steak – AT-AT Everywhere

Garlic Brown Sugar Flank Steak with Chimichurri

Who’s hungry?

As a continuation to the Chocolate Banana Bread Pudding recipe I posted as part of Alex’s birthday dinner, er, back in February, here is the recipe for the Garlic Brown Sugar Flank Steak with a fresh Chimichurri sauce. I found the recipe on How Sweet Eats and loved it. Here’s their recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

Steak

2 pound flank steak (about 1-inch thick)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/3 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons brown sugar
4 garlic cloves, minced

Chimichurri

1 cup fresh cilantro
2/3 cup fresh parsley
1/4 cup fresh oregano
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2/3 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

DIRECTIONS:

Steak

Add the flank steak to a large baking dish and season it with the salt and pepper. In a bowl, whisk together the olive oil, brown sugar and garlic cloves, then cover the steak with it and place it in the fridge to marinate. I marinate anywhere from 2 hours to overnight.
Marinated Overnight
When you’re ready to cook the steak, you can grill, broil or pan sear it to your liking. I tend to broil it as I find that easiest. Preheat the broiler in your oven and move the oven rack as close as possible. Place the steak on a broiler pan or baking sheet and broil on each side for about 5 minutes. This will result to a medium to medium-well doneness in my oven.
Allow the steak to rest for 10 minutes before slicing it thinly against the grain, otherwise those delicious juices will spill out if you cut into the meat too soon. Serve it immediately with the chimichurri.

Chimichurri

Combine the parsley, cilantro, oregano and garlic in a food processor and pulse until small leaves and pieces remain. Add in the vinegar and pulse once more. With the processor going, stream in the olive oil and mix until just combined. Stir in the salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Taste and season additionally if needed. Store sealed in the fridge for up to a week or so.

I also made an easy roasted cauliflower recipe as another healthy side. After breaking up the cauliflower florets, I tossed them in lemon juice, fresh minced garlic, red chili flakes, and grapeseed oil. Then I roasted them at 375 degrees for 25 minutes, flipping them halfway.

Garlic Brown Sugar Flank Steak with Chimichurri

I’ll definitely be making that flank steak again some time!

Mario Batali’s Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye

For Valentine’s Day (YES…still backlogged!), I was charged with making dinner for Kevin and I, and wanted to make something a little out of the ordinary. I remember really being wowed by the porcini-rubbed delmonico that I had at a work dinner at The Capital Grille a couple of years ago. After some googling, I found a video tutorial on how to make the porcini rub Mario Batali uses at his amazing restauraunt, Osteria Mozza. The sugar in the rub helps develop the char and “steakhouse” crust you want while cooking, and the porcini powder adds a divine earthy flavor.

The original recipe calls for one 3 1/2 pound steak, but I decided to do two 1 pound steaks (which was still pretty aggressive). Here is a recipe as adapted from Mario Batali, Food & Wine magazine, and several gchat sessions with my dear friend Chef Seong. I had always made steaks using a nonstick frying pan and had gotten by just fine, but for a rib-eye, I really wanted those steakhouse-style char marks. We don’t have room for a real grill, but after a number of persuasive conversations with Shirley and Spencer, I decided to buy a cast iron grill pan to try and cook these steaks with. I also had been thinking of getting a kitchen scale for some time, and read that this compact Tanita one had great reviews. What better excuse to buy it than for weighing the porcini mushrooms for the rub! Okay it ended up being a more expensive dinner than originally intended.

Brand New Scale

INGREDIENTS:

2 oz dried porcini
1/2 T red pepper chili flakes
1/4 C sugar
2 T kosher salt
2 T freshly ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning
good quality olive oil
Two 1 pound bone-in rib-eye steaks (about 1″ thick)

PORCINI RUB DIRECTIONS:

Roughly chop the porcini, and then grind in a blender – slowly at first, and then gradually increase the speed.
Add in red pepper flakes and blend to mix. Mix salt, pepper, and sugar together and then add the porcini-chili flake mixture together. You will have plenty of rub left over to make these steaks again – and you will want to!

