Philly Steak Salad

What do you get when you combine healthy salad, great steak, and delicious cheese? A cheese steak salad! I happen to have a freezer full of steaks, so this dish helps me work through them. Though the recipe calls for leftover steak, you can, of course, cook the steak specifically for this salad, as I did. Once cooked, either slice thin or grate your steak. Heat a large skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat. Cook your peppers with the steak and garlic powder for about five minutes. Turn the heat off and smother the still-hot steak and peppers with the shredded mozzarella. While this is melting, split the bag of lettuce between two plates or bowls. Add the cheese-covered steak onto the salads and you're ready to eat!The ingredients for Food Network's Easy Philly Steak Salad are:

• one cup of fresh, diced red and green bell peppers
• a six to eight ounce steak per person, cooked, sliced or shredded
  
• a quarter teaspoon of garlic powder
• one cup of shredded mozzarella cheese
• a 10-ounce bag of salad mix
  

Peppercorn Sauce Over Steak

I must admit, it has been a pleasantly busy weekend - a brief calm before the storm of the coming week. I've had little time to prepare an elaborate dish, so I hope you'll forgive another steak recipe. This time the emphasis is on making a peppercorn sauce to go over your cut of choice. Since this meal is relatively straight-forward, I thought I'd experiment with some cropping and Photoshop touch-ups of my pictures.

What am I trying to hide? Perhaps if I leave the cooking up to the imagination, the results will turn out better. ;-) I jest. The work here is in preparing the sauce. I had to journey to that distant land known as Hannaford to find a shallot; Price Chopper is failing me more and more regularly. Finely chop a tablespoon of shallot, cook in some olive oil, and then add a clove of garlic and two-thirds of a teaspoon of peppercorn. I couldn't find fresh, brine-packed peppercorn, so I simply used McCormick's instead. I've got quite a collection of McCormick seasonings at this point - maybe it's time to invest in a spice rack (or a spice weasel? "BAM!").

Attention span: gone. Now would be the time to add a cup of red wine and (shockingly!) I had none handy. But a cup of chicken stock and half a cup of water will do the trick. Boil ten to fifteen minutes until the sauce has reduced. Strain into a smaller saucepan and melt in two tablespoons of butter along with another two-thirds teaspoon of peppercorn. Keep this warm while grilling your steak. Your sauce will look creamy as above, but too much time over heat will result in the chicken stock thickening out and that's gross (see the final pictures below).

Grill your steak as you would normally. And, when finished, slice thin and cover with the peppercorn sauce. As you can see, mine ended up separating before the steak was finished. Alas, my cooking skills have much improvement to make. But the steak was delicious and the peppercorn quite good nonetheless. Did my cropped photos work? No? Can you tell they're Photoshopped? Here's a hint: the last photo had a fork in it. ;-) God speed and eat well, friends. Ooops, I totally forgot - I won't be around this coming weekend. Cook something for me... and then devour it yourself!

Lindsey's London Broil

I know not who the eponymous Lindsey is, but I must thank her for an excellent steak. Target has a nice selection of Calphalon cookware, and this past weekend I picked up a rather stylish grill pan. I realize, of course, that a grill pan bought at the start of the warm season is like a snow blower in Georgia. But if it's rainy (or snowy or you suck at grilling), a grill pan is an easy way to fix a steak or burger or seven hot dogs at once.

But you know all this. "Ward, you're just grilling a steak?" you ask. Let me draw you an analogy. If you are at all familiar with Fighting Games, then you are aware of the U-shaped learning curve. When one picks up a Fighter for the first time, it is instinct to "button-mash". That is, to press all the keys at random, hoping for a favorable outcome. Unfortunately (a sign of bad game design?), a new player can go a long way with haphazard technique. Once you decide to learn the game's core mechanics, your win percentage drops considerably. You embark on a longer journey then, to master the simple before mastering the complex. To the naïve, this can seem a step backward. To the cognoscenti, you show dedication.

And here I thought I could get through this whole post without mentioning the meal at all. A London Broil is a top round steak, not dissimilar to a flank steak (and you can safely replace a London Broil with a flank steak, if you so choose). This steak tends to have a distinct grain, but is quite thick. Lindsey's contribution consists of a marinade of olive oil, red wine vinegar, crushed garlic, and soy sauce. Delicious! Thoroughly cover the steak(s) and refrigerate them for at least six hours (or overnight, as I did). Thaw well before tossing onto a very hot grill. Cook for five or so minutes on each side. Expect a pink interior, but remember that to a gourmand (why would we care about them?), medium-rare is preferable to medium-well. I like mine medium-well.

Special thanks to Peter for his guest photography! Serve alongside a minimalist salad of baby spinach (I chose an Asiatic Sesame dressing to match the soy sauce in the marinade). This Franciscan Merlot (2004, Napa Valley) was just brilliant: hints of black cherry and not strong enough to overpower the steak. Excellent! 'Til next time, faithful reader. Eat well and enjoy good company!

