If I Owned a Steakhouse in Greece

I would serve up something like this.

Steaks aren't really part of the traditional Greek diet. There isn't much by way of aged steaks like we know here North America. Beef and veal are most used for braising, stews and mince.

There are some butchers who have know-how to butcher cows with an eye towards steak cuts and they even have their own aging and hanging rooms for the beef. These butchers cater to the steak houses in Athens, Thessaloniki and some of the jet-set Greek islands.


Having spoken to butchers about how they butcher cattle differently from their North American colleagues, the consistent reply I get is that although they (Greek butchers) know how to butcher for steak cuts, there is little demand for it in the Greek market.

Another thing one should know is that many (perhaps most) Greeks like their meats well-done. There's a generational gap between myself, cousins and our parents as us younger folks like our meat medium to rare and our parents like their beef well-done. It's a cultural thing, no right or wrong - that's just how it is.

On to the dinner. The flavours and ingredients used for this dish are used in Greek cooking but none of the dish can be really characterized as "Greek food". Greek-inspired, yes. Greek recipe - NO. I can't say that anything here is derived from recipes of our forefathers or even from a Greek cookbook per se.

The steak is inspired by my dad's treatment of a steak....coarse salt, black pepper, garlic powder and dried Greek oregano.

The mashed potatoes utilize Yukon Gold potatoes, roasted garlic, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, scallions and crumbled Feta.

The beans are simple...a quick saute of sliced mushrooms with some roasted garlic and olive oil and blanched green beans get tossed in at the end to warm through. This pairing was inspired by a recent beans and mushrooms recipe posted over at my dear friend's Kalyn's Kitchen.

Put the steak, mashed potatoes and green beans with 'shrooms and you have a wonderful steak dinner with "an eye towards Greece".

Pull up a chair, let me fetch a bottle (or two) and please do, have a seat. You're having steak at my place tonight. Let's sip some wine, talk food, think about summer vacation plans and enjoy a wonderful steak dinner!

Pan-seared Steak With Roasted Garlic and Oregano
(for 4)

4 New York Strip steaks, 3/4 - 1 in. thick
olive oil
unsalted butter
coarse sea salt
fresh cracked black pepper
garlic powder
dried Greek oregano

Mashed Potatoes with Roasted Garlic, Sun-dried Tomatoes and Feta
4 large Yukon Gold Potatoes
1 bulb of garlic
4 sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped
the green tops of 2 scallions, chopped
1/4 cup of unsalted butter
approx. 1 cup of milk
crumbled Feta cheese to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Mushrooms and green beans
4 handfuls of green beans, trimmed
1 cup of Cremini or button mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup olive oil
2-3 cloves of roasted garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heated 375F oven

1. Peel and cut your potatoes into quarters. Place inside a pot and cover with water and reserve. Preheat your oven to 375F. Cut the top off your head of garlic and place in some tin foil. Drizzle with olive oil and wrap up, place in a oven-proof vessel and roast for about 40 minutes. Allow to cool. You may also use this time to boil your beans in salted water (until al dente) and then shock by placing in a icy water bath. Drain and reserve.
   
2. Bring your steaks to room temperature for cooking. Drizzle some olive oil on both sides of the steaks and season with coarse salt, fresh ground black pepper, garlic powder and dried Greek oregano. Start your pot of potatoes by boiling them in salted water and cook until fork tender.
3. Place your skillet on the stove-top over high heat and add a couple of pads of butter and some olive oil. sear your steaks in batches until both sides are a deep brown colour and reserve on a baking tray (reduce heat to medium-high).
4. When the steaks are all seared-off, place the baking tray in pre-heated oven for 10 minutes (for medium), remove from the oven, place on a plate and tent with foil. Allow to rest about 5 minutes before serving.
5. In the meantime, your potatoes should be ready to make your mashed potatoes. Strain the water from the potatoes, add butter and all but 2-3 cloves of the roasted garlic (for the beans and mushrooms). Add the milk, sun-dried tomatoes, and mash up some more. Now using a wooden spoon, mix in the crumbled Feta and scallions and then taste and adjust seasoning with salt & pepper. Reserve & keep warm.
6. In a skillet, add a few turns of love oil and add your sliced mushrooms over medium-high heat. Stir to coat the mushrooms with oil and season with some salt and pepper. Cover, reduce the heat to medium and cook off for another 5 minutes. Take the lid off and add the beans and the remaining 2-3 roasted cloves of garlic. Toss to mix and and taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper and keep warm.
7. Divide the mashed potatoes by spooning a big scoop onto the middle of each plate, place a steak on top of half the steak and place a mound of beans and mushrooms on the side.
   

