Steak Teriyaki

Again...it would be lame to apologize again but I am sorry that I have been gone so long....
But here I am. And here is some tasty steak teriyaki!
I used a recipe from Simply Recipes for steak teriyaki. I mixed up the marinade recipe: 1/3C mirin rice wine, 1/3C sake, 1/3C soy sauce, 1T sugar, and 1T grated ginger. I actually probably used more ginger than the recipe calls for. I used an unfiltered sake from Oregon: Momokawa Pearl. I chose this one because it is one we like to drink and so only using 1/3C wasn't an issue because the rest of the bottle was happily consumed!
I let the flank steak soak in the marinade for a few hours and toward the end I also tossed in some locally grown shiitake mushrooms from our farm share. We skewered the mushrooms and grilled those and the flank steak on the grill.
While those were grilling, I cooked down the marinade to make the teriyaki sauce to serve over the meat.
We also had rice and sauteed spinach along with the steak and mushroom. Delicious!!

Sides dishes for steak!

I love steak but I don't think I had ever bought myself a steak at the grocery store to cook at home. It just seems decadent, I guess. But yesterday was the day. Steaks on the grill for dinner and they were yummy. Plus, our dinner guest made a darn good imitation of A-1 sauce by combining ketchup, worcestershire sauce, and Heinz 57 chili sauce. However, I thought it would be more interesting to post about our sides. I opted for potatoes and spinach, which seemed like the classics.

I was tempted to make creamed spinach but it seemed way too rich.

We often saute spinach with feta cheese and pine nuts, but with no feta I used goat cheese instead.

First, I toasted about 1/4C of pine nuts in a dry pan over med-high heat. I am really good at forgetting about toasting nuts and letting them go too far. It is very easy because they go quickly from perfect to burnt.

This time I stayed close to the stove, shook the pan often, and turned off the heat when they started to smell toasty and delicious. The smell even rivaled the grill just outside on the deck.

Next I cooked 2 cloves of minced garlic in about 1T olive oil.

Once fragrant but not browned, I added the spinach. I covered it for a few minutes and then stirred it to combine the oil, garlic, and spinach.

Once it was all wilted, I added the pine nuts and about 2 ounces of goat cheese. I drained a little of the water out of the pan because I was worried that the cheese would mix with the water and lose its richness. It did melt all over the spinach but did not lose the creaminess.

For our potato side dish, we grilled tiny red potatoes in foil. I wrapped up the spuds in three layers of foil with 1T olive oil, salt, pepper, and several sprigs of fresh rosemary.

We wrapped up the package and let it cook on the edge of the grill. It is good to rotate the foil package around from side to side and to flip it over from top to bottom. The potatoes were on the grill for about 30-35 minutes total. Yum!

Thursday night.

Dinner tonight...steak fajitas, green salad, and dessert!

I found some sirloin strips for a good price so I snatched them up today at the store. I had planned to make lamb saag tonight but the beef changed my plan. I stuck the meat in a marinade of chili powder, cumin, cayenne, salt, pepper, and oregano. I think I over did it on either the chili powder or the cumin because the meat cooked so fast and one of those powders didn't get to cook off enough.

I grilled green peppers and onions in oil, salt, pepper, oregano, and pepper flakes. And then in a hot pan I cooked the meat in small batches. We ate the fajitas with some guacamole, salsa, cheese, cilantro, and lettuce. YUM!

The green salad was greens and radishes from our farm share and cucumbers and carrots from the grocery store.

And dessert...strawberry and rhubarb cobbler with fresh fruit from our farm share. Only it wasn't as delicious as I'd hoped. The rhubarb needed to be cooked before going in the dish as it was still crunchy. And I added baking soda instead of baking powder and so the topping tasted metallic. And finally there is too much tapioca in the recipe for my liking as a serious jelly developed leaving no juices to be sopped up by the topping. Oh, well.