Sunday Dish

Steak Salad with Champagne and Mint Vinaigrette

Summer may be coming to an end in your part of the world, but here it's still HOT.  It's getting me a tad hot under the collar.  I'm a bit over sitting in my house, blinds drawn, AC running.  I'm ready for stew, hot crusty bread, fuzzy socks!  But, we're still the throes of heat and dinner must be light.

This is a good combo of grilling, lo cal and tasty.
 
Steak Salad with Champagne Vinaigrette. 

I would love it if you'd make it for your gal (or guy) pals and let me know how it turned out.

Ingredients:

1-1 1/2 lbs. steak (I usually go for what's on sale to be honest) marinated for at least 1 hour (see recipe for marinade below.)
2 red, orange or yellow peppers (or a combo)
1 large yellow onion - sliced into 1/2 moons
Grape or cherry tomatoes - cut in 1/2
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
Your choice of greens:  red leaf, arugula, spinach, I usually like a combo of all of these.
Champagne and Mint Vinaigrette (see recipe below)

___________________________________________________________

Begin by making the marinade and letting the meat marinate for at least an hour. (see recipe below)

Next, roast the peppers. 

You can do this under the broiler or on the bbq, whatever is easiest for you.  Once the peppers are charred on all sides, transfer them, while they are still hot, to a large bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

While those sit, caramelize your onions. 

In a large skillet heat up some olive oil over medium/high heat.  Add the onions and cook until they begin to brown, stirring them often. Then turn the heat to low and continue to cook the onions until they are soft and a nice golden color, about 20 minutes.   Set aside.

Now, take your peppers from the bowl and remove the seeds.  You can also remove the skin if you like, but I enjoy the charred flavor.  Dice the roasted peppers and set aside.

It's time to make the vinaigrette.  (see recipe below)

Next, cook your steak.  I cooked mine in a grill pan, but you can do it under the broiler or on the grill.  Cook it to your preferred "doneness"  I like medium rare.  Once it's done, set it on a cutting board, cover, and let it sit for at least 10 minutes, Then slice the steak into strips.

From here you can compose the salad, making one large salad or individual servings, as you like.   Place lettuce in the bowl.  Add steak, peppers, onions, feta and tomatoes.  Drizzle with vinaigrette and serve.

____________________________________________________________
 
For the Steak Marinade:

1 cup red wine
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 cloves garlic - mashed or minced
Thyme - to taste
salt and pepper

Put the meat in a nonreactive dish.  Poke a few holes in it with a fork.  Add all ingredients to the dish.  Cover and let the meat marinate for at least an hour, but longer is better.

For the Vinaigrette:
1 cup champagne vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
squeeze of lemon
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 table spoon fresh mint
pinch of oregano (or a little more if you are using fresh)
small scoop of the diced/roasted peppers
small spoonful of the caramelized onions
1 clove of garlic - minced
Salt and pepper to taste

Take all the ingredients and mix them together in a blender.  Place the vinaigrette in the refrigerator until you are ready to put your salad together.

Little Ol' Me?

I have been remiss.  I seem to be starting quite a few posts off that way these days!  I could list so many excuses, but why? 

This is going to be short today (yes, I'm busy.) But a few days back I got my first food blog "award."  And I forgot to brag about it.  How lame of me. 

Now, getting this lovely accolade was good enough, but how exciting that it also coincided with my 40th birthday. Yup, that's right, the big 4.0.  Yikes!  So this was an extra special little gift on my big day.

One of my favorite blogs since I wandered into the realm of the foodie blog-o-sphere has been A Southern Grace.  Grace has a sweet and sassy whit and knows her way around the kitchen to boot.  She has been a supporter of my fledgling blog and I can't thank her enough.

So when I wandered over to her site the other day and found she'd passed on this...

Well, let's just say, I was all farklempt, (I always thought it was spelled vaclempt.  Looked it up, who knew?)   Thanks to Grace for a great blog and for being a regular reader.

So in the spirit of paying it forward I'll pass this on to some of the blogs I check in with on a regular basis:

Bitchin Camero

Noble Pig

Canela Y Comino

And Then I Do The Dishes

(Eating Club) Vancouver

I try to tell my friends about what a cool community the food blog world is, but alas, no one quite gets it.  But, if you are reading this, chances are, you know exactly what I mean.  MWAH!

Yia-Yia's Potato Salad

The weather is definitely still nice and warm here in Southern Calif - good enough to eat dinner on the patio.  So when my good friend Vanesa invited me over for a little ham dinner I said sure and offered to bring potato salad.   Figured as long as I was going to make a batch - I'd share it with you!

For as long as I can remember my Grandma, "Yia-Yia", made this potato salad whenever we would come to visit.  She was rather famous for it.  So famous that at her funeral, as each of us got up to say what we'd loved most about her, one of my cousins stood and listed all the things that made her special, including, you guessed it, her potato salad. 

The ingredients are few and there are a couple that I've not come across in other potato salad recipes.  But, I'm telling you, there is something about the combination of flavors that has converted many a die hard potato salad hater into a fan, myself included!

The original recipe, as told to me by my Grandma, yielded something like 100 pounds of potato salad. Okay not that much, but ALOT.  I've tried to cut it down a bit, but this recipe doubles well, in case  you do want or need more.

Ingredients:

2 lbs. waxy potatoes (don't use Russets - too mushy)

3 hardboiled eggs - chopped

1 yellow onion - diced

1 - 3 oz can sliced black olives

1 jar pimentos

1 tablespoon (approx) celery seed

salt and pepper

Mayonnaise (only use Best Foods please...and not the reduced fat, pleeaasse)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Boil the potatoes until they are fork tender.  Drain them, allow them to cool and then remove the skins.  Dice the potatoes into 1 inch pieces and place in a large mixing bowl.

