Asian-Marinated Flank Steak

Alex came up with this flank steak recipe with a little inspiration from a short rib recipe in our Zak Pelaccio cookbook.  I think the ingredients he used were intended to be the braising liquid for the short ribs in that recipe, but he turned them into a marinade.  I had asked him to come up with an Asian-inspired flank steak recipe to go with the Roast Corn with Spicy Miso Butter.  I described the corn as being a Fatty Crab-esque dish - Asian-inspired and spicy, but not truly Asian.  So he decided to make a Fatty Crab-esque flank steak dish to go with it.  And then he decided to make a riff on the cilantro salad they serve with the steamed pork buns at Fatty Crab to accompany the flank steak.  I thought the cilantro salad was a brilliant idea.  I only wish we had some pickled radishes to throw in there with it.  Part of the reason that the cilantro salad was so great was that the steak wasn't as flavorful as I had thought it would be.  I really thought there would be more spice and more boozy flavor from the marinade.  The bottom line was that it was good, but it totally needed something to boost the flavor up a notch.  Every once in awhile you bit into a mustard seed or a coriander seed that managed to survive the grilling process and you get a burst of spicy, floral or peppery flavor (depending on what type of seed you bite into).  Otherwise I really tasted the beef and just a hint of booze.  Thanks to the chilis the the steak got some heat.  And thanks to the cilantro and the vinegar, it got some freshness and some acidity.  The bottom line was that the steak wasn't bad by any means, but I think we have made better Asian-inspired steaks in the past. 

Recipe after the jump!

Zak Pelaccio's Skirt Steak Salad

I must admit, I was really excited for this recipe.  Zak Pelaccio owns Fatty Crab, which is one of my absolute favorite restaurants in the city.  The food is really good (although there are some misses from time to time), the vibe is fun (if a little loud and raucous at times) and it's just different from most of the other restaurants on the UWS.  I wanted the recipe to have everything that I love about Fatty Crab - spice, flavor and fun.  But it ended up dominated by the fish sauce.  We kept adding more sugar and more lime juice to the dressing to try to balance it, but no matter what we did the fish sauce dominated.  We finally got it to a place where we thought it would be good, but once we tossed everything together the dominant flavor was the saltiness of the fish sauce.  Perhaps if we had used the full number of chili peppers that Zak had called for, we wouldn't have run into that problem.  But I wanted to cut down on the number of chilis (he wanted 6 Thai chilis and 2 Anaheim/Hungarian Wax chilis) so that the dish was spicy, but not blow your mouth out spicy.  Actually, you would still have the problem of a one note dish - the dominant note would just be heat in lieu of fish sauce.  The licorice flavor of the Thai basil was the only flavor that really managed to overcome the flavor of the fish sauce.  But in some bites, the licorice flavor was totally overpowering so I thought that the bites with the Thai basil were at times the best and also the most jarring bites.  My final complaint (although I would like to think that it is constructive criticism for my future attempts at making Thai-inspired beef salad) is that this dish isn't exactly much of a salad.  It is really just a skirt steak that happens to have a little herb, chili, ginger and garlic garnish.  I wish there had been some watercress or another green to give it more of a salad feel.  Or maybe some green apple or something to give it a little sweetness?  The more I think about it, the more I want to tweak this salad until it is more like the Spicy Beef Salad at Land Thai Kitchen, which we vaguely paid homage to here.  All in all, I just wanted the salad to be more of a salad and the flavors to be a little better balanced - less salty, more sweet and more brightness/freshness.

P.S.  If you want to take a look at the original recipe, it is also available on Serious Eats.  I appear to be on a serious Serious Eats kick lately...

Recipe after the jump!

Carne Adobada (Grilled Adobo-Marinated Skirt Steak) and Corn Pudding

We made these dishes last weekend when we had friends over for dinner, but I didn't get around to posting about them until now.  I guess that's because I didn't find either dish to be super exciting.  They were both good.  I was happy to eat them.  But neither blew me away.  Alex was in the same boat.  With respect to the steak, think that the flavor was pretty good, but we were both hoping for a little more kick or pizazz from the adobo.  We tried eating the steak as tacos (with corn tortillas, jalapenos and cilantro) and then alone; I think I preferred it solo.  I thought that the flavor of the steak was muted enough that the corn tortilla masked it a little too much.  I wish we had made a salsa or something to go with it, but we ran out of time.  And I'm not really sure what kind of salsa I would had served.  The recipe was intended to be served as part of a taco party menu and there were two salsa recipes and one guacamole recipe on the menu.  I wish we had made one of them because I think that would have made a real difference and then the tacos would have been much more successful.  

