It's What's for Dinner

Steak is delicious.  Enough said.  When the Prime Rib Eye goes on sale at Costco, it's a happy day for all in the household.
When I get to sink my talons into a good piece of meat I like to do as little as possible to it in regards to flavor and cooking. 

With the newly sprung season we have rediscovered our outdoor grill.  Living in a apartment, there are rules about these things.  As much as the charcoal smell equates delicious picnic foods and the controlled fires of a gas grill conjures visions of flame-licked sweet and sticky chicken breasts, we must abide.  But it's not so bad, thanks to George Foreman.

I made a quick marinade with some brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, garlic, shallots and lime and let my steaks sit for about half an hour while I let the grill heat up and threw together a salad.  Then was grilling time.



Super easy.  8 minutes on each side, a quarter turn after 4 mintues to get good grill marks.  I threw the juiced lime skins on the grill, too, to get the last delicious bits of juice and pulp broken down.  I squeezed them over the steaks just before taking them off the grill to rest.

After the grilling was done and the meat rested for about 20 mintues under it's aluminum foil tent we dug in and enjoyed.  A little bit of hibachi sauce on the side and it was easy and awesome.



Hibachi Sauce

1-1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon paprika
dash cayenne pepper

Using a fork or a whisk, blend all ingredients together thoroughly until well mixed and the sauce is smooth. Refrigerate overnight to allow flavors to blend. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Soup & Sandwiches

Sometimes comfort food is simple food.  Especially when your schedule is hectic and you want something delicious that you don't have to work very hard for.  Hence soup and sandwiches.

It doesn't take very much to make something that sounds so mundane a delectable masterpiece.  Just a little creativity.  Sometimes boredom helps, too.

The soup is simple; Campbell's Tomato, or in our house 'Mato Soup.  It's one of a handful of things I don't settle on generic brands for.  For every can of soup, half a can of fat free Half & Half and half a can of water (or a whole can of 1% milk, but that's too milky for me), some garlic powder, Italian seasoning, throw it in pan until it's hot.

The other thing I like to do with 'Mato Soup is something I learned working for a soup & sandwich cafe and it's super simple:

Tomato Basil Soup
1-10 3/4 oz can of condensed tomato soup
1-14 oz can of chopped or stewed tomatoes (I prefer S&W Italian Recipe Stewed)
1/4 cup butter
1 handful fresh basil leaves
1/2 handful fresh oregano leaves -or- 1 TBSP dried oregano
Garlic powder and Italian seasoning to taste


  • Julienne basil and oregano leaves (it's easy, just stack the on top of each other, roll them up and slice little ribbons).

  • Melt butter over medium heat in a small pot or sauce pan, whatever you usually cook soup in.

  • Add garlic powder, basil and oregano and cook until leaves are wilted, being careful not to scorch your garlic powder

  • Add tomatoes with their juice to butter; if using whole, halved or stewed tomatoes crush them with your hands before you put them in.  (If they're diced don't worry about it).

  • Cook tomatoes until heated all the way through, stirring occasionally.

  • Add condensed soup and stir until all is combined.

  • Bring soup to a simmer, cover and turn heat down to low.

  • Allow to simmer for 30 minutes before serving.
If the soup is too thick for your liking use a little water, veggie or chicken broth to thin it out.  It's easy to correct the flavor with a little salt or lemon juice.  It's excellent topped with some julienned basil, shredded Parmesan or provolone and some sourdough or focaccia croutons

On to the sandwich!

There is an art to making a good sandwich.  Anyone who has ever made them for a living can tell you this. 

You have to have a good spread on the bread; something that will add but not overpower flavor, that will seal the bread from getting wet from wet ingredients.  You have to have a good balance of wet to dry ingredients; usually meat and cheese to veggies.  But first you have to choose a good bread.

The way I see it, you can take some mediocre fillings, put it on a great bread and make a decent sandwich.  However, the best meat and cheese in the world put on crappy bread will make a pasty, disgusting mess.  

I usually choose either a tasty sandwich roll, like sourdough, dutch crunch or french.  I save the sliced white bread for my PB&J and the occasional old school tuna salad.

This time I made GIGANTO SANDWICH!!!


The bread is an Albertson's French loaf. For the spread I used a mix of mayo, Beaver Sweet Hot Mustard and a touch of honey thinned out with a little pickle juice. Like I said, be creative

As far as meat and cheese goes, we've got some sliced beef, brown sugar ham and honey turkey breast, some cheddar and some Swiss. For veggies some black olives, Mezzetta roasted red bell peppers and chopped peperoncini, some sweet onion and plain ol' shredded lettuce.

I tried sneak in some tomatoes, since I'm the only one that really likes them. I marinated them for about an hour in a blend of balsamic vinegar, dried oregano a little olive oil and some kosher salt. They were yummy but didn't mesh well so I saved them for a salad.

A word of caution to anyone making a sandwich that's going to be eaten by others - TASTE EVERYTHING FIRST. If there is one bad ingredient it's going to spoil the whole thing. And if it's what's for dinner it's going to piss everyone off.

