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Posts tagged ‘red meat’

May 8

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Only fools Russian….

I’m going to be 25 this June.  I’m still single with no prospects and no dependents.  I’m renting a room in an overpriced Bay Area apartment.  My mom and stepdad are within “I’m crying on the phone because there’s a spider in my bathtub” range.  My mother was 25 years old when she had me.  My mother was married; my mother owned a house and she lived further than 45 minutes away from her parents.  I’d be lying if I didn’t say that part of me gets overwhelmed when I think about how far behind I feel in relation to this.  When I was half my age I would have told you I planned to be having my first child by now too.  At 20 I would have told you I should be getting married at least around now with plans to have a child in two years or so.  Now standing here at the precipice of being halfway through my twenties I feel like marriage, kids, the picket fence…they are years away—if ever.

Despite the fact that the only thing I know I can plan is for life to upset my plans, I still have all these guidelines for the love and marriage thing.  The underlying strategy to these guidelines follows that old idiom “only fools rush in.”  Marriage would follow years of dating—children should be held off until the marriage is at least two years tested.  A home should only be bought in a neighborhood that’s been thoroughly vetted for these theoretical children’s future education from K through 12.  Definitely can’t have a kid until I’m ready to simultaneously start saving for their college fund!  All these well intentioned plans that are meant to keep me safe and secure and probably will ensure I never do any of the above.

At what point does this need for security become an excuse to not do any of it?   Is the truth really that I’m just bloody effing terrified of these very permanent life changes?  Will I ever be as brave as my mother was at my age?

I mean I say I’m focusing on my career.  It’s true but if I really wanted to, if I really wanted to I could set aside the money and raise a kid.  I could do it.  I’m physically at the right stage.  I’ve got a real job with real future prospects.  I’m just too damn selfish, too damn scared and well I would ideally like to have a life partner to raise a child with so I’m not really equipped but still…I could do it on my own.  Is there an opposite phrase for “Only Fools Rush In” something like “and even bigger fools need to be pulled in kicking and screaming?”  I know plenty of people who do…well the opposite of what I think should be done and they do it quite well.

Am I just making excuses hidden under the guise of wisdom?  What do you think?  Do you have similar “rules” for planning your future?  Oddly enough this all popped into my head because sometimes when I go for a run at work I find reruns of Roseanne on and I’ll watch them.  As far as sitcoms go this show really was something special.  It was actually clever, had continuity and managed to be thought provoking at times.  It wasn’t just some crass weekly potato about blue collar, white trash in Middle America.  The opening is always the family seated around a dinner table, interacting and loving each other.  I do have a craving for that in my life.

But until I’m ready to give up these selfish ways of my single youth, I can only supply the family meal and not the family.  That’s where this dish comes in—nothing screams Sunday night family dinner more than a classic from my cultural heritage: Beef Stroganoff.  The Jewish side of my family comes from the Ukraine/Russia Ashkenazi tribe and despite having never been to the “mother country” I seem to have retained some sort of cultural tastebuds.  My passion for fermented vegetable juices, cabbage soups, beets…not exactly American.  This main course will appeal to non-Russian Jews though as it’s really just a big pot of pasta, meat and creamy mushroom sauce.  In fact it should appeal to everyone BUT jews since as we all know mixing dairy and meat is decidedly not-kosher.  Oops.  Well like I said…I’m Jewish.   I don’t keep Kosher year round…and I’m fairly certain Nana would approve of this meal.  “If it’s clean, it’s Kosher”

The flavor is OFF THE CHARTS out of this world amazing.  I know it’s far from the healthy food I eat most of the time, but this is exactly the sort of thing I crave when I really want to indulge once in a while.  It’s warm and filling in your stomach.  A more “Russian” approach might be to spike the sauce with vodka instead of red wine, but I guess the one thing I didn’t inherit in my cultural genetics was a love for that fermented potato juice.  It’s just…gross.  I think the red wine adds more body to the sauce–some cognac would be nice too.  Play with it if you like but just remember this: it’s not stroganoff without the mushrooms. Yes mushrooms.  It’s just not stroganoff without them.