As for the corn pudding, it was sweet and I thought the flavor of the roasted poblano pepper was really nice in it.  Even though the poblanos were just on top, the flavor really permeated the entire pudding.  And the texture was really nice - tender and creamy, but not as fluffy and airy as a souffle, or as dense as cornbread.  It was also nicely moist without being wet.  But it was fairly labor intensive to make (almost like a souffle since you had to separate the eggs and whip up egg whites).  To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that the flavor of either dish was worth the time and effort.

Recipe after the jump!

Chili-Marinated Skirt Steak Tacos and Green Salsa with Avocado

Sometimes we get stuck in a rut.  Sometimes we try to mix it up.  This dish came about when I was trying to use one of our cookbooks that we never use - Rosa's New Mexican Table.  I bought the cookbook ages ago at Costco or Sam's Club when I saw that they had the recipe for their homemade guacamole and salsas, plus several other interesting recipes in there.  And then it proceeded to sit on the bookshelf.  For years.  We have our go to cookbooks and the rest tend to get lost in the fray.  In case you were wondering, our go to cookbooks are probably Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients, Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia, our two Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks and Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavor.  Runners up probably include The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook: Home Cooking from Asian American Kitchens and Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans.  We really need to branch out into our other cookbooks more often.  I periodically page through all of the cookbooks that we don't regularly use and pick out recipes that I want to make.  We have tons of recipes on deck from those other books and yet they still don't get made.  Perhaps making at least one recipe from each of our cookbooks should be my goal for this year.  In case you're wondering, we probably have about 30 cookbooks, so that should keep us busy for awhile...

This salsa recipe came straight out of the cookbook and the taco recipe was inspired by a recipe in the cookbook.  We rarely marinate our skirt steak when we make tacos because it has so much flavor on its own, but every once in awhile I like to mix it up.  Plus we had all of these dried chilis in our pantry that I wanted to use - cascabels, ancho chilis, chipotle chilis, chilis de arbol, etc.  So I got out my blender and decided to whip up some marinade.  In the end, I thought the tacos were good, but not amazing.  The steak by itself was almost overwhelmingly smoky/aggressively flavored with the dried chilis. It wasn't exactly spicy, but it was heavily spiced (if you get what I am saying).  But the coolness and brightness of the salsa went really well with the marinated steak and gave it some much needed acidity (as did the squeeze of fresh lime juice at the end).  And I really thought the creaminess that the avocado gave the salsa was an interesting touch.  Altogether it worked, but it wasn't my favorite skirt steak taco recipe.  I  will probably make the salsa again in the future, but I think the tacos themselves are doomed to be a one time experiment.  It's not the type of salsa that I think would work well as just chips and salsas, but I think it would work well as an accompaniment to any meat dish.  I think the cookbook actually says to serve it with empanadas and other fried food, which sounds like a brilliant pairing.
 
Recipes after the jump!

French Bistro Steaks with Provencal Butter

I had never heard of a hanger steak before studying abroad in France.  And to be perfectly honest, I had no idea what the English translation of "onglet" was until years after my return to the US.  I guess I just wasn't a "foodie" then.  But hanger steak has become one of my favorite steaks to cook.  It's not super expensive and it has a ton of flavor.  The only problem is that it can be a bit harder to find than say flank steak or a ribeye.  But I'm willing to make the effort to search it out because it really is worth it.  This recipe was one that I found in my Ina Garten cookbook some time ago.  It was one of those recipes that kind of sits in the back of your mind for ages until one day you finally think, "gee, there was that one recipe I wanted to try..."  That day finally came for me last week when we had a hanger steak in the fridge and no plans on how to use it.  And we just happened to have all of the ingredients on hand.  Serendipity.  Actually, I had to run out and buy herbes de provence, but we were so close.

