Flat Iron Steak with Smashed Potato an Radicchio Salad

Okay, so I decided to make steak again and this time it worked out perfectly. After school today, Lucas and I walked over to the meat hook, our neighborhood butcher shop, and picked up a couple of flat iron steaks for dinner tonight. Honestly, I still have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to cooking meat but maybe I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

The steak was cooked pretty standardly - super hot pan, salt, pepper, then finished with thyme, butter and a rub of raw garlic. For the potato salad, first I cut up the potatoes and boiled them in salted water. For the last 10 minutes, I threw in 2 eggs to hard boil. I made a dressing with a ton of dijon mustard, sherry vinegar, raw garlic, anchovy paste, chives, tarragon, sautéed shallots, olive oil, salt and pepper. Once the potatoes and eggs were done cooking, I let the potatoes drain while I peeled the eggs. I gave the eggs a rough chop and tossed them with the potatoes, dressing and sliced radicchio (the radicchio should wilt a little from the heat of the potatoes). Finally, while the steak was resting, I made a little sauce in the pan with the leftover butter and some sherry vinegar and then poured that over the steak. That's it! Lucas rated this meal a 9.8 out f 10 - pretty good if you ask me.

Potatoe, Fennel and Smoked Jalepeño Hash + Fried Eggs and Chimichurri

Last night's leftovers turned into this morning's breakfast. I'm not really into the philosophy that everything is better with an egg on top, but for breakfast, an egg can really transform your leftovers from dinner.

This morning I decided to use the leftover roasted potatoes, chimichurri, arugula and raw fennel from last night.

First, I sautéed an onion in a little olive oil and added in one of my favorite dried smoked jalepeños that my mom gets from the Santa Monica farmers' market. They are super spicy and have this really subtle smoky flavor that just kind of lingers in the background of whatever you put them with. After about 5 minutes, I added in some sliced fennel and about a tablespoon of butter and let that cook for another 2-3 minutes before adding in some roughly chopped leftover potatoes. Once the potatoes had warmed through, I turned off the heat and threw in a few handfuls of arugula to wilt. I then fried a few eggs and topped them with some of my chimichurri.

Best breakfast ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Roasted Branzino with Fingerling Potatoes, Chimichurri and Bread Crumbs + Cucumber and Radish Salad

I've been cooking a lot lately but haven't really felt like posting about anything until right now. Last night I made a reaaalllyyy delicious meal which I then turned into the best breakfast ever this morning (I'll be posting about that next).

First, I cut the potatoes into even pieces and coated them in salt, pepper and olive oil before roasting them at 400 degrees. Next, I prepared the stuffing for the fish. I sliced up a shallot, a bulb of fennel, some parsley stems and a meyer lemon and seasoned them in a bowl with salt and olive oil. I then seasoned the fish and filled each cavity with a handful of the fennel mixture. The fish were roasted at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes.

For the Chimichurri, I combined parsley, mint, tarragon and chives with a clove of garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil and sherry vinegar in a blender.

For the salad, I sliced some radishes and cucumber and then at the last minute tossed them with a little wild arugula, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Finally, at the last minute, I toasted up some homemade sour dough bread crumbs in a little butter and olive oil with salt and some chili flakes.

Quinoa with Beets, Red Onion, Shitake Mushrooms and Snap Peas + Roasted Potatoes

This is one of my favorite ways to eat. Super vegetable-y and delicious. First, I cooked the beets in vinegar, water, salt and sugar in the oven until they became tender but NOT mushy!! Next, I sautéed a small red onion in olive oil before adding in roughly chopped snap peas and shitake mushrooms. In a separate pot, I cooked the quinoa until just done. When the beets were ready, I mixed everything together with a little lemon juice, olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and pepper. Served with a side of roasted potatoes.

Trout with Romesco Sauce + Roasted Asparagus and Yellow Squash

Sorry about the lack of posts, I haven't really felt like taking photos of my meals lately, although I can assure you that I've been cooking a lot. Last night I made some of the best banana bread I've ever made before (very exciting considering that I totally mixed up the measurements for baking powder and baking soda). I've tried about a billion banana bread recipes but I always go back to this one. SO GOOD but having said that, I can recommend a few adjustments.

1) Reverse the quantities of baking powder and baking soda (I need to figure out why this worked)
2) Substitute 1/2 cup of the flour for whole wheat flour
3) Add in some cinnamon
4) Also add in about 1/2 cup of dried unsweetened coconut

Anyways, onto tonight's meal.

