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. 

Rolled Flank Steak in Tomato Sauce and Mom's Crunchy Topped Potatoes

Our neighbor, Miriam, decided it'd be fun to have a progressive dinner.  I volunteered for the entrée.  She and John did the dessert.  And, John and Mary next door did the salad and the appetizers.  We invited Ernie and Shirley from across the street to join us.   Now, what you don't know is the Ernie was the principal of my grade school.  I have such wonderful memories from those years.  Now, I get to know him as an adult and it's a truly wonderful thing. 

Mary's salad was amazing.  I want the recipe.  A layered salad with lettuce and cauliflower and bacon.  Yum, yum, yum.  We did a rolled flank steak that's pretty much a bracciole, Mom's crunchy top potatoes and rolls with herb butter. 

Since it was the weekend before Halloween, I decided I'd actually get the decorations out and gussy up the dining room.  Thanks to being crazy busy at the office for the last few years, I've skipped the decorations.  It was oodles of fun to see all my old friends.  The biggest problem was that I didn't have any placemats that'd work with a Halloween theme.  So, I started shopping online.  The prices I found ranged from $16 to $4 each.  So, I headed to Tuesday Morning.  Yup, got eight for $10 total.  If I've got to shop, that's the way I like to do it!

Here's what the dining room looks like with very low lights and all the candles:

 

 

For my entrée I made three old faithful's.  The rolled flank steak was first made in 1980.  I marked it "Excellent" and still agree with that rating.  A couple of days after the party I took the leftover sauce and added a bit of vodka and cream to it and served it over some crab ravioli.  

Mom's crunchy topped potatoes were always such a treat when we were kids.  Now, as an adult, I also appreciate the fact that other than the topping they're a fabulous make ahead dish.

Last, but not least, herbed dinner rolls.  One of my colleagues in my banking days taught me the trick of making compound butter with loads of fresh herbs and a teeny, tiny bit of lemon juice and Tabasco.  Then, you slather it on the cut rolls or bread, wrap it up and leave it in the fridge for the day.  When you're ready, heat them up like normal.  Here they are chilling out on the counter before I baked them:



Rolled Flank Steak

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lb flank steak, butterflied
8 thin slices prosciutto
2 green bell pepper, cut into 1/2" thick strips
salt and pepper
3 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 - 28 oz cans of diced tomatoes
1 T dried basil
1 t dried thyme

Directions:

Lay the flank steak flat on a cookie sheet and put it into the freezer for 20 minutes.  While it's in the freezer, put a tablespoon of the olive oil in a large saucepan.  Add the onion and garlic and sauté until it's softened.  Add the tomatoes and herbs.  Simmer on medium low heat while you're preparing the flank steak.

Take the flank steak out of the freezer and put in on a large cutting board.  VERY carefully, butterfly it. 

Take each half and pound it to an equal thickness.  Lay four slices of prosciutto on each half.  Starting at the thin end, lay green pepper strips across the steak. 

Roll up, tucking in green pepper strips.  You'll used a whole green pepper for each half.  Make sure the rolls are very tight so the green pepper doesn't squirm out.  Use cooking bands or string and tie the rolls.  Put the other two tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet.  Heat to shimmering.  Salt and pepper the flank steak rolls.  Add them to the skillet and brown well on all sides. 

Once they're browned, put the rolls into the tomato sauce and simmer for at least an hour.  Turn the rolls at least once and spoon the sauce over.  This recipe is VERY flexible on time which is why I chose it for our entrée.  I actually left the rolls simmering for two hours.  The original recipe called for drained plum tomatoes.  I chose to use undrained diced tomatoes so there'd be plenty of liquid for the additional cooking time.

Mom's Crunchy Topped Baked Potatoes

Ingredients:

2 c mashed potatoes
1 T butter
1 small onion, finely diced
3/4 c milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
dash of cayenne pepper
2 T butter, melted
1/2 c grated Parmesan cheese
1 c Corn Flakes, crushed

Directions:

Saute the onion in the tablespoon of butter.  Once it's softened, mix it with the mashed potatoes, milk, egg and cayenne.  Put the potato mixture into a baking casserole.  When you're ready to bake it, top it with the grated Parmesan, crushed cornflakes and two tablespoons of melted butter.  Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.