Anyway, butter and steaks go together like pb&j.  If you Google "steak" and "butter" you end up with thousands of recipes for cooking steak in butter, or serving steak with a compound butter on top.  This compound butter was an interesting variation on the garlic compound butter, or herb-filled compound butter that you usually see because it incorporated everything but the kitchen sink - garlic, anchovies, capers, herbs and lemon zest.  It was a very interesting flavor combination and it paired well with the meatiness of the hanger steak.  And, like all compound butters, it was easy to make and imparted a lot of flavor.  We served the steak with a simple arugula salad and I thought it was a really, simple nice meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Skirt Steak with Chimichurri

Alex and I are still on our mission to clean out the freezer.  Little by little we are getting there.  I picked up this skirt steak sometime early this year or late last year from Dickson's Farmstand Meats and it has been hanging out in the freezer ever since.  But we finally liberated it for dinner tonight and served it with a nice quick chimichurri we whipped up in the mini food-prep.  Skirt steak and chimichurri make for a wonderful pairing.  Alex described this dish as full of "herby, spicy, saucy goodness."  If I were to translate that into a more sophisticated description, I would say that the chimichurri is a really bright, fresh and delicious sauce, with a nice kick to it from the vinegar and red chili flakes, that compliments the rich, meaty flavors of the skirt steak.  The chimichurri is a little too intense to work well with fish or even chicken breasts.  I think it would pair best with steak (like we did tonight) or lamb.  It also might work just fine with some nice chicken thighs.  I know there is some debate about whether you should salt your steak a little (or a lot) in advance of cooking it and let it sit there, or if you should season your steak just before throwing it on the grill.  The debate is actually divisive enough that there is actually an article from Food & Wine about the proper time to season a variety of different meats.  Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen is a fan of "massively salting" her steaks an hour before cooking them.  I'm being completely honest when I say that I am not entirely certain that I can tell the difference.  The steak was juicy, but I don't know that it was any more juicy than it would have otherwise been.  And unlike the writer from Food & Wine, I am not motivated enough to do a side-by-side comparison.  All I know is that the steak was good and the chimichurri was really good.  It was a simple and flavorful meal that I can see myself making in the future.  The end.  If you want to experiment with salting your steak, well then that is your business. 

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-Grilled Beer-Marinated Hanger Steak

First things first.  Alex tells me I have to apologize for how ugly this picture is.  Sorry guys.  Not every picture (or dish) comes out as well as I wish it would.  A pile of steak on a plate never looks very appetizing without a fabulous side dish, but the Grilled Peach Panzanella Salad we prepared with this one didn't fit on the plate.  And if we tried to serve them on the same plate, the salad ended up looking all gorgeous while the steak looked like an afterthought.  Oh well.  I guess that was kind of indicative of how I felt about the two dishes.  The peach salad was a wonderfully composed and flavorful dish, while the steak just came off a little flat in comparison.  Don't get me wrong, the steak is not bad at all (and I admit that I am probably being overly picky).  But it just couldn't compare.  Furthermore, I am of the opinion that with steaks you should really taste the beef (otherwise why bother eating steak) and in this recipe I felt like the marinade masked, rather than complimented, the inherent rich beefiness of the hanger steak.  There was a little too much going on with the marinade for it to really appeal to the carnivore in me, but not quite enough going on for it to really excite me.  Like I said, I'm being a little too picky here, but so be it. 

Recipe after the jump!

