Can I take this second to tell you how much I love food?
I love food. A lot. Food is my sustenance, in more ways than one.
I really, really, REALLY love food.
Really.
I love food so much, I consider myself a Foodie. I'm an Amateur Foodie, but still a big-enough lover of food to call myself one.
Don't know what a Foodie is? Educate yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodie
Do you know what else rocks? I can eat a lot of food. A whole lot of food. Thank God I'm a guy with an overactive thyroid.
Anyway, tonight's post is obviously about food, and how much I love that. But, you've probably figured that out by now. My blog readers are such observant and attentive people. And intelligent. And good-looking. And hopefully are just barely vain enough to be smiling at these compliments, right now. :)
I love alcohol, too. Not in like a "WOO PARTY DRUNK CRAZY" sense, but in a...well...actually, yes, I love alcohol in a "WOO PARTY DRUNK CRAZY" sense, but I also love it in a "hmm. what kind of drink would go best with this meal" sense. That's part of the reason I got a job at a liquor store: to learn. I love learning about anything really, but especially about food and alcohol. Especially when they're paired up together. :)
You know this already, but I also love Agriculture. A lot. A lot lot lot. Agriculture makes my heels click, man. Ag is where it's AT, yo! One of my favorite things about Agriculture is that....Ag gives me food! AND alcohol! It's a win-win-win! I eat, I drink, and I clean up animal poop! Three of my favorite pastimes!
Well, two of my favorite pastimes. I'll leave it to you to pick them out.
Since I've mentioned food and I've mentioned Agriculture, I'm going to mention something that comes from the blessed union of those two topics: BEEF.
Man, I love beef. Not like, love. I love beef so much that in order to get around that no-meat-on-Friday-during-Lent thing, I put beef bullion in my pasta dishes. That's not technically meat, right?
Anyway, back to the proper subject matter: food. And beef.
What happens when you marry food and beef? You get...a recipe!!
Tonight's recipe-for-share is what mi familia had for supper tonight. Last night. Whenever.
Steak fajitas, courtesy of Simply Recipes.
There are hyperlinks up there in those blue underlined phrases. I encourage you to right-click and open them in a new tab. That recipe will make your tastebuds sing and your digestive tract happy.
Trust me. I'm a Foodie.
If you simply can't be bothered by all that right clicking nonsense, I suppose I can just put the recipe right here in the blog post. Here it is, verbatim from the website:
Ingredients
1 lb of flank steak or skirt steak1 large yellow onion, peeled and sliced with the grain, not against the grain as one would normally slice an onion. Slice first in half, and then slice off sections a half inch wide at widest point.
2 large bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, de-ribbed, sliced lengthwise into half-inch wide strips
Marinade:
Juice of 1 lime
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled, minced
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 fresh Jalapeño pepper, seeded, ribs removed, finely chopped (be careful not to touch your eyes or anywhere near your eyes after handling a Jalapeño pepper!)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro, including stems
Method
1 Mix all marinade ingredients. Set the steak in the marinade and let it sit at least an hour, the longer the better.2 Heat to high heat a large cast iron pan or griddle. Add a teaspoon of olive oil to the pan. Add the steak, frying on each side for 3 minutes, or to desired doneness. 3 minutes per side will yield approximately medium rare doneness for an average cut of flank steak. If pan starts to smoke too much, reduce the heat to medium high. We want the steak browned, not burned. Remove from pan and let sit for 5 minutes.
3 Reduce the pan heat to medium high. Add a little more oil to the pan if necessary. Add the onions, bell peppers. Cook, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes, until the onions are slightly translucent.
4 Slice the meat against the grain into thin slices. If you slice the meat at a slanted angle, you will be able to get your slices pretty thin. Flank steak is flavorful but can be a little tough, so thin slices will really help make it easier to eat.
5 Serve immediately with shredded cheese, salsa, shredded iceberg lettuce, sour cream, guacamole and warm flour tortillas. (Hint for warming tortillas - put in microwave over a paper towel for 20 seconds on high heat.)
