The Steak I Can't Recommend Enough!

Flat Iron Steak Fajitas



The flat iron steak is the best steak ever! I purchased this piece of meat at Whole Foods. It is about 8 ounces and was only 4.50, I think. All I did for the meat was place it in a zip lock with a spice mixture, about 1t of oil, and a couple shakes of Worcestshire sauce. Then I moved it around and let it sit about 20 minutes.
Spices:
1/2t Cumin
1/2t paprika
1/2 cayenne
salt
pepper

I love the Calphalon grill pan. I just throw vegetables on there with some salt and they are perfect. Now, I do have to wave an oven mit over the smoke alarm every minute or so. Whoever chose to place a smoke alarm in the hallway, right by the entrance to the kitchen, is a chooch!

Pink Moon Cupcakes...the latest craze in Powell.


Next Post...the weekly Cupcake Specials. Because I am a nice person, and I think a lot of people want to know what all this place has!

Things I could've made with a Dutch Oven

More food without Pictures, sigh.

Parental Anniversary Menu (PAM)

Shrimp with Cocktail Sauce (including an extra tablespoon of horseradish)
Au Gratin Potatoes
Cabernet Pot Roast
Shredded Brussel Sprouts
Chocolate Crepes with an Amaretto Cream and Coffee Syrup

Two of the menu items were from fellow food bloggers, and I have linked those recipes to their sites. Go check them out, as they are much more diligent at the blogging than I.

For the potatoes, there was some drama. I do not have a mandoline, so I used the large bladed side on the cheese grater. It worked great; however, I did the slicing in the morning, put the potatoes under plastic wrap in the refrigerator, and when I came back to cook them, they were almost black. I rinsed them with cold water, which seemed to lessen the discoloration, and upon cooking them, it was all normal again. PHEW! But I thought I had lost 4lbs of potato!

Because I did not have a pot large enough to house all of the potatoes, I split them up between two round casserole dishes. This recipe definitely serves at least 8!
Potatoes au Gratin

Ingredients:
4 lbs. russet potatoes, sliced into 1/8" slices with a mandoline
2 Tbsp. butter
1 small onion, choped fine
2 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed
2 Tbsp. butter
5 c. chicken stock
1/3 c. flour
1 4in x 2in parmesean rind
1 bay leaf
1 c. shredded aged white cheddar
1/2 c. shredded parmesean
1/8 c. shredded white America cheese (I just did more white cheddar)

Directions:-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
-Meanwhile, melt butter in Dutch oven over medium high heat until foaming subsides, about 1 min.
-Add onions and saute until soft and begins to brown, about 4 min.
-Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about 30 sec.
-Add flour and stir until browned, about 1 min.
-Deglaze pan with chicken stock, scraping browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
-Add parm rind and bay leaf and simmer vigourously until stock is reduced and sauce gets thick, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes.
-Remove parm rind and add cheese, stirring to melt.
-Add sliced potatoes and stir to coat.
-Cover Dutch oven tightly and place in oven to cook for 45 minutes.
-Remove top of Dutch oven, stir slightly to recoat potatoes and place back into oven to brown for 15 minutes.
-Remove Dutch oven from oven and let cool, uncovered, for 10 minutes before serving.

And the pot roast...

I also added a sweet potato to the vegetables that roasted with the beef. I actually cooked all of this in my large Calphalon Omelete pan, covered in foil. Worked just fine! I did my grocery shopping at 1130pm, and there was no rosemary in the fresh herb section. I bought, instead, a poultry mix, using the sage and thyme as the herbs used. I also forgot to use bay leaves. And I did a red wine and corn starch slurry for the gravy.

