Cooking: Skirt Steak With Spicy Green Salsa

I guess I'm the eternal carnivore. When I'm not going around sampling new burgers, I'm at home cooking up some skirt steak.

I wanted to share this recipe from one of my fave cookbooks, Great Food Fast. The recipe in the book recommends pairing it with potato salad, but I wanted something healthier so I made a salad with grilled peaches instead. Stay tuned for the salad in next week's entry!

This skirt steak was so tender and when cut at a bias and with the sauce on top, it looked and tasted fantastic. And it was very easy and quick. The vinegar and jalapenos in the sauce gave it a kick and tanginess that complemented the meatiness of the steaks extremely well.

I mean, it was no chimichurri sauce but it was another good option to the Argentine classic. If you're a red wine lover like me, this will go perfectly with some full-bodied Pinot Noir or Syrah (or heck, some Zinfandel too). Enjoy!

Skirt Steak with Spicy Green Salsa
by Martha Stewart from Everyday Food: Great Fast Food

Ingredients:
5 teaspoons chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
Coarse salt and fresh ground pepper
1 1/2 pounds skirt steak
2 teaspoons of olive oil, plus more for grates

1. In a small bowl, combine the chili powder, cumin, oregano, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Sprinkle the mixture over the steak; drizzle with oil. Let stand, turning to coat evenly with the oil halfway through, for 10 minutes.

2. Heat a grill to high, lightly oil the grates. Place the steak on the grill (fold thin end over so steak is an even thickness); cover. Cook turning once, until the meat has reached desired doneness, 4-6 minutes for medium rare.

Spicy Green Salsa

Ingredients:
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
1 tablespoon minced pickled jalapeños
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon red-wine vinegar
1/8 teaspoon course salt

Combine all ingredients with 1 tablespoon water in a small bowl. The salsa can be refrigerated for 3-4 days; cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly on the surface to prevent discoloration. Makes 1/3 cup.

Capital Grille: Mac-n-Cheese with Real Lobster!

We went to Capital Grille in the Beverly Center to redeem a coupon from a Los Angeles Magazine subscription. Prices are a bit exorbitant, I must say, especially for the quality of the food. But there's one thing I'll definitely be returning for -- the gloriously buttery and cheesy mac-n-cheese dotted with generous chunks of lobster.

Wow. It also came in an unusual pasta shape, Campanelle, a bell shape instead of the standard elbow macaroni. The Mascapone, Havarti and Grana Padano-based sauce was perfectly creamy and the panko breadcrumbs and grated white cheddar gave the dish the crunch and bubbly cheesy top that pulled it all together. The soft pieces of lobster felt like gems I bit into. It was odd that the pieces were so large since restaurants usually skimp on expensive ingredients. I guess I was conditioned to expect tiny pieces and looking through the little bell shaped pastas to find those specks of lobster. But not here.

The next best thing I had there -- Parmesan truffle fries. Ok, I didn't just have arteries-clogging things, I swear. More on healthier fare later. But these fries were good. I'm not usually a big follower of the truffle hype, but these had a good truffle aroma and dusted with shredded Grana Padano cheese, which is similar to Parmesan (hence the misnomer menu name). Fries were piping hot and crispy, just the way I like them.

The calamari appetizer was misleading on the menu but flavor was ok. It said pan-fried so we were surprised to find deep fried calamari smothered in the tangy and slightly spicy sauce. Even the online menu claims the calamari is sauteed in butter but maybe it's coated in flour or something because it definitely looked deep fried. Anyhow, we were just trying to be less unhealthy is all. The sauce was ok. I liked the modified version I made later for brunch when I added home fries.
The most perplexing dish was hands down the steak. This place is mostly a steakhouse. The decor, vibe and everything about it screams "old-school steakhouse-cum-power lunch place a-la DC (hence the name)." But the porcini rubbed Delmonico steak (named after the famed New York steakhouse's signature boneless ribeye dish) with 12-year aged balsamic vinegar (whatever -- I couldn't taste the difference) wasn't cooked right despite the insistence of our server. The dried porcini mushroom bits that it was encrusted with had basically charred into a jet black coating, which was beyond browned.