Asian Flank Steak with Sugar Snap Pea and Pea Shoot Salad

This flank steak had about 10 different mental incarnations.  First I was going to stir fry it with snow peas and serve with pan-friend noodles.  My next idea was to simply season it with salt and pepper, grill it up and serve it with a homemade chimichurri sauce.  Then I was going to make a steak salad of some sort.  Finally I came up with this recipe after I got super excited at the farmer's market and bought some pea shoots.  They were just too beautiful to pass up.  I'm not sure that I have ever had fresh pea shoots in American cuisine, but they are one of my absolute favorite vegetables in Chinese cuisine (dou miao), where they are simply sauteed with garlic.  I love pea shoots cooked that way.  But I don't think I have ever had them raw.  The idea to put them in a salad came from my Cooking in the Moment cookbook by Andrea Reusing where Andrea has a recipe for a Pea Greens with Ume Plum Vinaigrette and Chive Blossoms.  We didn't have enough pea shoots to saute them (unfortunately), but we had a perfect amount for a salad.  So I re-evaluated my flank steak recipe and decided I wanted a vaguely Asian flank steak to go with a vaguely Asian pea shoot salad.  I had a few different ideas for an Asian marinade - the first thing I had to decide was whether I wanted to go Thai/Vietnamese with fish sauce, etc. in the marinade, Japanese with sake, Korean with some sesame oil and Korean red pepper flakes, or Chinese.  I ended up going vaguely Chinese with sherry and soy.  

I thought that these two dishes work together beautifully as a meal.   The flank steak is bold and in your face, with the savory flavors of the soy, the sweetness from the Sherry and the honey, and just a whisper of heat from the sriracha.  Then you contrast the boldness of the flank steak against the subtle flavors of the sugar snap pea and pea shoot salad.  The dressing is not going to blow anyone's mind or change anyone's life, but its subtlety really works to let the delicacy of the fresh pea shoots shine.  I'm a sucker for sesame oil so of course I like the dressing.  I really liked combining the salad and the steak together in each bite because I thought that they complimented each other so well, although both dishes were perfectly fine on their own.  Alex ate them separately and he thought the combination was really nice too.

Recipes after the jump!

Ancho and Cocoa-Rubbed Skirt Steak Tacos

 A long time ago I saw a recipe in Gourmet magazine for carne asada using ancho chili powder, cocoa and cinnamon.  It sounded interesting enough that it stuck with me.  And tonight when I was trying to come up with a spice rub for some tacos I hit up Epicurious (which is my go-to website for finding recipes) until I found the recipe from the May 2009 issue of Gourmet for Ancho and Cocoa Carne Asada.  Score!  I roughly stuck to the proportions of the chili powder-cocoa-cinnamon spice rub and then decided to play around with the toppings.  We pickled some jalapenos and shallots, chopped up some avocado and cilantro, and charred up some scallions.  I love being able to throw different toppings together with tacos to see what I like best.  My favorite topping here was the quick-pickled shallot and jalapeno mixture because it really brightened up the tacos and gave them a lot of flavor.  The shallots actually absorbed some of the heat from the jalapenos, which was new and interesting.  For my last taco I threw on all of the toppings for a super taco and I think that one might have been my favorite combination - a little bit of everything. 

As for the skirt steak itself, I'm not sure that I was a fan of the chili powder-cocoa-cinnamon spice rub.  It was kind of gummy and mushy; it just coated the outside of the steak in a really strange way (and then your tongue) that I didn't find particularly appetizing.  I think it was the cocoa powder.  The steak was fine when you had it with the toppings, but I would never eat it alone.  Beyond the strange mouthfeel, I'm just not sure that the flavor was all that great.  I much preferred the Beef Tacos with Radish and Avocado Salsa (where the steak is seasoned with cumin, s&p) and other tacos we have made where the skirt steak was seasoned simply with s&p and served with some sort of salsa, like the Skirt Steak Tacos with Roasted Tomato Salsa.  I thought that the flavor of the beef itself really shined in those recipes and was augmented by the seasonings, whereas I thought the flavor here was obscured by the overpowering (and almost cloying) flavor of the cocoa powder in this recipe. 

Recipe after the jump!

Truffled Steak Sandwiches

When I bought Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics by Ina Garten Alex and I weren't really expecting much.  But I had picked it up a few times at Barnes & Noble and there were a lot of recipes that struck me as good, simple dinner party fare.  Actually, the recipe that really sold me on the cookbook was the White Pizza with Arugula.  I was also pretty excited by the recipes for Dinner Spanakopita and the Creamy Cheddar Grits.  I haven't made the spanakopita, but given how successfully everything else we have made from this cookbook has turned out I know they will be fabulous.

