Flank Steak with So-Hot-You-Can't-Eat-It Pepper and Watermelon Salad

I pulled this recipe out of Bon Appetit (no surprise) last summer, thinking it sounded pretty good. We never had the chance to make it before grilling season ended, so last week we finally got around to it.

This is an interesting one. Husband doesn't like watermelon much, so the salad was already kind of a miss, but it was so spicy that neither of us ate much, throwing away most of the salad.

The next time we make it, there will be drastic changes:

• The meat marinade wasn't noticeable, even though it sat for nearly 12 hours. I'd use the dressing for the salad as a marinade instead.
• The salad is an interesting concept, but a little too variable in terms of texture and of course it was too spicy. I might leave out the watermelon, halve the quantity of sriracha, and double the honey.
• It needed a starch. I'm making rice with it next time and dealing with it more like a stir fry (hence, no watermelon).

The Original Recipe: Grilled Flank Steak with Spicy Pepper and Watermelon Salad

Flank Steak:
1 1/2 Tbs fresh lime juice
1 Tbs olive oil
2 garlic cloves, pressed
1 tsp sambal oelek (a hot chili paste)
1/2 tsp grated ginger
1/2 tsp honey
1 1/2 lb flank steak

Pepper and Watermelon Salad:
1/4 cup sriracha (hot chili sauce)
1/4 olive oil
3 Tbs seasoned rice vinegar
1 1/4 tsp honey
4 bell peppers of varying color, cut into 1/2-inch squares (2-3 is plenty, really)
2 Tbs minced red jalapeno chiles (we used green, it was fine)
2 cups 1/2-inch cubes of seedless watermelon

Steak Preparation:
Whisk all ingredients together (except steak), pour into a ZipLock bag with the steak and let marinate as long as possible, ideally 4 hours up to 1 day (chill, obviously). Bring to room temperature before grilling.

Salad Preparation:
Whisk sriracha, oil, vinegar, and honey in a small bowl; season dressing with salt and pepper. Place peppers and chiles in large bowl. Toss with 6 Tbs dressing. Let marinate 2 hours at room temperature.

Prepare barbecue (high heat). Grill steak until cooked to desired doneness. Transfer to work surface; let rest 10 minutes. Thinly slice steak against the grain. Drizzle with some of the remaining dressing from the salad.

Toss watermelon into pepper salad. Serve flank steak and salad with remaining dressing alongside.

***

When we make this again, I'll post the new recipe and let you know how it goes.

Coffee-Rubbed Cheeseburgers with Texas Barbecue Sauce

An instant crowd pleaser, this was the most-requested recipe at our last BBQ! It sounds a little strange, but is absolutely delicious. The coffee rub and barbecue sauce could be used on many other meats.

Coffee Rub
1 Tbs freshly ground coffee
2 tsp (packed) brown sugar
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp salt

Burgers
8 slices bacon (applewood smoked is preferred, but not necessary)
2 lbs ground beef
8 slices smoked provolone
8 hamburger buns (we used onion rolls from Sunflour Bakehaus in Farmington)
8 slices red onion
8 slices tomato
Texas Barbecue Sauce

For the Rub:
Mix all ingredients in a small bowl. Can be done up to one week ahead. Store at room temperature.

For the Burgers:
Cook bacon in a large skillet until crisp. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Break in half.

Form ground beef into 8 patties. Using thumb, make a slight indentation in the center of each burger. Burgers and bacon can be prepped up to 8 hours ahead. Chill.

Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat). Sprinkle 1 tsp of coffee rub on top side of each burger. Place burgers, rub side down, on grill rack. Grill until slightly charred, about 4 minutes; turn.

Place 2 bacon halves atop each burger. Cook 3 minutes. Top each with 1 cheese slice. Cover and cook until cheese melts. Place burgers atop bottom halves of buns. Top with onion and tomato slices. Spoon on Texas Barbecue Sauce. Cover with bun tops and serve.

