Smoky and light with a touch of heat

I first read about the flat iron steak on Chowhound and was intrigued by the idea of a “new” cut of steak. The first thing that came to mind is, “this is going to become the monkfish of the beef world.” The name comes from the shape of the steak, which looks like a flat iron (surprise). There’s a fabulous description of its origins at Gourmet Sleuth.

What intrigued me the most was legend of its tenderness, despite the fact that it looks to be a cut of meat that would require some sort of artificial tenderizing. But when you see the meat, and see the long tendrils of marbling, you’ll understand why this is not so. The flatiron steak is extremely tender, and to me, one of the most delicious cuts of meat you can buy these days.

The trick is to find it from a local producer and at an affordable price. It ranges. I’ve heard of people paying upwards of 10 bucks a pound for the stuff, while, at D.C.’s Eastern Market butchers, I paid about 5. They’re meat isn’t sourced locally, but they do source from a sustainable beef producer in the mid-west. Tough to hit local, sustainable and organic at all time, but I try to do the best I can to hit one of the three.

But what to do with the flatiron? It looks like a flank, and you can certainly apply the same treatment.

I was in the mood for something, as usual these days, to make me forget about winter. Something spicy and sweet and grilled. So, I decided to try a spicy rubbed steak with some sort of salsa.

I’d purchased some powdered chipotle at world market and decided this was the time to call it to duty. Here’s what I came up with:

Smokey Rub

• 1 TBS chipotle chile powder

• 1 TBS mustard powder

• 1/2 TBS paprika

• 1 tsp onion powder

• 1 tsp cracked black pepper

• 1 tsp salt

Combine the rub below in a bowl. Then, surprise, rub it into the meat making sure you spread it out evenly. It should take on a gorgeous reddish orange color. I let this sit for about three hours in the fridge.

When you feel that it’s had enough time (it really doesn’t need it, but I’m always one for letting spices sit a bit) I removed the steak from the fridge and let it come to room temperature for about half an hour.

Now for the salsa. As always, I was in position of looking over my weekly haul from Washington’s Green Grocers, and I had an abundance of onions and clementines. I also had leftover chayote squash and cilantro from my escovietch recipe, and it desperately needed a home. So, I combined sliced red onion and chayote with the torn cilantro and peeled and chopped oranges to make a salsa. I didn’t want the onion to be too acidic with the oranges, so I actually cooked it down in a pan with veg. oil until they were just translucent. I tossed the hot onions in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients below and let sit.

Clementine, Chayote and Red Onion Salsa

• 8 clementines

• 1 red onion, sliced

• 1/2 chayote squash sliced

• handful of torn cilantro leaves, chopped roughly

• Red wine vinegar to taste

• Vegetable oil (maybe a quarter cup)

• Mrs. Salt

• Mr. Pepper

Now to the stove. Because it’s winter, and I don’t have access to a grill, I rely on a trustee grill pan. If you don’t have one, and you’re a grilling fan, they’re a must for out-of-season grilling – unless if you live in a warm climate, of course.

Heat the grill pan until its smoking hot and add a bit of oil. NOTE, the chipotle in the rub could make you cough if you don’t have good ventilation or a diesel powered oven hood. If you DO NOT, open a few windows, move the children out of the way, and wear a bandanna. Okay, maybe not that last part, but you get the picture. Just be careful with the smoke.

Add steak to the grill pan for about 3.5 minutes per side at the most. Remove from the pan to a cutting board, and let sit, tented with foil, for about 5-10 minutes. Slice on the diagonal into thin slices with a sharp carving knife or electric knife.

Place a heaping tablespoon of the salsa on top of the sliced steak, serve with white rice and black beans.

This is one of the easiest, most delicious dishes I’ve made in some time. I recommend it highly. At the very least, I encourage you to explore the wonders of the flatiron steak.

Will

Vinegary, Sweet and Spicy

The weather in D.C. is bone chilling these days. So, I needed something warming, something that reminded me of warming times and warming places. I had this dish last year during an all-too-brief stint to Jamaica. It was stunning in its flavor and simplicity.

The term “escoveitch” emanates from the Spanish word “escabeche,” which means pickled. But the fish ends up with more of a balanced, garlicy piquant flavor than anything overly (pickled) like you might find with jarred and pickled vegetables.

I also love this recipe because most of us have these ingredients around the house at any given time, and tracking down the remaining items (or improvising) isn’t too arduous. As always, with Recipe Play, I encourage you to play around with spices and levels of garlic, sweetness, heat – let me know if you try something different that turns out well.

I ended up buying a few fresh corn tortillas and a can of black beans and making fish tacos out of this. If fish tacos are your thing, this is a fabulous recipe to try. It is of course tasty on its own, but the warm, slightly fried tortillas and the earthy black beans complemented the garlic-vinegar flavor of the fish extremely well.

