Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Grill Master B

Lately (and shall I say finally), citizens of the Hudson Valley have received the weather we deserve:  sunshine, sunshine, sunshine.  It was so lovely and warm, with daytime highs in the low 70s.  I ventured over the Hudson River Walkway with my friend Mary.



The dog has been the recipient of some long, family walks.



And all this warm weather means grilling season has begun!  Not that we ever took a seasonal break.  Brian grilled leg of lamb over the holidays.  In early February, he put a rack of lamb on the rotisserie (and oh my goodness, you better believe that was the best rack of lamb).  We've been enjoying grilled pizza every few weeks since we first made it last August.  Our grill has actually received a lot of good use during months usually reserved for cooking (and hiding) indoors.

This was not always the case.  Before we bought a house and before we received an awesome gas grill as a wedding present from Brian's parents, we lived in a second-story apartment and our grill was a little table top number with a little can of propane attached to it.   Brian would have to hustle up and down the stairs, ferrying items to be grilled and items to be consumed, checking the heat (always inconsistent), and generally producing awesome meals in the face of challenge.  My good friend Khambay from culinary school witnessed Brian's grill prowess on that little grill on more than one occasion and referred to Brian as Grill Master B.

Often we like to grill flank steak.  It takes to marinade quite well, becoming tender, and it benefits from grilling.  Also, to be frank, it is one of the cheaper cuts of beef and therefore we can afford it.  We always start from the same base point and then augment.  Today, I'll give you that base and then in the future I'll share the augmentations.



I should make a note about serving sizes.  From a one pound serving of flank steak we can get four meals: two dinners and two lunches.  This equals about 4 ounces of steak per person.  Most people would consider this a small portion so you may want to budget 6 - 8 ounces of meat per person.


GRILLED FLANK STEAK
Yield:  3-4 servings

1   pound flank steak, trimmed of fat
1/4   cup low-sodium soy sauce
Freshly ground black pepper

Combine steak and soy sauce in a one-gallon ziploc bag and marinate in the refrigerator anywhere from two hours to overnight.  The longer you marinate the steak, the more tender the final product.



Remove the steak from the refrigerator one hour before you plan to grill it.  A good general rule of thumb when grilling any kind of meat is to bring it to room temperature first.

Preheat the grill to medium.  Remove the steak from the marinade and discard the marinade.   Season the steak with freshly ground black pepper.  You do not need salt because the soy sauce, even the low-sodium version, provides an ample amount.

On our grill (and this is where I say that all grills are different, may have temperature fluctuations, and may have hot spots), Brian grills a 1-inch to 1 1/2-inch thick steak six to seven minutes per side.  When it is done grilling, he lets the meat rest for five to 10 minutes before thinly slicing it against the grain.

When we ate flank steak last week, we served it with potatoes and asparagus and my version of salsa verde which I promise to share with you soon.  It was a delightful way to usher in spring!

Friday, March 5, 2010

Astonishingly Foul


If you live in the Hudson Valley, then last week was bad.  Very bad.  From Monday night until Sunday afternoon, the sun did not shine.  It did not appear.  It was nowhere to be found.  In its place was just gray.  Everything was gray.  The sky, the light, the mood, the lawns.  Grayness fell from the sky in the form of an awful slushy mess that the meteorologist kept calling snow, but this was unlike any other snow I've ever encountered.  When the snow was done, then the ice would fall from the sky.  It, too, was gray.  When the ice subsided, the rains came.  Sometimes, the wind would make an appearance just to add to the malaise.   An addition, by the way, that led to downed trees and power lines.



Brian writes a weekly update for our families since the distance between all of us means we are not involved in each other's daily commerce of life.  Here is the lead paragraph from last week's update:

Hello from New York!  I guess the big story from last week was our astonishingly foul weather, with two winter storms.  Even by east coast standards, it was appalling.  We had five full days of nonstop wet heavy snow, with no interruption, just a constant deluge of slushy snow.  Our usual daily routine was to spend about two hours every morning clearing the driveway and our decks, with much of that time spent on the three-foot-high wall of compacted icy snow at the end of the driveway resulting from the town's plowing of the street.  This would be repeated in the late afternoon, for a total of about three or four hours a day of snow management.  We have to use the word "snow" with a bit of caution here, because this was not really snow in the normal sense of the word.  This was some kind of evil, sticky, heavy substance more akin to wet cement than to what you may have experienced as snow.  Although our road crews do an extraordinarily good job here, our streets were ankle deep in slush for most of the week.  Even the dog wasn't too thrilled about walking in it.  On Saturday morning, when the precipitation finally stopped, I measured the accumulation in our front yard at eighteen inches. 

Nothing was spared.  Not even the tall, proud mailbox.


To be fair, one of us did enjoy all that snow:

When weather like this appears as it did last week (and last June) in which the sun decides to go on some sort of extended, and unapproved I might add, vacation, two things occur.  One, I hide under the bed as I am prone to malaise.  In fact, I was so unable to deal with all of the grayness that I threw in the towel and put myself to bed at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday night.  Two, my thoughts turn to the food I associate with warmer weather: strawberries and corn and lettuces and tomatoes.

You can have tomatoes right now, though.  You don't have to wait until July and August.  Really!  Normally, I wouldn't know such a thing.  I would avoid those awful, mealy tomatoes of winter and patiently wait for the gorgeous, ripe, juicy tomatoes of summer.   However, I live with (and love dearly) Brian.  And Brian dearly loves tomatoes (the word addiction has been thrown around).  He has to have them (in much the same way my dad, brother and I consider a day incomplete without a little chocolate).

At first, a compromise was struck.  We would get the little grape tomatoes and put those on our salads in the winter.  However, we grew tired of lettuce in winter, because like the tomatoes, it lacked flavor.  Besides, it makes no sense to pay more for less ripe produce in winter because it has to be shipped from someplace far away, like South America, never mind the environmental concerns of such an endeavor.  We stopped eating salads which meant no reason to eat the grape tomatoes.

Brian is true to his loves and he still wanted his tomatoes.  Then, I happened upon a wonderful recipe for roasted plum tomatoes.  Slow roasting tomatoes increases their flavor and their color such that one might hardly notice, if at all, the tomato started out as a mealy, underripe plum tomato.


In fact, we've grown so fond of roasted tomatoes, we now make this gem of a recipe once per week.  We spread the tomatoes on homemade whole wheat baguettes, we use them in the base of pasta sauces, and we use them on pizzas.

The recipe was shared by Molly Wizenberg who writes the Cooking Life column for Bon Appetit magazine.  She also has a great blog, Orangette, and a delightful book, A Homemade Life, all of which I have enjoyed reading.



In the meantime, if you live with a tomato lover or just need a taste of summer amidst all this winter blah, this is a wonderful recipe