Monday, May 30, 2011

Hey, let's meat up. I've got salsa!

I am not sure if it is the warmer temperatures here in Boston, but my kitchen has taken a decidedly less vegetarian-friendly turn. My cooking career has not involved much cooking of meat , so it is interesting to experiment with something relatively new. This past week I made two dishes featuring beef.

Ginger, Garlic, Habanero, Sesame Beef
Being relatively inexperienced in the land of the cow, I forgot to note what cut of beef I used, but I think it was a sirloin.



I used a grill pan to cook the meat (which I had very lightly salted) until medium-rare. While it was cooking I made a ginger-garlic-habanero-sesame-soy sauce accompaniment. I served it up with a japanese sweet potato that I had cooked in the toaster oven and some baby bok choy that i sautéed along with some of the ginger, garlic, and habanero.



So easy!

Salad of Beef, Arugula, Portobello, Tomato, and Feta Cheese
Again, not quite sure what cut this was, but it looked nice. And at least the cows got to eat grass, grow at a normal rate, and fight disease using nothing but good old fashioned natural remedies (chicken noodle soup?).



The beef was salted and tossed into the grill pan which had already been heating up a bit.



Meanwhile the other ingredients assembled themselves...





When the beef seemed mostly done, I took it out and tossed in the mushrooms and tomatoes.



The mushrooms cook in their own juices, though I added a few drops of olive oil to the pan to keep things smooth. Once the mushrooms were nice and tender, I decided to cook the meat a little longer since it was still perhaps undercooked (I am still figuring out how to get the right amount of heat to the meat).




The mushrooms get sliced:



Add everything added together with the arugula, some garlic, salt, feta cheese, and a bit of olive oil.



Yum!

Salsa v 1.0
As a final thought here, I thought it might be interesting to try making some different kinds of salsa this summer. Tonight I made some by first chopping 1 clove of garlic, 1 habanero, a bunch of cilantro:



And roasting some tomatoes under the broiler:



The roasting allows you to easily peel off the skin, and then mash in a bowl with the other ingredients including a bit of lime juice and salt. Voila mon passeport!

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