Grilled Marinated Flank Steak

Hello and welcome back! 
My deepest apologies for not posting since April. A number of factors led to me really not cooking very much. This all culminated in me eating a whole bunch of terrible food, and not having anything of substance to post. 
However, stress level is significantly lower, so culinary adventures have resumed!
Tonight's specialty is some grilled, marinated flank steak.

Couldn't come up with a more creative name for this... Sorry folks, but sometimes it is what it is, and this time, it is just delicious.

And how easy! I stuck this in the marinade last night, let it hang out overnight, and slapped it on the grill tonight! Served it with a baked potato and some corn on the cob. Love summer food!

Enjoy!


(Adapted from Simply Recipes)
Ingredients:

Look at that adorable honey bear. SO CUTE.

• 2 lb flank steak
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic (or 2 cloves of elephant garlic! Yup. It's real.) crushed/minced
• 2 tablespoonsful red wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup soy sauce (I opted for low sodium. I didn't want to overpower the steak with saltiness, plus, healthier!)
• 1/4 cup honey (I got the kind that is in a bear shape. Because it was TOO ADORABLE to pass up!)
• 1/2 teaspoonful ground black pepper

Directions:

• Score the flank steak with cuts about 1/4 inch thick

Hard to see, but I did it crisscross. You can choose to just do it one way if you'd like.

• Combine all the ingredients (mix well!)

I wish I had 10 whisks like this. Love it!

• Trim the steak if you need to. Mine was really fatty
• Put the steak in the marinade either in a container or a freezer bag to marinate. I did it overnight, but if you're not going to do that, do it for at least 2 hours. The longer, the juicier!

• Grill! Use high heat. We cooked it sort of indirectly, on the cooler spot of the grill, because we were a little nervous the honey would burn. Cook it until it is the level of done-ness that you prefer!

• Let it rest for a few minutes before slicing, and make sure you slice on the diagonal.

Enjoy!

P.S. Kitchenaid mixed due in the mail in a few days. There will be LOTS of baking ahead! Also, I do take requests/suggestions!

Roasted Lamb Dinner

Happy Easter, blog readers!
If you're confused and think that Easter was LAST week, you are both right and wrong! Today is the Greek Orthodox Easter (Καλό πάσχα, Χριστός ανέστη! (Happy Easter, Christ is risen!)). To celebrate, we made traditional Easter lamb... And I can't tell ewe how how great it turned out!

I'm not pulling the wool over your eyes folks! But to be sure, you'll have to try it yourself!


Ingredients:

• Boneless butterflied leg of lamb (Ours was about 4 pounds. If you eat like us, this will MAYBE feed 3 people :) But for normies, this will probably be enough for your whole family.)
• Red wine (Everyone on Food Network says to cook with a wine that you would also drink. Little do they know, I'm willing to drink boxed wine. We used whatever we had, which turned out to be a good red!)
• 4 lemons juiced (plus extra lemon wedges served with the meal)
• Olive oil (an amount roughly equal to the lemon juice)
• Garlic (4-5 cloves minced, and an additional 2 cloves cut into thin slices)
• 1/2 teaspoonful freshly ground black pepper
• 1 to 2 heaping tablespoons of oregano
• 1 small to medium onion, grated (whatever you have is probably okay)
• Potatoes (as many as you want, whatever type you want!)
• Carrots
• More onions for roasting

Directions:
IMPORTANT: Make the marinade the night beforehand. The longer this baaa-d boy marinates the better it is!
Prepare the marinade: 
Whisk together the olive oil and lemon juice before adding anything else.
Add the minced garlic, oregano, pepper, and grated onion.
Add a splash of red wine. Whisk until properly mixed.
(If this look familiar at all, reexamine the Chicken Souvlaki post from last summer!)

Prepare the lamb:
We like to trim excess fat off of the lamb. While some fat is okay and tastes good, too much can be hard to chew.
Pierce the lamb randomly all over with a pointy knife, and insert the very thin sliced garlic into the piercings. Marinate the meat overnight!


Dinnertime Preparation:
When it is time to start cooking, preheat the oven to 360 oF. 
Slice the potatoes and carrots into chunks, and boil for about 7 minutes. Slice onions into wedges.

