I'm kind of nostalgic person. I write letters, collect LPs and wish for the days before smart phones and facebook. Some people might call me a Luddite, but I prefer the more positive label of nostalgic. That said cooking from a cookbook is right up my alley. I love flipping through my mother's cookbooks. Maybe it's the feeling of the pages or seeing my mother's notes in the margin. Cooking from a cookbook gives me a similar feeling to when listening to an old record-- that someone has listed to this record before and enjoyed this song. I also like the idea of holding an entire cannon of cooking in one book and how flipping from one recipe to another can be an inspiration for more meals.
Sadly, I won't be cooking from my mother's collection or anyone else's for that matter; I'll be checking out cookbooks from my local library. However, I think using cookbooks is a great way to expand my cooking repertoire instead of seeking out my own preconceived recipe ideas on the internet. I can cook my way through different styles of cuisine all sourced from the same place. I also hope this blog can act as an advertisement to buy some of the cookbooks since I think it's vital to have a few tried and true books to reference.
My first cookbook to sample is The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook by Julee Rosso, Sheila Lukins, and Sarah Leah Chase. My dear friend Jessica gave me this book from her own collection, a very touching gesture that I hope I can reciprocate. The book was written for entertaining. There are four chapters based on the four seasons, and each chapter is sectioned into social events with recipes to match. Although I have not done much entertaining in my time as an amateur chef, I find this type of organization informative. It is like picking a recipe based on your mood. The book is scattered with lovely ink drawings of the ingredients in the dishes and the margins are full of witty sayings about food and tidbits of history about certain dishes.
The first dish I made from the book is Flank steak with garlic-ginger sauce from the Sassy Ginger Salute from the Autumn Hues chapter. The steak:
1 flank steak (2 pounds)2 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs sesame oil
Rub down each side of the steak with 1 tablespoon of each soy sauce and sesame oil. Let the steak sit in this marinade for 20 minutes or more.
Ginger garlic sauce
3/4 cups olive oil
6 cloves garlic, finely minced
3 tbs chopped fresh ginger root
4 large carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces
5 scallions (sliced up to two inches of the green)
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup water
1 tbs dried oregano
pinch of red pepper flakes
1/2 cup fresh chopped parsely
koshe salt and ground black pepper to taste
1. Heat the oil in a medium sized skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic, ginger, and carrots and sauté for ten minutes. Stir in the scallions and sauté for 2 minutes more.
2. Add the wine, water, oregano, red pepper flakes, and simmer uncovered over low heat for 30 minutes. Stir in the parsley and season to taste with salt and pepper.
3. To cook the steak, heat oil in a large skillet over high heat until the pan is hot. Cook 4-5 minutes per side, more if you like your meat well done. Let the steak rest for 10 minutes at room temperature.
4. Slice the steak into thin slices against the grain of the meat. Overlap a few slices on each plate and top with several spoonfuls of the ginger garlic sauce.
The directions above are from the Silver Palate. However, I procrastinated until 9pm before I started making dinner, so I thought it would be a clever time-saver to just grind all the ingredients together in my food processor and cook them in a small sauce pan for 5 minutes before adding the liquid components. I also used carrot sticks instead of large carrots with the assumption that a large carrot equals about 7 carrot sticks, and I only had 1/2 cup of white wine so I substituted the rest with red cooking wine. My idea would have worked better if I had thought to halve the wine and water since food coming out of the food processor is always has more liquid than before it was processed. I cooked the sauce on high for an extra ten minutes to boil off the extra liquid.
Even with my ad-libs, the sauce with a strong flavor of ginger and carrot, tasted delicious with the steak, and I wish I had cooked rice to eat with the remainder of the sauce. Yet I have to admit that the sauce would have been better with chunkier vegetables as it would have been more substantial and acted as more of a side dish. I'll definitely make this recipe again since I often buy flank steak because it is a cheap cut of meat that can be used in a variety of dishes from fajitas to Chinese beef dishes.
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