It never would have occurred to me to use black truffle butter on a steak sandwich.  But it was awesome - rich, earthy and flavorful.  It was the element that really brought the sandwich over the top.  The recipe as written would have been the most luxurious steak sandwich ever because it called for truffle butter and 2 pounds of fillet of beef.  That stuff is expensive!  Instead of fillet we used hanger steak because I really love the flavor of hanger steak and once thinly sliced I thought it would be an ideal sandwich steak.  The peppery arugula cuts through the richness of the black truffle butter and the steak.  The shards of Parmigiano-Reggiano gives the dish a salty, nutty bite.  The dish seems too simple to be truly delicious, but it really is.  It comes together really quickly and easily and could be the centerpiece of a lunch party just as easily as dinner for 2.  You could serve it with a cheese and fruit platter, a nice salad, and a simple dessert and have a fantastic meal for a lunch party.  Or you could do what Alex and I did and serve with a simple arugula salad for a really nice lunch or dinner.  Hurray for my absolute favorite every day cookbook for providing us with another tasty meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Grilled Lime-Curry-Rubbed Hanger Steak with Fresh Melon-Cucumber Chutney

Since we just had Korean Bulgogi Tacos (Alex had them for dinner on Saturday and I had the leftovers today for lunch), it seemed a little weird to make steak tacos, which is what I usually do with hanger steak.  My other initial thought was to make a traditional French hanger steak with a shallot sauce (aka onglet aux echalottes).  But I decided that sounded boring.  Then I saw this recipe from Gourmet, which sounded really interesting and not at all boring.  So we went for this one.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the individual components when I first tasted them.  The lime-curry rub is quite intense.  Delicious, but I wasn't sure that I could eat an entire steak rubbed in it.  And the chutney was good, but on its own it felt like it was missing something.  I thought about adding more jalapeno and more spices, but I wanted to wait and see how the steak tasted before doing so.  I'm glad I did wait because when you put them together the sweetness and freshness of the chutney really complements the intense curry and lime flavor of the hanger steak.  And the rice soaks up the juices from the steak, combined with the juices of the chutney.  It's a really fresh, flavorful and savory dish.  I actually started thinking about what other types of dishes the chutney would work with.  And the success of this dish made me even more interested in a recipe for Jamaican Jerk Salmon and Mango Pineapple Salsa that I recently saw in the April issue of SELF.  I think both recipes share a similar combination of a sweet fruit salsa/chutney with an intensely flavorful protein.  Hopefully that recipe turns out as well as this one did.

Recipe after the jump!

Seared Steak with Rosemary and Broccoli Rabe

Sometimes you reach into the fridge to start dinner and you magically have everything you need.  Sometimes you go to cook a recipe and realize that everything you thought you had, you were actually out of, and everything you bought at the store was duplicitous because you already had it.  This was one of those times where I magically had everything I needed.  Alex told me that I have to stop writing posts and picking recipes by what ingredients luckily show up in my cabinets.  But I can't help it because this is another one of those meals.  For no particular reason I took two NY strips out of the freezer on Wednesday to defrost.  And then I just happened to pick up broccoli rabe from Fairway on Thursday, which is strange because we almost never make broccoli rabe.  The same goes for rosemary.  We typically have fresh thyme, not fresh rosemary, but I bought the rosemary for the Turkey Sausage, Red Onion and Shiitake Mushroom Pizza so we have been using rosemary for random recipes all week.  And for the record, I am pretty proud of us for sticking with my proclamation that we were going to turn over a non-Asian leaf.  Alex and I love Asian cuisine.  We argue over which Asian cuisine is actually the best, but we both agree that Asian cuisine is by far our favorite cuisine overall.  So an entire week of no Asian food is something of a feat!  Maybe next week we will throw in an Asian recipe or two, but try to mix it up a little more than we did in February and March...

So back to our steak.  I love a good steak about once a month, whether it is flank steak or skirt steak or a nice thick porterhouse.  We had NY strips this time because a few months ago we went to Costco and picked up a ridiculous number of NY strips.  I don't generally pair steaks with rosemary, but that is about to change.  I really thought these steaks were nicely flavored and nicely cooked.  I have never cooked a steak this way, by searing it on both sides, and then reducing the heat to cook it through.  I also really liked the method of deglazing the pan and topping the steak with pan juices, before cooking the broccoli rabe in the same pan.  The broccoli rabe absorbs a lot of flavor, but has a bitter and assertive enough flavor to stand up to the meaty steak.

