Add Some Asian Flavor to Your BBQ: Ten-Spice Steak and Golden Beet Hash

 

We're getting closer and closer to grilling season with the weather getting consistently nicer. Plus, we're just about ready for our move to Brooklyn where we'll finally be able to grill again! Sometimes it's nice and easy to just pop a steak on the grill and throw some A1 sauce on top. But if you want to have a really gourmet experience, this ten-spice steak with soy-ginger barbeque sauce is an easy yet exotically delicious way to do it. The golden beet hash on the side is a great early summer side dish when the beets are at their peak. It's a simple enough dish to make if you can get past all the chopping, but it is twenty times more exciting than the normal side of potatoes, and healthier as well!

This is modified from the strip steak recipe out of the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que cookbook, and gives a big bold infusion of Asian flavor into the barbeque paradigm. And the best thing is, since you're using a spice rub, there's no need to prep hours ahead! Read on to learn how to amp up your next grilling night!

P.S. - We've picked a winner for the Fresh Direct Giveaway! Head over to our Facebook Page to see who won!

Making the Steak
What You'll Need
1 hanger steak, trimmed

For the Rub
1 tablespoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 tablespoon cajun seasoning (cumin, garlic powder, cayenne, chili, and salt)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil

For the Sauce
1 tbsp peanut oil
1 tbsp chopped fresh ginger
1 tbsp chopped garlic
Dash of salt and pepper
1/4 cup bbq sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
Dash of Sriracha chili sauce
1/4 tsp sesame oil
Juice from one slice of a lemon
sliced scallion for garnish

To prepare the steak, take out all of the rub ingredients, and mix the seasonings together until everything is nicely incorporated. Then add in the soy sauce and oil and mix it together. It will form a black paste, and should be fairly thick. Rub this evenly into the steak, and then let the steak rest out for about 30 minutes to come to room temperature.

While the steak is coming to room temperature, make the sauce. In a small saucepan, heat up the peanut oil and then throw in all of the garlic and ginger, as well as a touch of salt and pepper. Cook for a couple of minutes until the garlic and ginger are fragrant but not quite golden. Then add in all the remaining ingredients, and stir together to blend. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Keep warm.

Cook the steak on the grill or grill pan to the desired level of doneness - for the hanger steak to get the medium it took us 4 minutes per side on the grill pan plus 8 minutes in the oven. Let the steak rest for a good 15 minutes after you cook it, then slice it into nice medallions. Pour the sauce over top and sprinkle the scallions on top.

For the Golden Beet Hash
What You'll Need
3 golden beets
1 to 2 russet potatoes
4 sprigs thyme
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees

Peel the beets and potatoes and chop them up into small quarter inch sized dices. This can take some time, so be patient. Remove the thyme leaves from the stems and coarsely chop. In a non-stick pan heat up the olive oil over medium heat. Add the diced beets and potatoes to the pan and sauté, coating with oil. Add in a touch of salt and pepper as well as the thyme, and cook for about 10 - 12 minutes until the potatoes and beets are nice and soft.

Remove the beets and potatoes from the heat and add to a baking dish. Place the baking dish in the oven and cook for 10 - 15 minutes, until the beets and potatoes are soft and almost crispy. Remove from heat.









Serve on the side of the hanger steak. We used a measuring cup to get the golden beet hash to hold its shape!

One Year Ago: Marcella Hazan's Porcini-Style Shiitake Mushroom Pasta

Delicious Spring Pasta: Farfalle with Veal, Porcini, and Spinach

 

Every time we see a recipe that calls for dried porcini mushrooms, we get a little scared. We'd never worked with them before and weren't really sure what they were all about. Plus, dried porcini mushrooms always seem to be so expensive, and without knowing what they taste like or what they're good for, we never bothered to try them out.

Until now.

Turns out, they're not so scary after all. You only need a tiny amount of them for the dish you're going to use, they have a big, hearty mushroomy flavor that you just cannot get from a regular mushroom, and the liquid that you use to rehydrate them can be used to enhance the flavor of the dish you're preparing.