Our server insisted that was the way it was supposed to be and offered to give me a new one but when I saw that the inside was cooked medium rare properly the way I like it, I decided to take a bite first. The steak was ok but frankly the porcini rub didn't add much other than my having to scrape it off because it likely was carcinogenic. The meat flavor was good enough, but no match to the juicy ribeye I had at Jar or the mother of all steaks I had at Peter Luger's in Brooklyn.

We ordered the haricot verts with tomatoes and fennel to balance out all the fat and grease we were consuming. It was good but nothing special. After all, it's hard to compete with lobster mac-n-cheese.

Service was ok but not great.

Jar: Rib-eye and Fries for a Special Occasion

Because I was good on Thanksgiving day and didn't stuff myself silly with, well, stuffing and such (more on my Thanksgiving day meal later), I didn't feel bad having an uber hearty meal at Jar, complete with fat, bloody steaks and tender, juicy pot roast.

I had read about this "signature" pot roast, so although my companion and I weren't huge pot roast fans, we ordered it. It was definitely one of the best pot roasts I had ever had (albeit in my limited pot roast experience) although a tad on the salty side. The carrots and onions were well integrated into the roast, which was nicely seared on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside. I also liked the horseradish cream it came with, that gave it a nice balance in flavor with a slight kick.


My favorite item out of all the things we ate was undoubtedly the rib-eye steak, which was all it was cracked up to be. It was perfectly cooked medium rare -- nice and browned on the outside and crispy on the edges and bloody and soft on the inside. We had a choice of sauces so based on posts we got the lobster bearnaise (because there's always room to get more luxurious and decadent) and the peppercorn sauces. The lobster one was far too rich, even for this butter and fat fiend, and distracted from the amazing flavor of the steak. The peppercorn, which was more watery with whole peppercorn spheres for some kick, was just ok. I almost didn't mind slicing and chewing one piece of meat after another, without any condiments, just pure good red as red meat. When I saw the massive hunk of meat, I didn't think I'd put much of a dent but I couldn't stop eating it, bite after bite, as my stomach would tell me I needed to stop. But my head wanted to keep eating because it was enjoying it so much. Similar to my Girasole experience with its carbonara.



The fries were also very good, served piping hot and super crispy. It didn't hurt that they came smothered with garlic bits and parsley, imparting even more flavor and textures. The only thing is I wanted to leave room for the star of the show -- the rib-eye -- and not fill my stomach unnecessarily with these carbs. But then my dining companion and I concurred that fries don't keep very well. What better excuse?



We tried to be semi-healthy amid the heart attack on the table. We got the stir-fried water spinach, which was good and reminded us of the great Chinese restaurants that serve this (Din Tai Fung came to mind) but nothing to write home about, especially given the stellar steak sitting next to it.

A big disappointment was the crab deviled eggs appetizer, which was raved about on message posts but was so unmemorable and devoid of crab that I almost think it is a misnomer.



Those things were absolutely nothing special. The deviled eggs tasted flat and didn't have much flavor in them. The crab that I had hoped would add some pizazz to the quotidian egg didn't do much and at worst, even had a whiff of unfreshness to it.


The octopus salad special was ok but nothing to write home about either. My companion is a huge octopus fiend so we tried it and the octopus was cooked well enough -- nice and soft, not too chewy. But it didn't exactly blow me away.

The bread that came with butter was good but would have been better had it been heated. The butter was salty but I like salty so it was ok.

For dessert, we had bread pudding topped with vanilla ice cream and some caramel sauce. It was good but think we were too full to really enjoy it. Portion was small so that was actually good for us so we didn't have to feel bad for not finishing it.

In short, I would definitely return for the steak but it's also a special occasion place, not cheap at all. We got a special deal from Open Table but still overall not an everyday kind of experience. Tables are a bit on close side but noise level isn't too bad. You're better off parking on the street since they only have valet (and I personally hate to valet).

I was torn between the Kansas City Steak that's the only dry-aged one on the menu and is a whopping $40 a pop, but once I realized the rib-eye is more marbled, aka fatty, aka much more succulent and um, yummier, it was a no-brainer. It also helped that it's supposedly the chef's favorite cut. Let's just say it had me at marbled.

