Quick N Easy

 I decided to throw myself back into the sauna, aka my kitchen in the summer, for a little dinner tonight. All I want to eat is salads and fruits since its 100+ out these days. I went with horseradish skirt steak over a bead of mushrooms and greens. And...YUM! I even have some left over for lunch tomorrow, lucky me!

This is what you'll need:

1 lb of skirt steak
1 tbs horseradish
olive oil
2 garlic cloves
4 cups mixed greens
1/2 lb mixed mushrooms ( I did common and portobello)
1 lemon
salt & pepper to taste
1 tbs balsamic vinegar


Combine horseradish, garlic clove and a bit of EVOO in a bowl. (I added a dash of balsamic to this as well) and rub over one side of meat.

Use a grill pan or a real live grill for these, skirt steak is meant to be served medium-rare so they'll need about 10 minutes MAX on the heat.

Chop your mushrooms into chunks or slice them, whatever you fancy.

Start the sautee process about 5 minutes into your meat grilling. Mushrooms don't take too long to cook, and if you cook them too long they begin to be super chewy. When they're finish be sure to dump out the excess liquid before transferring them into the greens because they tend to lose a lot of moisture when cooking.

Take the juice of half a lemon, 1 (or a little less) tablespoon olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar and salt & pepper to season the greens and mushrooms.

When your meat is finished resting (about 5 minutes while covered with foil), slice and serve over top of greens. Simple, right? Right! And so, so good.  I'm making monkey bread tomorrow night while Ryan's working. I hope it lasts longer than 2 days this time ;)...stay tuned for that!

Guilty Pleasure #474896132

My love for cheese steaks started last May when we visited Pennsylvania. They sell them basically on every corner, and they are SO good. I never got into the "whiz" (cheese whiz) thing, but liked the hoagie style best. I've been really hesitant about making that at home because 1. they are not the healthiest option in the world and 2. they're surprisingly easy to mess up. SO, I was feeling ambitious and decided to give it a whirl. I had some help from Ryan, considering these are from his homeland.

I used ribeye steaks and just pounded them as much as possible with one of those meat pounder things.

PS- I'm blogging this from the airport right now...well the airport bar. What? There were no seats available at the terminal! I have priorities.

These steaks pounded out to be about 12" long- I really got 'em good. In Philly they use a product called Steak Umms which is basically really thin beef. I didn't think I had access to them, but I was told I can find them at the grocery store here as well.

I sliced the steak into strips and threw them into a greased skillet. They cooked in 10 minutes. I sautee'd 1/2 a yellow onion and 1 whole red bell pepper. NOW- I don't personally like bell pepper but for some reason I do on these. I don't get me sometimes.

 While you're browning your meat be sure to get started on the cheese sauce which is:

2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups milk
2 cups grated provolone cheese

NOW- if you're cooking for 2...you don't need this much of the sauce, cut the recipe in half. Trust me.

Melt butter in small sauce pan. Stir in milk and cheese. Stir until cheese is combined and fully melted. You will have to keep an eye on it- for some reason all of the ingredients dont like to stay together.

When steak is done you'll need to cut the pieces to make them a bit smaller, or not, whatever you wish.

I got giant sourdough french rolls from the market for our bread. If you get small ones a lot of your sandwich will fall out. I realize that this isn't a "real" recipe. I kind of flew by the seat of my pants on this one- but I will tell you the cheese SAUCE makes a difference, if you use plain provolone it's just not the same. Veggie alternative: sautee yellow and red bell peppers, yellow onion, and portobello mushrooms instead of using meat.

These were really really good. I even got the seal of approval from a real live City of Brotherly Love native.