London Broil

Terry and I had planned to have tri-tip on a recent Sunday. It was on sale at Sprouts for $3.99 a pound. But when I got there the packages were labeled “untrimmed” and there was a lot of fat on the meat. I picked up a London Broil instead. Terry was quite happy with that.

I found a recipe on myrecipes.com for London Broil that had an interesting marinade that included lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and soy sauce. I followed that formula and added a splash of orange juice. To that I added a creole spice blend that I found on a recipe blog for an entirely unrelated dish: paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, cayenne, oregano, thyme, and salt, which I omitted.

I marinated the steak for a good four hours and broiled it until the internal temperature reached 148, about fifteen minutes. It came out a bit rare for my taste, but it was right in Terry’s wheel house. And she absolutely loved the flavor.

I love it when I can make a meal that my wife really loves.

salmon with aioli

My recent blog on aioli generated more interest that usual. My cousin commented that aioli is “killer” on salmon. I don’t eat much salmon these days. It’s just too terribly rich for my stomach. But we had a piece in the freezer and I thought it would be worth the experiment.

I baked the salmon in our new toaster oven on the convection setting at 400 for about ten minutes. I coated it with the aioli and added another five.

It was excellent. Served with baked potato with all the trimmings, it made for a great Saturday dinner. And my stomach was perfectly happy with that small piece of salmon.

Thank you, Cousin!

coconut lime chicken

I found this recipe for coconut lime chicken on Pinterest before I gave up on that social media site because I kept seeing the same recipes over and over again. This one, however, from the gluten-free site asaucykitchen.com, was worth capturing.

I seasoned the chicken with Penzeys 33rd and Galena. I used a fresh, locally grown red Anaheim pepper, so I saw no need for the red pepper flakes. I added fresh chopped garlic. I used vegetable stock as I always do instead of chicken stock. Of course I omitted the onion.

It turned out really well.

If you’re willing to forego serving the dish over rice (as I did) it qualifies as a one-skillet supper.

That works from my perspective.

homemade tortillas

I had been thinking about getting a tortilla press for a long time. I had one that my uncle and aunt gave me many years ago, but it got lost somewhere along the way.

When Terry and I saw Bobby Flay make tortillas on The Bobby and Damaris Show (which episode we watched twice) we decided that we wanted to give it a shot. I ordered a moderately-priced, highly rated tortilla press from Amazon and when it showed up we went to Cardenas, our Latino supermarket, to get fresh masa and their marvelous marinated flap meat.

It’s not as easy as it looks. The first time we made a lot of mistakes and made a lot of modifications. The last three or so tortillas we made came out pretty well, but we still had some tweaking to do in the process.

The second go-round was a disaster. One of the mistakes we made the first time was using plastic wrap between the press and the masa rather than a cut up ziplock bag as both Bobby and the instructions that came with the press recommended. Our first time out we bought the smallest bag of masa that the store had, but it was still twice what we needed. I asked Siri if we could freeze masa, but all I got back from her was the temperature in Massachusetts. A Google search turned up the result that yes, we could.

Wrong. The masa was crackly and would not hold together. I tried adding water and some additional polenta which I had on hand, but to no avail. No, masa can’t be frozen. Not the kind they make at Cardenas, anyway.

As the cliché goes, third time’s the charm. I bought a package of Bob’s Red Mill Masa Harina. We used a cut-up ziplock bag again, and I quickly learned that spraying it with olive oil from our Misto  (not a Mexican cooking staple, I know) was essential. I discovered that the ideal size tortilla came from a 1 ¼ ounce ball of masa, rather than one ounce as Bobby suggested. We learned to use a hamburger spatula rather than tongs when we cooked them. I rolled and pressed thenTerry cooked at 30 seconds a side in a dry (not oiled) cast iron frying pan. We got a rhythm going.

By Jove, I think they’ve got it!

The nice thing is that we know exactly what’s going into our tortillas: Bob’s Red Mill Masa Harina, just a bit of salt, and water. That’s it.

We’ll keep moving forward from there.