Cabernet Pot Roast
1 2 lb. chuck roast trimmed of excess fat
Flour for dredging plus 1 Tbs. for slurry
salt, pepper and garlic powder for seasoning
2 Tbs. canola oil
1 cup Cabernet
1 cup diced tomatoes
1 1/4 cup beef broth divided
3 med. sized carrots cut into long strips
2 celery stalks roughly chopped
1 medium chopped
4 garlic cloves roughly chopped
1 rosemary sprig cut in half
2 bay leaves
2 sage stems with leaves
1 Tbs. unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 325

Heat skillet over med. high heat and add oil. Season meat with salt, pepper and garlic powder and dredge in flour. Sear meat in skillet on all sides, and set aside. Add butter to the pan and take off burner to cool down. Lower heat to med. low and return the skillet to the burner after a few minutes. Add all veggies and herbs except garlic. Saute for about 5 minutes or until onion is translucent and soft. Add garlic and cook a couple minutes. Deglaze the pan with the wine scraping all the stuck on bit from the bottom of the pan. Add tomatoes, and broth and bring to a simmer. Let simmer about 5 minutes until slightly reduced. Add roast, cover skillet tightly with foil and roast for 2-2 1/2 hours.
Take skillet out of oven and put meat and veggies on a platter. Discard stems and make a slurry with 1 Tbs. of flour and water. Turn heat on burner to low and stir in slurry and 1/4 cup of beef broth. Continue stirring until you have the consistency desired.

The blogs, where these two recipes came from, have great pictures. So I feel a little okay that I didn't take the photos last night. I was entertaining for this meal, so the added stress made it impossible.

I will post the dessert recipe with the photo tomorrow...stay tuned.

Roasted Garlic and Horseradish Crusted Beef Tenderloin

Crust to me means: a crispy topping a la the crust of bread is not soft.
This recipe?
Not crusty.

Not at all.

The recipes DOES make a great and full of flavor (I have stopped using the word flavorfull because it is so overused by Rachel Ray, who I no longer like very much) beef tenderloin.

Here are my thoughts on beef tenderloin. It is my beef of choice because it really needs a sauce, and I am saucy. Also it is not chewy, and you don't have to cut around hunks o' fat. It isn't the most flavorful beef. And filet mignon, grilled, is really kinda icky sometimes. It just ends up tasting like the grill. And I like keeping my bacon with bacon and beef with beef, so adding bacon around the beef so that it tastes like bacon, seems rather idiotic to me. I mean honestly, you are turning a $30 piece of meat (at a restaurant), into a 5 cent slice o' bacon.

So with a sauce, you are getting the tender, melt in your mouth, beef, with a nice addition of bernaise sauce, or red wine reduction, or some gorgonzola cheese. In this case, our dinner last night, it had a roasted garlic and horseradish topping. It was roasted, which is nice because then it doesn't taste like the grill. I served it with roasted garlic mashed potatoes.

The recipe says it serves 12 people. I halved the recipe for the two of us, using less than 1.5 lbs of beef (much less), and the topping was enough. So if you are going to do this with 3 lbs of beef, I recommend doubling the "crust". And if you want a "crust", as I define crust, press some breadcrumbs into the topping...

Here is the recipe, taken from Cooking Light.

Beef Tenderloin with Horseradish-and-Roasted Garlic Crust
1 whole garlic head
Olive oil-flavored cooking spray
1/3 cup prepared horseradish
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 (3-pound) beef tenderloin

Preheat oven to 350°.
Remove white papery skin from garlic head (do not peel or separate the cloves). Coat with cooking spray; wrap in foil. Bake at 350° for 1 hour; cool 10 minutes. Separate cloves; squeeze to extract garlic pulp. Discard skins. Mash garlic pulp, horseradish, salt, basil, thyme, and pepper with a fork until blended.

Preheat oven to 400°.

Trim fat from tenderloin; fold under 3 inches of small end. Rub garlic mixture over roast. Place tenderloin on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Insert meat thermometer into thickest portion of tenderloin. Bake at 400° for 40 minutes or until thermometer registers 145° (medium-rare) to 160° (medium).

Place tenderloin on a platter. Cover and let stand 10 minutes before slicing.