Using a skillet, at high heat, sear the lamb for a few minutes on each side until caramelized.

Put the carrots, potatoes, and onions in the bottom of a roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil. You can go ahead and add some extra salt, pepper, and oregano if you want!
Lay the lamb on top of the vegetables, and sprinkle with salt. (use a roasting rack if you have one!)

Roast uncovered for about an hour and a half. We used the American Lamb Doneness Chart to determine how long to cook it. Cook less if you want it more on the medium-rare side!

After you take it out, squeeze fresh lemon juice over it, let sit for about 10 minutes before you cut into it. 

I literally can't express how good our kitchen smelled, and how impatient I was during those 10 minutes.  WORTH THE WAIT! We also served it with imported Greek feta cheese and olives!

Anyways, that's our lamb dinner! If you celebrate Easter, then I hope you had a wonderful holiday and were lucky enough to spend it with people who you care about.
If you don't celebrate Easter, this is a good recipe anyways to have anytime you have time to make it! 

And as always, enjoy!

Mom's Lasagna!

Hello, readers! Tonight's dinner is a classic - homemade lasagna!

This recipe comes from my mother, and is always good! (But especially good on freakish nights where it gets cold again. Not happy about that!!)

I'm not going to lie about this one - not as simple as the others, mainly because it has homemade sauce. But it does freeze great, so you may as well make two while you're at it and throw one in the freezer!!

Ingredients:

• 1 onion
• 1 green pepper
• Mushrooms (as many as you want! I used half of a package for 1 lasagna)
• 6oz can tomato paste
• 29 oz can tomato puree 
• Salt, pepper, garlic powder, basil, and oregano (to taste)
• 1 lb ground beef
• Lasagna noodles (1 lb if normal noodles, 1 box if no-boil noodles. YES it is a thing!)
• 1 lb ricotta cheese
• 1 egg
• 1 lb shredded mozzarella cheese
• Romano cheese

Directions:

Make the sauce:

Dice the onion, green pepper, and mushrooms. Brown in olive oil.

Brown the ground beef.

Add tomato paste and tomato puree. Rinse out tomato paste can with water and add to the sauce until it is of desired thickness.

Add the spices to taste... I like adding a little more basil than I do oregano, and just a bit of the other spices. (I am aware at how vague that was, but it really is individual per your palate!)

Add the ground beef, and let the sauce simmer for at least 1 to 2 hours. 

Assemble the lasagna:

Preheat the oven to 375oF.

Mix the egg in with the ricotta.

Using a 9x13 dish (or a lasagna pan), layer sauce, noodles, ricotta, and mozzarella. 

Repeat layers until 3 layers of each. Sprinkle Romano on the top when done with layers.

Layer 1: Sauce (yumm!)

Layer 2: Noodles! These are the no-boil noodles

Layer 3: Ricotta cheese

Layer 4: Mozzarella

Cook uncovered for 30 minutes, and serve with extra sauce. (And crusty bread. As I have said many times here on the Fork and Dagger, EVERYTHING goes well with crusty bread!)

Enjoy! (And then, enjoy a second time around when you reheat your second lasagna. Go ahead, thank me later :) You'll be glad you made it!)

Chicken Fajita Night!

Good evening internet :)
So I am currently spending 6 weeks with two of my friends in Virginia, and so I decided that the LEAST I could do was make them a few nice dinners! (Mainly just an excuse to add some more blog posts for you all)
After making Dino Nuggets twice this week, I thought they were due for some real chicken...

ENTER: Chicken Fajitas!

Or tacos. Or burritos. I'm not entirely certain of the technical difference, but in MY eyes, these are fajitas, so you can just deal with that.


This is a good, easy, flavorful meal that always goes over well (or at least that's what they told me!) Enjoy!


Ingredients:

• 4 Limes 
• Olive oil
• Garlic (About 4 cloves... or more. If you read more posts, you'll know I often take liberty with garlic!)
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon cilantro
• Chicken (~4 breasts yields about 8 fajitas)
• Soft tortillas (white, wheat, corn, whatever floats your boat)
• Cheese
• Toppings (Whatever you like! We used lettuce, tomatoes, and sour cream)

Directions:

First you have to make the marinade for the chicken:

To make the marinade, whisk together the lime juice with an equal amount of olive oil. Once whisked, crush/mince the garlic and add to the marinade, and follow with the cumin and cilantro. 

