gorgonzola and walnut stuffed flank steak

Flank steak is one of my favorite cuts of beef to feed a group (or one large bear). It's inexpensive, if you pick a good cut it's quite lean, and it dresses up so well. You can stuff it with many combinations (try spinach, feta & pine nuts), but this particular recipe is close to my heart. Several years ago, for valentine's day, A surprised me with this cooking-for-2 class. Despite being the youngest couple there by about 25 years (this is apparently quite popular with the empty-nester crowd), we had so much fun. On the menu was this flank steak, roasted potatoes with truffle oil, and a spinach souffle. A certainly got his money's worth with this gift; I've made this dish at least once a month every since I learned it. And I bet you will too.

Grocery list: 2-3 pound flank steak, gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, 3-4 shallots, olive oil.



Before you can start, the flank steak has to be pounded thin, to less than half an inch thickness. If you ask nicely, sometimes your butcher will do it for you. Or, just lay it down on parchment paper, cover with a few layers of plastic wrap, and pound with a meat mallet. Try and get it as even as possible, and work it into a rectangle like this as best you can.



Mince the shallots and saute in olive oil until they are translucent, about 3-4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, remove to a plate, and allow to cool. Wipe out the pan with a towel, and toast about 1/4 cup of walnuts for a few minutes. Chop.



When the shallots and chopped walnuts are cool, spread them across the flank steak, along with a couple of ounces of gorgonzola cheese crumbles. Leave one edge of the flank steak empty, so when you roll it up (this will be the outside edge), stuff doesn't fall out.



Now comes the fun part. Roll up the flank steak, and tie it with kitchen twine every inch or so along the steak. The cooking class taught us a cool trick for doing this with a single long piece of twine - like adding a slip knot every inch. I still ask A to help me with this every time, since he's so much better at it than me. If I have to do it, I just cut little individual pieces and tie them separately - elementary but effective.



When it's all tied up, season the outside with salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.



Heat a swirl or 2 of olive oil in a large oven proof skillet. Sear the flank steak for 4-5 minutes - keep rotating it every minute or so, so all sides are browned. Transfer to the oven and roast for another 20 minutes.



When it's done, allow it to rest for 10 minutes on a cutting board. You can go ahead and cut off the twine while it's resting. Then, slice along the marks left by the twine.



I served this with swiss chard with garlic and an easy gruyere souffle.

swiss chard with goat cheese walnuts & cranberries

I've been serving swiss chard with slivered garlic, fresh lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil for a while, and wanted to mix it up. Turns out you can use a popular salad combination of goat cheese, walnuts and dried cranberries - who knew?

Grocery list: rainbow or red swiss chard, goat cheese, handful of chopped walnuts, handful of dried cranberries, olive oil.



Chop and toast the walnuts over medium flame, stirring frequently to prevent burning, for a few minutes. Remove from heat.



Remove the stems from the chard and cut into bite size pieces. Saute in olive oil over medium high heat until they just begin to soften, then add the cranberries.



Chop the chard leaves then add to the pan with about 1/4 cup water (pan will be overflowing, but the chard will cook down significantly). Keep moving the chard around so the uncooked leaves on top get moved to the bottom. The water will evaporate as well.



Sprinkle a little fresh goat cheese on top, followed by the toasted walnuts, then stir to mix. Season with salt and pepper.

bacon cheddar quick bread

I've never had a desire to bake my own bread, but I guess that's the next step in my adoption of the "slow food" trend. When I saw this recipe for a bacon and cheddar quick bread in the October 2008 issue of Bon Appetit, it was time to bite the bullet. It only took a few minutes to put together, and made a great breakfast. This would be a great bread to throw together if you have house guests - impressive but very hands-off.

Grocery list: 5 slices bacon, 6 oz cheddar, 1/2 cup dried fruit (original recipe called for dried pears; I used dried cranberries), 1/3 cup walnuts, 1 T fresh sage (minced), 1 3/4 cup AP flour, 1 T baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground black pepper, 3 eggs, 1/3 cup whole milk, 1/3 cup olive oil.



First, chop up 5 slices of bacon and crisp it in a pan, then drain over paper towels.



Mix your "wet" ingredients - whisk 3 eggs and the milk and olive oil together.