“Rush-in” Beef Stroganoff

An Olivia Original – to serve 4 Read more

Apr 30

Think Think Tuesday: Raising the Steaks

What if I told you that it is possible for you to lose anywhere from 3.5 to 7 pounds in a year without changing a single meal in your typical week and without adding exercise to your daily routine?  If I told you that you can eat just as many pounds of beef in a year and lose weight simply by changing how that beef is farmed?  Do I have your attention now?  It’s a common misconception that beef is bad for you.  Beef is not bad for you.  Beef is in fact quite good for you.  It’s the kind of beef you eat that matters.  I posted last week a little bit about the corn industry and why I have serious issues with factory farmed beef.  Today I just wanted to share some interesting facts with you about the quality of corn raised beef versus grass fed beef through the simple lens of weight loss.  Just looking at our waistbands (ignoring ecology, biology and economic factors) the case for grass fed beef is far from lean.

Commercial beef has on average 8.5 grams of fat per 3 oz serving, commercial chicken has 2.5g when you average the white and dark meat.  How many grams of fat, on average, do you think grass feed beef has per 3 oz serving:

  1. 8.5 grams
  2. 5 grams
  3. 4 grams
  4. 2.5 grams

If you answered D you would be correct.  Grass fed beef, according to a 2002 study by the Journal of Animal Science, has as much fat as a commercially farmed chicken.  White meat will be a little less, dark meat actually much more, but on the whole that chicken has as much fat as your grass fed cow.  Okay great but what does this mean really in your diet?  Pardon me while we do some quick and dirty math to explain what these fat grams really mean.

A single hamburger patty from your typical McDonalds – according to their website – is 3.5 ounces and contains 9g of fat.  Okay my math says that should really round up to 10g but let’s go with 9.  At a ratio of approximately 3:1 that same burger, if made with grass fed beef, would contain only 3 grams of fat.  Sweet!  But…what does that really mean?

A single gram of fat is 9 calories.  That means you are getting 81 calories from fat in that McDonalds patty.  If you replaced that beef with grass fed, you would be getting only 27 calories from fat.  That’s a difference of 54 calories in the one burger.  Assuming you eat a single hamburger patty once a week…that’s 2800 calories in a year.  A single pound of fat is 3500 calories.  With the assumption that you eat only a single hamburger fast food patty a week, that’s almost a pound you could lose in year from simply switching from corn fed to grass fed beef.  And that’s a low estimate.

The reality?

On average ¼ of Americans consume at least one fast food/meal out in a week.  Various reports show that of those meals the average fast food consumer will eat 4 hamburgers in a week.  Doing that math it breaks down to 3.5 pounds you could lose in a year without changing the content of your diet—just by changing the quality of the beef you are eating and again that’s assuming your burger is a simple ¼lb patty.  Are you eating half pound burger?  Now that’s 7 pounds in a year.  That’s ignoring any other beef products you may be consuming.

This shit adds up.

And those fats you do get?  A 1998 study in the Journal of Animal Feed Science and Technology showed that the “good fats” needed in our diets versus saturated, make you big fats, are much higher in pastured animals than feedlot animals.  How much?  Try as many as 10 times more omega-3s in pastured, true free-range hen eggs versus factory farm, crammed in cages hens.  10 times more.  This applies to beef too.  In fact grass fed beef contains the ideal ratio of the heart-healthy omega fatty acids.  It’s perfectly balanced for our bodies.

But wait…there’s more!  Grass-fed beef is higher in cancer fighting fatty acids, in vitamins B and E as well as various minerals including calcium.  The milk from grass-fed beef can be as much as 4 times richer in vitamin E and this is because the grass that they eat, versus the corn, is that much more nutritious for the animals and therefore, for us.

So to sum up by switching to grass fed beef you could do all the of following without changing a single thing you actually eat:

  • Lose 3 to 7 pounds in a year (on average, for many this number would go up)
  • Increase your omega fatty acids – good for your heart
  • Increase additional healthy fats shown to reduce cancer risk
  • Increase your intake of calcium
  • Increase your intake of vitamin e

Now I know, I know.  Grass fed beef is expensive right?  Fine.  Here’s a recipe using grass fed flat-iron steak.  I was able to buy 8 ounces (2 servings) at whole foods for under 8 dollars.  Flat Iron is a really great cut of meat for a simple steak salad.  It’s no Filet Mignon or New York strip but when you slice it and pan sear it with the right seasonings it’s just as delicious.  It’s superior to ribeye that’s for sure.  Pair it with some greens and a perfect steak horseradish dressing?  You never knew getting skinny tasted soooooooo good.

