Showing posts with label steak. Show all posts

Ropa Vieja – old clothes, but tasty!

Tomato Chutney as a dip. For crackers I used a cookie cutter to cut flour tortillas,
painted them with olive oil, sprinkled salt and baked them in a 350ºF (185ºC)

Sliced tomatoes, topped with rice vinegar marinated onion
was a nice and colorful addition.

What a tasty pile of old clothes it is! Before I get started, I'm putting out a disclaimer. Ropa vieja is made around the Caribbean basin, by everybody and his mother who drink rum all night, dance the Macarena, then cook all day. So, I’m sure that your mother, wife, girlfriend, or favorite stalker makes the best ropa vieja on earth.

By the way, what does Macarena mean? Is it a) a salsa queen who has gobbled a Big Mac, without using her hands b) the best macaroni in Hoboken c) a Peruvian princess whose rena is pleading for larger size pants d) I know, but I ain’t sayin’ because you might tell my wife.

The answer will come in next week’s blog about humiliated salsa dancers.

Meanwhile, back to the recipe. It's a great one!

Ropa Vieja

2 nice sized flank steaks, sprinkled with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 or 2 strips of bacon, roughly chopped

Enough olive oil to make 3 tbsp when added to the rendered bacon fat

1 medium to large onion, peeled, quartered, and thinly sliced

1 red bell pepper thinly sliced

1 green bell pepper thinly sliced

6 oz tomato paste

1 tsp each of dried cumin, marjoram (or thyme), and oregano

5 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

1/2 cup dry white wine

2 cans beef consume (Campbell’s condensed), plus just enough water to make 3 cups total

1 16oz can whole, peeled tomatoes, undrained (crush these with your hands as you add them)

1/2 cup green, pitted olives, sliced in half

1/2 cup roasted red bell peppers, roughly chopped

3 tbsp capers, drained and rinsed

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (to be sprinkled over the cooked ropa vieja)

Place the bacon in a Dutch oven, over medium heat and cook until the fat is rendered. Remove the bacon pieces and add enough olive oil to make approximately 3 Tbsp of total fat.

I prefer to grill the flank steaks on my gas grill, but if you don’t have a gas grill, cook the steaks briefly in the fat/oil until they are lightly browned on both sides. Remove the steaks from the pot and set them aside.

Add the onions and (raw) peppers to the pot and cook until they are soft, about 4-5 minutes. Add tomato paste, cumin, marjoram, oregano, and garlic. Mix well and continue cooking for another 4 minutes. Add the wine and cook, scrapping the bottom of the pot to mix in all those delicious bits. Return the bacon to the pot and mix.

Cut the steaks cross-grain into 1 1/2 inch wide strips. (the strips will be about six inches long) Return the steaks to the pot, along with the beef stock and can of tomatoes. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and cook until steaks are very tender, 2-3 hours. This may be done stovetop, but to avoid having to watch and stir for several hours, I heat my oven to 230ºF (110ºC) and slide the covered pot in the hot oven.

After the steaks are tender, remove them from the pot, shred the meat and put the shredded meat back in the pot, along with the olives, roasted red bell pepper strips, capers, and vinegar. Cook about 30 minutes longer.

Before serving, sprinkle the chopped cilantro on top.

As a side dish, try this: 2 cups of rice, 4 cups of water, 1 tbsp cumin seeds, paprika, 3 tbsp olive oil.

Put the oil in a pot and add the cumin seeds. When the seeds begin to darken, pour in the rice and the paprika and mix until the rice is nicely coated. Pour in the water and let the rice boil for 10 minutes, uncovered. At the end of ten minutes, you’ll see steam holes in the rice, with the top layer of rice appearing to be not fully cooked. Remove the pot from the heat, cover it and let it stand 5-10 minutes. Fluff with a fork and serve.

What’s For Dessert?

Fruit Mélange over shortcakes, with whipped cream

4 cups of mixed fruit cubes

1/4 cup Amontillado Sherry (medium)

8 scones

cream for whipping

1 tbsp sugar

Make basic scone recipe (see a previous post), but add 8 Tbsp of butter instead of 4, to make the scone flakier. For aesthetics, I cut the scones in rounds instead of pie wedges.

Put the fruit in a bowl, pour the sherry over the cubes of fruit and mix well.

Whip the cream. Add the sugar and whip again. Do this out of order and the cream won’t whip!

By Jove, I think you’ve got it!

Be sure to tell your mother, this ropa vieja wasn’t as good as hers!

Elk Steak Dinner

My dad is the local gun guru, and as such, he always has a line on some game meat through his gun pals who hunt. Dad hasn't hunted in years, but he did when we were kids, and I remember one time he came home with a moose that we ate for the better part of a year. It was awesome meat, from what I recall, and to this day, I really enjoy moose meat. Game meat in general is great stuff: basically organic, free-range, drug free, and leaner than beef, pork, or other meats you get in the grocery store. And it tastes amazing. Some meats I avoid, however: bear is gross and I don't like eating teddy bears; white tail deer is very gamey and strong; and I won't touch cougar for ethical reasons.

Elk is a large animal and it's extremely lean. I have had elk done poorly, and when it's done poorly, it's really bad. However, when it's done well, it's excellent. Last night, Dad brought over an elk steak of unknown cut for me to grill up along with a beef sirloin he had hanging around his freezer.

