Meaty Matters

Though I don't eat lamb or veal so I'm only able to use half the book, Bruce Aidells' The Complete Meat Cookbook is one of my all time favorites. The book is filled with great information about buying, preparing and cooking meat. His recipes are great and he offers plenty of ideas for leftovers. And the man really knows how to season food. Do you know how sometimes you put a marinade or a rub on a piece of meat but when cooked you can't really taste it very much? That will not happen with Mr. Aidells' recipes. He is not shy about adding bold flavor with recipes calling for loads of garlic and generous use of spice. These recipes are not for the tender-tongued. I love that. Some of my favorites from his book are the Nogales Steak Tacos, the Teriyaki Flank Steak and the Cuban Roast Pork with Mojo Sauce. The latter will leave you with leftover pork to make a divine Cuban Pork Sandwich. The recipe I made today is Priscilla's Marinated Beef and Black Bean Salad. The salad recipe calls for jicama, but unfortunately, I couldn't find it at my corner market, so I used corn instead. I used a 1 1/2 lb piece of top sirloin - enough for 4 dinners easily.

We cook the steak medium rare, slice it thinly and serve it with the bean salad and something green. I recommend grilled pita bread on the side. It is reasonably healthy if you don't eat too much and the next day, it makes great leftovers. Dear husband did an admirable job with the grilled red onions, they were super sweet.


Priscilla's Marinated Beef and Black Bean Salad



Southwestern Spice Rub

1t ground cumin
1t chile powder, preferably Gebhardt's
2t salt, kosher
1t freshly ground pepper
1 1/2 t light or dark brown sugar
1/2t cayenne pepper
2t minced garlic
1t minced shallots or green onions

1 1/2 lbs. boneless top sirloin, flank steak or NY strip (personally, I wouldn't use this good a steak for this preparation)

Black Bean Salad (I halve this, for just the two of us)

3c cooked black beans or 2 cans, beans rinsed and drained
1c jicama, peeled, diced
1 roasted red or yellow pepper, diced
1/2c finely chopped green onions
1/2c coarsely chopped cilantro
1/4 c flat-leaf parsley (no big deal to leave out)
2c diced seeded ripe tomatoes (canned, not recommended)

Vinaigrette (I halve this too)

1T dijon mustard
1/4c fresh squeezed lime juice
1/4 c olive oil

Rub half the spice mixture on the steak. Let the steak marinate for at least 2 hours at room temp or cover with plastic and refrigerate overnight.

Combine the rest of the spice rub with the vinaigrette ingredients, whisk

If the steak was refrigerated, remove it from the fridge 30 to 1 hour before cooking. Prepare a grill. Grill the steak over med-hot until done to your liking, 130* for med. rare. Let rest before slicing.

Meanwhile, put the beans, jicama, pepper and green onions into a large skillet and set over med. heat. Stir in the vinaigrette and mix well to coat the beans. Cook until beans are warmed through, 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and stir in the cilantro, parsley and tomatoes.

Spoon the beans onto a plate. Slice the steak diagonally into 1/4 inch thick slices and arrange over beans. Garnish with cilantro, if you like.

Happy Birthday, Julia

Although Julia Child has moved on to that big kitchen in the sky, there is still good reason to remember her birthday. I thank Julia for making me appreciate the art of cooking and what could be learned about other cultures through food. As a child, I loved to watch her television show, often preferring to see her carve a chicken or make bouillabaise over watching Saturday morning cartoons. Julia using a cleaver to chop the heads off fish was way more interesting than watching "Captain Caveman." So in honor of Julia's birthday today, I plan to cook one of her recipes for dinner or dessert. What am I making? I'm about to go to my cookbooks and determine that. My blogger friend, Lisa at Champagne Taste, has put together a lovely tribute to Ms. Julia, please have a look. Bon Appetit!

I ended up making Blueberry Nectarine Pie from Baking with Julia. This is great baking book that is completely out of my league. Beside this pie, I pretty much just look at the pictures. But the pie turned out nicely this time, better than a recent effort on vacation where I tossed in some blackberries (seeds = bad). I added 1 T more cornstarch for thicker juices and properly measured the fruit instead of just winging it, as I am known to do.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Starting right about this time every year, our dinners become an endless string of meals based on corn and tomatoes. The season is so fleeting that I feel an urgency to make all those dishes that you just can't make any other time. Like Caprese salad, that's a dish only worth making when tomatoes are acidy ripe. And if you are going to make a soup based on corn, it had better be some good corn, so now's the time.

We've had our share of corn-on-the-cob, corn-off-the-cob, corn salads and corn soups . I've made both Crema de Elote (Creamy mexican corn soup) and Corn chowder.

The chowder is a meal in a bowl from Jasper White, a chef from the northeast who really knows his chowders. He wrote a whole book on them. This is his recipe for a classic Corn chowder It has all usual ingredients that you'd expect in a chowder: corn, potatoes, red pepper, onion and bacon. And I promise, it will turn out just like you want corn chowder to taste. You don't need to add all the cream to a recipe like this, I never do. Sometimes I use half n half, somtimes milk, just be careful not to boil it.

Also recently, I have tried two of the corn saute recipes from the current issue of Fine Cooking. One is Corn sauteed with red potatoes, onion, bell pepper and BACON (on the back cover), and the other is Corn, onion, zucchini saute with cumin and coriander. For both dishes, I think the slow-sauteed sweet onion is what makes them especially good. I guess they really don't look like much, not with my photography skills anyway. But both corn sautees are really tasty. I can't share the recipes for these though, since they're in the current issue. We did the zucchini one with some grilled trout, stuffed with lemon slices and herbs. That was kind of novel for us.

And then there's tomatoes. We've been having Caprese salad and Bruschetta, just plain old tomatoes sliced and salted, and tomatoes "my mom's way," sliced with onion and oil, no vinegar. This night I made a cherry tomato salad with fresh mozz. Nichols Farm at the Evanston Farmers Market, offers mix and match of cherry tomatoes. So I can pick a few pear shaped, some cherry and globe ones, sweet 100's and all kinds of others, in every color imaginable, to make an interesting salad. I made a basil oil to drizzle over this, plus I splashed a little balsamic.