Skinny Steak Salad with Horseradish Dressing

an Olivia Original Read more

Feb 12

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Think Thin Tuesday: Horny as a Goat Tacos

It’s coming up on Valentine’s Day and that means two things: flowers and chocolate.  Past that it usually means an elaborate meal out with your honey that costs tons of money and usually leaves you full to the point of bursting.  Valentine’s day is the ultimate post-New Year’s diet trap for anyone trying to stay on track, or maybe get back on track, with a diet resolution.  Some of you might be ready to splurge on a nice fancy dinner after working hard the last 6 weeks since turning the corner on the fatty food trilogy that is Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas.  Some of you though, maybe haven’t been keeping it together so well and for you the thought of Valentine’s Day is “oh god here comes another holiday where I ‘m going to stuff my face and there’s going to be chocolate EVERYWHERE for days.”

That’s a big part of the problem with these holidays isn’t it?  If it were simply a single day out of  a month to celebrate that would be one thing.   Instead, in the wake of our consumerist culture and social obligations, these events really seem to stretch on for a week—at least!  There are office parties, friends parties, festivals, special events, shows, shopping deals and last but certainly not the last—the post-holiday clearance sale.   Halloween and Valentine’s Day definitely see weeks of lingering chocolates marked down 50% or more in drugstore bins nationwide and it can be so hard to resist a discount chocolate santa.  Soon enough this single holiday to reward yourself has turned into a smorgasbord that has undone the last month of hellish sacrifice and those five pounds just waddled back with their smiling, adiposian faces.

For someone like say, my mom, it’s always been a struggle.  My step-dad took a few years to learn that she really, truly does NOT want him to buy her chocolates on Valentine ’s Day.  Now what she means by this isn’t so much literally “I don’t want chocolates” but a general “I don’t want to be tempted by sweets or decadent meals, I’m trying to be good and stay on my diet and maintain willpower this year.”  I will always remember the infamous fortune cookie incident that I think finally hit home the request she makes year after year.  See my mom has unfortunately always struggled with her weight.  I have seen her on a perpetual diet since the day I was birthed into the world.  This is in part because she’s always had to work with a long commute and when she was a single mom forget it.  There was no time to exercise.  She also struggles with a metabolism problem that makes it harder for her to maintain a healthy figure and while many people I’ve known use that as an excuse, she legitimately does eat well and gain weight.  Carbs are not her friend even in the best of times.  So my mom routinely asks that for Valentine’s Day we avoid buying her chocolates.  My stepdad interpreted this after several years of buying chocolates anyway by buying my mom a GIGANTIC FORTUNE COOKIE that had been dipped in a candy shell.  We’re talking the size of a human head gigantic.  The rationale?  Well it wasn’t chocolate.  Cue the drama.  Anyway they laugh about it now, at least I hope they do, and in the years since he only buys my mom sugar free chocolates and only when she asks.  Not only does this help her manage her weight, but it demonstrates that he supports her efforts which makes her happy.

So if your honey is trying to stay good this year, but you want to still have a romantic meal, do yourself a favor and stay home.  Cook.  It’s easy and gives you complete control over the nutritional content of your food.  Plus it means so much when a meal is made for you by someone who loves you and men—if you are the one planning the menu get ready to be the talk of the town.  Every lady loves to brag when her man cooks for her and does it well.  So stay home and try this recipe that is high on flavor and low on guilt.  It’s got everything you could want: tortillas, cheese, red meat and pure deliciousness.  Oh and never fear, if you are looking for something completely sinful, I’ll be sharing several of those recipes in the days to come.

Goat meat is extremely lean, to the point that when it’s prepared improperly it can be gamey and unpleasant but when prepared correctly it has a very sweet and tender flavor.  That sweetness will get a boost from the citrus marinade and the meat will be perfectly cooked when you slice it thin and pan sear it just to barely cook.  The best part is that goat’s meat is lower in both fat and cholesterol than beef—in fact it’s lower in fat and cholesterol than chicken.  Meanwhile it’s almost double the iron content so you’re getting all the benefits of eating meat and reducing the bad.  Concerned about growth hormones?  Goat meat isn’t approved for hormone use so you don’t even have to worry about reading the package.  Not only will you steal your honey’s heart, you’ll be protecting it so that you can celebrate this holiday together 50 years down the road and feel just as young as you do today.

Foodies will be happy and delighted by the exotic element of this dish.  If your valentine is red-meating loving American he/she will love it too.  Buy some whole-wheat, low carb and high fiber wraps and you can be happy knowing that you are getting healthsome whole grains.  Finally a dollop of salted crème fraiche will add decadence and tang.  Why are these called horny as a goat tacos?  Well I don’t know about you but there are certain other things I associate with Valentine’s day.  Personally I can’t get very ardent about amorous activity when my stomach is weighing me down.  Plus, yes I’m being a girl here, but I don’t feel sexy after a super fat-laden meal.  Pair these with a nice salad, some strawberries and cinnamon spiced cream and a good Spanish wine and you will have a Latin meal that seduces through the stomach without weighing it down thus leaving room for *ahem* dessert.