Flank Steak Salad

Wonder of wonders! Two Sunday updates in a row! You'd think I had a crush on you or something (I do). Confession: I'm a big fan of salads... but only if I can put meat on them. I love ordering buffalo chicken salads when they're on menus. But what about this? A steak salad. I mean, c'mon - steak! Now that you're as sold on the idea as I was, let me explain how simple this is: grill a steak, put it on top of a salad. Whew, trivial! Rachael Ray makes things interesting by asking us to make our own marinade, salad dressing, and croutons.

Basically, get some fresh, crisp bread (sliced is convenient), brush some olive oil on a few pieces, sprinkle with salt and pepper, toast until crispy, rub with crushed garlic, then slice into one inch square chunks. I recommend munching on the leftover crusts as you cook. Delicious. This recipe calls for making two other liquidy mixtures: the marinade and the salad dressing. Following the recipe's quantities, my horseradish salad dressing was skimpy and I have no good pictures of it. It's made by whisking together horseradish (which you can get prepared in a can), Dijon mustard, lemon juice, and olive oil (and sour cream, if you're so inclined).

The marinade was much better. As you can see above, it's combined olive oil, thinly sliced garlic, Worcestershire, hot sauce, and a little thyme. I coated the flank steak (about 12 ounces) and let it marinade for a few minutes before warming up my iron skillet. Oh man, I suck at indoor grilling (and, arguably, outdoor grilling). The flank steak gave off sooo much smoke (I mean, it is 16 square inches of marinaded meat straight onto a cast iron frying pan). I'm a little concerned, now, that none of my smoke detectors went off (Cyndie, ignore this last sentence, please). Ten minutes - two open doors, three open windows, and the ceiling fans on high - later and the steak was ready.

The steak turned out very flavorful (I loved the marinade) but borderline rare, which isn't quite my preference. I may postpone other grilling-based dishes until Spring (so, like, May). Thinly slice the steak against the grain and lay it on top of your salad. Oh yeah, the salad (I almost forgot): baby spinach with arugula. Even though arugula sounds like a variety of spider, it's a leaf not unlike spinach itself. In fact, it's so not unlike it, I think I bought spinach again instead of arugula. Price Chopper, you lied to me!

Toss the salad (hehe) together with the steak, croutons, and dressing and you're finished! Man, I used way too many exclamation marks in this post. Screw that! Anyway, it was quite good. Steaks and salads for the win!

Steak with Corn Relish and Smashed Spuds

I wasn't as excited, beforehand, to make this dish as I had been for the drunken pasta; though, I suppose, any dish that involves red wine in its preparation gets immediate bonus points. Nevertheless, the heart of this week's recipe is the corn relish. Served on top of the steak, the two are accompanied by (what are basically) mashed potatoes. But since preparing these three items offered three distinct chances for something new, I thought it would be a good second attempt.

The three dishes are prepared, cooked, and served mostly independent of each other. This made it easy to lay out all the ingredients and photo them separately. First, the steak (with its seasoning) in its cast-iron skillet. Second, the onion, garlic, scallions, cilantro, corn, chicken broth, and new spices for the relish. And third, a bag of red boiling potatoes and some cheese (not pictured) to mash in.

On the advice of my friends, I tried Hannaford instead of Price Chopper and (though it had a smaller selection) found that it had a larger variety of goods (including that mysterious pancetta from last week!). Once the individual ingredients were assembled (it took two trips to Hannaford, two to Price Chopper, one to Target, and one to Marshalls... don't ask), I started slicing up the vegetables before anything else. This had proved to be a hassle when rushed last week, and - since I had no time constraints this time - I took it slow. The only person waiting on the food was me, and I'm hardly important.

Putting the potatoes on to boil, I started sauteeing the chopped garlic cloves, onion, and scallions. Confession: the scallions were meant to go into the potatoes but I didn't pick up on this until later (the inclusion must've struck me as silly at the time I started cooking). Spicing these with chili powder, ground cumin, sugar, salt, and pepper left the room with a fantastic aroma (though short-lived, the steak took care of that).

Now I seasoned the steak and threw it onto the stove-top in its skillet (pre-heated with EVOO). I left the steak for "last" since, though the three dishes all cook at the same time, I figured that the meat needed more watching and attention. As the steak was grilling, I added the chicken broth and corn to the pan with the vegetables (now golden). Flipping the steak after five minutes revealed exactly how messy grilling on a stove-top is: oil had sizzled its way all over the rest of the flat surface. What a mess! I assume Rachael Ray never had to clean up after herself on her show (where's my cleaning crew and/or small dog?).

The steak, however, turned out fantastic. These pictures do not do it justice. The corn relish was also very tasty when served on top of the steak. I must say, I enjoyed those dishes far more than the pasta from the previous week. The potatoes, however, were poorly neglected. Now lacking their scallions (and cream cheese, which I "purposely" left out), I added some grated cheddar which melted in and (though I'm sure it was fine) didn't look too appetizing. Maybe I should have skinned the potatoes first (I've been told the skin adds fiber, though?). Anyway, here's the result: a delicious meal and an absolute mess. The savory steak left its oily patina and I'll just thank the cooking gods (Alton Brown and Rachael Ray?) for surface stoves and Windex!