RIB-EYE DIRECTIONS:

Dust your rib-eye with the rub. Wrap a piece of kitchen twine around the steak, and drizzle on some olive oil and rub that in too. The rub will turn into more of a thick paste with the consistency of wet sand.
Flip the steak and repeat. Tie a piece of kitchen twine tightly around the perimeter of the steak. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate 12 hours or overnight.
About 1 hour prior to grilling, remove the steak from the refrigerator. Brush off the excess marinade paste with a paper towel (THIS IS IMPORTANT). Place on a plate and let come to room temperature. I forgot to do this and my steak ended up pretty spicy from the chili flakes.
Pre-heat a gas grill or grill pan. If you are going to use a charcoal grill, preheat that but use enough coals to keep the fire going for about 20 minutes.
Put the steak on the hottest part of the grill, cover and cook, turning every 5 minutes, for about 12-13 minutes for medium-rare doneness. The internal temperature should be 127-128°F (thanks Seong!). Transfer to a carving board and let it rest for 30 minutes or more. The steak will continue to cook another 5-7 degrees internally once it’s off the grill, and if you cut into it too soon, you’ll let all of those delicious juices out.
Almost done!

Steak newb’s note: If you use a meat thermometer, make sure the end is smack dab in the middle of the steak. I think I stuck the point in a little too deep so it measured the temperature closer to the grill pan than it should have. Our steaks were actually a bit undercooked when all was said and done, though still tasty.

I paired these with some “smashed potatoes”. Quick recipe is as follows: Boil a pound of small potatoes (yukon gold in my case) for 8 minutes (until fork tender) in generously salted water. After draining and cooling the potatoes slightly, brush some oil onto a baking sheet lined with foil. After lightly crushing each potato on sheet with your palm into 1/2″ thickness, brush potatoes with oil. Roast until golden and crisp about 25 minutes, rotating the baking sheet about halfway through the cooking time.

Mario Batali's Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye — Mario Batali’s Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye

For an appetizer, we had a DELICIOUS beet and burrata salad atop some prosciutto and arugula. I found the easy recipe on The Organic Kitchen and admittedly this was more of a me dish than Kevin because it had all of my favorite things in it – roasted beets and burrata, prosciutto, and it even called for pistachios to be sprinkled on top! And thank you Thomas for our lovely serving dish!

Beet and Burrata Salad with Prosciutto and Arugula!

So… I probably bit off more than I could chew making everything in between work and dinner time. I admittedly did not make the perfect steak (overspiced, undercooked), but with less ADD next time I’ll get it right. In all it’s imperfect glory, the steak was still delicious and there were no leftovers. Most importantly, we topped off the meal with mini molten chocolate lava cakes a la mode that I will for sure post separately about at a later time. They were too good not to!

Filet Mignon with Balsamic Pan Sauce and Truffle Oil

Okay… so this is a late one, but I’ll make it short. I totally forgot about Christmas dinner I made last year for my dad and I. I had purchased a small duo of black and white truffle oils back when Alex, Lingie, and I visited Andrew in Seattle last December. I had been meaning to try them out on something other than potatoes, pasta, and every other carb truffle is usually paired with. My diabetic dad doesn’t eat carbs at night, so I bought some grass fed filet mignon steaks from Whole Foods for us. For desert, I made the Apple Mosaic tart with Salted Caramel which I enjoyed so much I ended up making again for a Sho-Yu Christmas potluck. Sadly, my dad and I ate about 3/4 of the tart that night (it was supposed to make enough for 12 servings).

Here’s the recipe, as I found it on Food.com. The sauce was really good, and not too overpowering with the truffle as long as you aren’t heavy-handed with it.