Horny Goat Tacos

An Olivia Original Read more

Oct 23

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Think Thin Tuesday: A Molar Eclipse of your stomach

NERD ALERT NERD ALERT NERD ALERT: Do you know what today is? It’s MOLE Day.

Oh moliest of days – when the number of elementary particles coincide with a chemistry teacher’s calendar on October 23rd nerds can rejoice.  Today is a day to sit around the Bunsen burner, telling ghost stories of days of dark days before a standard unit of measurement was introduced as we watch our marshmallows roast with a shell of toasty carbon.  Turn to one another and say things like “What does Avogadro like in his hot chocolate?”  Answer: Marsh-mole-ows! Oh to be nerd on this moliest of days.

Celebrated annually on October 23 from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m., Mole Day commemorates Avogadro’s Number (6.02 x 10^23), which is a basic measuring unit in chemistry.  Each year has a theme and this year it’s a “Molar Eclipse” which is why my title is so puntastic today.  For those of you who aren’t [chemistry] nerds I’m sure this might be a little confusing.  High School science classes are a thing long past and while algebra is still something most of us need on a daily basis, a whine of “but I’m never going to need this” probably was true for most of you with respect to the mole.  Oh sure it’s a part of your daily life since chemistry IS life but it’s not anything the average person is sitting around contemplating. Still would you like a little refresher so you can feel like a smarty pants this morning?  You would?  Excellent!

Q: How would you describe a sulfur-ically, stinky chemist?
A: Quite Mole-odorous.

Basically imagine the unit of a mole like zeroing out a scale.  In order to measure anything you need a standard to weight it against right?  Like telling me how much an apple weighs doesn’t mean anything to me if I have no concept of weight.  Whereas if you hand me a five pound brick I can then scale anything else I’m given to hold relative to the brick.  One object may be half a brick or another may weigh the equivalent of two bricks.  Simple enough right?  Well in chemistry as you know all the elements are made up of smaller components called atoms.  Those atoms are a mess of protons, neutrons and electrons.  Each element is going to have a different ratio of these components.  Chemists wanted a handy unit, a “brick” or in this case a “mole” by which to standardize all the elements relative to one another.

Carbon being one the most abundant and important molecules to life was set as this standard; the Carbon-12 isotope specifically which composed of 6 protons, 6 neutrons and 6 electrons.  Okay I just threw a bunch of words at you so let’s rewind.  Carbon-12 is an isotope that is it’s one potential configuration of carbon.  See these molecules can be arranged in different ways, like legos, and so there are different forms of them.  Carbon-12 refers to the atomic mass 12 and where does this number come from?  Answer: The number of particles in the nucleus (center) of the atom.  The nucleus is composed of the protons and the neutrons so 6 + 6 = 12.

Okay great we have our element to use as a standard, Carbon, now how much of it should be 1 mole?  We want to evaluate weight remember so we’re going to be talking grams.  Well why not make it simple: Carbon-12 has an atomic mass of 12 so the number of grams set to 1 mole was also 12.  All that was left was to establish how many particles were present.  Answer: 6.02214X×1023    Yikes!  What to name that number?  It’s kind of a mounthful.  Enter Amadeo Avogadro – an Italian chemist and savant from the 18th century.  Avogadro didn’t actually set the constant used in chemistry today but he was the first to theorize that relative masses could correspond to molecular weights and be used to calculate the mass of a gas from a known volume.  I know mumbo jumbo right?  Suffice to say he was largely influential in chemistry and so the constant was named in his honor.  Though I’m not sure Avogadro is any less difficult for folks to say.  

Anyway that sums it up for now.  I hope I managed to be somewhat clear and I didn’t bore the pants off people who may have already known this stuff.  In honor of the holiday I decided to try out this recipe for a Chili Mole.  I beefed it up a bit with buffalo meat, it was initially a vegetarian recipe, but even with the addition of some ground beef and a minor tweak here or there, it’s still a fantastically skinny recipe and extremely delicious.  You get tons of flavor from the spices, the chocolate and the meat but tons of nutrition from the pinto beans, squash and KALE.  Oh the kale is so nice in this–not at all bitter or unpleasant.  You’ll love it and feel so good about yourself for eating it.   Perfect for summer or fall since you can use summer squash or autumn squash in it though I do think I prefer the autumn varieties.  I went with a “delicata” squash which was similar in flavor to acorn squash if you can’t find it.  Now that the weather is FINALLY chilling down I have to say it is a really great blend of spice and warmth for a cool night.  Leftovers went quickly too.  Hip Hip Hooray for Mole Day! 