Steak Sandwiches with Creamy Shallots

10.5.  That's how many hours I finally slept when I could just sleep.  August was a brutal month and September isn't going to be much better.  We've been in the midst of a big change at the office.  I'd tell you more but then it'd have to get my post approved and on and on and on.  So, suffice to say that it's been brutal.  I finally did laundry when I ran out of undies.  Should I say dainties?  Nope, I'm far from dainty!  Saturday morning about 7:30 I crawled out of bed after my extended snooze and put on gardening clothes.  Onward to the herb garden.  The crabgrass had won. I couldn't find my basil.  By the time I got to the point of falling over three hours later, I'd found some basil.  And, some pimento peppers.  And, a bunch of other good stuff.  It was hotter than blazes even that early in the morning.  So, I took a 15 minute break and came in and organized photos.  My camera downloads in date order.  Then, I have to go in and create folders for the recipes.  August photos got done.  Big whoop.  I barely cooked during August.  But, we did try a few new recipes that were successes.  I'm here to tell you about one of them. 

A sandwich.  From Everyday Food.  Now, I'm not a big Martha Stewart fan.  Nobody in their right mind can be that perfect without tons of assistance,  I quit taking her magazine because it was just too much to slog through.  But, I do thoroughly enjoy Everyday Food.  I typically clip several recipes to try.  In fact, I've still got a stack of recipes to try.  A vegetable barley salad is on top followed by a couple of recipes for pork, one for chicken and a couple of salads.  Hopefully, I'll get one or two of them tried.

But, enough about future stuff.  Let's talk about a fabulous sandwich.  I'd bought a package of steaks at Costco.  The first night we had Steak Oscar with lobster instead of crab.  It was heavenly.  We had leftovers the next day.  Then, we took another steak and had fantastic salads. This was the third day.

What did we think?  Awesome.  And, so very easy to put together.  Instead of using all shallots, I did clean out the kitchen and used a red onion, shallots and half a sweet onion.

Steak Sandwiches with Creamy Shallots
serves 4

Ingredients:

2 New York strip steaks cooked to your preference, fat trimmed, sliced
1 T olive oil
2 c of sliced onions and/or shallots
1/3 c heavy cream
1 T Dijon mustard
4 sandwich rolls or bread
2 c baby arugula

Directions:

Saute the onions and shallots in the olive oil.  When they're translucent and well softened, add the cream and mustard.  Cook until the cream has reduced and the onions are glazed with the sauce. 

Split the rolls and toast the cut sides.  Lightly spread with Dijon mustard.  Divide the onion mixture into fourths.  Put a serving one four of the roll halves. 

Top with sliced steak then arugula then the other roll half. 

Back Home Again

Well, this is one that didn't get posted...  Something about all the traveling, big projects at the office, moving Mom, on top of the normal life stuff like work and laundry and yard and cleaning the house.  (You notice how the house cleaning is last?  Yup.)  Well, the potatoes I mention here are so fantastic that I'm going to go ahead and post this late...

After spending the morning traveling back from Boston/Cape Cod then spending five hours in the office the last thing either of us wanted to do was go to the grocery.  Not only that but my freezers are in desperate need of purging.  I know there are some really antique things that need to be tossed.  And, lots of things that need to be used up.  Two little steaks caught my eye. 


I'd trimmed asparagus and stood it in a bowl of water before we left hoping that it'd be fine for dinner the night we got home.  It was.  The grape tomatoes were still fine.  And, some potatoes needed to be used up before they went to seed.  Altogether it sounded like the makiings for a lovely dinner.


My friend Liz (That Skinny Chick Can Bake) gave me a couple of bags of fun seasonings from Artisano's.  One was a bag of onion sugar.  I've used it on different dishes but never on the one specifically mentioned on the bag - asparagus on the grill.  Perfect.


We debated different preparations for the potatoes.  No milk so unless I made mashed potatoes with sour cream those were out  I'm not a fan of plain baked potatoes.  Too dry and boring.  So, I wondered how regular russet potatoes would work as smashed potatoes.  Like you'd do with baby reds?  My motto is pretty much What's the worst that could happen?  They'd be horrible and we'd toss them and I'd open a can of Bush's Grilling Beans.  Not a big deal.


What did we think?  The sugar caramelized on the asparagus was fantastic.  The potatoes were out of this world.  I was a bit worried when I smashed them on the grilling tray and they rather disintegrated.  But, I went on ahead and drizzled them with olive oil then added some merlot salt (Thank you Liz!) pepper, chives, parsley and rosemary.  After they'd been on the grill on medium heat for about 10 minutes I flipped them with a spatula and drizzled them with more olive oil.  They turned out to be crunchy outside and melt in your mouth soft on the inside.  The herbs added great layers of flavor.