Stir your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, pepper) together in a large bowl. Pour the egg mixture into the flour, and stir just enough to combine (don't overwork the batter, it's good if it's chunky).



The recipe called for 1 cup grated cheddar plus 1/2 cup of 1/4 inch cubes of cheese. For color more than anything, I used yellow extra-sharp cheddar for the grated 1 cup of cheese, and then cubed some seaside extra sharp white cheddar to make the extra 1/2 cup. Fold the cheese, dried fruit, walnuts (toasted and chopped), sage, and bacon pieces into the dough.



Grease the sides and bottom of a one pound loaf pan (8.5" x 4.5" x 2.5"), and spoon the dough in. Bake at 350 degrees on the center oven rack, until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. The recipe said 55 minutes (an exact number, which I interpreted as authoritative - should have checked it at 45-50 minutes, as it turned out a touch drier than I would have liked). Cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Loosen the sides of the loaf from the pan with a knife, then invert on a rack and allow to cool to desired temperature.

walnut-crusted tilapia with lemon cream sauce

This is a new recipe for me, and although there are a few technicalities I'll address next time I make it (not chopping the walnuts as fine, for one), it was absolutely delicious. Tilapia is my new favorite fish -- only $9 a pound, from WF, where they promise it is farmed in an eco-friendly and sustainable way, plus tender and incredibly mild and full of protein... So any dish I run across these days that calls for a mild white fish is getting swapped out for tilapia. The lemon cream sauce adds a tangy richness to the salty crispy fish; it's just perfect.

Grocery list: 4 tilapia filets, 1 cup walnuts, 1 cup breadcrumbs, parsley, 1 sprig rosemary, butter, 1.5 cups half-and-half, sour cream, 2 lemons.



First, make the lemon cream sauce. A little note about zesting lemons: if you don't have a microplane grater, you are missing out (about $12, one of the best kitchen tools ever). I went years thinking I had one but didn't -- turns out it was a paddle grater -- and zesting a lemon used to take about 20 minutes and a lot of swearing. Now it takes less than 1 minute. Anyway, continuing with the sauce: bring the half-and-half to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and reduce by about half. Add the zest of 2 lemons, and the juice of one of them, plus a few T of sour cream. Stir well, and remove from heat. Stir every now and then while cooking the fish.



Next, toast the walnuts over medium heat in a frying pan. When they start to glisten and make a tiny hissing sound, it's time to turn off the heat. Stir them several times; let them cool.



Making the crust in the food processor was very easy, but I'm going to describe it in the order I'll follow next time, not the order I went in last night. Last night, the crust ended up being too finely chopped, since I started with the walnuts and every time I added other ingredients they kept getting pulverized. Chop a handful of parsley leaves and the leaves of the rosemary (remove the stem). Add the walnuts. Remove the blade from the processor, then stir in salt, pepper, and 1 cup of breadcrumbs.



To prepare the fish, preheat the oven to 450 degrees and line a baking sheet with foil. Melt half a stick of butter. Coat each filet with butter, then press the walnut crumb mixture onto the outside. Don't shake off the excess -- in fact, do the opposite. Press as much of the walnut mix as you can onto the fish.



When all 4 filets are on the baking sheet, take any remaining walnut mix and press a little extra onto the tops of each. If there's any remaining melted butter, you can drizzle that on top as well.



Bake for 12 minutes, until the tilapia is flaky and white inside. Serve with a few spoonfuls of the lemon cream sauce. I also served this with the watercress apple salad and sweet potato fries.

sauteed spinach

There's a similar recipe for this in the Moosewood cookbook, but I've adapted it from its original (which was a wilted spinach salad with pecans) to more of a fully-cooked sauteed version.

Grocery list: 1 9 or 10-oz bag of fresh baby spinach, 2-3 cloves garlic, handful of walnuts, handful of dried cranberries.

Start by mincing the garlic and heating 1-2 T of olive oil in a large saute pan. Cook the garlic for about 2 minutes, then add the bag of spinach. Keep rotating the spinach around so it cooks -- it will look like a LOT of spinach but will quickly cook down into 2 servings. After the spinach has wilted, add the cranberries, walnuts, salt and pepper to taste, and continue to cook for another few minutes. That's all there is to it.