INGREDIENTS:

4 filet mignon steaks, 1 1/2 inches thick
sea salt, to taste
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
white truffle oil, for drizzling

DIRECTIONS:

Sprinkle steaks generously with salt and pepper.
Steaks!
Coat the bottom of a large, heavy frying pan with olive oil and heat over medium-high heat. Add the steaks and cook to the desired doneness, 3-5 minutes on each side. I had thinner than 1.5″ steaks, so I only did a total of 2 minutes on each side.
After a Minute on Each Side
Transfer to a platter and let rest, tented loosely with aluminum foil, while you make the sauce.
In the same pan over medium-high heat, add the vinegar and deglaze by scraping up any browned bits from the bottom. Cook until slightly reduced and thickened, about 3 minutes.
Balsamic Pan Sauce
Remove from the heat. Whisk in the butter to form a smooth sauce.
Whisk in Butter
To serve, transfer the steaks to individual plates, top with the sauce, and drizzle with a small amount of truffle oil.

I paired this with a made-from-scratch butternut squash soup (post to come soon), and an avocado and corn salad which I wasn’t really a fan of (won’t be posting about that one). A great special occasion meal!

Raspberry Mini Cheesecakes

I somehow managed to get sick AGAIN last week, thus the surge in posts (2 posts within a week is a lot!). It all started on Valentine’s Day – the day I was planning to surprise Kevin with a new cheesecake recipe I came across back in January. However, we miraculously must have channeled the germ gods at the same time because we both ended up feeling fatigued and sniffly by the end of the day. After almost a week straight of feeling congested, unquenchably dehydrated, and tired, I finally regained my energy over President’s Day weekend – enough energy to cook-up a storm.

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, or so the cliché goes. However, the object of my affection has a bottomless pit for a stomach and peculiar taste preferences, so I’ve really had to change up my game in the last few months. While my food staples are quinoa, fresh produce, and lean proteins, Kevin’s are Party Pizza, Carl’s Jr. western bacon cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, and hot sauce. While I like to think I’ve always been a decent cook (considering my parents don’t cook so I pretty much figured it out on my own), it’s been a challenge to meet halfway between an “obsessively healthy” cooking style to cuisine that has a lot of flavor additives. The man even said STEAK doesn’t have enough flavor…to which I replied, “That’s because you haven’t had mine yet”. Challenge accepted. I said I was going to make steaks for dinner.

After an hour’s worth of time at Ralphs and Trader Joe’s followed by a 3-hour (yes, THREE HOUR) stint in the kitchen, I’m glad to share with you my well-rounded (albeit not calorie-friendly) dinner featuring a dinner salad, my favorite homemade steak, mac and cheese (Kevin’s pick), and raspberry mini cheesecakes. The raspberry cheesecakes really are the main event to this post, but I was taking tons of photos for the cheesecakes anyway so I figured why not do the same for the meal as a whole.

Who can resist a medium-rare filet mignon rubbed with a little fresh ground pepper and kosher salt? I topped it with some fried garlic and grilled onions on the side. Nom.

Next up, we have baked mac and cheese, utilizing a recipe I borrowed from Alton Brown.

Last but not least, sweets for my sweet. I made a raspberry puree sauce with my “hand-y” food processor. That is, I don’t own a food processor so I mashed a container of raspberries with a fork and separated the seeds from the fruit. I didn’t need the raspberry seeds/guts for this recipe, but it made a nice pseudo-jam for my almond butter sandwich the next morning.

Raspberry Sauce (right) and Seeds (left)

The hardest part about making these guys was dealing with the water bath situation. I drowned one or two mini cheesecakes in water every time I took a batch out of the oven. The other difficult step was drawing the hearts, while taking a photo in one hand and keeping my other hand steady while doing the heart. I didn’t have any toothpicks handy, so I improvised by using an uncooked soba noodle to draw the hearts.

I thoroughly enjoyed this particular recipe… dare I say even better than the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes I made for his birthday in August. As fluffy as I thought those were, these were much more delicate and light, but still had a velvety rich taste to them. Voilà!