86. Thai-Style Beef Salad

Date Cooked: July 17, 2009
Page: 117
Rating: B+

I had been eyeing this recipe for quite some time and finally got around to cooking it. Thanks in large part to my neighbor for delivering a rather large bunch of fresh lettuce from his garden. Salads are one of those things I keep telling myself to eat more of but I always consider them a lot of work. This one showed me that I have nothing to be afraid of, but that I need to invest in a good salad spinner.

I started off washing the lettuce. The one thing about fresh from the garden produce are little crawly things. I thoroughly, bordering on obsessively, washed the lettuce in my sink. After freeing a few mini slugs, ants and some other unidentifiable critters, the lettuce was fit for consumption. Drying the lettuce would have been easier with a salad spinner. I had several feet of my counter cover with kitchen towels and lettuce.

With the lettuce done it was time to cook the flank steak. I pan-seared it in a small amount of oil and while that was happening I prepped the cucumber and onions and the marinade/dressing. The marinade was equal parts fish sauce and lime juice with some red pepper flakes and sugar. Half of this was reserved as the dressing while the remainder was used to marinate the sliced flank steak.

When the flank steak was finished cooking it was sliced and marinated for 10 minutes. Once done marinating the steak, cucumber and onions were tossed in the dressing and then served on a bed of lettuce and finally topped with peanuts.

Rating: B+. I liked this salad but I had one complaint. Between seasoning the flank steak prior to searing in, and then marinating it in a dressing based on fish sauce, it was a bit salty. The dressing alone was fantastic but the flank steak probably could have skipped the short marinating session. Overall I was happy with this dish and I look forward to making more salads.

08. Creamy Garlic Vinaigrette

Date Cooked: August 31, 2008
Recipe: 8
Page: 83

Ok, Ok… I can hear the groans now and those few readers I have are probably already trying to click to some other blog. But I have an excuse. We were on vacation and I didn’t feel like going grocery shopping so we used what we had in the house, which meant the last of the salad greens before they began to wilt into a slimy mess.

Salad dressings and vinaigrettes are quick and easy to make so they were perfect candidates for fulfilling my cook-through project while under time constraints and limited fresh items. The vinaigrette recipe suggested using a jar to mix the ingredients in. I was trying to remember where I had stored the mason jars we bought several months ago, when we thought we would try to make preserves (yeah that never quite happened), when I remembered I had a single jar in the cupboard that was from some gift basket thing and since I am a pack rat of sorts I washed it thinking it could one day be useful. That was an absolutely atrocious sentence. I apologize for anyone that needed to waste time trying to read through that more than once. Anyway, the jar, so I filled it with the simple list of ingredients (garlic, oil, sour cream, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and vinegar), gave it a vigorous shake and was done.

My wife loved this vinaigrette and I am told I will be making it more often.

06. Blue Cheese Dressing

Date Cooked: August 28, 2008
Recipe: 6
Page: 80

It was this dressing that prompted the torture of manually whisking oil and egg into mayonnaise. I felt like a salad since we were leaving for small vacation for the labour day weekend and I didn’t want to come home to a fridge full of less than fresh leftovers. A simple salad was my choice and I felt that throwing together a homemade dressing for it would be nice. With some blue cheese sitting in the fridge I felt this was an opportune time to utilize the ‘Best’ book. It had a simple blue cheese dressing recipe so I dove in… only to realize I was out of mayonnaise. So I figured I could just make my own (see previous post). I’ll be sure to stock my fridge better in the future.

Nothing could be easier than mashing the buttermilk and blue cheese together and then mixing in the rest of the ingredients. At first when I tasted the dressing I was a little concerned. The blue cheese was muted and overall I wasn’t too enthusiastic. I covered it and put it in the fridge for about an hour as we finished a few other things around the house. When it was time to eat I was really excited about the dressing… that was until I took my first bite! While resting in the fridge the flavors had a chance to meld and the sharp flavor of the blue cheese came through bold but without over-powering the dressing. It was delicious!

Reflecting back on this dressing I will definitely make it again the next time I have some blue cheese. I’m not sure the worth of homemade mayonnaise in it but next time I make it I’ll see if off the shelf mayonnaise impacts the flavor.

The Next Day
Well technically this was a few days later but I still had a little bit left over so I threw a quick salad together to finish it off. This dressing just kept getting better with age!