One night when Lucas and I were in Barcelona, every restaurant we wanted to go to was either closed or packed. After wandering around for about an hour, we finally decided to settle on some mediocre touristy spot that we had remembered reading about on a blog somewhere. The food was mostly ok, but one thing that really stood out was a side of roasted asparagus with romesco sauce. It might have even been one of the best things I ate on the entire trip! Anyways, I've been thinking about that asparagus a lot so I decided to try making my own romesco.

I read a bunch of recipes for research and went with the following ingredients -
(most called for hazelnuts but I skipped them because I didn't have any)

- 2 medium sized tomatoes, sliced in half and roasted in the over at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes
- 1 dried ancho chile, toasted in a pan for a few minutes on each side
- 1 piece of stale whole wheat bread, chopped into cubes and then toasted in olive oil
- about a tablespoon of almonds, toasted
- 2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped and briefly sautéed in olive oil
- a few pinches of dried chili flakes
- about 3 tablespoons of jarred pimientos
- a small handful of parsley
- a tablespoon of anchovy paste (apparently not traditional but it just seemed to make sense to me)
- a tiny bit of grated orange zest (maybe half of a teaspoon)
- a bunch of olive oil
- red wine vinegar
- salt
- pepper

I threw all of the ingredients into my food processor, blended until smooth and adjusted the seasoning with salt/vinegar.

Then, I roasted some yellow squash and asparagus at about 425 degrees until cooked but still a little crunchy and seared my fish briefly in olive oil. Turned out really well!

Looking forward to Thanksgiving! I'll be taking lots of photos!!

Pongal

I can't say that I've cooked a lot of Indian food before but when I came across this recipe on www.thekitchn.com I couldn't resist trying it out. It's basically an Indian porridge. I did however make a few adjustments to the recipe. First off, I've started using more whole grains in my cooking ever since I started taking this class on nutrition and health, so that meant substituting the white rice for brown rice. Brown rice has about 100x more flavor than white rice (and is obviously way better for you). Brown rice does take longer to cook than white rice though, so I omitted the initial lentil soaking in the recipe. Also, the recipe only called for a 1:4 ratio of lentils to rice so I decided to increase that ratio to about 1:3.

I also caramelized some onions as a topping for the porridge. To the spice mix, I added a little minced ginger and a finely diced chili. I cooked the spices quickly in butter and vegetable oil (I had no ghee and didn't feel like making any). Next time, I would probably increase the amounts of each spice by about 1.5 times more than what is called for in the recipe. The recipe also doesn't specify this, but I finely chopped up the curry leaves before cooking them. Also, if you plan on making this recipe, do not omit the fresh curry leaves! They should be easy to find at a local Indian market and I found that they were a really integral part of the dish.

I roasted a little broccoli to go with the pongal but any other vegetable would do. Finally, I served it with a little plain yogurt. Wish I had some of my mom's favorite mango pickle to go with the pongal. Anyways, this recipe was sooo easy and sooo delicious. I would highly recommend it to anyone!

Roasted Tomato and Eggplant on Toast with Homemade Aioli and Arugula + Bloody Ceasars

This was another one of my toaster oven creations from the two weeks when we didn't have gas in our apartment.

First, I cut up the eggplant into about 1 inch cubes and tossed them with salt, pepper and olive oil before roasting them at about 425 dergees. Next, I sliced a few roma tomatoes in half, again, tossed them with salt, pepper and olive oil, plus a few sprigs of thyme and roasted them at about 425 as well. For the aioli, I crushed up some garlic and then in a separate bowl, combined an egg yolk, sherry vinegar, dijon mustard and salt before slowly streaming in a combination of vegetable and olive oil. I then toasted a few slices of bread, spread on a little aioli, next lay on a roasted tomato and a few pieces of eggplant and then topped it with a handful of arugula and a little of my fancy balsamic vinegar that Lucas bought for me.

Now, for drinks we had a couple of Bloody Ceasars. Apparently it's a SUPER Canadian drink that doesn't really exist in the US, but think of it as basically the same thing as a Bloody Mary but with Clamato juice instead of tomato juice. Clamoto juice is tomato juice mixed with clam juice. Sounds really gross, I know, but it's just soooo delicious, you have to trust me!!! Instead of using store-bought Clamato juice, I opted to buy separate bottles of tomato and clam juice to make my own. This way, it's easy to control how clammy it gets... So anyways, the other ingredients are lemon juice, worcestershire sauce, tabasco (not pictured), horseradish, tons of pepper, vodka and celery salt around the rim of the glass. I don't have a recipe, so it helps to just put in a little of everything at a time and keep tasting until it's just right. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.