Pinto & Buffalo Chili Mole
adapted from Gourmet Magazine Nov 2007
makes 6 generous servings – photos are of half a serving  Read more

Aug 28

Think Thin Tuesday: Saucy Eggstras

Goldfish crackers, Oreo cookies, cupcakes, Halloween candy, Doritos, sausage bites, quesadillas…I wonder how many wannabe actresses start off as extras only to get too fat for the industry from that damn craft services table.  I am currently suffering the afterness of a weekend of stuffing my gob and doing an excessive amount of “hurry up and wait/” Yup time for The Guild to film season 6!  I’m still so blessed and lucky to have stumbled into this little world where I get to support my favorite webseries and spend time with some of the greatest people I’ve ever met.  FYI no spoilers since I signed one of these:

The Guild shoot just kind of lined up all magically for it since this season is less extra heavy and the opportunities are really only going to local folk.  This weekend I was lucky enough to be LA local for equally awesome other reasons.  Another member “Guild of Extras” that I’m particularly close to was deployed to Montana a little while ago.  Sadness!  But Chris decided to fly in for this weekend to visit our mutual friend (and official behind the scenes guild podcaster) Kenny a while back.  While Chris wanted to surprise the LA crowd, he knew that I’d need to be made aware of this visit so I too could come down from NorCal to see him.  Chris’ trip lined up with the shoot so nicely (because he actually got a gig PAing) and because of that I got to see a good friend and play on set a bit.  Then the organizers of our network “The Guild of Extras” decided to throw a last minute dinner meet up together…and they didn’t even know Chris was in town visiting!  Super-mise.  Dallas, who I mentioned in a past post, was there and brought me a gift that made me squee.  Guess who finally got herself a FRINGE HAT from comic con??

Extra-ing for a show isn’t glamorous work and it isn’t particularly hard work either.  I have to admit I feel rather useless standing there twiddling my thumbs while the crew work their asses off.  It’s all I can do to keep from throwing on some jeans, pulling back my hair and trying to jump into the fray.  I’ve never been one to like standing by idle while other people are sweating and working hard.  It makes me feel like such a lout.  But I’m not union, I’m not hired, I’m not covered by insurance and since I’m not actually working on the show enough to know what’s going on I know I’d just get in the way.  Still I hate feeling so useless and flaccid.  I want at the very least to hop over to the Crafties and help prep food.

Maybe if I didn’t care so much about this show I wouldn’t feel so useless on set.  But when I think about the people it brought into my life, people who have become some of my greatest friends, I feel so intensely protective and indebted.  The actors and production crew take great pains to make sure we’re well taken care of because they know that this group of extras isn’t comprised of actors or Hollywood hopefuls (well mostly isn’t) but rather a group of fiercely devoted fans and through season 5 filming, this fanbase found a little foster family of our own.  Sunday we barely shot at all but the handful of us who were kept on standby didn’t care.  We were just happy to get to have an excuse to meet up and gossip.  At one point I forgot we were even on set.  How many shows can boast that they have a group of extras who are happy to simply hang around on set to spend time with one another?

My only frustration is that these weekends are exhausting since they are bookended with the long drive to and from San Francisco.  Essentially I spend 48 hours without significant physical activity and eat the unhealthiest food imaginable.  I also wind up going straight from the drive to commuting in to work where I then spend my first day back in “reality” sitting on my butt in front of a computer.  Funny how almost three days of physically doing nothing can still leave you so mentally exhausted that your body wants to fold under itself.  Once I got home from work last night my stomach was crying out for something green and healthy but I was too exhausted to cook anything elaborate.

Thus I have for you a very delicious, easy one vegetable dish for our Think Thin Tuesday.  If I can drag my bum up to the stove for 25 minutes even in that state, you can too.  Trust me this dish is worth it.  Rich, savory and chock full of vitamin and phytonutrient rich foods but you can console yourself that the main ingredients aren’t really vegetables.  No seriously they aren’t.  Tomatoes, Zucchini and Eggplant are the stars and all three are technically fruit, they are berries so no whining.  I doctored the dish up with some left over chunks of braised lamb to add in protein.  Otherwise you can leave the meat out of it and have a nice vegetarian main or side dish.  This would serve up really nicely alongside a dinner of chicken, lamb or fish.

