For my friend.

Well about a week and a half ago I received a request from one of my friends, a certain Mr. Torok of Egyptian goon squad fame, for a steak marinade. Although I am loath to marinate good meat-I feel that a good cut of meat is flavorful and delicious if cooked properly on its own-I also realize that the bigger/faster/leaner craze in the United States have left us with some very sad cuts of meat compared to the rest of the world (there are exceptions, I like to hit the meat locker in Royal Center, IN for some FANTASTIC local beef and pork, but places like that are the exception and not the rule).

With that said, I had an excuse to create a simple steak/beef marinade that I'd love to use for pan cooking or grilling, on many different cuts of beef. I like to think that when you do marinate something, it is to help intensify the flavors of the meal you are serving and now drown it out. With that said, I made a very simple Asian-inspired marinade to soak my beef in overnight before cooking.

D's Asian-Inspired Marinade

Tools:

Cutting Board

Food Processor

Knife

Plastic Bag you will marinate the meat in

Ingredients:

A thumb sized piece of ginger with the skin peeled off.

1 cup of Blue Moon Beer (You can imagine how I instruct you to dispose of the rest of the Blue Moon)

2-3 large pieces of garlic

1/2th cup of orange juice (Whatever kind of OJ that you like, I am a pulp man personally)

If you have never worked with ginger before, peel off the outer brown skin of the ginger. Place the ginger and the garlic into the food processor and turn it into a liquid paste. After it is ground up, add the beer and orange juice into the food processor an mix it for a few seconds to clean the blades off. Add all the ingredients into the plastic bag and add your choice of beef. (Note: I used chicken as well and was VERY happy with the result). Refrigerate overnight for the best results, but give at least an hour for the flavors to mingle and for the beer to break down the meat and make a more tender cut of beef.

When I grill this, I use a medium hot heat (I can hold my hand near the grill for 3-5 seconds before I have to pull away) rubbed down with a paper towel with oil on it (you have to oil the grill or the meat can stick). Before I put the meat on, I cover both sides with salt (I love sea salt) and pepper (white pepper is nice on steaks) to taste, and then grill it until it is a happy medium/medium-rare.

I hope this is what you are looking for Mr. Torok, it was fun developing a new marinade.

Bien Camino

Note: if you don't have a food processor, it isn't the end of the world. Just chop the crap out of the garlic and ginger and then place it into the plastic bag. Then get out a very heavy rolling pin and mash the crap out of the bag as well, further releasing flavors.

Asparagus

Finally! It's that time of the year again when one of my favorite veggies is in season and I can start to gorge on it until it costs me four dollars a pound again. Yes, I am talking about that same veggie which too often has been destroyed by boiling for years, that strange green stalk with the consistency of mush when it is served out of a can.

I swear, asparagus gets a horrible reputation that it doesn't deserve, so what people have been abusing it for years and mutilating the poor veggie into baby food paste for years. We shouldn't abuse such a fantastic veggie that is very easy to prepare, but of course there are those out there that will continue to damage and abuse the reputation of this misunderstood plant based on flashbacks of your mom forcing you to eat that crappy canned variety.

To you, I say, "have heart, be brave, and get out the fire: we be grillin'."

Grilled Asparagus

Tools:

Charcoal or Gas Grill, turned on and hot (about 400 degrees-ish).

1 gallon plastic bag

grilling tongs

Ingredients

1 lb of fresh asparagus

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons fresh minced garlic (I used jarred minced garlic to save time)

Pepper and salt to taste

This recipe is a two-day recipe, I like my asparagus to have the time to absorb some of those wonderful garlic flavors before grilling. But if you don't have time, prepare the asparagus as the grill gets warm. It'll still be delicious, just not as garlic-y.

First thing you need to do is wash the asparagus and dry it off. Then you will want to remove the bottom of the stalk of each plant, asparagus is very "tough" by the base of the plant where it comes out of the ground. There is a REALLY easy way to figure out when the asparagus is tender and to remove the bottom: grip the stalk at the end and at the middle and bend it until it breaks. As you remove the bottoms, toss the tender tops into the gallon plastic bag to get it ready.

Once all the asparagus is done, pour the olive oil, garlic, and seasoning into the bag, seal the bag, and toss it around until the stalks are covered in the oil/spice mix. You can then just plop the bag into the refrigerator overnight.