We found this recipe in Mario Batali's latest cookbook Molto Batali and modified it a bit for our small kitchen. The porcini mushrooms are mixed with ground lamb, tomato, and spinach, for an extraordinary pasta. The results are below.


Making the Dish
What You'll Need

1 oz dried porcini mushroom
2 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 tsp red chile flakes
1/2 lb ground veal
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/4 cup white wine
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 lb farfalle
4 oz baby spinach
pecorino romano
salt and pepper

Start by rehydrating the porcini mushroom. Place them in a bowl and fill with 1 cup or so of warm water. Let them rest in there for about 10 minutes. When they're nice and big, drain them and reserve the liquid - you'll need it for later. Run the liquid through a sieve to get out any dirt. Chop the porcini coarsely.

Heat up the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add in the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until fragrant, about 2 - 3 minutes. Once done, add in the veal and the porcini and cook until the veal has browned, which should be about 8 - 10 minutes over high heat.

When the veal is ready and the porcini are nice and soft, add in the tomato paste and stir everything together so that the paste is completely incorporated. Let the tomato paste toast a bit on the pan's hot surface, for about 5 minutes, until it has developed a deep, dark looking color.

When the tomato paste is where you want it to be, add in the white wine, and about 1/3 of a cup of the porcini soaking liquid. Stir to incorporate. You should have a nice sauce forming at this point. Once the wine has nearly evaporated, add in the tomato sauce and stir to incorporate. Return the heat to low and simmer

While your veal and porcini mixture is simmering, cook your pasta. Bring the water to a boil and add in a bit of salt. Cook the farfalle until 1 minute shy of the package directions. Drain the pasta, reserving a touch of water just in case.

At this point, toss the spinach into the veal and porcini mixture, bringing the heat back up a bit. Stir it around until the spinach has started to wilt. Then, add the drained farfalle to the mixture as well, and a touch of pasta water if necessary, and toss everything together over high heat until the farfalle and veal and porcini sauce are completely incorporated.

Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve with grated pecorino romano to finish. Enjoy!

Have you ever cooked with dried porcini mushrooms before? Let us know in the comments!

One Year Ago: Tomato and Onion Focaccia 

A Fancy Taste of Summer: Burgers with Caramelized Onions & Mushrooms, and Rosemary Fries

 

Allright everyone, the weather is getting NICE. And when the weather gets nice, that means it's time to break out the grill and start making burgers. Or, if you're in New York City and don't have any way to grill without giving yourself carbon monoxide poisoning, you can break out the grill pan.

Now while there's certainly a lot to be said for the plain old Ron Swanson burger (btw, if you get the reference, let us know in the comments and win our enduring love and respect!), if you can't cook over charcoal, you might feel the need to fancy things up.

That's what this post is for. We'll show you how to cook up some perfectly caramelized onions and mushrooms, create a nice, spicy sauce, and give you the recipe for some brilliant rosemary fries to go along with the burgers. Read on!

Making the Dish
What You'll Need

1/4 lb burger meat per burger, preferably 85% or 90% lean
1 bun per buger
1/4 cup olive oil
3 - 4 sprigs rosemary
2 russet potatoes
1/2 onion, sliced
4 oz mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp, sherry vinegar

Salt, pepper to taste

1 tbsp mayonnaise

1 tbsp mustard

1 tsp sriracha 

1/2 tsp red wine vinegar

First things first, you'll want to start with the caramelized mushrooms and onions because they will take the longest. In a medium saucepan, melt a tablespoon of the butter and drizzle in about a tablespoon of the olive oil. Then throw in your sliced onions. Let them start to cook down on medium heat. Low and slow sort of thing. First they'll get soft and slighty translucent. After about 10 minutes or so, they'll start to turn a little golden.

At this point, add in your mushrooms and let them start to cook down as well. Soon, they'll start to exude their liquid. When that liquid evaporates, add in the sherry vinegar and toss it around with the onions and mushrooms. Continue to cook while that sherry vinegar evaporates. At this point you can turn the heat down to low and let it simmer for another 10 minutes or so, until everything else is done. Make sure you don't go too far and let it burn. 

