Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Italian Style Steak

Please forgive this bare naked post. My computer is not feeling well and no longer letting me upload photos :(
I thought November's dish was going to be Thanksgiving day themed but then I pulled out my Food & Wine Mag again early in the month and realized there was one more 60 minute (not 30 min as I stated previously) meal I wanted to try making. This one was called, as per the title, Italian Style Steak Dinner. The star of the show was a lightly marinated flank steak; with garlic, thyme, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The supporting characters were a buttery polenta and roasted shiitake and red onions.
This meal I made several "Doh!" mistakes that ended up causing the parental approval index to go way down.
First, despite my parents not being big steak eaters, I decided to stick with the suggested flanken meat instead of upgrading to a more tender hunk of beef or even switching to chicken. Second, I tried to cut down on sodium for health reasons but felt that the strong blue cheese that should have graced the shiitakes would more than make up for the lack of salt sprinkled onto the veggies and into the polenta. The operative word is should, the darned hunk of cheese sat silently in the refrigerator all evening.
All in all this was not a success in the eyes of the parental units but the leftovers were honorably (and in my opinon successfully) repurposed as Monday's lunch. This time with the cheese proudly sitting on top of everything.