Carne Asada!

Well, her mom is still here. So until we can have a talk about guests and proper notice, I'll regale you with this tale of cooking success!

(Cross-posted to Flirty Food.)

In the spirit of my new-school-year's resolution to try a new recipe every week, a couple of days ago I made a dish that I'd tried many times before in restaurants, but never made - carne asada. I love this dish partly for the fact that it's steak - and I love steak - and partly for the things it's traditionally served with. (Avocado/guac, beans, pico de gallo and sour cream.)

The recipe, which I got from Simply Recipes, goes as follows:

Ingredients

2 pounds flank or skirt steak
Olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Marinade:
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeño chile pepper, seeded and minced
1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed (best to lightly toast the seeds first, then grind them)
1 large handful fresh cilantro, leaves and stems, finely chopped (great flavor in the stems)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 limes, juiced
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup olive oil

I eliminated the salt and pepper (because I'm lazy), the jalapeno (because I don't like it), and the cumin (because I thought I had some and didn't). I also used dried cilantro instead of fresh, because that was what I had already, and garlic from a jar. (Incidentally, I highly recommend Spice World marinated garlic. It packs the same punch as fresh garlic for a lot cheaper, and you don't have to go out and buy a couple of cloves every time you want to put garlic in something, which for me is a lot of the time.)

The rest of the marinade ingredients went into a mixing bowl along with the steak, which I had to cut into a few smaller pieces for the sake of not being so messy.

The bowl then went in the fridge for an hour and a half or so while I went to go do online homework or, more likely, poked around Tumblr for a while. The recipe recommends 1-5 hours marinating; I would have liked to let it sit longer, but I was getting hungry!

While I was waiting, I also prepared some of the things I was going to eat with the steak itself - plain old avocado (guacamole is sometimes just too much effort) and beans, plus some prepared pico de gallo from the grocery store. (For the record, the Marsh here has amazing avocados; I couldn't stop myself munching while I was cutting them up.)



To get a facsimile of refried beans without the effort and added calories involved with actually frying them, I put a can of pinto beans in my food processor with some salt, garlic and lime juice. They were great!

Finally, it was time to grill the meat. The recipe called for either an actual grill or a cast-iron frying pan; I only had a newfangled Teflon-type pan, so I went with that. I don't think it was a mortal error.



It took a little longer than I anticipated to cook the steaks, but luckily I like my meat pretty rare, so it could have been worse. Here's how they turned out:

Finally, after slicing the meat, I made up a plate with some steak, avocado, beans, sour cream and pico plus a few mini tortillas.

Shortly after finishing dinner, I emailed my dad to tell him I'd successfully grilled my first steak. He was proud.