While the onions and mushrooms are simmering away, you can start on your rosemary fries. Heat your oven to a nice hot  475 degrees and take out a large non-stick skillet. Add in the olive oil and heat it up, tossing in two sprigs of rosemary. After a few seconds, it'll start to sizzle a bit. Let this keep going but be careful not to burn it. What we're trying to do here is infuse the rosemary flavor into the olive oil. 

Wash the potatoes and cut them into wedges. Season them with salt and pepper. Then, carefully place them into the hot olive oil, 4 or 5 at a time so as not to crowd the pan. Let them get nice and crispy on one side, then turn them over and let them get nice and crispy on the other side. Once totally crisp, remove them from the olive oil, let the excess oil drip off, and place them in a baking pan. Continue until all the potatoes have been crisped. 

Chop up the remaining rosemary into a small dice and scatter over the fries in the pan. You can also liberally sprinkle salt over them as well. Then, pop them into the oven for about 15 - 20 minutes, until the fries are nice and baked through, golden brown, and awesome. 

To make our magical sauce, it's simply a matter of stirring the mayo, mustard, sriracha, and red wine vinegar together until it emulsifies. Taste, and adjust the ingredients as you'd like. If it's too spicy, add more mayo. If it's not mustardy enough, add more mustard. You get the idea. 

Cook the burgers however is best for your situation. If you have a grill, we envy you, and will be joining your ranks soon! If not, use the indoor pan like we recommended in our indoor grilling instructions episode. 

Finish off the caramelized onions and mushrooms by removing from heat and adding in half a tablespoon of butter, and swirling around. This will give it a nice creamy consistency. 

Then, put it all together by spreading some sauce on your buns, placing the burgers on top, and topping with a ladle of the caramelized onions and mushrooms. Serve with the rosemary fries on the side, and enjoy the fruits of your labor and the wonderful summer-ish weather!

Got a favorite burger recipe? Let us know in the comments!

One Year Ago: Stuffed Shells and Manhattan Clam Chowder

A Simple Classic for Dinner Tonight: Veal Scallopini Picatta

 

Today we bring you a classic technique with this veal scallopini piccata. You can use this same technique with a variety of difference sauces or meats for a similar result. What you get is something light, tasty, quick, and delicious.

The basic idea is a very thin cut of meat - in this case veal, but could be chicken or pork or anything - around a quarter of an inch thick at most, evenly thick throughout. It's dredged in flour and then quickly fried. Then you make the sauce, and simmer in the sauce for a few minutes to absorb the flavor. But we're getting ahead of ourselves - let's dive in!

Making the Dish

What You'll need
3 - 5 thin slices of veal/chicken/pork
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup white wine
juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp, capers

Get started by mixing the flour with the salt and pepper and sifting everything together until evenly combined. Dredge the veal pieces in the flour until entirely covered.

In a large non-stick sauté pan, bring the olive oil to a high heat. When it is just barely smoking, add in the veal pieces. Do it in batches if necessary so as not to crowd the pan.

Let the meat cook on each side for about 2 - 3 minutes, until golden brown, and then flip and cook for an additional 1 - 2 minutes until cooked through.

Remove the veal from the skillet and let rest on a paper towel. In the same skillet add in the capers, white wine, and thyme and stir together, scraping up any bits on the pan. Let simmer until the liquid is reduced by half.

Add the lemon juice and the butter to the pan, and reduce the heat. Swirl the butter around until melted. Then, add the veal pieces back to the pan, stirring together gently and sloshing some of the sauce around until the pieces are covered. Remove from heat.

Serve over your favorite side - in our case, that was pasta with a quick coating of lemon, butter, and pecorino.











The Result
For a 15 minute fix, this is tough to beat. Quick, light, and flavorful, this does not dissapoint. You can modify this easily - swapping out the capers and white wine for mushrooms and marsala, and you have veal marsala. Or add tomato sauce and amp it up. Or cook with spinach. Or whatever you want. It's an easy technique that 's simple to master.

Have you cooked anything in this way before? If so, let us know about it in the comments and give us some links to go and find the recipes!

One year ago: Penne all'Arrabiatta