Hmmm…we used to (every so often) get these pre-made at Trader Joe’s. They don’t seem to have them anymore which is just fine — they are very easy to make yourself! Give it a try! Plus, nothing says “I love you” like red meat and a bottle of wine! Grrrr!!!

Besides, this was jwa’s request for Valentine’s dinner!

Flank Steak Pinwheels with Boursin, Spinach and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
Based on a recipe from Eating Well magazine
2/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)
2 cups boiling water
1 pound flank steak, trimmed of fat
1 clove garlic, minced
3 oz herbed cheese spread, such as Boursin
1 cup baby spinach leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
kosher salt & freshly ground pepper
15 or so button mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup Cabernet Sauvignon wine (plus the rest of the bottle for drinkin’!)

Place sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl; pour boiling water over them and let steep until softened, about 10 minutes. Drain and chop. Meanwhile, place steak between 2 large pieces of plastic wrap. Pound each side of the steak thoroughly with the pointed side of a meat mallet until the steak is an even 1/4-inch thickness. Salt and pepper it good.

Align steak so the the grain is running horizontally. Rub garlic all over one side of the steak. Spread cheese lengthwise in a 3-inch-wide strip down the middle of the steak.

Top with the sun-dried tomatoes and spinach. Starting at one edge of a long side, roll the steak up tightly, tucking in the filling as you go.

Carefully rub a bit more salt and pepper all over the outside of the steak roll. Turn the roll so the overlapping edge is on top. Use 4 pieces of kitchen twine and secure steak roll in four places. Slice between the twine to make 4 pinwheels. Trim the edge pieces if necessary to keep it all nice looking. .

Oil your skillet and cook the the pinwheels 5-7 minutes per side for medium-rare. After you flip them, add the mushrooms to the pan and let them start to golden up.

Use a spatula when turning them to prevent too much filling from falling out. Let the pinwheels rest for 5 minutes before serving. Remove the twine from each piece.

While the beef is resting, continue to cook the mushrooms in the tasty, tasty beef drippings. Mmm….beef drippings. Saute for about 3-4 more minutes and at the end pour in the wine and let it reduce about a minute or two. Serve the steaks with the mushrooms. Now, if this doesn’t get you some love, I don’t know what will…

Oh, and besides being delicious, deglazing the mushrooms with some wine should get up any cheese that is stuck to your pan. Awesome!

Today is mostly pictures. Okay, there is also a really good peach-tomato gazpacho recipe from Gourmet magazine. On the fourth, as mentioned yesterday, we grilled, ate and hung out in the backyard enjoying the cool breeze. It was a very nice time.

Getting the grill going

jwa tends to the burgers

The end result — cheeseburgers (Tillamook cheddar) and some last minute vegetable rosemary skewers — we have a huge rosemary bush out front that is very handy in situations like this…

jwa assembles his burger empire

Enough with the burgers, let’s get to the gazpacho!

Peach & Tomato Gazpacho
1 1/2 lb tomatoes, chopped (4 cups)
1 lb peaches, pitted and chopped (2 cups)
1/4 cup crushed ice
1 medium shallot, peeled & chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp white-wine vinegar
1 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Purée two thirds of tomatoes and half of peaches with ice, shallot, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 2 teaspoons tarragon, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a blender until very smooth, about 1 minute.

If desired, force through a medium-mesh sieve into a large glass measure, discarding solids. If you like a chunkier gazpacho or you are lazy, you can skip this step.

Toss together remaining tomatoes and peaches with remaining tablespoon oil, remaining 1/2 tablespoon vinegar, remaining teaspoon tarragon, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper in a bowl. Serve soup in bowls topped with the tomato peach salsa. When I made this, I did not make the salsa but used everything in the gazpacho. If you too chose this route, it works fine!

The end result is a little sweet and has a really nice tarragon flavor. It’ll be cold because of the ice but you can also chill it further in the refrigerator. Now let’s return to the red meat. Grrrr.

My single, lonely hamburger

Vegetable skewer

The mighty IPA…

We are off to Astoria this weekend to meet with the caterer (hooray!) and to meet with an officiant (hooray, too!).

Holy hell in a humongous handbag this was good. And it really started as an accident. See, I went to New Seasons to pick up some tuna for dinner. They had none. As I perused the meat/poultry/seafood area in search of something tasty, my eye caught the word “rosemary”.

Now, I love rosemary, so I continued reading — Maple Rosemary Skirt Steak the sign said. Whaaaaaaa? Maple and rosemary? Together? Well, okay then.

I made my purchase and brought two of the skirt steaks home.

They were rolled up and secured with a skewer, drizzlets of marinade clinging to the meat. I stored them in the fridge and then tried to find out what in the world to do with skirt steak, ie: how to cook it. After some Internet sleuthing, I discovered that grilling and braising are the best ways to cook skirt steak. Of the two methods, the braising seemed the most appealing, as the steaks were already rolled up in these cute ittle rounds, I hadn’t done a lot of braising before and it just seemed….well…fun.

My next decision was what to braise in. Wine or beer seemed to be the most popular choices by far. Works for me. Because of the maple in the marinade, which seemed like it might clash with the wine, I chose beer. And one of the best things about cooking with beer? The leftovers.