Voodoo Chili

This recipe came about when an announcer at a pub trivia night mispronounced the Jimi Hendrix song "Voodoo Chile." We decided it was hilarious and immediately set out to come up with a recipe that incorporated an element we thought sufficiently Voudun.

The main recipe comes from a cookbook a friend bought me called "The Feast of Santa Fe" by Huntley Dent; the secret ingredient is mine...

2 to 3 pounds beef round or chuck steak
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 medium-large onions (1 lb, about), chopped
1/4 c flour
2-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 of a 6 oz can tomato paste
3 c crushed tomatoes, or the equivalent in whole canned tomatoes, roughly chopped
5 c beef broth, or the equivalent of beef broth and water, mixed to desired proportions
6 Tbsp powdered red chilies
2 tsp whole or ground cumin
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp salt (we rarely add this, as the broth is salty enough)
3 Tbsp cider vinegar
1 bell pepper, chopped
4 c red kidney beans, home-cooked or canned
**1/2 c of Rum (we use Pyrat because of its unique taste, you can take or leave that as you will)

Heat half the oil in a large eskillet and brown the beef thoroughly in 3 or 4 batches - larger quantities are likely to crowd the pan, which will cause them to steam instead of saute. As each batch is finished, transfer it to a 4- to 6-quart pot or Dutch oven.

When all the meat is browned, make sure there are at least 2 Tbsp of fat left in the skillet, and add the onions. Cover the pan to sweat them over low heat for about 5 minutes. Remove the lid, raise the heat to medium, and stir the onions until they are uniformly light brown but not at all charred. Sprinkle the flour over the onions and continue to stir for a minute to incorporate it and cook the mixture through. Transfer the onions to the pot with the beef.

Add all the remaining ingredients except the bell pepper and the beans to the pot and place over medium heat. Stir thoroughly, bring to a simmer, and cook gently, covered, for 1 1/2 hours. The chili will need little attention as it cooks except for occasional stirring to keep it from sticking to the pot. Add up to 1 cup of water to the mixture if it seems too thick.

At the end of the simmering time, degrease the surface of the chili if necessary and add the chopped bell pepper. Simmer another 15 minutes, then add the beans (including some of their liquid if the stew needs further thinning) and simmer barely 5 minutes longer. The chili can be served immediately or held.

This recipe makes more servings than I've had opportunity to count. Sasha and I usually eat 3-4 immediately, and then I enjoy it consistently for the next week (sometimes for lunch AND dinner). Enjoy!

These beefs are tender

Last night Eve and I made Moroccan Braised Beef. It was delicious.

3 Tbsp olive oil
2/5 lbs chuck roast, cut into 3/4 in cubes
2 cups chopped onions
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp Garam Masala
1 Tbsp Paprika (hungarian)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (but come on, knock that up another notch)
1 cup dry red wine
1/2 cup dry sherry (we didn't have this so we used more red wine)
2 cups beef broth
14.5 oz can diced tomatoes in juice
1.5 cups golden raisins (we only used 1/4 cup, I think we might go up to 1/2 next time)

Heat 2 Tbsp oil in large pot over medium-high heat. Sprinkle meat with salt and pepper. Add meat to pot; saute until no longer pink. Transfer meat to bowl, heat 1 Tbsp oil in same pot. Add onions, saute until brown (I waited until they were nearly caramelized). Add garlic and powdered ingredients, stir 1 minute. Add wine, boil until reduced to a glaze, stirring occasionally. Add broth, tomatoes with juice, and raisins; stir to blend. Add beef and ccumulated juices, bring to simmer. Reduce heat to med-low and cover for 30 minutes, then simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally for about 45 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

We served this over Jasmine rice. It was great.

original recipe from epicurious, we changed a few things.

Fajitas: Multi-blog Spectac-u-larrrr

For this recipe I am expecting you to have followed the entire blog. We're going to combine components of previously posted recipes into this meal. Watch me as I link.