• 1 1/2 cups white vinegar
• 1 cup water
• pinch salt
• pinch sugar
• 2 cloves, diced garlic
• 4-5 sprigs of Cilantro
• 5 pimento berries (all spice) use the whole ones if you have them. If you only have the ground version, just use about 2 teaspoons
• 1 White onion, cut in rounds (like you’d do for onion rings)
• 1 half a Scotch Bonnet or Habenero pepper (feel free to play with the pepper depending on what you have, but the Scotch Bonnet is a special pepper and most stores carry it.
• 1 half a julienned Chayote squash (delicious, but I’m not sure how necessary it is). I see them more and more, but don’t fret if you can’t find one.
• 3-4 julienned carrots, depending on size

Fish fillets (you can do almost anything here, but I recommend something white and flaky. I saw a lot of recipes that called for snapper. I had frozen mahi mahi on hand and it worked out swimmingly

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Simmer the vinegar, water, onion, carrot, squash, garlic, Scotch Bonnet, salt, sugar and pimento berries for about 5-7 minutes. Let cool for about 3-4 hours or (best) overnight.

NOTE: If you haven’t worked with Scotch Bonnets before, be careful. They are extremely hot, and can leave welts on your skin if you’re not careful when cutting them. Do NOT rub your eyes or your nose when cutting. I recommend cuting the pepper in thin strips, using a plastic baggy to move them onto your knife, and then adding to the vinegar sauce. Afterwards, clean your knife and cutting board.

If you want this dish SPICY, use even more of the Scotch Bonnet. When measuring the Scotch Bonnet’s heat, take a look at the Scoville Scale, which measures the amount of capsaicin in peppers. Consider for a moment that Jalapeños have about 2500-8000 Scoville Units, while Scotch Bonnets fall at about 100,000 to 250,000 SU. Pepper spray, to level set, is about two million SU. So, check the spice-tolerance of your guests prior to moving forward with this pepper, especially in consideration of adding more.

Wash and dry the fish. Add a bit of salt and pepper and then dredge in flour. As I’ve mentioned before, seasoned flour is a great option for this kind of dish. Use it here if you have it.

Add vegetable oil to a hot pan and cook fish for 3-4 minutes per side. Add to an oven safe dish and pour the vinegar mixture over the fish. Add to the hot oven for about 8 to 10 more minutes, or until the fish is flaky, but not overcooked (this is tbd depending on the fish you choose -my mahi fillet took about 18-20 minutes in total).

Remove from the oven, add bruised cilantro and let sit for 30-40 minutes to let the vinegar absorb into the fish. This dish isn’t commonly served hot, so if that’s your thing, let it sit and then re-heat it slightly. I prefer the flavor at room temperature, but again, if that’s not your thing…

Serve with rice and black beans, or, as i did, as a delicious Jamaican fish taco.

Tis the season for leftovers. With the traditional spread of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing and cranberry sauce, the leftovers are indeed often better than the main event. However, after sandwiches, and the inevitable re-warming/repeat of the holiday meal, we often run into a dead-end.

Here are a couple of fun ideas you might try, or expand upon.

Each of these features the stuffing cake as its base. Our family used the traditional store bought stuffing mix (I think we used this brand), and then added chicken stock, raisins and other simple accouterments. I added a whole, beaten, egg to about two cups of stuffing mix, blended quickly in the food processor and formed into cakes. I cooked this in oil for about 2-2.5 minutes per side and removed to a cookie sheet in a warm oven.

The stuffing cakes, crunchy from the pan frying and warm in the center, have this wonderful, familiar flavor of stuffing, with the sweetness of raisins, celery, herbs, apples, or whatever you’ve added previously. The possibilities for these are vast.

A quick search didnt’ turn up too many variations, so I encourage you to send them to me if you come across them.

A fellow blogger over at The Barber Bunch has a cool take on this concept.

Sauteed Green Bean Casserole

The first topping is a simple re-imagining of  the traditional green bean casserole, with the added benefit that the green beans and mushrooms haven’t spent 30 minutes cooking in the oven, and the white wine, garlic and stand on their own quite well.

Again, it’s a familiar, comforting flavor profile, with a fun new twist.

I used moreover green beans, mushrooms, white wine, garlic and cream.

• Saute a crushed garlic clove or two in butter and remove when it turns golden
• Add mushrooms (about a cup depending on how many cakes you intend to make) and fry in the garlic oil. Remember the rule about mushrooms: leave them alone so they brown slightly. Stir them to much and you’ll reintroduce a cold surface a hot pan, in essence steaming the mushrooms. No one likes gray, rubbery mushrooms. If you have a recipe that calls specifically for these, I’d love to see it.
• Remove mushrooms, add another small pat of butter, a glug of chicken stock and a glug of white wine to the pan. Cook green beans about two minutes per side in simmering wine/butter mixture.
• Reintroduce the mushrooms to the pan and add a few shots of cream, Mr. S and Mrs. P. If you’re feeling adventurous, grate some fresh nutmeg into the mixture as well.
• Stir occasionally as the mixture reduces. When the consistency thickens, remove from heat and spoon over warm stuffing cakes.