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-Roasted NY Strip

Generally I cook my steaks by searing them off on the stovetop and then finishing them in the oven.  I have found that is the easiest way to ensure getting a nice medium-rare steak every single time without ending up with a bit too much char or uneven cooking.  But Tom Colicchio had a recipe for Pan-Roasted Sirloin in his Think Like a Chef cookbook that inspired me to give pan-roasting and butter-basting a try.

If you have a nice piece of steak, I would say definitely give this recipe a try.  The recipe is all about the steak - there are no fancy marinades or sauces to obscure the taste of the beef.  Instead all you taste is the beef, with a hint of butter and rosemary (both of which you can taste in every single bite).  And because of the pan-roasting technique over medium heat, the steak almost feels like it was cooked gently sous-vide for a zillion hours in an immersion circulator before being briefly seared up on the top and bottom.  The steak ends up very tender, almost buttery on the inside and perfectly cooked.  I thought it was delicious.  Alex wanted the steak to have a little more of a crust, which you could accomplish easily enough by searing the steak at a slightly higher temperature, before lowering the temperature and butter-basting it.  He really liked the rosemary flavor, but I think we would both like to try the recipe with fresh thyme instead and if we liked the steaks more or less that way.  We both like rosemary, but a little rosemary goes a long way and too much rosemary just makes your entire meal taste like a pine tree.  And no one likes that.

Recipe after the jump!

Seared Asian Steak and Mushroom Salad

There are few things I enjoy more than a good steak.  It totally appeals to the carnivore in me.  Sometimes when I am trying to be good I switch out the steak for a steak salad.  I figure if you throw in some lettuce or arugula, it has to be good for you, right?  At the very least it has to be better than chowing down on a big meaty butter-basted steak and a baked potato...  Anyway, we purchased this hanger steak a week ago and have been hanging onto it until we came up with the right recipe.  I was originally going to thinly slice it and stir fry it, but I thought that sounded like a waste of a good steak.  Since we had a vaguely Latin-inspired meal last night I didn't want to make tacos with our hanger steak.  So that left me at something of an impasse.  And then it occurred to me that we could make a steak salad.  I had a few steak salad recipes bookmarked, but this was the one that struck me this evening.  I think it was the mushrooms that did it.  I really like sauteed mushrooms.

Generally I cook a ribeye or a NY strip when I am serving it over salad, but the hanger steak has such great flavor (and is tender if cooked and sliced correctly).  I think that hanger steak was perfect for this salad.  The flavors in the mushrooms and vinaigrette were pretty subtle, so the flavorful steak was a nice touch.  I thought the thinner steak also went nicely with the Asian flavors of the salad and a thicker steak might have seemed a little clunky.  Mesclun or mixed greens are a much better choice for this salad than arugula.  I think that arugula goes really well with the thicker, fattier ribeye because it has some bitterness to cut through the richness of the steak.  Baby spinach would have been ok, but I really liked the mildness of the mesclun.  The entire salad just feels light and flavorful, but is substantial and hearty enough to be a very satisfying meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Skirt Steak Lettuce Wraps with Sweet Chili Sauce

After a long day of running errands, Alex and I decided to make some Asian lettuce wraps for lunch.  Or I decided to make them and told Alex what I was thinking.  Luckily he was completely on board.  Granted, he is almost always completely on board with my suggestions when it comes to dinner.  We had some skirt steak in the fridge that we picked up at Fairway yesterday, along with some Bibb lettuce I picked up the late last week with the vague idea of doing lettuce wraps at some point over the course of the weekend.