The elk steak was ginormous, and it required some trimming to that I could fit in into my rather modestly-sized grill pan. it had two sections of bone in it and a large piece of very tough fat around the edge that was almost the texture of cheese rind. After trimming, I managed to fit it into my grill pan. I seasoned it with Montreal Steak Spice.

I have one of those cast iron grilling pans and I've yet to master using the stupid thing because I always seem to heat it too high and cause a lot of smoking to happen. While grilling last night, it got so smokey in my kitchen that my smoke detector, located in the living room, went of twice. I reduced the heat but still got smoked out. It was brutal!

I don't know how long I grilled this per side. I do know that you don't want to grill the crap out of game meats because they are so lean, so my aim was to cook this to a nice medium rare - which is how I like my steaks done anyway. Once I took it out of the pan and let it rest, though, it wasn't done to my father's satisfaction: it was still too rare for him. So I put it back in the pan for another few minutes - creating more smoke - until finally, it was done to perfection.

It was delicious and cut like butter. It was a beautiful thing indeed. I served it with some mini potatoes, also donated by my dad, and some yams. It was so big we each had a hunk and I sent my dad home with about 1/3 of it that was left over.

Oh, and the beef steak was pretty good, too, but not as good as this bit of elk. Go game meats!

Camping Grub 2010

My SIL and I went camping recently, as has been our tradition for the last three years. It was a totally awesome trip, and if you want to read more about it, you can go here. The full Flickr set is here.

As usual, we ate like queens! Here is a rundown of some of our food.

On day one, we went to soak in Ainsworth Hot Springs, then drove the short distance from there to Kaslo, where we had one freaking awesome lunch at a place called The Rosewood Cafe. Here are our lunches.

I had a fantabulous Monte Christo Sandwich with homemade baked fries.

Shan had a huge turkey burger with all the fixings & a side salad that was served with a homemade rosemary vinaigrette.

More to follow on this restaurant as it was absolutely brilliant!

One morning we had Eggs Benny, which is something we usually have while camping. It's just such decadent camping grub!

Dad joined us on Saturday, and he brought a set of really amazing steaks for dinner. We didn't have the BBQ with us this time and the grate on the fire pit was way too filthy to cook anything on directly, so we opted to pan fry them in cast iron skillets on the camp stove. Shan seasoned them with garlic butter and Montreal Steak Spice, and we served them with garlic bread (which she baked over the fire as it was covered in foil) and some rice. The steaks were like butter - completely awesome!

More from this trip upcoming, as we went to the Hills Garlic Festival in New Denver, too.

Lunch at Frisco's Seafood & Steak House

OK, here is my latest NaNoWriMo update! The end is near - and so is my 50,000 words!

My dad gets really excited when Save-on Foods in Nelson has a case-lot sale, so we recently took another trip over there, which of course, meant another lunch out! On a whim, my dad suggested we check out Nelson's Prestige Lakeside Resort, where there is a restaurant called Frisco's Steak & Seafood House. I was game, so off we went.

Frisco's is in a lovely spot, right overlooking the water and marina located at the resort. The restaurant is quite beautiful, too, with a darker but warm ambiance and a huge gas fireplace. It was pretty busy when we got there at 12:30, but the service was excellent and the place emptied out quickly as 1:00 approached. There was a hot buffet on offer, but nothing on it appealed to us, so we perused the lunch menu and found a lot to choose from.

My dad doesn't eat seafood at all, so he went with the Beef Tender Tips with Asparagus & Portabello Sizzler. He also wanted some soup (it was a chilly day) so he ordered the French Onion Prime Rib Soup. I had a tough time choosing between the Frisco's Seafood Salad and the Frisco Burger. In the end, I went with the burger with half Caesar salad and half fries.

Both of us made great choices, except Dad wasn't keen on the soup. He said it was kind of bland, not nice & rich as a French Onion should be. But he was very impressed with his Sizzler! It came out sizzling on a cast iron platter and Dad said it was really delicious.

The Frisco Burger contained beer battered halibut on a sourdough bun, topped with pickle, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and tartar sauce. It was really good, but for a signature burger it was a little bit uninspired. It wasn't particularly interesting even though it was well-prepared and tasted great. The Caesar salad, on the other hand, was fabulous! This was not your typical Caesar dressing; it definitely seemed homemade and was far better than any Caesar dressing I've had in a restaurant in ages. The fries were also good. I loved the garnishes they used on our plates; you don't get that everywhere, let me tell you!

Both of us were way too full to have dessert. The prices were very reasonable given the quality of the food and the portion sizes. I had a quick peek at the dinner menu and it's very fancy and has things on it like lobster dinners, Dungeness crab dinners, and very expensive steaks. I won't be having dinner there any time soon, I can tell you that, but I'd definitely go back for lunch!

Family Dinner

Sometimes it's just so nice to have someone cook a meal for you! Last weekend, me, my dad, my brother, and my SIL got together for a family dinner - something we hadn't done in a while because of everyone's hectic schedules.

Dad provided the steaks, and my brother, Jem, marinated them in Worcestershire Sauce, balsamic vinegar, and some steak spice. Then he threw them on the BBQ.