Chop up your hard boiled eggs and add those to the bowl with the potatoes.

Next add the diced onion, olives, pimentos and seasonings.

Then mix together with generous amounts of mayonnaise.  You want the mixture to look a bit wet because the potatoes will continue to absorb the mayo and you do not want a dry potato salad.  Yia-Yia would not like that!

Eat up! 

Late Summer Salad

Last weekend was pretty much the first weekend all Summer that we've had a family BBQ.  Handsome Cohort, Todd, has been gone, and well, I'm not much of a grill master on my own.  So Todd set to grilling.  This man does nothing simply.  Two BBQ sauces from scratch, pork and tri-tip, grilled corn and baked potatoes.  He and his oldest son, a major chef in the making, spent hours in the kitchen having a high old time.  Of course I was off flitting about and didn't take any photos.  But I did make a salad to compliment the more heavy items on our menu.  I'm calling this beauty my...

Late Summer Salad

Ingredients:

- 4 ears Roasted corn - corn removed from the ears. We did our on the que, but in the oven is fine as well.
-  1 bunch Asparagus - cooked in boiling water for about 5 minutes until tender yet toothy, then cut into bite sized pieces.
- 1 large Jicama - peeled and cut into matchsticks. (See below for my new favorite snack too!)
- 1 bunch Green Onions - diced
- 1 Red Bell Pepper - diced
- 1 cup (or so) grape tomatoes - halved
- 4 oz. Feta cheese crumbled
- 1/4 cup Fresh Oregano - or you could use basil, or dill whatever you fancy.
- Olive oil and Vinegar - to taste
- Salt and Pepper

Combine all the ingredients and toss.  Normally I might also add just a pinch of sugar, but the corn was so sweet it didn't need it at all.   This is the kind of salad you can make so easily with whatever veggies you have lying around.  Sort of a peasant salad varietal!   Easy - breezy!

Before I leave you for now - I have to tell you about my new favorite snack.  We discovered it that nite.  I was cutting up the jicama for the salad and cut off a few big slices.  I brushed them with olive oil and then sprinkled them with salt and pepper and asked Todd to throw them on the grill for me.

The results were delicious!  I cut them up into matchsticks as well and would have put them on the salad but I gobbled them up too quickly.  Grilling the jicama completely brings out a whole other flavor!  So good and so lo-cal!  Bonus!  If I hadn't already cut up the raw jicama, I would have put the rest on the grill.  I'm hooked. 

It was a lovely, lazy day, full of hammock swings, watering plants, sipping wine and listening to our kids laughter.   It's hard to believe Summer is almost over, and we were just getting started....

Pad Thai

I've been slowing down on posting a bit since my handsome cohort returned to town.  What can I say?  I've been too busy cooking and eating out and basking in the glow of having him back home to sit down at the computer.  But the good news is, I have about 3 posts "in the can" and am excited to share them with y'all.   

I love Thai food (that was a sharp left turn, I know, but let's get to the good stuff.) but aside from the occasional stir fry I don't cook much Asian cuisine at home.  This must change, especially with the success of my very first Pad Thai.  OMG, this turned out delicious. 

Before I go any further, I'll tell you that although I did adapt and add too her recipe, my main source of inspiration came from from one of my favorite blogs, Chez Pim.  She's a pretty famous food blogger and did and entire write up on Pad Thai for Beginners.  Like all her stuff, it's well written and thorough.   If you've never made Pad Thai before and would like to, I'd certainly recommend checking that post out first.  It helped me quite a bit.  So thank you Pim!

Pad Thai - Sunday Dish Style:

Ingredients:

For the Sauce:

- 1 cup fish sauce
- 1 cup Tamarind pulp
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- Few dashes Chili Powder
- Few dashes Chili Sauce

Mix tamarind and fish sauce together then add seasonings according to your taste. 
Results:  This was super duper salty.   Next time I would use a bit less fish sauce because it is a bit too intense for my palate.  Also, when I used with the noodles, I over indulged, less is more people, less is more.

Remaining Ingredients:

- Pad Thai noodles.  Soak in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, drain and rinse with cold water. I loved the noodles, they had a really wonderful consistency, and unlike regular pasta they didn't get sticky at all and kept quite well in the refrigerator.

Garnishes:

- Firm Tofu - cubed.  Make sure you use very firm tofu.  The kind I bought was a bit on the soft side, and while it held up in the pan I feel it would have been better had it been firmer.
- Egg (there is a trick to making the egg just right - screwed that up the first time around, then went back and read how Pim did it.  Guess what? Perfecto!)
- Bean sprouts
- Green onions - chopped - use green and white parts.
- Red bell pepper - chopped or in matchsticks.
- Radishes - thinly sliced
- Cilantro - chopped
- Chili sauce - burns your lips in the most wonderful way possible.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Heat a decent amount of oil in the wok (another rookie mistake I made.  didn't use enough the first time and my noodles stuck to the pan.)  Add the tofu and a bit of sauce and cook until the tofu browns.  Add a handful of noodles and a bit more sauce (gentle reminder - don't drown it.)  and toss the noodles to coat.  Then add the been sprouts, green onions and bell peppers.  Cook until the veggies soften a bit, but not too long, they should still have a nice crisp to them.  Then shove all the ingredients up the side of the wok and tilt it a bit so some oil runs back down into the empty spot in the pan.  Crack the egg, break the yolk, and let it cook for about a minute or so.  Then, after it's cooked, mix it back in with the noodles.  Garnish with cilantro, radishes, more green onions and of course that lovely chili sauce!    The fun part for us was that everyone got to garnish it in their own way.  Little Chef passed on the chili sauce and I believe that was a wise move on her part!  Enjoy and make sure to check out Pim's Pad Thai For Beginners to learn more!