I came across a site today that caught my eye - One Million Acts of Green. Its part of the CBC, but don't hold that against them... Its full of lots of tips and projects both small and large that you can do to improve your environmental footprint. Most of them end up saving you money too, so regardless of your position on global warming and greenhouse gases, even Scrooge himself would be interested in something like this.
Check it out, sign up and see how much you can do to help reduce pollution, and your monthly expenses! Go Green!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
What's up with those steaks?
When Chris and Irene (my wife, Carri's parents) came over last weekend, as usual they brought along their "suggestion" for dinner - in other words, showed up with dinner.
Wow - I have to say, normally its something fun to try, or something that Irene normally doesn't get to have at home since she and Chris agree on somewhat limited areas of culinary choices... At any rate, this time the entree du jour was "Cowboy Steaks" -some promo that Chris had won on a Calgary radio station. When I looked at them, I was somewhat less than impressed. Cross Rib steaks, individually vac-packed and frozen. Bleck - this is not something I was looking forward to!
Ok, so... What do we do with this??? A ha! We are going to need to marinate! Acids and flavours to the rescue! Unfortunately, I had already popped the steaks into the refrigerator to thaw, and by the time the marinade idea hit me on Sunday, it was too late to let them thaw in the sauce... I seem to find the flavours more intense and the meat more-tender if (when dealing with frozen meats,) the marinade is poured over the meat THEN thawed, not the other way around.
Ok, so that ship had sailed, time for something with some heart and a good deal of time to soak up and tenderize.
I found a recipe as follows:
1 cup olive oil (extra virgin – come on, we want flavour here, right?)
½ cup red or white wine (we used Carri’s home-made Amarone wine– yum!)
2 Tbsp soy sauce
3 cloves garlic (at least! I probably tripled that. Sorry, but when it comes to the stinking rose, who measures???)
2 Tbsp fresh parsley (or favourite herb -whatever you have on-hand)
2 tsp Italian seasoning (we didn’t have this, so I used oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary and a bit of savoury)
½ tsp black pepper (I doubled that, fresh ground of coarse... -he he)
1 tsp Crushed red peppercorns
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp sugar
Blend up and pour over meat in a big Ziploc bag, marinate for at least 15 min.
I made a double batch, reserved ¼ for basting while grilling steaks, and another ¼ was heated to use as a sauce for the steaks. (ie. ½ set aside, and the original amount was actually used as a marinade.) -this was plenty for 6 steaks, about 9 oz each. We could’ve probably done more steaks in it, this recipe would be pretty flexible.
We marinated for 5 hours in the fridge with this sauce, and I added an intermediate step of “frustration venting” –I beat the ever-loving-piss out of them with my fists as well, after all, they were cross rib steaks, so some "tenderizing" was in order.
I pulled the steaks out of the fridge and left them to come to room temperature on the counter for a good hour, maybe an hour and a half. If possible, I never put cold steaks on the grill. As a final step, once they were just ready to hit the flames, I hit them with a shaker of Montreal Steak Spice. We use the Clubhouse brand -Carri gets it in a 2 pound bottle at Costco. We seem to go thru about one a month!
Anyway, I'm not sure if there was something done to the steaks ahead of time or not, but after 5 hours in this marinade, they were SUPER tender and VERY flavourful. We have 2 left from Sunday that we’ll be grilling tonite – they’ve been marinating for two days now... Can’t wait! What a turn around! From "Bleck" to "Wow" in a few hours.
Try this marinade and let me know how it works for you! :)
Wow - I have to say, normally its something fun to try, or something that Irene normally doesn't get to have at home since she and Chris agree on somewhat limited areas of culinary choices... At any rate, this time the entree du jour was "Cowboy Steaks" -some promo that Chris had won on a Calgary radio station. When I looked at them, I was somewhat less than impressed. Cross Rib steaks, individually vac-packed and frozen. Bleck - this is not something I was looking forward to!
Ok, so... What do we do with this??? A ha! We are going to need to marinate! Acids and flavours to the rescue! Unfortunately, I had already popped the steaks into the refrigerator to thaw, and by the time the marinade idea hit me on Sunday, it was too late to let them thaw in the sauce... I seem to find the flavours more intense and the meat more-tender if (when dealing with frozen meats,) the marinade is poured over the meat THEN thawed, not the other way around.
Ok, so that ship had sailed, time for something with some heart and a good deal of time to soak up and tenderize.
I found a recipe as follows:
1 cup olive oil (extra virgin – come on, we want flavour here, right?)
½ cup red or white wine (we used Carri’s home-made Amarone wine– yum!)
2 Tbsp soy sauce
3 cloves garlic (at least! I probably tripled that. Sorry, but when it comes to the stinking rose, who measures???)
2 Tbsp fresh parsley (or favourite herb -whatever you have on-hand)
2 tsp Italian seasoning (we didn’t have this, so I used oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary and a bit of savoury)
½ tsp black pepper (I doubled that, fresh ground of coarse... -he he)
1 tsp Crushed red peppercorns
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp sugar
Blend up and pour over meat in a big Ziploc bag, marinate for at least 15 min.
I made a double batch, reserved ¼ for basting while grilling steaks, and another ¼ was heated to use as a sauce for the steaks. (ie. ½ set aside, and the original amount was actually used as a marinade.) -this was plenty for 6 steaks, about 9 oz each. We could’ve probably done more steaks in it, this recipe would be pretty flexible.
We marinated for 5 hours in the fridge with this sauce, and I added an intermediate step of “frustration venting” –I beat the ever-loving-piss out of them with my fists as well, after all, they were cross rib steaks, so some "tenderizing" was in order.
I pulled the steaks out of the fridge and left them to come to room temperature on the counter for a good hour, maybe an hour and a half. If possible, I never put cold steaks on the grill. As a final step, once they were just ready to hit the flames, I hit them with a shaker of Montreal Steak Spice. We use the Clubhouse brand -Carri gets it in a 2 pound bottle at Costco. We seem to go thru about one a month!
Anyway, I'm not sure if there was something done to the steaks ahead of time or not, but after 5 hours in this marinade, they were SUPER tender and VERY flavourful. We have 2 left from Sunday that we’ll be grilling tonite – they’ve been marinating for two days now... Can’t wait! What a turn around! From "Bleck" to "Wow" in a few hours.
Try this marinade and let me know how it works for you! :)
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