Slice the chicken into strips and let it soak in the marinade. 

And try to marinade the chicken enough in advance that they really get a chance to spend quality time together. About 4 hours of marinating time is good!

Done marinating? Time to go!

Heat some olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.

Saute the chicken strips in the skillet until they are cooked through and browned on the outside. 

*NOTE*: DON'T OVERLOAD THE SKILLET! To avoid this, you may have to do this in batches.  If you do it in batches, use water to deglaze the skillet in between batches or else the little pieces of chicken and garlic that stick will burn before you are done!

You're more or less done at this point. But here's my favorite part!

Lay some of the chicken strips on the tortillas, sprinkle on the cheese, and stick it under the broiler until the cheese is melted and the tortilla is slightly crunchy.

Mmmmm... melted cheese :)

Add your toppings, and you're good to go!! Enjoy!

Delightful Slow Cooker Beef

Happy winter, blog readers! To help you make it through these cold days, I thought I would provide you with a good, stick to your ribs, slow cooker beef dinner!

Yes, it IS as tasty as it looks!

This was a SUPER easy dinner - and the beauty of the slow cooker meal is that it was almost all ready for me to eat when I got home from work today!
Well,
almost. :)


If you are looking for an easy way to eat hearty and stay warm this winter, this is the meal for you!


(Adapted from the Zesty Cook)
Ingredients:

• 1 beef roast (~4 pounds)
• 3-4 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup red wine (Food network always says to cook with a wine that you would also drink! We used a cabernet)
• White mushrooms (if you want a specific amount, we used 15 and quartered them. But listen to your heart :) And my heart loves mushrooms!)
• Cherry tomatoes (again, for specifics, we used about 10)
• 1/4 cup chicken broth
• Thyme (The recipe I found didn't specify an amount, so I pulled the leaves off of about 3 sprigs of fresh thyme)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Cornstarch

Directions:

PART I: IN THE MORNING:

In a large pan with olive oil, on medium high heat, sear all sides of the meat until caramelized.

Place meat in the slow cooker.

Add the mushrooms, tomatoes and garlic. 

Then add the salt and pepper, wine and chicken broth, and then the thyme.

Cover and set on low. Cook for at LEAST 8 hours.

THEN GO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT! 

If I had it my way, I would have spent the 8 hours necessary to properly cook this doing something awesome, like Geocaching... or going to see a movie.

Or napping.

But instead I had to go to work...

After working up an appetite counting pills, it was time to come home to my dinner.

PART 2: AT DINNER TIME:,  

Take out the meat and vegetables and put the sauce in a pan. Bring to a boil and reduce.

Add 2 tablespoons cornstarch to 3 tablespoons of water, mix well, and add to the sauce.

Allow the sauce to thicken and create a (delicious!) gravy.

We served our beef with corn and a baked potato. And of course crusty bread. If you're questioning our use of crusty bread, just keep reading other posts. It goes with EVERYTHING. But really, just do whatever makes you feel good :)

And as always... enjoy!

Creme Brulee French Toast

Whoaaa two posts in a week! We're getting a little crazy here, watch out!
Thought I would put up something I made on Christmas this year, but didn't get around to posting....

The bear mug in the background made this truly complete!

A tasty creme brulee french toast!
I first had this recipe from one of my roommates: the lovely and fabulous Katie Post. She wrote down the recipe for me a few years ago but I lost it. Luckily I found a very similar (if not the same) recipe!


Enjoy our Christmas breakfast! Good for family brunch, holidays, or just when you have a hankering for something sweet and delicious!


(Adapted from Food Network)
Ingredients:

I love the tiny Chambord bottle.
The crown makes me feel fancy!