PLEASE NOTE: You may certainly grill the steaks on your outdoor if it's warm enough in your part of the world.


If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://kalofagas.blogspot.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at truenorth67 AT gmail DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author. © 2007-2009 Peter Minakis

Remember This Photo?

Well...thank God those days are gone. It was a long winter and any Canadian will tell that we do not take our warms months for granted. I enjoy every opportunity to be outdoors. You would be too if your first snowfall was in late November and the last bit of snow melted in mid-March.

The warm months means hanging outside and more importantly, being with friends. One such new friend is Sam from Greek Food, Recipes & Reflections. Sam also shares my passion for Greek Food and I invited him over for a coffee and to try out my Cinnamon Rolls.

We chatted, warmed to each other immediately and he also got a peak at the master cook herself, my mom making a Greek almond cookie (to be posted soon).

I encourage you to also pay a visit to Sam's blog. Sam "get's Greek food", knows it, loves it and writes most eloquently about it.

Unfortunately for Sam, he couldn't stay for dinner. Look at what he missed! I was in a grilling mood and I had some sirloin.

Sirloin beef is a full-flavoured beef cut. Legend has it that King Henry VIII of England prized this cut so much that he dubbed it Sir Loin. Others say that this cut got it's name from the French word surlonge, meaning "above the loin".

For those not familiar with cooking sirloin, it's great for stewing, braises and in this instance, grilling. I treat sirloin much like a flank steak. It's a lean meat that should be cooked to no more than medium.

Much like a flank steak, sirloin also benefits from a marinade. In this instance, I combined some Soy Sauce, red wine, black pepper, sesame oil, garlic and Worcestershire sauce and marinated the sirloin for about 90 minutes, room temperature.

To accompany this grilled sirloin, I made a fabulous Chimichurri Sauce that I had bookmarked long ago from the Zen Chef at Chefs Gone Wild. I made some alterations but I stayed true to the spirit of Zen's sauce.

Finally, when grilling steak, remember to get the grill as hot as possible before grilling, brush off any residue from your previous grilling session, allow 5-6 minutes for the meat to rest before cutting and when marinating a meat, always pat-dry the meat of the marinade.

Grilled Sirloin with Zen Chef's Argentinian Chimichurri Sauce

Marinade
1/4 Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire Sauce
1/4 cup red wine
3 cloves of garlic, minced
black pepper

Zen Chef's Argentinian Chimichurri Sauce 1 large handful of fresh parsley, washed, stemmed & dried
6 cloves of garlic, peeled & chopped 1/4 cup chopped red onion
1 small carrot, grated
splash of white wine vinegar
a few splashes of water
1 tsp. of sea salt
1/2 tsp. dry oregano
1 whole chilli
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1. Add all the Chimichurri ingredients (except the olive oil) and pulse a few times to puree your ingredients. Now set the processor to a medium speed and when the ingredients become a coarse paste, start adding your slow but steady stream of olive oil. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve on top of your grilled steak, store the remaining sauce in your fridge for up to a week.
   
2. Add all of the marinade ingredients into a large zip-lock bag and mix well. Taste-test and adjust seasoning accordingly. Marinate for 90 minutes (room temp.) or up to 4 hours in the fridge. Bring back to room temp. before grilling.
   

Carcass and Spuds

Before I get on with my latest meal I want to thank everyone for their kind words for my recent blog entries. You all know how to make a guy's ego swell but I promise I won't have to walk through the door sideways because of it!

I also want thank everyone for their comments on the Spanakopita as I've shown my mom what was being said and she was moved.

On to the dish. I realized last night that I haven't had a good slab of carcass (steak) in perhaps over a month and that's heresy!

I also finally perfected Rosti potatoes. Rosti are a Swiss potato fritter/pancake/pattie but up until tonight, I've not had much luck with them. They would fall apart...until now.

Here's what I found to be keys to successful Rosti:

• Use Russet or baking potatoes. The starch in Russets seem to work best for binding (Yukon Golds just didn't give a good result).
• Use vegetable oil for frying.
• Use 1 egg for binding. This step proved to be invaluable and the Rosti held together when I had to flip them.

As for the main attraction (steak) I was in heaven tonight. I pan-seared a beef tenderloin, finished it off in the oven and then complemented it with a cranberry/fortified wine reduction...it kicked some serious donkey and it reminded me a bit of my ex...a little tart!

