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!

Well no fiancee around last night, so I made a steak (she doesn't eat red meat, and it's usually annoying cooking one thing for me, another for her...).

I am poor- so unless I get to costco and buy steak in bulk (like I posted about previously), I tend to buy it cheap. One cut of meat which really isn't so bad is London Broil - a tougher cut which can be really really cheap in your local store- but isn't so bad to eat!

I think I bought my last one for $2/lb - but it was a manager 'special' and wasn't the best London Broil cut you could get, too much tendon (making for tough to eat pieces). I don't know if I would recommend getting the special on an already budget cut...but if you're not too picky and really want red meat, why not?

The best way I've found to cook this cut is to look for a good piece- one that looks like a solid slab of steak, and doesnt' have too much fat in it. While marbling in better cuts of steak is desired, in Londen Broil it more likely means that the meat will have lots of tough gristle! Get the steak home, salt with kosher salt and crack some fresh pepper on it.

Cook the meat as you usually would your steak- and when you go to serve it instead of serving in large pieces, as you would a fillet or ribeye- cut the steak across the grain into thin strips. This will make the meat more tender and taste better!

Marinades are also great to use on Londen Broil, as the meat isn't the most flavorful cut.

By the way, slicing steak like this can really make your money go further! People tend to eat what they are given- and 5 slices of steak are actually a nice size portion- but much less than if you were given an entire steak to eat! You will find you will eat less, and will have leftovers that you can make a nice steak sandwich the next day with... get a nice roll, add some A-1 steaksauce, a slice of american cheese, and you're done!

Thats' it!

I really want to try a Bread Fruit - someone at my office had one the other day and it looked really interesting...I can't find them anywhere though.

I would love to try more exotic fruits- there are a ton of them out there which I think most of us don't even know about..custard apples, starfruits, rollinia, pomello, mangosteens, etc. I can't find anywhere that has more than a few of these- so if anyone knows of someplace to try let me know!

I had hotdogs last night. Yup. Two huge hotdogs- and you know what? Hotdogs really don't taste as good when they aren't grilled...boiling them just doesn't cut it and grilling them on a pan doesn't seem to do them justice. I also felt a little sick afterwards...

So I didn't make anything...well I can't be expected to every night, right??

Might make a steak tonight...hmmmm. I need to stop at costco again- the last time we were there I swear I spent like $400, but our freezer was so full it was a little ridiculous - and we ate like kings for a few months!

One great tip- buy one of those huge, uncut,whole fillets or large stip steak packages. You'll know them when you see them- they will look like giant slabs of meat. They will most likely be over $100 as well! Don't let the price scare you though- since these are uncut and costco has good deals, you really end up paying less than half per pound than what you would be paying at the supermarket. One strip steak slab I bought I cut up into 18 steaks - it lasted me a couple of months and ended up being much cheaper than if I had bought the steaks at the store (which i probably wouldn't have done since a good steak is ridicoulous - like $20/lb!). I could have made it last longer if I weren't such a pig and didn't eat such huge portions ;)

Anyway- once you get your fillet, strip, or whatever, get it home and put it in the freezer for 30 mins or so- just to get it firmed up. Don't freeze it! You can't freeze things after defrosting them (the cellular walls of meats, etc get broken down and they turn into gross mushy things).

Once the meat is firm, bring it to the sink and unwrap it- then rinse the meat off. Take a sharp carving knife and slice the slab into steaks anywhere from 1.5" to 3" (for fillet), depending on your preference. I would get a ruler and use it to guide your cutting, it really makes a huge difference.

Make sure you remove as much fat as you can. Also, there will be membranes of tendon, or whatever on the steaks- you will be able to tell by the fact that they are thin, translucent, and tough- and run the length of the steaks. Remove these! Unlike fat, which cooks off - these will stay tough and chewy. Take a sharp paring or fillet knife and run it underneath the membrane- all down the length of it- they should remove in large pieces and without much effort. Try not to take meat with them!

If you get to an end piece that you don't think its worth cutting further, you can do a number of things. You can 'butterfly' the piece, slightly cutting almost entirely through the center of the piece, and folding it over so you have two halves of steak the thickness you want (sounds confusing, but just look up 'butterflying' online- its really easy). Or you can just cook the end piece like on long, thinner steak!

If you have a lot of scraps, even fatty scraps - save them! I love cut them up into 1-2" cubes and then marinate them in a ziplock bag w/ good balsamic vinagear, some kosher salt, and ground pepper. Cook these like shish kabob, over an extreamly flaming hot grill - charcoal preferred, but gas OK too. Cook only for a couple of mins - depending on if they just came out of thr fridge or not. You should get nice, rare, slightly charred pieces of amazing steak!

You can also save these, then make cheesesteaks w/ them! Just roll flat with a rolling pin, chop up into small pieces, and then sear over high heat in a frying pan! Get some crusty french bread, and whatever cheese you like - cheese wiz or american is my choice. I also like mine 'wit' - with onions, and to do this just 'sweat' your chopped onion over med-low heat for around 10 mins, or until they start to get translucent, but are not getting browned.

Thats it! You will be eating like a king for months without breaking the bank! A little more work than buying from the buther, but worth it, in my opinion.

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I get many of my ideas from the cooking magazine Cooks Illustrated (which I make reference to below) and from Alton Brown on the Food Network. Alton's show, Good Eats, is really something to watch - especially if you enjoy knowing why things turn out they way they do, not just how. Knowing the science behind the cooking will really help you to create your own meals- and make things much more fun for you (it's also cool impressing your friends with your vast knowledge of foodie chemistry...or not). I live by Alton's book, 'I'm just here for the food', and have his first season on DVD as well. I also plan on getting his guide to kitchen gear, since I am always impressed by how efficient he is and I want my kitchen to be like his. His show is a little cheesey, but I like it like that- and you will learn more about cooking from him than anywhere else. He actually teaches you how to cook, not just what to cook!