• 1/2 cup (aka 1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar (I used light brown, because the color looked nice!)
• 2 tablespoons corn syrup
• Some variety of sweet bread. In the past I have used tsoureki, a delicious Greek sweet bread. We waited too long to go shopping this year so we used about a 10-inch round of generic Shaws Supermarket sweet bread
• 5 large eggs
• 1 and 1/2 cups half and half
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon Chambord (I chose this because of the slight raspberry flavor. You can sub your flavor in of choice... the original recipe called for Grand Marnier, but I have used the Chambord twice and have not been disappointed!)
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt

Directions:
**I should preface this by saying that the bulk of the work on this french toast is done the night before!!**

1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter with the brown sugar and corn syrup over medium heat.
2. Stir until smooth and silky! 
3. Pour mixture into the bottom of a 9" x 13" baking dish
4. Cut 1 inch slices from the bread and put on top sugar mixture in the dish (try to squeeze in as many pieces as possible! Like a puzzle. Or tetris!)
5. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, half and half, vanilla, Chambord, and salt.
6. Pour evenly over the bread until all the pieces of bread are covered.
7. At this point, cover and chill in a fridge for at least 8 hours (up to 1 day)
8. Go to sleep! (zzzzz....)
9. Wake up! (And while you're brushing your teeth to get rid of morning doodle breath, take the french toast out of the fridge and bring to room temperature)
10. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
11. Bake uncovered in the middle of the oven 35-40 minutes. The edges should be pale golden and the french toast will be puffed! (It will settle down though. Don't worry!)

Serve with maple syrup if you would like, but with the creme brulee bottom you may not need it!

Bacon creates a great salty-sweet contrast, so feel free to cook up some bacon to go with it!

Enjoy! (And happy belated Christmas!)

White Bean and Roasted Mushroom Soup

Before I begin - I apologize for my long absence from the Fork and Dagger... I have been very busy and as a result, cooking less and eating more nonsense. And by eating more nonsense I mean I have been eating lots of Dunkin everything bagels with cream cheese, McDonalds cheeseburgers, and pizza. While quite tasty, they were not quite blog-worthy.
But now we've passed the start of the year and like most, I have jumped back onto the diet bandwagon. (Woo!) Tonight's dinner is one of hopefully many more tasty, healthy meals to come!

White Bean and Roasted Mushroom Soup... Serves 8. Unless you halve it like I did. Then it serves 4. But the below directions are for 8!
(Recipe from She Wears Many Hats)


Ingredients: 

Don't have stainless steel mixing bowls? GET THEM.
Must-have in the kitchen :)

• 16 ounces of mushrooms halved or quartered. I used baby 'bellas, because the brown makes it look earthier and because they're adorable.
• 2 large sweet onions, quartered
• 3 garlic cloves, lightly crushed
• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons pepper
• 8-10 fresh sage leaves
• 8-10 stems + 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
• **If you prefer to use dried for either spice, you can feel free to do so. The rule of thumb is one part dried to three parts fresh.... But fresh tastes better!**
• 48 ounces broth (either chicken or vegetable is fine! we used chicken)
• 3-15 ounce cans white beans NOT drained (we used cannellini)
• Salt and pepper as needed.
• Crusty bread is a MUST :)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Toss the mushrooms, garlic, and onion in the olive oil and 1 teaspoon each of salt and pepper (*The mushrooms are going to need to be separated at a later point, so you can save yourself some hassle and keep them separate from the get-go if you want! Ex. mix the mushrooms and onions/garlic with 1 tbsp oil, 1/2 tsp salt and pepper each*)
3. Spread veggies on baking sheet and add the sage and thyme. 
4. Roast in oven for 10 minutes, toss, and roast another 15 minutes.
5. While vegetables are roasting, add broth, beans, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, and remaining thyme (1 tbsp) to a large stock pot. Simmer at medium heat.
6. When the vegetables are done, separate the mushrooms.
7. Put the roasted onions, garlic, and herbs to a blender. (We also scraped up the browned bits from the bottom of the roasting pan and added those as well!)
8. Add 2 cups of the beans and 1 cup of stock to the blender as well.
9. Cover the blender and blend until smooth.
10. Whisk the pureed vegetables back into the stock pot until smooth. 
11. Add the roasted mushrooms. Salt and pepper to taste! 
12. Keep the heat on low until ready to serve.
13. MOST IMPORTANTLY: SERVE WITH CRUSTY BREAD :) Sops up the broth B-E-A-utifully!

I encourage you all to make this - it was a delicious, healthy, earthy dinner. Served with a little salad on the side, and I would say I stuck to my diet today!

Enjoy!!