Eggplant and Zucchini in Tomato Garlic Sauce

Adapted from Bon Appetit July 2012 Read more

Jun 8

Chim-Chimi-Churri Flank Steak

For a long time I had friends who would refer to me as Mary Poppins.    Obviously because I’m practically perfect in every way.  Er….yeah.

So what WAS the reason?  No I didn’t have some cheery british ‘tude or a seriously creepy talking umbrella; I definitely didn’t have any magic tricks that could make cleaning up a bedroom easier.  I did however always seem to have whatever you could need in a giant bag I’d carry on my shoulder.  I thought for a long time that the scene where Mary Poppins pulls out an entire apartment from her purse was fairly iconic.  According to Felicia Day’s Vlog on her new premium youtube channel, this is some sort of obscure reference.  On “Ode to Carrie Fisher” there is what they call a “failed Mary Poppins reference” that made me smile.  If you aren’t watching  Geek & Sundry  by the way you are missing out on some seriously nerdy fun.

Back to my original train of thought though, I always loved that scene with the carpetbag.  My top three memorable moments in that film were always: the bag, votes for women and the chimney sweep song.  Ever the girl scout I tend to travel with a purse loaded with the sorts of things you’d want desperately when needing them and a few things that no sane young woman would carry around with her.  I think one time I actually had a small bottle of tabasco and don’t ask me to remember why we needed it, but by crazy random happenstance, I had it.

My desk at work is remarkably the same way.  I share a space with a coworker who has the same need to be prepared as I do so we literally have almost anything could ever want.  The problem with this?  I’m starting to get a little wee bit claustrophobic.  It also can get a bit grating to suddenly be expected to have anything at the drop of a hat.  This isn’t just at work, I can be out with friends who will be shocked I don’t have sunblock that time or a printed bus schedule for that city.  **Bangs Head**

Far more smashed potatoes than you could ever need

That’s the problem with expectations, once they get built up you have to keep them up.  I guess I’d just rather be the person with the answers though than the person who can’t be relied on.  I just wish I were better at striking a balance between the two.  Maybe I should become a chimney sweep instead?  I’ve also been really good about posting every day this week so far and I’m feeling the pressure to not miss a day.  It’s going to have to happen.  I know it’s unavoidable.  Hopefully I don’t just publish drivel in an attempt to get a post up every day.  (Too late.)

Actually now I really want to go home and watch Mary Poppins….  That movie doesn’t get enough love from the Disney lineup.  Aside from the random love for infinite bags of holding, my favorite song was always Chim Chim Cheree.  It was so mysterious and creepy in that way only children’s movies can be, especially when Bert exhibited his crazy side and would sing little foreshadowing codas to himself. 

Chimichurri is a traditional Argentinian condiment and actually there isn’t much I know about it aside from the fact that it is delicious.  Essentially  it is a marinade blend of herbs parsley and oregano, garlic, olive oil, vinegar and chili flakes.  From there it can be modified with anything your taste buds desire.   See even my knowledge bank isn’t infinite :-( I promise to return with some food anthropologist level whoopass in the coming days.

Steaks with Olive Chimichurri

That is what practically perfect in every way medium-rare steak looks like.

 

From Bon Appétit February 2009

  • 3 tablespoons fruity olive oil, divided (I have an amazing olive oil made from kalamatas I used)
  • 4 garlic cloves; 2 thinly sliced, 2 pressed
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
  • 1 bay leaf, preferably fresh, broken in half
  • 1/3 cup finely chopped shallots
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped pitted Kalamata olives
  • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons water
  • 2 14-to 16-ounce 2-inch-thick grass-fed New York strip steaks
  • 2 teaspoons paprika
  • 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy medium skillet over medium heat. Add sliced garlic, red pepper, and bay leaf. Stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add shallots and sauté until just translucent, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in parsley, olives, and vinegar. Add 1 tablespoon water. Add more water by teaspoonfuls to thin as needed. Season chimichurri with salt and pepper. DO AHEAD: Can be made 2 hours ahead.

Let stand at room temperature.

Rub steaks with 1 tablespoon oil and pressed garlic. Sprinkle both sides of each steak with 1/2 teaspoon paprika, 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt, cayenne, and generous amount of black pepper. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes or up to 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 400°F. Brush heavy very large oven-proof skillet (preferably cast-iron) with oil. Heat over high heat until almost smoking. Add steaks. Cook until browned, about 5 minutes. Turn steaks and transfer skillet to oven. Roast until instant-read thermometer inserted horizontally into steaks registers 110°F to 115°F for rare, about 10 minutes.

