Flank Steak Fajitas

 

As with many of our friends, the last three plus years have been challenging.  On the one hand we’ve loved working remotely.  On the other hand, we had some significant staff turnover.  Now, I have the best team in the world!  We’ve celebrated many happy occasions and mourned many sad ones.  The most recent was the death of my brother John.  He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in April and told he’d probably have one to one and a half years with chemo.  It was three months and ten days.  I miss him like all get out.  A month after his death we celebrated his life.  First with a calling and family dinner on a Friday.  Then, with a service at church followed by a celebration of life at our local Knights of Columbus.  After that Connie and I had dinner for 34 at our home. 

We got home from the celebration of life with two and a half hours before our first guests due.  Time to fly!  I ran back to our bedroom and put the pretty pillows on the bed, opened the shutters and turned on lights so it’d look pretty when the ladies dropped their purses back there.  Then, out to the kitchen to finish up the last minute, ok last hour projects.  I hit a wall of heat.  There was just no way the sous vide could’ve created that much heat!  The thermostat said 78 but it was set at 70.  I clicked it down to 68 and still nothing.  Time to shout for Connie.  He was downstairs playing pool with our grandkids.  Long story short we had to put in an emergency call to our HVAC folks.  Our tech showed up just as our first guest did.  Bottom line was a blown motor that couldn’t be replaced until Tuesday…  34 people in the kitchen, dining room and great room.  Both ovens blaring.  No air conditioning.  Everyone kept a smile on their face through their sweat.  

My sister-in-law, Pam, had asked that I make John’s favorite meal.  That would be chicken green bean casserole, Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins and cranberry sauce.  I made a few things in addition.  LOL, a few things.  I think we wound up with close to 20 dishes once friends showed up with desserts.  One of the additions was flank steak with caper sauce.  That was our birthday dinner growing up.  Everyone inhaled the flank steak.  INHALED is a better word!  I cooked it to 125 degrees sous vide and then my brother Ken seared it on the grill two minutes each side.  Actually, one minute, one minute, one minute and one minute to get gorgeous grill marks.  I’d say he had the grill on nuclear.  Somewhere around 600 degrees.  Brother Matt and nephew Tom then were the designated slicers.  There was a lot of caper sauce left over.  I didn’t want that to go to waste so Connie bought some more flank steak the only place he could find it – Costco.  Yup, two large flank steaks.  I cooked them using the same method and we had flank steak with caper sauce for a couple of meals.  Then, I had leftover flank steak.  Like a really large flank steak. 

The first recipe that caught my eye was a flank steak niçoise salad in That Must Be the Place from Rachael Ray.  That was one yummy salad!  A couple of flank steak and tomato sandwiches with horseradish sauce followed.  Ok, fine, time to try making fajitas.  Can you believe that’s something I’ve never made?  I order them out all the time but have never tried making them myself.  John got me started on Serious Eats so that’s where I went to hunt for the recipe.  Yes, I pretty much majorly modified it.  But the bones of the recipe are still from Serious Eats.  Funny aside…  We had a peach, rosemary bourbon cocktail also.  Turns out its from Serious Eats!

 

Flank Steak Fajitas

 Ingredients:

¼ medium rare flank steak, very thinly sliced against the grain

1 T light olive oil

1 green bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

1 jalapeno, finely diced

1 tomato thinly sliced

 

For the marinade:

2 T soy sauce

2 T lime juice

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

2 t sugar

1 t oregano

1 t cumin

 

For the sour cream topping:

½ c sour cream

1 T lime juice

1 t cumin

 

2 large flour tortillas

1 c shredded cheddar cheese

 

Directions: 

Make the marinade and toss the sliced flank steak into it. 

Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet and add the onions and the green bell pepper.  Once the onions have turned translucent add the jalapeno.  To heat the tortillas, I laid them across the vegetables and flipped them over after a minute or two. 

Mix the sour cream while the vegetables are cooking. 

Add the tomato and the steak to the vegetables and warm them through.  

Put the tortillas on plates and top with the flank steak mixture followed by the sour cream and then the cheese.