I cut the heels off my loaf for two reasons; because we were hungry and wanted to eat them, and because nobody likes getting the heel end of the sandwich. Some construction tips:
  • Apply spread to both sides of the bread. Don't go crazy, but make sure there's enough to cover all the way to the crusts
  • Layer meat and cheese on one side and alternate. That way you don't get the gross block-o-cheese bite or the gut busting "oh god, that was all meat" bite.
  • Lay your dry veggies on before your wet veggies on the opposite side of the meat. This is your bread protection
  • If you're going to add a dressing like vinaigrette or tapenade or even just extra spread or mustard do it on top of your meat/cheese layer. That way it will apply to the veggies on contact but not sink into the bread.
Delicious.  A slice of that and a cup of soup and you've got a pretty simple middle of the week dinner and probably a couple lunches, too :)

Yankee Delights

9.2.13 Note - Due to mishaps in the blogosphere many pictures were deleted from this blog.  I've done my best to add them back in but, unfortunately, the ones for this post pre-date my laptop.  Please imagine everything to be perfectly mouthwatering - Jessie

Last Sunday I decided to make a super-tradish Sunday dinner for me and my peeps.  I made a beef roast and some awesome biscuits with peach crisp for dessert!  Very typical Leave it to Beaver dinner.

I like my roast to be almost steak-like when it's carved.  This is not the way I remember my mom's or my grandma's; the stringy, sometimes dry, covered in delicious gravy, awesome on a piece of white bread with ketchup roasts of my youth.  This is how my peeps recall their roast fondly as well.  So I had to do my best to not fancy anything up.  It took great restraint, but I feel I succeeded.

I chopped up some russet potatoes and fresh Thyme (I had to put a little something fancy in there!) as well as some white onions and mixed them with some baby carrots.  Then I greased up my roasting pan with a little vegetable oil and tossed all my veg in and rolled 'em around to get coated.  I shook my Johnny's Seasoning Salt all over the place, like ya do.  (For anyone who uses Johnny's, I find it's always best to get it from the regular grocery store, not Costco.  The bulk sizes they put in Costco don't have the MSG and that MSG is what makes that dependable, consistent Johnny's flavor.  And if you're one of those people who's all CRAZY about MSG, and you don't have a confirmed sensitivity to it, , perhaps you need to do a little more research on the matter.)

I took my roast, around 3 or 4 pounds of beef rump, and seared it off in a hot pan on all sides in some leftover sausage fat.  Just like grandma used to make, no?


I used a packet of McCormick Slow Cookers Savory Pot Roast seasoning for the first time ever, putting blind faith in the fact that the gravy on the front of the packet looked like my mom's.  Then I covered the whole thing super tight with about 8,000 (actually 5) layers of foil to do my best to simulate a dutch oven. 

Sidenote: I need a dutch oven.  My birthday is coming up.  I want the Le Creuset 9 quart enameled cast iron French Oven in Sonoma Green which you can only find at Williams Sonoma.  It's only a million dollars.

Once my roast was nearing its finish I whipped up some biscuits.  My method to making awesome biscuits is one part my mom, one part my mother in law, one part America's Test Kitchen and the rest Better Homes & Gardens cookbook under Biscuits Supreme.  My own contribution is using evaporated milk instead of regular milk.
I make by dough and dump it out onto a floured surface before it fully comes together.  Then I knead and fold, knead and fold until it's fully combined.  When I roll out the dough I fold it in half twice before each roll so there are lots of layers when I cut out my biscuits.  Then when I use my cutter I push straight down and do one half turn.  I pick them up and put them on my ungreased baking sheet and LEAVE THEM ALONE.  When I put them in the oven they're little disks about a quarter to a half an inch high.  The come out around two inches high and are awesome.

The roast came out delicious and stringy, slightly dry on the ends and paired well with plain ol' ketchup.


The 'tatoes and carrots were soft but not mushy after 3 hours in the oven and the onions were sweet and practically melted.  And everything was knee-deep in gravy.
Our dessert was a super-simple peach crisp.  I make crisp topping probably once or twice a year; it's basically flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and baking powder or something along those lines.  I keep it in a gallon sized Ziploc with the instructions on the front: "Mix one cup with one stick of butter.  Dump it over fruit.  Cook at 375 until done."
The fruit I chose were a couple cans of sliced peaches that have been neglected in the cupboard for million years.  I drained them and tossed them in a buttered pan with a couple teaspoons of vanilla, a shake of cinnamon and a tablespoon of brown sugar, squished everything up a little and let that sit for about an hour.  Once it was a fragrant, juicy mess, I dumped my crisp mix over them and cooked it until it looked golden and delicious.  And it was when topped with some vanilla ice cream.


A nice homey Sunday dinner for a cold late-winter evening.  And leftovers for a week!  Although, I must admit, as good and traditional and nostalgic as it was, I still can't wait for the farmer's markets to start up.  I need some non-root vegetables!