The Minimalist Cooks Dinner (27 page)
Read The Minimalist Cooks Dinner Online
Authors: Mark Bittman
All of these proportions are based on ½ cup (1 stick) butter. Remember that all of the flavoring can be done to taste; start with the suggested amounts and take it from there:
Horseradish (or Wasabi) and Ginger Butter with Soy:
Flavor the butter with 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish or wasabi, 1 teaspoon finely minced ginger, and 1 teaspoon good soy sauce. Use salt and pepper sparingly.
Garlic-Oregano Butter:
Flavor the butter with 1 teaspoon finely minced garlic (or 1 tablespoon roasted garlic puree), 1 teaspoon finely minced fresh oregano or marjoram, and 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, along with salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.
Chile-Cilantro Butter:
Flavor the butter with 1 stemmed, seeded, and finely minced small chile, 1 tablespoon minced cilantro, and 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice, along with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
|
Once you get started you’ll see that compound butters can be made with any seasoning you like
: mustard, garlic, ginger, chiles, vinegar, or citrus juice and zest, just to name a few. In summer and fall, you can easily experiment with adding the fresh herb of your choice—chervil is especially nice, as are dill and parsley.
Plum Purée Sauce
TIME:
40 to 50 minutes
MAKES:
4 servings
Most summer fruits are more capable of making a contribution to the savory part of a meal than we realize, especially when they’re puréed, creating an easy-to-make base for an unusual sauce. This is a good example, an enriched, slightly sour purée of fresh plums that complements steak brilliantly.
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup plum purée (see Keys to Success)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
About 24 ounces skirt steak, cut into 4 portions
⅛ teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
Prepare a gas or charcoal grill; the fire should be so hot you can hold your hand over it for only a couple of seconds. (You can broil or pan-grill the steak if you prefer.) Meanwhile, place the butter in a small saucepan and turn the heat to medium. Cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until the butter turns light brown, about 5 minutes. Lower the heat and stir in the purée. Cook, stirring, for about a minute; keep warm.
When the fire is ready, grill the steak, 2 minutes per side for rare, 1 to 2 minutes longer for medium-rare to medium. Season the steak as it cooks with salt and pepper.
While the steak is cooking, add the cayenne, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt to the purée and stir; taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Serve the steak with the sauce, garnished with the parsley.
| WINE | Rioja or another soft, lush red |
| SERVE WITH | Roasted Peppers, and/or Tomato Salad with Basil ; Sautéed Shiitake Mushrooms |
THE PLUMS
must be ripe, even a tad overripe, making this an ideal dish for using up fruit you might otherwise discard.
TO PEEL
, plunge the plums into boiling water for about 30 seconds, or until the skin loosens (sometimes this takes as long as a minute); then plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking. At that point, you can easily remove the skins with a paring knife. Then cut the fruit into halves or quarters and remove the pits. Generally, figure that about a pound of fruit will produce just over a cup purée.
TO PURÉE
, cram the plums into the blender, literally pushing them down onto the blades and squeezing some of the water from them. This will help get the machine started and should make it easy to purée the fruit without any intervention or added liquid. If the machine is having trouble, turn it off and use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to mash the fruit down onto the blades.
THE PURÉE
is stable, but its flavor is fleeting and will become less intense with every passing hour. If you are not ready to proceed after making it, refrigerate in a tightly covered container and use within a day.
Skirt Steak with Peach or Apricot Purée Sauce:
Make the purée using peaches or apricots; these will take a little more lemon juice and cayenne.
|
For the skirt steak, substitute sirloin strip or rib eye, pork chops or ribs, or lamb steaks.
Roquefort Sauce
TIME:
30 to 40 minutes
MAKES:
4 servings
It may be that the paradigm of steak-and-cheese combinations is the Philly cheese steak, but there is a more elegant and arguably better-tasting way to combine these two foods: Top steak with a simple sauce based on blue cheese. This dish, which often appears on bistro menus in France, fits the need for a good steak served with something powerfully salty and rich (anchovy butter, or a combination of butter, soy sauce, and ginger also does the trick). Some might consider the sauce overkill, but not those of us who crave it.