Here's how dinner looked along the way:

Steakhouse Steak

I'm working my way through a stack of old cooking magazines.  Like ten years old.  Antique.  Please don't ask me why I've saved them.  It's just that I hate to toss cooking magazines.  This morning on the way to work I read an old Cuisine at Home.  The lead article was about Steak House Searing.  Now, I've always been a steak grilling kind of gal.  Stovetop steaks were not on my radar.  Comes from having a father who thought the only way to cook a great cut of meat was on the grill.  Even though we didn't see him much since he lived in Orlando and we lived in Indy, grilling became part of our lives.  My brother, John, is the grilling pro.  Man, he's perfected grilling.  I can only hope to come close. 

Let's add up the facts.  1) I had an article about steak house searing.  2) There were a couple of pieces of tenderloin left from the trimmings from the holiday party.  They'd been in the freezer long enough.  3) I was REALLY hungry for beef.  Kinda the perfect night to fix some tenderloin.  Add in the fact that a gal who'd been a friend of my mom's and who'd played bridge with Connie died a couple of days ago.  She was the original creator of Jane's Rice - which is perfect with beef.  Oh, and we're having company for dinner tomorrow night so getting the house a bit clean was a great idea.  A quick dinner would help. 

Now, the magazine had some great sauce recipes.  Not on our diets these days...  I decided to make a change to the morel dusted ribeyes recipe and try the rub on the tenderloin pieces.  It turned out to be a good call.

What did we think?  I think I may have found my new preferred way to cook a piece of tenderloin.  The crust was perfect.  The interior was medium rare.  Flavor, great.  Tender.  We loved the steak.  And, the Jane's Rice was awesome as normal. 

Here's the basic premise.  Preheat your oven to 425F.  Cut the tenderloin into serving size pieces.  The article calls for cutting them about 2" thick. Mine were close to that but not perfectly shaped.  Rub the steaks with whatever rub you're using.  I used our morel dusted ribeyes rub but substituted brown sugar for white.  Then, you heat an ovenproof skillet.  I mean heat that skillet.  The recipe called for using oil.  I had some butter and thought that'd work.  Not so much.  I dropped it in the HOT skillet and it burned pronto.  Here's what it looked like after about 10 seconds:

I poured that out and wiped out the skillet and poured in some oil.  In went the steaks.  Five minutes on high heat, flip them then five minutes in the oven.  Pull the pan out - watch out for a hot handle! - and set the steaks aside to rest for five minutes. 

Now, the recipe in Cuisine at Home says this'll create rare meat.  It says to roast for seven minutes for medium rare and nine for medium.  My pieces were not uniformly thick AND I didn't remove them from the skillet immediately upon removing them from the oven.  So, I wound up with medium rare.  Which was fine.  I'd have preferred rare but Connie prefers medium rare so it worked out just fine for him. 

Flank Steak with Caper Sauce

Birthday dinner.  As an adult it just isn't the same.  But, that's just fine because so many wonderful birthday memories are made in kidhood.  Mom always let us choose what we wanted.  Flank steak with caper sauce was always my choice.  You know how the steakhouses typically top their beautiful steaks with a pat of butter?  Well, this lovingly coats thin slices of rare flank steak with butter and capers.  Heavenly!

If you want the story about how we came to have this, you need to go back and read my post about Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup.  The end result?  Connie loved the family favorite.  I saved half of the steak for him to eat while I was out of town at a conference - women only, how fun is that!  He loved putting different condiments with the steak slices on Triscuits.  Word of warning here:  flank steak does not feel like other steak when you're checking for doneness on the grill.  If you're not careful, you'll way overcook it.  And, it is MUCH better served rare or medium rare. 

Here's a photo of my grandmother's original recipe:

Actually, there's a story behind why it's printed on that piece of paper.  I wanted to organize my recipes electronically.  Both so there was a backup and so I'd be able to share them more easily.  Connie showed me how to scan them in and upload them to Word.  I got less than half of my TRIED recipes in and ran out of room on Word.  I had no clue it'd fill up.  Betcha you didn't either, eh?  That's when I said there had to be a better way and found blogging.  Now that the computer in the kitchen is MIA, it's either be wasteful and print the recipe and carry it to the kitchen or run back and forth.  You can see what the verdict was in this case. 