This was one of those meals that was best described as fairly easy to make and tasty.  No it didn't blow my mind, but it was very good and we both really enjoyed it.  I love that the ingredients are almost all ingredients that we keep in the pantry at all times.  The only ingredients we had to go out and buy in order to make this dish were the steak and the Bibb lettuce.  You could also switch out the skirt steak for any other cut of steak (modifying the cooking time appropriately), chicken, shrimp or even tofu if you're going for a vegetarian day.  If you're going to switch it out for chicken or tofu, I would marinate the tofu with soy, ginger and garlic before frying it up, rather than rubbing it with the garlic-sugar mixture we used here.  If I were to use shrimp, I would probably saute it with garlic, ginger, and s&p.  Skirt steak inherently has so much flavor that it really doesn't need much to make it delicious, but with some substitutions would require more marinating and/or seasonings.  We used the garnishes we had on hand - cilantro, fried shallots and finely chopped peanuts, but there are a number of other garnishes that I think would be delicious.  The first alternatives that come to mind are very finely minced red onion, minced water chestnuts (I really wanted to add water chestnuts for some crunch but we didn't have any in the apartment) or minced jicama.  You could also omit the garnishes entirely and still have a nice lettuce wrap, although I recommend you throw at least something in to provide some crunch for fun.

Recipe after the jump!

Korean Steak and Kimchi Quesadillas

I love meals made almost entirely from repurposed leftovers.  They make me feel so virtuous and thrifty.  Plus meals are so much easier to make and quicker to put together when your proteins are already cooked and some of your ingredients are already prepped.  I made these quesadillas with the leftover Momofuku Marinated Hanger Steak Ssam with Red Kimchi Puree and Ginger Scallion.  We used the leftover hanger steak, the leftover red kimchi puree, and the leftover ginger scallion sauce.  I had originally intended to make our quesadillas with some brown rice tortillas that I picked up at Trader Joe's, but when I took them out of the fridge today they looked a little moldy.  So I threw them out.  And decided to use some lavash (also purchased at Trader Joe's) for our quesadillas, which actually worked quite well.  The only other thing we needed was some grated cheese and we were in quesadilla-making business.  And it was good business.  Our quesadillas were quite delicious.  I really enjoyed them - they were really easy to make, and very tasty.

Recipe after the jump!

Momofuku Marinated Hanger Steak Ssam with Red Kimchi Puree and Ginger Scallion

So this might be our last Asian-inspired meal of the week.  Or at the very least it is the last Asian-inspired meal that I had planned on making.  Actually, that's not entirely true because we made enough steak for two meals, which means that we are going to do the trendy thing and make some Korean quesadillas later this week.  But I'm not sure it counts as Asian-inspired when you start making quesadillas, which are totally Mexican-inspired...  But anyway, for the last Asian or Asian-inspired meal for the week, I had to go to David Chang because I love David Chang and his whole Momofuku empire.  Actually, randomly enough Alex and I went to Ma Peche last night and had a fantastic meal.  Ma Peche is David Chang's newest restaurant in the city and his first restaurant drawing on Vietnam for inspiration.  It's also his first restaurant outside of the East Village and how lucky am I that it ended up opening up a few blocks away from my office?  More on Ma Peche later.  For now, back to these hanger steak ssams.  My original plan was to use this marinade to make the beef, and then to use the beef in quesadillas.  But then I realized that we had two hanger steaks in the freezer, so I thought why not make the ssams and then use the remaining marinated steak to make quesadillas later in the week?  I love it when you can use "leftovers" again to make an entirely different dish!

So this hanger steak itself has really nice flavor to it.  But hanger steak always has great flavor.  Except that when you marinate the hanger steak in apple juice, onion, etc. you end up with hanger steak that is sweeter and less beefy than usual.  Not that the steak was super sweet, but it definitely had a distinct sweetness to it.  The sweetness was balanced out by the spicy funkiness of the kimchi puree, and the brightness of the ginger-scallion sauce.  Now I have had the hanger steak ssams from Momofuku Ssam Bar back in the day before they took all of the ssams but the Bo Ssam off the menu.  While our homemade version based off the recipe in the cookbook was good, I thought you could definitely taste the difference between the restaurant version and our homemade version.  But who really cares?  It was still delicious.

Recipe after the jump!

