Mmmm... steak fajitas

Occasion: Movie Night (The Cutting Edge - how's that for craptastic?) at Mike and Gerald's

Steak Fajitas

I based the marinade for the steak on Tyler Florence's (original recipe here) - I feel like that justifies using his glamour shot.

Steak Marinade:

juice of 1 orange

juice of 2 limes

2 tbsp adobo sauce

a fistful of chopped cilantro
a good glug of olive oil
1 tsp cumin

salt & pepper

Marinate the steak for about an hour. No more than two - there's too much acid in this marinade to let it sit overnight.

Traditionally, you'd use flank steak or skirt steak but since I don't have any experience cooking those notoriously finicky cuts, I went with ribeye. Which is fine, except that ribeyes are much thicker and the marinade will not penetrate as well. (You can compensate for that when you cook it.)

For cooking the meat, I'd recommend a good sear at high temp for color (and flavor). Rest for 10 min. and slice. If you've used a thick steak like I did, try giving it a quick stir-fry with some more adobo sauce or reduced marinade. (Note: normally, you would throw out a marinade you used with raw meat. But it's safe to use if you bring it to a boil and cook it through, so to speak.)

Serve with sautéed onions and peppers, on warmed flour or corn tortillas. Sour cream, guac and salsa to garnish.

Salsa

I also made a tomato-corn salsa, based on a Martha recipe (original here). It's just 1 ear of fresh corn, de-cobbed and sautéed in butter, and one or two tomatoes, de-seeded and chopped. Dressing with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. I also threw in some chopped cilantro, because I just love the stuff.

Guacamole

I made some standard guacamole. You know the drill - avocado, tomato, red onion, cilantro, jalapeño, salt and pepper.

On the avocados: Don't expect to buy avocados from a grocery store and make guacamole that day. They will be underripe. In a pinch, you can sometimes get ripe ones from those little outdoor fruit stands. I had the boys get the avocados two days earlier and leave them out at room temp to soften. But even then there was one that stayed waxy and hard and couldn't be used. The avocado has to be pretty mushy to make good guacamole, in my opinion.

Some ideas for leftover steak and veggies: Make quesadillas. Do a makeshift pasta puttanesca with some olives, or a chicken cacciatore. Make a frittata or omelet. Throw in some Asian sauce (hoisin, bbq or sriracha) and make a stir-fry to serve with rice. Throw together a hearty lunch salad with some greens. It's all good.