If you are lucky to live near a New Seasons or some other market that sells maple and rosemary marinated skirt steak rounds, there you go. If not, I found this marinade recipe online that sounded kind of interesting.

Marinade:
4 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
2 cloves garlic, crushed

Combine all ingredients in a zip lock bag. Add rolled up and secured skirt steak and marinade overnight. Remove steaks from bag and discard remaining marinade. Now we can all start on the same page.

Stout Braised Maple & Rosemary Skirt Steak
2 maple-rosemary marinated skirt steaks
1 tbsp olive oil
1 bottle of stout
1/4 cup beef stock
8-10 button mushrooms, sliced
4 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Start by heating an oven proof pan over high heat. Add a little olive oil, salt and pepper the steaks lightly (there’s soy in the marinade which is pretty salty, remember) and sear the steaks 2 minutes or so on one side. Flip over and add the mushrooms and garlic cloves to the pot. Let steaks sear on second side for about 2 minutes as well. Remove pan from heat.

Pour stout in the pan until almost halfway up the steaks. Drink leftover beer. Add the stock next and then place the rosemary sprig on top. Cover and bake for 45 minutes. At this point, I took the pot out, turned the steaks over, recovered and baked for 45 more minutes. Now, I’m not sure if I was supposed to uncover and flip, but it seemed like a good idea. Perhaps, that just let heat escape and hurt my braise. I don’t know but in the end, it worked out just fine.

After a total of about 1 1/2 hours cooking time, remove the meat to a plate and cover with foil to keep warm. Discard rosemary twig. Place pot of stout on the stove top and bring to a boil. Let it reduce and make a sauce, until it thickens enough to leave a nice trail from whatever you are stirring with.

Serve each steak topped with the mushroom-stout sauce and perhaps some rice pilaf and asparagus. This bears repeating — it was so good. I’m especially pleased as I completely just winged that whole thing. I know hardly nothing about cooking red meat and I had never really braised anything before. This could easily have been a complete disaster. So, I’m considering this a happy, delicious accident. The meat was all tender and moist inside and the sauce was just amazing. I think the garlic cloves actually melted into the sauce.

Stout. Is there anything it can’t do?

Flank Steak Rolled Up with Feta & Spinach:
This post is a little different. It’s half quick recipe and half product review of sorts. Whenever I buy chicken at Trader Joe’s I always see these rolled up steak things that look intriguing. They are, in fact, flank steak stuffed with feta, spinach and red pepper — but usually, I just see them and think, “huh, those look interesting.” This week, however, I actually bought a package. For you see, I am easily lured by the promise of feta stuffing. In addition to the persuasive power of the feta, they were very cute — they looked like little meat wheels. At $4.99 a pound, the price wasn’t bad either (the package I bought was $6.99).

Typically, I (and subsequently jwa) am still mostly in the chicken, fish and turkey cooking/eating cycle at home. See this post for more on my history of meat. I’m not looking to eat a lot more beef but every so often it would be nice to cook up some red meat when the mood strikes. As it is, I think I buy beef tenderloin once a year for Mini-Beef Wellingtons at Christmas but that’s about it. So, I am expanding my non-poultry and non-fish repertoire!

The package said to cook the steaks 10-15 minutes per side and not knowing all that much about flank steak I figured I’d just do what it said. If we didn’t like it, well more brussel sprouts and pine nut rice pilaf for dinner.

So, here you go — my Trader Joe’s meat experiment.

Ingredients:
1 tsp olive oil
1 package Trader Joe’s Flank steaks, rolled up and stuffed with spinach, feta, and red pepper
8-10 button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced thinly
3 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1/2 cup of red wine (Cabernet works well)
1/4 cup beef stock
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt

I heated up a heavy pan and added a little olive oil, salted the steaks and set them down to sear. I also added a bunch of sliced mushrooms and three sliced garlic cloves to the pan, thinking they would get all golden while the meat cooked. Then, I realized that the mushrooms would give off some liquid and probably keep the meat from browning, but you know what? They didn’t. Sure they gave off a little bit but between the olive oil, medium-high heat and tantalizing meat fat everything got all brown. It went perfectly to plan! Ha! I love it when that happens.

I gave the steaks ten minutes on each side then removed them to a plate and covered with foil, while I made a quick pan gravy. This entailed adding about 1/2 cup of red wine, dried thyme and 1/4 cup of beef stock to the mushrooms and scraping down all the brown bits in the pan. I let cook down just a bit — 3-4 minutes, then plated the steaks, removed the string (as the meat was secured in its circular shape), and drizzled some of the mushroom & wine gravy on top of each steak. Served with the pilaf (from a box — lazy!), sprouts and the rest of the Cabernet.

Braised Brussel Sprouts:
The brussel sprouts were cleaned, halved and sautéed with 2 cloves of garlic (minced) in a little butter until browned. Then I added beef stock (typically, I use chicken stock but I figured beef would work better here) and let them braise for about 20 minutes. Delicious!

All in all, this was a pretty good experimental dinner! If you’ve seen these spinach and feta stuffed flank steaks at Trader Joe’s and like me, have wondered if they were any good, you should give them a try — they were pretty tasty!