This is a marinade that I made up for the steak portion of the fajitas. I think it would work better with chicken, these flavors seemed to be at odds with what the steak wanted to taste like. It still made for an interesting meal.

Steak Marinade

4 Limes
2 lbs steak (skirt steak will work best, but you have to let it soak in this for at least 24 hours)
a splash of the best tequila you can find
pepper (I like to grind black and white pepper into the bag until my hands don't work anymore)
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp cilantro
4 cloves garlic
1 cup white vinegar
2 Serrano peppers, sliced

Cut up the limes and squeeze out some of the juice into a gallon sized ziplock bag. Add ingredients and let sit for 24 hours. Make sure that the entire steak is covered by the
sauce.

*time passes*

Okay, let's make some fajitas!

Chicken & Steak Fajitas

You've had chicken & steak brining and marinading for the last 1-2 days, and now you're very hungry. Pull those bad boys out and fire up your grill. We're going to cook the meat whole and then slice it into smaller pieces later; this way you have more control over the done-ness of your steak. Also, I think everything tastes better after being exposed to charcoal.

Remove steak from bag. Remove chicken from bag. Get ready to transport them to the grill.

Save the marinade from the steak's bag. This is going to turn into fajita sauce.

For the sauce -

Marinade

bell pepper (yellow & red), sliced
Spanish onion, sliced

This is so easy I hesitate to mention it. Heat the sauce until it boils, reduce to a simmer and add the onions and peppers.

Grilling

For the time being I'm going to assume the reader knows how to grill and understands how they want their steak cooked. I tend to use a high heat so that the steak is rare to medium rare. I'd throw the chicken on first and give it a 5-7 minute head start on the steak. Don't worry about that chicken - after brining it for a day it's not going to overcook. It's dummy proof.

Remove meats from grill and cut into slices.

You're ready to enjoy.

Take your sauce, assembled meats, add some guacamole, and roll them up in your homemade tortillas. Thanks for playing.

Fermented black beans? WTF?!?

Who would have thought that fermented black beans would give a dish such great flavor? Who would have thought that black beans are not just confined to Mexican cooking? (ok, people more culinarily enlightened than myself) And who would have thought I would have learned about black bean and stir-fry from guys named Ken and Curt? Seriously, WTF?!?

Ken and Curt are current and former coworkers of mine, respectively, and these two Chinese guys have started to show me the real way to do stir fry, fast, hot, and with tons of flavors. Curt introduced me to black bean stir-fry one day at lunch, and not long afterwards I tried making it on my own based on his recipe. I thought I was hot shit cooking with an ingredient that only had the nutrition information in English on the label, that is until Ken saw me eating it for lunch. After some mocking of my technique, he started letting me in on little secrets of the actual stir-fry technique, and supplying me with proper ingredients! So, after much learning, here is how to make some killer black bean stir-fry…

What you need:

Beef for stir fry, cut super thin (we use top round, because we buy it in bulk from Costco) ~1 lb
One onion cut into strips, again, thinner is better, ~1/4” wide
One red bell pepper, did I mention stuff should be cut thin?
Snow peas, these you don’t have to cut
Fermented Black Bean Paste (more on this later)

For the marinade
1/2 cup dry sherry
1/2-cup soy sauce (go for the real stuff from an Asian grocery store that was actually made from fermented soy beans, so much more flavor!)
Garlic (~2-3 cloves diced fine)

What you do:

Mix up the marinade, and drop in the beef for at least an hour. Remember, slice the beef super thin. Start some rice cooking, and the clock is ticking at ~20 minutes, just enough time to bring it all together. Slice up the pepper and onions and set them aside for easy access.

Now, get your wok out and get it going at full blast, turn up the burner to 11, 10 just isn’t going to cut it. At this point you will want to turn on an exhaust fan, open a window and take the battery out of your smoke detector. Stir-fry is all about cooking food really fast, on super high heat. It keeps the meat from overcooking, and it gets the veggies hot, but they stay crisp.