Yield: 12 servings (serving size: 3 ounces)

NUTRITION PER SERVING
CALORIES 179(38% from fat); FAT 7.5g (sat 3g,mono 2.8g,poly 0.4g); PROTEIN 24g; CHOLESTEROL 70mg; CALCIUM 22mg; SODIUM 117mg; FIBER 0.2g; IRON 3.3mg; CARBOHYDRATE 2.5g

Pastitsio, but less fat and stuff.

I have been craving the creamy. (I don't like the word creamy, so I will not use it again for the rest of this post.) Because I have been craving the smooth, cheesy, whiteness, I decided to try a ground beef pasta dish with elbow macaroni. TJ said, "Like hamburger helper?" Uh, yes dear. Something like that. (sorrowfully hanging my head that indeed I am craving the hamburger helper) So I decided I would try something a bit higher in class than the trashy box-o'processed, powdered, helper.

My mother-in-law mailed (postage? what is that?) me a recipe for Pastistio last year. I believe I made it for a birthday party. It was AWESOME! But TJ thought there were too many onions, which it did call for two chopped onions. I was amazed at the egg quantity with 6!! So I followed the recipe for the ground beef mixture, and then did my own cheesey white goodness for the elbow macaroni. It was excellent. Here is the recipe, as best as I can remember it. (Remarking snobbily, I really don't use recipes):

PASTA:
elbow macaroni (12 ounces, maybe??)

GROUND BEEF MIXTURE:
1.2 lbs ground beef
1/2 t cinnamon
salt
pepper
1/3 cup red wine
1/2 cup tomato sauce (I actually blended up canned "chopped tomato with onion and garlic", it was a wee watery, so i did not add the water. If you use canned tomato sauce, perhaps add 1/4 cup water)
1 t tomato paste (if it isn't thickening up for you by simmering)

Brown the beef, add the spices, add the wine and tomato sauce, simmering about 15 minutes to thicken. Add the paste if necessary.

MILK/BUTTER/CHEESE SAUCE:
3T unsalted butter
salt
1/4 cup plus 2 T flour
2 cups milk (I used 1% and it worked fine)
1/2 cup grated parmesan
pepper
After you cook the noodles, drain, rinse, and let cool while cooking the sauce. For sauce, melt butter, and add salt. Whisk in the flour until combined. Whisk in the milk. Simmer and whisk until thick, add cheese and black pepper to taste. Toss in noodles, stirring it all up.

Preheat 375.
In a round casserole/baking dish, put ground beef and then put sauced up noodle on top. Dust the top with nutmeg. Bake for 30 minutes. Let sit about 5 minutes, so that it sets up nicely.

When I made this last night, I ended up with a bit more noodle than necessary for the top layer, so just eyeball it.

I figure it is less fat than the original recipe because:
A. I did not use butter to cook the beef or onions in, nor did I add oil to the pan.
B. I did not add eggs to the noodles, as is customary.
C. I did not add eggs to the sauce mixture.

I think there were 4 good sized servings in this. The original recipe, served more like 8-12 (imagine 1 chopped onion and 3 eggs in this smaller one).

You know how I know that this recipe was a hit?? TJ wanted to take leftovers for lunch. SCORE!

Beef Roast in Sur La Table style

We tried the same lamb recipe with a roast last night. It turned out great!!

Since we didn't get to trim, pound, tie the roasts at the cooking class, that was an endeavor last night. TJ wanted to try doing that. Watching a left handed person using knives is really quite humorous! Not a jab at his wielding skills, just not something I have seen before.

If you want a rich tomato sauce, seriously, roast a can of chopped tomatoes on TOP of a beef roast, then blend up all the juices in the blender. In the future, I am going to make meatballs, brown them, top them with tomato and then bake them in the oven. Then blend up the tomato and whatnot and put the meatballs back in the sauce. It is just so much better than stove top simmered sauce!