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.

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.