Put some olive oil in the wok, and when it’s hot, drop in some of the black bean paste (a teaspoon full to start), break it up into the oil and let it cook for half a minute. This helps open up the flavors of the black bean. You can add it later, but it doesn’t taste as good. Now start cooking the meat, a little at a time, keep it moving in the wok, and as soon as it is almost done, dump it out into a bowl for holding for later (if you have a big arse wok, you don’t need to do this, but ours is small, and too much food in it drops the heat too fast). Each handful of meat should only take a minute or two. Cook up all the meat, adding oil and black bean as necessary to make sure all the meat gets seasoned.

Now, toss in the onions with whatever oil is left in the wok (shouldn’t be much), as soon as they are broken up in the pan, toss in the snow peas. Like the beef, keep them moving around in the wok, sitting=burning. The onions and peas will take 3-4 minutes to cook, but the peppers only need about 1-2 minutes tops, so… After 2 minutes with the onions and peas, toss in the pepper, and keep tossing in the pan. The rice should be just finishing up now, so toss the meat back in the wok and toss everything together. Serve it up and enjoy!

Black Bean paste:
You have some options here… We started out with pre-made paste, just scoop some out of the jar and you’re good to go. It tasted fine, but it had MSG in it. Then Ken gave me a package of just the fermented black beans, and suggested we make our own paste. It’s pretty easy, just take the black beans, and put them in a food processor and blend them with some olive oil, ginger and garlic. There is no precise ratio of the ingredients, so just go by feel, keeping in mind that the goal is to taste the black bean, not to mask it with garlic or ginger! You should be able to get either at a good Asian grocery store.

First entry: black & bleu burgers w/ mango chutney

I know a few folks who've threatened to start a food blog for awhile. Today is the day I provide momentum for the great amateur cooks I know and say "here is your forum."

Never content to sit idly by, I will kick off this guy by providing a few recipes from over the weekend. One was quite good, the other needs work:

Black and Bleu Burgers (needs work)

Freshly ground pepper
kosher salt
Gorgonzola cheese
Hamburger Meat

This is real simple, you wrap the hamburger around a serving of the cheese and add salt and pepper to the outside. I like to put a ring of pepper around the outside of the burger, too.

The problem with this recipe is that the cheese bleeds out before the burger is done. The burgers are moist, but you barely taste the cheese. Of course, you could add the cheese to the top of the burger, but that's a lot like giving up.

Mango Chutney (the good) - originally from Good Eats

4 lbs mangoes (ripe but not too soft)
1 large red onion
1 bell pepper
1/4 cup ginger root, peeled & minced
Vegetable oil
8 oz unsweetened pineapple juice (we've found this is hard to find, so we usually get crushed
pineapple chunks and use the juice and a few pieces of pineapple to make up the difference)
1 tsp chili flakes
1 1/2 Tbsp curry powder
4 oz cider vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup roasted, unsalted macadamia nuts
1/2 cup golden raisins
kosher salt and fresh ground white pepper

Peel and pit the mangoes, it's a pain. The mango pit is a very hard obelisk in the center of the mango, you'll cut around that and discard. The pieces should be small bit sized chunks, you want this to look like relish at the end. Cut up your onions, peppers, and ginger root.

In a bowl combine the sugar, vinegar, pineapple juice, and curry.

Heat up the oil (about 3 Tbsp, but you can eyeball it) and add the chili flakes. Let those go for about a minute on a medium to low heat and then add the onions. After the onions have been coated and softened, you can add the ginger and bell pepper. Saute for 1 to 2 minutes and then add the mangoes.

After another minute or two add the mixture from the bowl and simmer for about 30 minutes until the sauce has reduced (stirring often). Add salt and pepper to taste (I usually go heavy on the pepper). Add the raisins and chopped nuts to the chutney and transfer to an ice bath. Serve cold as a side dish or use as a topping for burgers.