Well, there you have it.  My kidhood birthday entree and my blogging history.  Now, time for the recipe:

Flank Steak with Caper Sauce

serves 8

Ingredients:

1/2 c butter

4 t vinegar (I use red wine vinegar but back in the day Grammie probably used cider vineger)

2-3 T capers

2 T parsley (I leave this out most of the time)

2 lb flank steak

Directions:

Melt the butter and stir in the vinegar, capers and parsley.  Broil the steak until it's medium rare or rare.  Remove it from the heat and let it sit for 5-10 minutes.  Slice it very thinly against the grain.  Serve drizzled with the caper butter.

Bourbon Marinated Steak

We have an institution in Indy by the name of St. Elmo's.  They have the finest steaks I've ever had.  I've been to places on top ten lists like Bones in Atlanta.  They're great but I prefer St. Elmo's.  Call it hometown bias if you will, but it's one of Peyton Manning's favorite places too.  And, ole Number 18 just isn't a slouch when it comes to great places to eat.


That being said, our budget just doesn't allow St. Elmo's on a regular basis.  Maybe once a year.  So, if I want steak, I've got to fix it.  Now, when it comes to steak, my favorite is a cast iron skillet heated about as hot as you can safely get it with the steak seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper and a lot of Worcestershire sauce tossed in and left long enough to create a decent sear on the outside with the inside nice and rare.  YUM.  Well, steak isn't Connie's favorite.  So, when we do have it I try and do it up a bit so he's not just eating a slab of beef.  Our usual is a nice blue cheese crust.  We do that a couple of times a year and thoroughly enjoy it. 

Now, since I'm trying to clean out the freezer for party space, I was pretty anxious to get the two rib-eyes out of there.  What to do with them.  On Foodbuzz I came across a recipe from Liv Life for Bourbon Marinated Steaks.  It was pretty similar to the marinade recipe I've used for years for pork tenderloin.  I got my recipe from Back Home Again.  That's a cookbook from the Indianapolis Junior League.  It's probably my favorite cookbook of all time.  And, it's finally back in print if you're looking for a great gift to give yourself or someone else.  This marinade had the normal suspects with an additional slug of mustard, a bit of Worcestershire and some slice onion. 


What did we think?  Very good.  I'll make this again and may even try it on the pork tenderloins.  My guess is it'd also be great on chicken. 



Bourbon Marinated Steak

Ingredients:
steak(s)
1/4 c bourbon
2 T packed dark brown sugar
1/4 c low sodium soy sauce
2 T spicy mustard
1/4 c sliced onions
1 t worcestershire sauce
salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:

Mix marinade ingredients and marinate steaks for about 2 hours before grilling. Note in the photos how easy it is to measure out 1/4 c of sliced onions when they're added to a measuring cup that already contains 1/2 c of liquid.

When you pour the marinade on the steaks, IF you put marinade on the already cooked side, make sure you flip the steak again to cook the marinade on that side.  The last thing you want is marinade from raw meat sitting on cooked meat...

We served our steak with some really crispy onions. 

adapted from Liv Life

Drick's Cowboy Sugar Rubbed Steaks

I originally wrote a blog about the first steaks we tried this way.  Then, last weekend I finally got to try this recipe again - this time with some steaks that were far better than shoe leather!!  Although my standby, Worcestershire sauce, is still the easiest way to prepare a steak, this is a better way.  Yes, it takes a bit longer but keep in mind that we shouldn't be eating steak all the time and if it's a special occasion meal, take the time.  You'll be rewarded with steaks that are just bursting with flavor.  Here's a photo of the second batch:

Here's what I said the first time around:

I've put off blogging about this because the rub was so wonderful and the steaks were so awful.  I'd hoped to have time to get a couple of small steaks at the grocery and make this again with decent steaks.  But, somehow, the week got away from me.  We survived on leftovers, pizza and carryout and put in more hours at the office than I care to count.  Because we were going on vacation and I wanted the meals to be special, I asked around at the farmer's markets we go to and was told one particular provider had wonderful steaks.  So, I splurged and spent $1 an ounce for two little four ounce strip steaks.  Shoe leather would have been better.  Let's just say I'll never go back to that vendor again!!  I'd been hankering for these steaks since Drick wrote about them a few weeks ago.  (Check out his blog at Drick's Rambling Cafe - he's got some of the best southern cooking around.  The link's also over to the right in my blog's I love to read list)  On the way down to Starlight, IN, I read a Cooks Illustrated that said you need a bit of sugar in a marinade to give a piece of meat a great crust.  AH, something I'd never thought about.  I always thought you just needed an acid to make it tender.  It also said you need some oil because the herbs and spices need that as a delivery system.  So, this recipe takes care of everything Cooks Illustrated says you need to successfully marinate a piece of beef.  My guess is this'd be great on pork and possibly lamb too.  These steaks were really easy to prepare and, like I said before, the rub was wonderful.  I'm very much looking forward to getting an opportunity to make them again - next time with something resembling a real steak!

