so that'll be the common starch," Garlick said. "Then I'll make strip steaks or rib-eyes for my son and I, and filet for my wife. For Gracie, I'll throw on a hot dog, then we all have the potatoes and she's as happy as any of us."
Gracie does get an extra cube of Velveeta tucked into the top of her potato, because she knows the chef.
It's not like those potatoes come around on the rotation every week. "This dinner is a heart stopper," he said with a chuckle. "You eat it once a month."
Married in 1991, Garlick has had years to triangulate his wife's tastes and adjust his cooking accordingly. Now, Garlick reported, she won't eat fish out at restaurants. That's because she prefers his rendition of grilled or seared salmon filet with garlic butter.
"Especially on the weekends, I try to make something my wife and I would go out for," said Garlick. "I just make it at home."
Tom Garlick's Steak au poivre
2 rib-eye steaks, about 1/2-inch thick
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup Cognac
2 shallots, finely chopped
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
12 ounces beef stock
1/3 cup Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 to 2 ounces light cream
Crush back peppercorns in plastic bag with heavy pan or rolling pin. Press crushed peppercorns into one side of each of the steaks. Sprinkle steaks with a little garlic powder.
Sear both sides of steaks over high heat, in grill pan, cast iron pan or grill, then remove to a plate.
For the sauce
Saute shallots with garlic in olive oil for 2 to 3 minutes. When solids are softened and start to brown, add Cognac and carefully flame.
Add 12 ounces beef stock and 1/3 cup Dijon mustard. Stir or whisk to combine ingredients. Simmer until thickened and reduced to about one-third original volume, 15 to 20 minutes.
Add unsalted butter and light cream, and stir to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir in any juice that has accumulated on steak plate. (Those with texture issues can run the sauce through a sieve for smoothness.)
Return the steaks to the oven with the twice-baked potatoes until they're cooked to desired doneness.
Spoon sauce over hot steaks and serve.
Twice-baked potatoes
4 Russet potatoes
4 to 6 ounces Velveeta, or more
2 ounces butter or margarine
3/4 cup milk
Black pepper, kosher salt and paprika to taste
Bake potatoes at 375 for 60 minutes or until fork goes into deepest part with little effort.
Allow spuds to cool. When you can handle them, cut skin off the top of the potato in oval shape and remove.
Scoop the inside of the potatoes into a large mixing bowl, while leaving the rest of the potato skin intact. A metal spoon with a thin edge might be useful; Garlick uses a measuring spoon.
Add 4 to 6 ounces cubed Velveeta cheese to the potatoes, and add butter or margarine. With electric hand beater running, add milk and beat with hand mixer until desired consistency.
Add black pepper and kosher salt to taste and refill potatoes.
Sprinkle with a little paprika, and for those whose kids love Velveeta, push a small cube into top of potato stuffing.
Reheat in the 375 degree oven until cheese is melted. Serve immediately.
Watch Tom Garlick prepare his restaurant-caliber steak at home in this video
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