Get the grill hot the next day and cook all of your meats. Once all of your other dishes are done, place the asparagus on the grill in a single layer. Don't stack it! The olive oil will cook the asparagus quickly on the grill, so you want to keep rotating it. The asparagus is done when you get those fantastic grill lines on the top and bottom of the asparagus, this will take at most 4-6 minutes on a hot grill, a little longer on a slightly cooler grill.

The asparagus can be eaten as is, although I know some people like to abuse the poor stalks in butter once they are done. To each their own, but I think the butter really cheapens the fantastic flavors that fresh asparagus gets when grilled.

Bien Camino!

"They call me Mr. Gimp!"

Or if Easter was a clue, my family lovingly referred to me as Dr. House all afternoon long. Thanks everyone, I'll make sure to only 'partially' beat you all to death with my cane when I catch you.

But in other news, I am healing up, even if the ligament damage is REALLY annoying. Mostly cause I don't listen to what my limitation are and my cat's favorite current game is "make Daddy scream." Jerk cat, but I love him. Or contemplating how to best cook him next time he gets underfoot in the kitchen.

I am slowly getting away from the processed crap that I've been forced to call food for the last few weeks, it couldn't come sooner! Granted, I have slowly been doctoring food to my taste over the last few weeks as I could stand more, but there's something about eating a meal that you made from near scratch that makes you a very happy camper. Much like today's recipe, this is a variation of a cold pasta salad that I learned to make on the Camino de Santiago from one of my fellow peregrinos, this is more of a "eye ball it until it is right" dish. I hope you enjoy!

Pilgrim Pasta Salad

Tools:

Large pot to cook the pasta in

Strainer

Large bowl with lid for the salad

Mixing Spoon

Cutting Board

Knife

Small bowl to nuke the veggies in.

Ingredients

Three hand fulls of wheat rigatoni pasta

Good olive oil

Red wine vinegar

4-6 diced up sun dried tomatoes packed in olive oil

1 can of lima beans, drained and rinsed

1/4 cup of frozen miropoix mix(carrot, onion, and celery)

1/2 cup of frozen spinach

5 tablespoons of a good Italian spice mix (I like the one from Aldi's if you have one of those)

2 tablespoons of lemon pepper spices (see above)

1 tablespoon minced garlic or garlic powder

water

The biggest trick with pasta is getting the largest pot that you own and filling it with as much water as it can hold. The more boiling water you have, the better, because this will keep the pasta from sticking together as it cooks. You want it filled until a good inch or two from the lip of the pot. Put it on the burner and crank the heat to the highest setting. Once the water is boiling, cook the pasta for 7 to 8 minutes, and then drain it through the strainer.

While this is going on, nuke the sun dried tomatoes in the smaller bowl in 5-10 second increments until they are slightly warm. This will help release a lot of flavor into the salad. Dice them up finely and add them to your final serving bowl. The same trick can be used on fresh garlic to help release all those wonderful flavors, but you'll need to add a couple big drops of olive oil on each piece of garlic you are doing this trick on.

Once the tomatoes are in the larger bowl, nuke the rest of the veggies in 30 second increments until they thaw and cook just slightly. And by just slightly I mean they are too hot to pick up with your fingers, but not nuked to the point that you have a flashback of the war you had with your mother and those crappy, nuked until mush, green peas. If you fear a flashback like this, go eat a bar of chocolate and laugh that your an adult now who knows better.

Once the veggies are thawed and just getting hot, add them to the large mixing bowl.

This leaves the lima beans. Oh, our mortal enemy growing up. A fantastic thing about canned beans are that they are cooked when they are being packed, so unless they have meat product in them (like pork and beans), they can be eaten right out of the can. Drain the beans in the strainer and rinse them until all the can goo is gone, adding them into the mixing bowl.

Finally the pasta should be just about done, drain the pasta and add it into the mixing bowl.

Here comes the seasoning, add all the dried seasoning to the pasta and then you'll want to add olive oil and vinegar in a 3 to 1 ratio (three parts oil to one of vinegar) in SMALL increments. You don't want to drown the salad in dressing! As you pour in both ingredients, mix the salad with your spoon, coating everything in that olive oil/vinegar/spice mix. At the very most I tend to use only a quarter to a third of a cup of oil/vinegar mix on this salad, and that's when I make a slightly bigger batch.

And now you have a delicious salad that is good for you and tastes fantastic as is, but the trick to get all the flavors to blend is covering the bowl up and plopping it in the refrigerator for two or three hours so all the flavors can mix.

And with that you have a dish perfect for a meal or to take to a large family pot-luck. It is cheap, economical, and best of all, really filling.

Bien Camino!