Hanger Steak Sandwiches with Romesco Sauce, Arugula and Onions

When Alex and I made our Hanger Steak with Roast Vegetables and Romesco the other night we made two steaks, which left us with a nice rare hanger steak hanging out in the fridge, plus a tupperware full of leftover romesco sauce.  I had this vision in my head of a steak sandwich on ciabatta with the leftover steak, arugula, roast asparagus, and onions.  But then the grocery store didn't have any ciabatta, or really any bread that we wanted at all.  So we had to settle for an Italian loaf (the baguettes were totally skinny).  And we ran out of asparagus so there went the roast asparagus.  But this sandwich was really yummy regardless.  My only complaint was the bread - it was a little dry and tasteless, but sometimes you don't have time to hit a nice bakery for bread and have to deal with whatever is left at the grocery store.  It happens.  But if you make our Hanger Steak, I highly recommend doubling the amount of steak so you have some leftover and can make some steak sammies.  They're yummy.  I'm not going to post a recipe, since this sandwich is really just bread, a handful of arugula, some sliced steak, thinly sliced onions, and a generous smear of romesco sauce.  If you have roast asparagus or a nice tomato, feel free to add that too.  I also think a nice fried egg with a runny yolk would be a wonderful addition if you want to get messy.  And you can always customize to your own personal tastes.  That's the beauty of sandwiches.  Enjoy!

Hanger Steak with Roast Vegetables and Romesco Sauce

Tonight's dinner was a slam dunk.  I loved it.  There might not be words enough to describe how much I enjoyed it.  And I can't even think of a single thing I would change about it - which is absolutely unheard of.  I rarely hit this kind of high with steak.  I like steak.  I like it a lot.  But I have never been a steak and potatoes type of girl.  Generally I find seafood much more appealing and inspiring.  But that might be about to change.  I might now be a hanger steak type of girl.  I rarely buy hanger steak.  I'm not sure why that is, but I tend to stick to skirt steak over hanger steak.  I think that is generally because skirt steak is easier to find, and often cheaper than hanger steak.  Any decently well-stocked butcher will have skirt steak, but not all have hanger steak.  I have heard that is due to the fact that there is only one hanger steak per animal, but who knows.  Both hanger steak and skirt steak come from the cow's diaphragm, and both are incredibly flavorful, but not especially tender.  You have to cook them quickly over high heat, and cook them no more than medium-rare for maximum tenderness.  

The hanger steak had so much flavor that it didn't even need the romesco sauce, which I had originally intended to be served with both the vegetables and the steak.  However, the vinegary, spicy bite of the romesco did a wonderful job of cutting through the richness of the meat.  It also paired very well with the simple roast asparagus, red onion and cherry tomatoes.  I will admit that the roast red onion might not be for everyone - if you aren't an onion lover you are going to want to either substitute Vidalia onions or omit the onions entirely.  But since I love onions, yum.  Love it.

Recipes after the jump!

Skirt Steak Fajitas with Lime and Pepper

Somehow I don't think I have ever made fajitas before.  I'm not really sure why that is, since we make soft tacos with all sorts of fillings fairly regularly, but we never ever make fajitas.  Growing up I always associated fajitas with chicken, grilled bell peppers and grilled onions.  Somehow they never quite did it for me.  If I had known that fajitas could be this good I would have made them long ago!

This recipe was based off one I found online at Epicurious that was from an old issue of Gourmet.  As I mentioned in my Chili-Rubbed Shrimp with Avocado Corn Cocktail post, I found two recipes that I was interested in making for Cinco de Mayo and we decided to make both.  Well, Alex decided to make both.  I just went along for the ride.  And since the shrimp was our original plan, I'm really glad that we decided to make the steak as well.  I loved these fajitas.  I think it was the onions that did it for me, although I also liked the steak itself.  It never occurred to me before to grill sweet onions and then toss them in balsamic vinegar.  Plain old grilled onions are tasty.  Grilled onions tossed in balsamic vinegar are amazing.  I'm going to start throwing them in all sorts of dishes!  There was something really wonderful about the combination of the bright cilantro, with the zip of the lime, the savory and yet sweet onions, and the skirt steak.  Skirt steak is one of my favorite cuts of steak.  It has so much flavor in and of itself.  Unlike other cuts of meat, you really can just throw some salt and pepper on skirt steak, and a little oil, and end up with a wonderfully tasty piece of meat.  I use skirt steak everytime we make tacos and from now on, I am going to use it for all of my fajita-making endeavors!

I love Cinco de Mayo!  And I love my new plates!  Aren't they pretty?

Recipe after the jump!