Let steaks rest 5 minutes. Thinly slice crosswise. Spoon chimichurri over.

Apr 23

4 Comments

Lea had a little lamb…

Lamb on FoodistaLamb

…and it was delicious!  (Sorry if that was too mean but I couldn’t resist)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we don’t eat nearly enough lamb in this country!  It is hard to find any lamb in local supermarkets, especially costco, that isn’t from australia.  Why oh why does this meat need to be flown half way around the world to reach my kitchen?  Silliness!  Not to mention wasteful–all that fuel burned to transport the succulence.  Maybe someday I’ll raise sheep to keep lawn mowed, make cheese and butcher.  Unfortunately that is somewhat impossible to do living in an apartment in a city.  I’m not sure I’m ready to give that up and move to the farm…yet.

This is a simple recipe that you can whip up on a week night for dinner.  If you are feeding a family of four odds are you’ll still have leftovers if you use a lamb roast as big as mine.  Feeding more than four people?  I make no promises.  Or if you are a hungry college student who’s been on campus for 8 hours the lamb might barely make it past the second day.  The recipe is tweaked slightly from my mom’s lamb that I grew up with.  I just added in a little bit more to amp it up but otherwise it’s all her.

Mom’s Cinnamon Lamb

  • 2lb lamb roast
  • Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • 2 tsp Cinnamon (or maybe 3, I did this by feel again OOPS)
  • 2 tsp Paprika
  • 1 tsp Cayenne Pepper
  • 2 tsp Dried Oregano
  • 1 head of garlic
  • ~2 tsp Salt
  • ~1 tsp Pepper

Heat the oven to 250 F and meanwhile prep your roast!

Ready to see how insanely simple this is? First mix together all the spices in a little spice bowl (except for the fresh garlic) and set to the side.

Now chop off the top of the head of garlic so all the cloves are exposed a tad.  Rub down the meat with this bunch of garlic and then peel the cloves and stud them in your lamb– i.e. make 1cm incisions into the lamb and stick in a clove of garlic.  Finally rub down the meat with a little bit olive oil and the spice mix.

Place the meat on a broiling/roasting pan and cook in the oven until the internal temperature at the thickest point is just below 120 (your end goal will be closer to 135 for medium rare)  At this point remove the lamb, heat the oven to 475 and wait until it hits that temperature.  Then add the lamb and let it go another ten to fifteen minutes until you have the desired crust.

LET THE MEAT REST.  Please please for all that is holy, if you want a juicy cut of meat you need to let it sit in the room for at least 10-15 minutes before you cut into it.  The juices are redistributing back into the meat from where they collect at the edges.  If you cut in too soon, all the juices run out on that first slice.  By the time you get past the first few delicious slices the rest will be dry dry dry.

Now you can cook the meat longer if you prefer it medium or **shudder** well done.  The thing is…I like it medium rare.  It’s just how the meat is meant to be eaten.  Lamb is especially sweet to me so losing that flavor by over cooking it is awful.  You might be asking about bacteria if you eat rare meats.  The thing is that the nastier bugs, like e. coli, are aerobic (as in require oxygen) and tend to be only on the outside of your meat.  These get cooked off.  Now in the case of ground meat the product gets mashed up and air is introduced into it which is why burgers should always be consumed well done unless you wanna take your chances.  Just don’t blame me!

Mar 21

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Curry Some Favor

with these lamb-curried phyllo appetizers!  I am super proud of this recipe as it was my own design to replicate the convenience of frozen, partially baked foods that I could pull out when company came round.  When I have friends over I tend to feed them but sometimes I don’t have anything ready on hand that makes a good snack.  These are easy to make on a rainy Sunday afternoon; you just prepare the filling, bake the packets slightly and then freeze them.  I had lots of cardboard boxes so I sliced them up into baking pan sized rectangles, lined them with tinfoil and then arrange the triangles as I would when baking.  Next time friends came over I pulled out one “tray” and transferred the aluminum foil directly onto a cookie sheet.  Not only did I have food in twenty minutes with no prep, but cleaning up the baking pan was a cinch.  I just balled up the aluminum foil and tossed it away.  Brilliant right?  I mean sure you could just buy things like this from costco but where’s the challenge and the customization in that?  Plus I promise you that you won’t find lamb curry packets with sweet potatoes and carrots there!