Serves 4.
Note: We used a flank steak that weighed about two pounds, and I ended up having to quadruple the marinade recipe. I know that sounds crazy, but it worked. I like my meat with FLAVOR, man. I also upped the cilantro a LOT. Like, a LOT. But, I'm a cilantro freakazoid, and I can't get enough of the flavor that it brings to the table. However, if you do end up quadrupling the marinade recipe like I did, you can lay off of the oil in the pan before you cook the meat. There is PLENTY covering that steak from the marinade to keep everything lubed up. I also doubled the pepper and onion quantity, because A) I love me some sauteed veggies and B) I've gotta have something to eat for lunch later. I'm a growing boy, and all that.
Another note: If you decide to tenderize your steak a little bit and slice it before you marinade it, that's totally okay, too. I did that, and it just put a little more flavor into the meat, as opposed to just on it.
Now, to tie everything together, those fajitas went great with the margaritas I made to have with supper. (Note number three: please only drink if you're 21 or older. Or younger. It doesn't really matter to me, but my morals say that I should put this legal disclaimer here.)
Would you like me to share this margarita recipe? It's quite tasty, and even a little bit spicy.
You would?
Gladly.
All of my margaritas start off with the 2-2-2 combo of tequila, triple sec, and simple syrup. That would be two ounces of each into a cocktail shaker or blender with loads of ice. By the way, my recipe for simple syrup: 1/2c water and 1c sugar into a little saucepan. Boil. Put into a little squirt bottle used for condiments and let cool to room temp before using. It yields just a bit over a cup of liquid, and is good on the counter for a few days. I'm not sure exactly how long, because like I said, I love alcohol. After you observe my 2-2-2 rule, you can start to mix it up a bit. Tonight, I added another 2 to the equation: two ounces of freshly-squeezed lime juice. It just goes so well with the marinade for the beef. If you were to shake or blend those eight ounces of liquid together, you would have Michael's Standard Margarita, which is a perfect accompaniment to...just about anything. Ha. But tonight, I got a little daring. I loaded those ingredients into my smoothie/margarita maker with a bunch of ice, and blended to get the ice broken up. AND THEN...I took the couple of pinches (about 1/4c) of leftover chopped cilantro, and threw that into the blender, too! Shocking and unexpected, right? Well, I gave it a few more pulses in the blender to get everything all chopped up and smooth and margarita-y. And gave it a taste. It needed just a little something, so I gave it a shot of lemon juice from the fridge, and let me tell you. That margarita was not only cold and delicious and boozy, but the cilantro gave it SUCH an awesome spicy bite and a freshness that I totally didn't expect. If anything, it actually made the drink MORE refreshing. I was very very pleasantly surprised.
So was my mom. I need to add tequila to the shopping list, now.
Of course, if you're not a cilantro person, you can totally ignore any and everything I just said about throwing it into an otherwise perfect margarita recipe. But if you are a cilantro person, I encourage you to give that drink recipe a shot next time you're having stir fry or Mexican or anything that is a little bit spicy. It's pretty durn tasty. Just be sure to have a glass of water handy to wash the cilantro bits off your teeth. Even though they're pretty minuscule by this point, they still have a way of sticking to your two front teeth, just like that pesky little bit of broccoli. Annoying, and embarrassing, if you're going to get your picture taken. Trust me.
Anyway, I think that's about all I want to say for this go-round. I've rambled on long enough. I really hope that you get the opportunity to try out these recipes soon. They're very worth it! I also hope that you enjoyed my little change of pace with the Foodie blog. I may be inclined to do this type of thing every so often, so keep an eye out!
Also, don't forget to thank your local farmers and ranchers. Without them, we wouldn't have beef, veggies, OR margarita-worthy cilantro. A world without beef, veggies and margarita-worthy cilantro would be a very sad world, indeed. Ag is what makes the world go round, kiddos!
Until next time!
Michael Dean