One final note to the ladies in "da haus"...if you're still stuck on what to make for the man in your life...go with steak...you might even get him to do dishes, give you a foot massage or take you out for some shopping on his card.

I wonder what I'd get if I made the steak?


Beef Tenderloin With Rösti Potatoes and a Double Cranberry Reduction
( for 4)

4 beef tenderloin steaks
coarse sea salt
cracked black pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. of butter
1/3 cup of diced shallots (or red onions)
3 Tbsp. dried cranberries
1 cup of fresh or frozen cranberries
1 cup of beef stock
1 cup of Mavrodaphne (or other fortified wine)
2 tsp. fresh thyme

Pre-heated 375F oven

Rösti potatoes

4 Russet potatoes, peeled and grated
4 Tbsp. of chopped fresh chives
coarse salt and pepper
1 egg
vegetable oil

1. In a small saucepan, add some butter and saute your shallots on medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add your stock, fresh cranberries and wine and bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Take off the the heat after 20 minutes or desired thickness and adjust seasoning.
2. Using a box grater, grate your potatoes into a fine sieve, add some coarse salt and allow the water to leech from the potatoes for about 30 minutes. Squeeze any remaining water from the potatoes with your hands and place in a bowl. Whisk an egg and add it to the bowl along with the chives, some salt and pepper. Toss to mix well and reserve.
3. Remove the steaks from the fridge and allow them to come to room temperature before cooking. If not tied by your butcher, tie some butcher's string around the steaks to give them a plump, round shape.
4. Season the steaks with salt and pepper.
5. Place your oven safe skillet on medium high heat and add a good pad of butter and the olive oil. When your oil & butter start to sizzle, place your steaks in the skillet and sear on one side for 3 minutes. Flip the steaks and place in the oven for 15 minutes.
6. Using a kitchen mitt, remove the skillet from the oven and keep your steaks warm (tented foil is fine). Keep the skillet and pan drippings handy, we're going to soon deglaze.
   
7. Using your hands, make patties out of your grated potato mix and get a non-stick pan on to your stove, medium-high heat.
8. Add some vegetable oil and in a minute or two, you should drop your Rosti into the pan. Cook your potatoes for about 5 minutes a side or until golden brown. Keep warm and reserve.
9. Place the skillet you used for the steaks back on the stove and turn the heat on to a medium-high heat.
10. Add a splash of water and scrape the skillet with a wooden spoon to loosen the brown bits. Take your reserved cranberry-wine reduction and add it to the skillet and bring everyone to a simmer while stirring. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, add your fresh time and the dried cranberries. Throw in a pad of butter to finish off the sauce.
11. Cut the string off the steaks and plate with your Rosti potatoes, some green veg and a good Zinfandel.
    

Grilled Beef Tenderloin With Tarragon Butter

If I were living in Paris, I would still have a BBQ set up in my cramped balcony or even on the roof of the building!

A classic French dish is Chateaubriand with Bearnaise Sauce but we're on the cusp of summer. Who wants to stay indoors by the oven?

My solution was to take Chateaubriand outdoors, to the grill. The first thing I would need is some Tarragon Butter and it's real easy to make but you'll need at least a couple of hours to do it justice:

• 1 Stick of salted butter, room temperature
• 5 tbsp finely chopped fresh tarragon

1) Put your butter into a bowl and with a spatula mix in the tarragon until it's incorporated entirely.

2) Scoop it out onto the middle a good sized piece of cling wrap. Fold over the cling wrap in half, thus covering your butter entirely. Now roll the encased butter horizontally until the cling wrap is entirely around the butter.

3) Hold the ends of the cling wrap with your fingers and twist the wrap around until it's taute and you've formed a "butter sausage".

4) Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.

On to the beef tenderloin.

I'm not ashamed to say that I look through the weekly specials at the supermarkets. I try to limit my trips to two but sometimes going to 1 supermarket for 1 item is worth it. I saw beef tenderloin on special and the price seemed too good to be true. Upon reading the fine print I saw that the beef that was on sale was "ungraded", which means I could be getting shoe leather or bovine manna!

I rolled the dice (kinda) and bought one whole tenderloin. I trimmed the meat of it's tough silver skin, cut the steaks and got approx. 14. I had to grill a steak PDQ to see if the goods were well...good.

What do you think??? I went back & bought 4 more beef tenderloins. ;)