Curry Lamb Triangles

  • 1lb ground lamb
  • 1 Tbsp Garam Masala
  • Curry powder (add as desired)
  • 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp cumin, ground, toasted
  • 1 package Phyllo dough thawed overnight in the fridge or a few hours on the counter
  • 3-4 large sweet potatoes
  • 1 cup shredded carrots
  • 1/2 vidalia onion
  • 1/2 cup crumbled Feta Cheese
  • Extra Virgin Olive Oil (or any other cooking oil)
  • Salt and Pepper

Mix the garam masala, curry powder, cumin and cayenne pepper in with the ground lamb.  Garam Masala is an indian spice blend that you can either make yourself or purchase from the store.  It incorporates a variety of spices used in Indian/Eastern cuisine and ingredients can vary.  I suggest going by what flavor profile smells best to you.  Your garam masala may have cumin in it already rendering the extra tsp overkill.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Sweat the onions in some oil for about 10 minutes.  Then add in the lamb and sautee until the ground lamb is thoroughly cooked.  Put this off to the side to cool.  Shred the potatoes and cook them with the carrots in the juices left in your pan from the meat.  They should be flavorful but not mushy.

Next I pulsed the entire mixture of meat and vegetables through my food processor a few times before finally adding in the feta cheese.  You don’t have to do this but I think it made the mixture somewhat more paste-like and therefore easier to stuff and eat in the phyllo dough.

Lay out the phyllo dough and cut each sheet lengthwise into three long rectangular strips.  I took two heaping tablespoons of the meat mixture and added it to the bottom of each rectangular sheet.  Next you will fold the sheet from the bottom left corner to form a right triangle.  This you will flip back and forth again in right triangles until you reach the top of the strip.   This is a little difficult to describe so reach back to those boy scout/girl scout flag folding days.  Don’t have them?  Damn. Okay try this website from step 4.  Now you know how to fold phyllo dough AND a flag.  Go you!

I prepped these by partially baking them for 20 minutes in a 375 degree oven.  This partially cooked the phyllo dough but didn’t make it brown/crunchy.  Then I froze them on trays and pulled one out the next day for a study group.  I baked them at 425 for another 20 minutes.  The phyllo dough was both crunchy and beautifully browned (thank you Maillard Reaction) while the filling was warm, soft and flavorful.   I served them with some tomato sauce from the other day.

Jun 20

1 Comment

Make your man drool

SimpleSteakWith some delicious, juicy pink steak.  A perfectly prepared steak should make any man weak in the knees whether you’ve been together for years or have only broached the second date.  Unless of course you’re dating a vegan, in which case I can’t help you.

As far as red meat goes, it’s essential for people prone to fainting (me) to make sure that an adequate amount of iron is consumed.  Nothing is better in that situation than red meat.  You can supplement with vegetables but the total iron contained is NOT how much your body absorbs.  Iron in vegetables is only 5% bioavailable as opposed to 30% in beef/lamb.  Other phytochemicals in vegetables can also interfere with your bodies ability to absorb the iron so you should eat it with plenty of vitamin c in your diet, preferably in the same meal as the intended vehicle for the iron.  Most people can’t put this much thought into what they eat, hell most people can’t spend more than ten minutes going through a drive through which is part of the US obesity problem…but that’s an entirely different rant.

Simple Grilled SteakSteak2

  • 1 new york strip (mine was about 1.5 inches thick!)
  • 1/4 tsp Cayenne
  • 1 Tbsp finely diced garlic
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • Olive oil

That’s it.  It doesn’t take much to make a perfect, simple steak.  Salting the steak and letting it sit for a minute before you grill it also helps draw out a little of the steaks juices–natural lubricant.  This way you can minimize the amount of olive oil you use on the pan!  In order to acheive a perfect “grilled” steak indoors you will need a good cast iron grill pan.

Heat that pan up on high and sear the steak on each side for about two minutes.  If you want to get the criss-cross grill marks then you should move the steak after two minutes at a 45 degree angle and let it go for another minute.  My steak was VERY thick so I moved the pan into a 375 degree oven and left it in there for about another 5 minutes and it still came out pink and delicious.

Eat it with Rosemary Cornbread for orgasmic deliciousness

**I rubbed mine down with that mix of spices but please keep in mind I’m estimating the amounts here.  I don’t measure usually when I’m cooking (rather than baking) so this is my mental list of roughly how much I used.  More garlic is always a good thing in my kitchen and the important thing is to not be afraid of salt.  I’ve noticed that a lot of people tend to underutilize this spice even though it brings out the natural flavors of steak more than anything else can.

I ate mine with rosemary cornbread for ultimate orgasmic deliciousness but that’s a recipe for another day.

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