Best of NY Part I: Porterhouse, Burgers & Pastrami

I've never had so many meals in a day and consumed so much meat within such a short period of time as I have during a recent New York City trip. Back-to-back steakhouses, paella at midnight and pizza at 2 a.m., although not all in one day.

I mostly ventured to new places this time around, except for my all-time favorite pastrami joint that's filled with equal numbers of tourists and locals during its bustling lunch hour, Katz's Delicatessen. But more about that later.



First I want to come out and say that the best meal I had -- and I qualify -- during this trip was the perfectly cooked, bloody pieces of sirloin and filet mignon with the delightfully charred edges at Peter Luger Steakhouse in Brooklyn.

It wasn't Momofuku's pork butt extravaganza braised for 10 hours-plus, or the piping bowl of ramen at Ippudo that everyone raved about. This signature bone-in porterhouse (for two supposedly but really for four) came sizzling on a plate that was so hot our server said we could cook the meat some more on the side of the plate if it was too rare for us. It wasn't. I'm not even a huge fan of steakhouses in general, always saying grumpily that a steak is a steak and I could cook steak on a home grill with better results. Have I been proven wrong. This meat was ridiculously tender, juicy -- yes, all the cliches stuck. The sirloin had a bit more fat so tasted a bit juicier than the leaner filet mignon. But the difference was very subtle and didn't deter from the sublime experience.
I could actually taste the meat -- and couldn't stop despite the fact that it was lunch time and we also ordered a burger to share, as if we didn't already have enough meat.

You know I'm a burger snob. I have very high standards for my burger and at every bite, I deconstruct and analyze before devouring a good one or dismissing a mediocre one. This burger was on the rare side, rather than medium rare, but was definitely above average. Still, the bun was on the dense and dry side for me and the patty was not as juicy as it could have been.

Speaking of burgers, I had three different burgers during this trip. All hyped and all good. I'll get into my favorite burger on this NY trip in a bit, but this one wasn't it. It was a decent burger but it wasn't as good as Houston's in LA (I know. Broken record). The best burger I had was from Minetta Tavern. By some tight scheduling that was at times hard to stomach, we landed a table at this hot spot that is a recently converted old-school steakhouse nearly as old as Peter Luger. I had to try restaurateur Keith McNally's latest project since I love his other joints like Balthazar, Pastis and Dr. Schiller's Liquor Bar so much. This burger wasn't the infamous $26 Black Label burger that has prime dry-aged beef but the relatively quotidian Minetta burger (still not chump change at $16) was good enough. I read that a superstar butcher supplies a patty that has a custom-mix of different beef parts, which was apparent in its great texture and flavor. I didn't love the brioche bun as much -- could have been less dense. The caramelized onions were on the sweet side for me but I liked the melted cheddar cheese topping.

Service, however, left a LOT to be desired at Minetta. Granted it was crowded with a huge line of people waiting, but that's no excuse for curt service. Our female server barely cracked a smile and wasn't helpful or attentive. I lost some respect for McNally, whose other restaurants always had impeccable service (but not as good as The Bazaar -- yes, I couldn't omit mentioning it -- or even Osteria Mozza).

While we're on the subject of sandwiches, can't neglect to mention the always reliably fantastic pastrami on rye at Katz's Delicatessen. I dream about this regularly. Needless to say, it was my first stop. This time around, though, I discovered another thing it does very well. Matzo ball soup! Ok, I don't even like this modified chicken broth with a huge ball of dough floating on it. But wow.



This soup really blew me away. The broth was light, tasted like chicken but not overpowered by it and the dough was not too dense or "doughy" and complemented the delicious broth so perfectly I couldn't help but be a little verklemp.

I'm a new fan of this soup that never sounded appetizing to me. Turns out I just hadn't had good matzo ball soup.

It's also the best way to warm up in cold weather. I heart NY.

Katz's Delicatessen
205 E. Houston Street (at Ludlow Street)
New York, NY 10002
(212) 254-2246

Peter Luger Steakhouse
178 Broadway Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 387-7400

Minetta Tavern
113 MacDougal Street
New York, NY 10012
(212) 475-3850