Turkey Sausage Hash

This is as simple as it gets. I used moreover turkey sausage from an earlier night in the week, added a few onions, marjoram. ground red pepper and chicken stock.  I encourage you to use turkey scraps and a bit more than a cap full of cider vinegar if sausage isn’t just laying around.

• Cook the onions in butter and chicken stock until translucent. Add chopped turkey sausage with the casing removed (easy to do, just slice the sausage on one side, from end to end, and peel off the casing).

• Add marjoram and red pepper flakes, turn to simmer, and cover for about 5 minutes.
• Remove from heat when the onion mixture starts to come together (I judge this by the slightly glistening look that the reduced stock, caramelizing onions and turkey sausage begin to give off. you’ll see it in the picture above).
• As always, make sure you’ve introduce Mr. P and Mrs. S.
• As above, spoon hot mixture over stuffing cakes and serve.
• This would be FAB with a fried egg. Give it a try.

More later

it's all about skin side down in a hot, hot pan

Here’s the link to the Roast Chicken recipe page on Foodista:

As promised, here is the result of the deboned whole chicken.

I find few things more comforting than a properly roasted chicken. They’re quite affordable and ready cooked at most grocery stores, but cooking one at home is a skill you should learn to master.

Recently, I’ve found that I achieve far better results by cutting up the whole roaster into separate pieces. For this version of Recipe Play, I butterflied the breasts and removed the breast bone from within, rather than separating the breasts from the bone during the deboning process. It cooked evenly and was quite easy to carve. I found that it also preserved the integrity of the skin.

But how to prep it? I’ve tried so many different approaches to seasoning and prepping chickens. This worked the best. The secret ingredient here: one packet of powdered ranch dressing mix. Yep, you read that correctly, Ranch…Dressing…Mix.

Now, if you’re worried about the contents of a spice pack such as this, you can replicate it using the parsley, onion and garlic powder below…plus a decent amount of salt.

And, here is a recipe to make your own mix – Ranch Dressing Mix

I used the following:

• The rind of one whole lemon, grated with a box grater
• The juice of the same lemon, squeezed out over the chicken
• Dry parsley (if you’re not using the spice mix)
• Dry marjoram
• Onion powder (if you’re not using the spice mix)
• Garlic powder (if you’re not using the spice mix)
• Salt (go ahead, be generous with your use)
• Pepper
• Lemon herb butter (recipe coming soon, but basically butter, fresh parsley, a pinch of the lemon rind, a squeeze of lemon juice and garlic powder)
• Two onions cut up into pieces

Arrange the roaster on a cookie sheet with foil. Cover the pieces with the lemon juice. Massage the herb butter into the skin and onto the flesh. Combine spices in a bowl and cover liberally (even under the skin, being careful not to tear it too much. Just to be thorough, go back over all the pieces with cracked pepper and sea salt. Cover and throw it in the fridge for about an hour.

Remove from the fridge and let stand at room temperate. Prepare your roasting pan by adding a small glug of olive oil and rubbing it around the surface with your hands. Turn the oven to between 400-425 to preheat and add the pan. By the time the oven is up to temp, the pan should be super hot.

Remove the pan and add the chicken pieces skin side down. Add the onion pieces around the chicken and the quartered pieces of squeezed lemon. You’re going to cook the chicken skin side down only (this method produced the crispiest chicken skin I’ve ever achieved) for about 40 minutes depending on the temp of your oven. Check the temp at around 35 minutes. It should be about 160 degrees when taken from the flesh – not the bone. When it reaches this temp, pull the roaster out of the oven, and turn the pieces flesh-side down. Let sit in the pan for about 5-10 minutes and then remove pieces to a cutting board. Tent with foil and let rest for 10 minutes or so (the chicken will continue to cook, but letting it rest allows the juices to redistribute into the meat).

While the chicken is resting, add cooked onions and lemon pieces from the pan, a can of chicken stock (about 8 oz. of fresh stock if you have it) and the juices from the roasting pan. Blend until it becomes smooth, then strain (you can actually serve it as is if you’d like, for a more rustic approach). Serve gravy in a gravy boat to allow your guests, friends, family to add the sauce if they’d like. The chicken really doesn’t need it, but it is tasty.

Serve with sauteed broccoli, green salad and rice. For this particular spice mix, a dry french chardonnay would pair nicely.

Or, you can merely eat the chicken as you carve it, as I am want to do.

More later