Well the holidays are coming up, and I've found that I've been too busy to cook anything really interesting, but even so I don't order out if I can help it (one exception is when I am in the mood for chinese food- I never seem to have the proper ingredients, and buying all the exotic sauces, etc for your meal can get expensive unless you eat it often).

Lets see if I can remember what was pretty good that I made...

One thing was really simple, and tasted pretty good too!

Feta and Tomato on Flatbread:

This is pretty much just what it says up there - You buy some Feta cheese, cut some tomatoes up, and buy some flat breat from the store.

Fire up your broiler (I used my toaster ovens broiler), put the tomatoes on the bread, add the feta, sprinkle some olive oil on top - and add some salt and fresh pepper. Cook until cheese is melted, and things look done. That's it!

You can also just leave out the bread and just do this with tomatoes - still tastes great and makes a great side dish.


Beef Braccioli:

This is something I am making myself tonight - so if it doesn't turn out well I will post about it. Beef Braccioli is pretty much just really thin steak (flank steak I think). It was pretty cheap- at about $4.20 for two nice sized steaks. It's the first time I ever have seen it in my store, but you can make it on your own by buying flank steak and pounding it thin (see notes on pounding steak below).

I got this idea from Alton Brown's show Good Eats. You basically just take your flattened steak, sprinkle some canola oil on, add some salt and pepper.

Take a very very hot frying pan (cast iron skillets work great as they hold their heat better) and add the steak, one min per side. Alton likes to flip over the hot skillet (so you cook on the bottom flat side) so it is easier to flip the meat.

Thats pretty much it! You can add some parmesian cheese, or some butter (or herbed butter) on top- serve with a side salad. Keep it simple- it's an easy meal that tastes great!


Steak pounding notes - again I learned this from Alton Brown...

Take your steak, put it between two sheets of plastic wrap that have been sprayed with a little water (keep the meat sliding instead of tearing). Spray meat with a little water as well, and once you fold over the top plastic sheet, spreay top with some water. Take a meat pounder (the OXO meat pounder was recommended), and using moderate force pound out meat while pressing out ward once the mallet hits the steak. This distributes the force of the hits, and causes the meat to spread out more evenly and not tear!