1 tablespoon butter or grape- seed, corn, or other light oil
¼ cup minced shallots
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar or cider vinegar
6 ounces Roquefort or other blue cheese, crumbled
Generous pinch of cayenne
Salt
1½ to 2 pounds strip steaks, filet mignon, or rib-eye steaks
Minced fresh parsley or chives, optional
Start a hot charcoal or wood fire, preheat a gas grill to the maximum, or preheat the broiler. The fire should be quite hot, and the grill rack no more than 4 inches from the heat source.
Put the butter in a small saucepan and turn the heat to medium. When the butter melts and its foam begins to subside, add the shallots and cook until soft, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Add the vinegar, stir, and cook until it is just about evaporated, 1 to 2 minutes. Turn the heat to low and stir in the cheese and cayenne. Stir occasionally until the cheese melts, then taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary (it’s unlikely that the sauce will need any salt). Keep warm while you grill the steaks.
Season the steaks well with salt, then grill or broil for 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium-rare, or longer or shorter according to your taste. Serve the steaks with a spoonful or two of sauce ladled over each, garnished with the parsley if you like.
| WINE | Rioja, Dolcetto, or another red from Spain or Northern Italy |
| SERVE WITH | Simple Green Salad or Tomato Salad with Basil ; Mashed Potatoes , or Crisp Potatoes ; Steamed Broccoli (or Other Vegetable) |
ROQUEFORT
, which is made from sheep’s milk, is my favorite blue for this sauce. But it’s entirely a matter of taste—Stilton, Gorgonzola, Maytag blue, or any high-quality, fairly soft blue cheese will work equally well. Don’t bother, however, trying to make this sauce with commercially produced domestic blue cheese, such as that sold precrumbled for salads. Not only will its taste be inferior, but it will not give the sauce the same creaminess.
THIS IS
an instance in which the usually too-lean and mildly flavored tenderloin (filet mignon) will do just fine. Its tenderness is welcome, and its blandness is more than compensated for by the sauce. I’d still prefer a good strip steak or rib eye, which are chewier and more flavorful, but you will notice their higher fat content when they’re combined with the rich sauce.
|
This is equally good with pan-grilled pork chops or thick medallions of pork tenderloin (buy a piece of tenderloin and cut it cross-wise into %-inch thick slices), or thin cutlets of veal or pork, sauteed.
Chimichurri Sauce
TIME:
About 30 minutes, longer if you have time
MAKES:
4 servings
This simple, Argentine steak sauce is made almost entirely from parsley, with relatively huge amounts of chopped garlic and red pepper. In spirit, it’s not unlike pesto, but because everything is hand-chopped rather than ground or mashed, it has a bit more chew to it. And its powerful ingredients set it apart, making it the perfect complement for mild-tasting but meaty tenderloin.
¾ cup washed, dried, and chopped fresh parsley (about 1 large bunch)
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
24 ounces beef tenderloin steaks, each about 1 inch thick
Put the parsley in a bowl and whisk in the oil, along with the lemon juice, garlic, crushed red pepper, and salt. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary; let the sauce rest at room temperature for an hour or two if you have time.
Put a large skillet over high heat and heat for 1 to 2 minutes. Meanwhile, season the steaks with salt and pepper. When the skillet is hot, add the steaks and cook for about 3 minutes per side for medium-rare, or a little longer for medium. Leave the steaks whole or slice them; serve with the chimichurri spooned over them, passing more sauce at the table.
| WINE | Inexpensive, rough red, like a no-name Cabernet or Zinfandel |
| SERVE WITH | Simple Green Salad , Rice Salad with Peas and Soy , or Cornbread |
YOU ALMOST
cannot use too much garlic or red pepper here; cut back on the amounts if you like, but chimichurri should be powerful.
THE SAUCE
can be made several hours ahead (in fact it’s better that way); keep it at room temperature. If you’re going to keep it longer than that—up to a day or so—refrigerate, then bring it back to room temperature before serving.
|
Use the sauce on grilled pork or lamb chops; grilled or roasted leg of lamb; or grilled, broiled, or roasted chicken thighs.