Drick's Cowboy Sugar Rubbed Steaks

Ingredients:
2 steaks of choice
olive oil
4 t brown sugar
1/4 t ground cumin
1/4 t freshly ground pepper
1 t garlic powder
dash cayenne
1/4 t dry mustard
1/4 t chili powder
salt
liquid smoke
worcestershire sauce
soy sauce

Directions:
Rub the steaks on both sides with some olive oil.  Then, rub in the brown sugar.  Follow by mixing the cumin, pepper, garlic, cayenne, dry mustard and chili powder and rubbing that mixture in. 

Cover the steaks and allow them to rest in the refrigerator for an hour. 

About an hour before you're going to grill these steaks, remove them from the refrigerator and sprinkle them well with the liquid smoke.  (I confess - I skipped this because I don't own liquid smoke and forgot to buy it!)  Let the steaks rest for another 30 minutes.  They'll work on coming to room temperature during that time period.

Finally sprinkle them with Worcestershire and soy sauce and let them rest for another 30 minutes before grilling them.  We grilled ours over direct heat to get a nice crust.  If only the nice crust had gone with nice steaks.  You can spoon the leftover marinade over the steaks as you grill them. 

When you remove the steaks from the grill, put a pat of butter on them, tent them under some aluminum foil and allow them to rest for 5-10 minutes.  This will allow the juices to redistribute. 

Please stop by Drick's blog and tell him thank you and check out some of his other recipes.  We particularly love the oven fried catfish :-)

adapted from Drick's Rambling Cafe

Steak with Red Wine Cherry Sauce

I'm a steak lover.  Connie could care less whether he ever has another steak or not.  He'd much prefer a wonderful grilled fish fillet.  So, when I serve steak, I normally serve rather small portions.  And, I balance it with plenty of vegetables and salad.  So, I admit, I've been craving steak.  We went to Sam's on Thursday evening and I splurged on three rib-eyes - smallest package they had.  Friday while Connie was playing bridge I fixed one of them.  Screaming hot cast iron skillet, lots of pepper and Worcestershire, great crust, rare meat.  Fabulous.  Even if it was eaten at 9:00 pm thanks to too much to do and not enough time.  Tonight it was time for a bit more gentle treatment.  I thought about cutting one steak in half and reserving the rest but didn't do so.  As it turned out, I made it through about a third of mine and Connie made it through almost all of his.  As he said, it was so good it was difficult to quit eating.  I quite agree.  This was a fabulous steak!  I got the recipe from a magazine that was sent to finish up the term of one that bit the dust.  I'm not sure what the original one was but the replacement was Country Woman.  Full of cheesy kitchens and kitschy stuff.  Not my kind of magazine.  But, on occasion, a really good recipe.  And, the good news is the we have enough left over to make steak fajitas!

Steaks with Red Wine and Cherry Sauce
2 steaks - filets or rib eyes will work best
2 t Kosher salt
2 t coarsely ground pepper
1 c dry red wine
1/4 c chopped red onion
1/4 c chopped shallot
1/3 c raisins (I used the mixed bag from Trader Joe's)
1/3 c dried cherries
1 T sugar
1 1/2 t corn starch
1 1/2 t dry mustard
2 t cold water
1/2 c crumbled blue cheese

Bring the steaks to room temperature.  Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper and rub the seasonings in. 

In a small skillet, pour in the red wine.  Add the onion, shallot, raisins, cherries and sugar.  Simmer until the wine is reduced by half and the onions are tender. 

In a small bowl, mix the corn starch, dry mustard and cold water.  Add the slurry to the onion mixture and stir until thickened.  Reduce heat to low.  You can add more red wine as needed to thin the mixture.  Be sure to simmer this for at least ten minutes to allow the dry mustard flavor to bloom.  Grill the steaks on direct high heat to form a good crust, then move to a cooler part of the grill to finish cooking. 

To serve, put a steak on a dinner plate.  Top it with half the sauce, then 1/4 c blue cheese.  Make sure you do this while the steak is very hot so the blue cheese can melt a bit.