Funky Fusion Fajitas

I don’t know about all of you, but I am hopelessly addicted to reality TV cooking competition shows. I’ve seen every episode of every season of my favorites, Top Chef(and all its iterations), Man vs. Food, and Hell’s Kitchen. I missed some of the first season of another great show, Throwdown! With Bobby Flay, currently airing on the Food Network, but I’ve caught up on almost all of them through marathons and reruns. If you haven’t seen the show, famous Iron Chef Bobby Flay travels around the country and challenges local chefs or regular people who have become famous for perfecting their “signature dish”. This show has provided me with numerous places to eat in the NYC area, and all of them have been fantastic – I cannot overstate how highly I recommend Taim for their falafel, Schnipper's for Sloppy Joes + Mac n’ Cheese, or A Salt and Battery for fish and chips. My best pal Molly knocked one out of the park when she gave me the Throwdown! cookbook for Christmas. It contains more than 100 recipes from the show, and I was super excited to find the falafel AND fish and chips recipes were included! I decided to try the recipe for steak fajitas first, since they looked delicious on the show and they seemed fairly easy to make. Bobby Flay lost this throwdown to Father Leo Patalinghug, a Catholic priest from Maryland who is famous for his funky fajitas, so I decided to make Father Leo’s version. Bobby’s version will no doubt be made very soon, since fajitas are a favorite in our household.

Father Leo’s Funky Fusion Fajitas from Bobby Flay’s Throwdown! Cookbook

What You’ll Need

• ¼ cup white wine
• ¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
• ¼ cup red wine vinegar
• ¼ cup + 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp ketchup (Heinz.  There is no other option.)
• 1 cup firmly packed medium or dark brown sugar
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 (1 ¼ lb) flank steak
• ½ red onion sliced into thin (½”) crescents
• 1 green bell pepper cut into ¼” strips
• 1 yellow or red bell pepper cut into ¼” strips
• 4 green onions (both white and green parts) sliced into ¼” pieces
• 12 (8”) flour tortillas, warmed
• Guacamole
• Screamin’ Sour Cream

Screamin’ Sour Cream

• ½ cup fat free sour cream
• 2 tbsp hot sauce (Frank’s.  There is no other option.)
• ½ tsp kosher salt
• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp garlic powder

What To Do:

In a large bowl, whisk together the wine, soy sauce, vinegar, ¼ cup olive oil, ketchup, brown sugar, 2 of the garlic cloves, ginger, 2 tsp of kosher salt, 1 tsp of black pepper, red pepper flakes, and the garlic powder. Set aside about ½ cup in a small bowl to serve with the cooked fajitas.

The marinade will be a viscous, molasses-like consistency that smells fantabulous.

Remove the steak from its packaging. Poke it all over with a fork so that the marinade will be able to penetrate beyond the surface of the meat.

Flank steaks are fairly lean, so there shouldn’t be too much extra fat to trim off of the steak. They are also long and thin, which allows them to cook quickly without giving up any of their tenderness, making them ideal for this dish. If you can’t find flank steaks, you can try any similar cut of meat – just avoid the shorter, fatter cuts which tend to dry out.

Place the entire steak into a large Ziploc bag. Pour the rest of the marinade from the bowl into the bag, seal, and refrigerate for at least 2 or up to 4 hours.

About 30 minutes before you are ready to start grilling the steak, remove it from the refrigerator and hold it at room temperature. Heat your grill to medium high. Once it’s smoking hot, remove the steak from the marinade and liberally season both sides with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Grill for about 6 minutes on each side for medium rare, or more if you prefer it more well done. Let the meat rest for about 10 minutes, while you are cooking your vegetables.

While the meat is grilling, prepare the Screamin’ Sour Cream by whisking together all of the ingredients in a small bowl.

Cover with Saran Wrap and refrigerate for about 30 minutes, or until you are ready to eat.

Next, slice, cut, or otherwise prepare all of your veggies.

Once the meat is resting, heat the final 2 tbsp of olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium high heat. Sauté the onion, bell peppers, green onions, garlic, about 1 tbsp of the reserved marinade, and salt & pepper to taste. Stir frequently, cooking for about 6-8 minutes or until the veggies are crisp yet still tender.

Slice the steak by cutting it across the grain into thin pieces.

Spread the bottom of your tortilla with about a tablespoon of guacamole (I got lazy and used Trader Joe’s guac, since it’s cheaper than making it on my own and just as yummy!). Fill the tortilla with 5 or 6 slices of meat, a scoopful of vegetables, some sour cream, and a drizzle of the reserved marinade.

Give thanks for this awesome meal, and enjoy the feast!

These are, bar none, the best fajitas I’ve ever eaten in my life. The marinade is really what makes the difference, since the rest of the ingredients are fairly standard. The sauce is tangy, slightly sweet, and has enough to kick to avoid being cloying. I couldn’t stop drizzling the leftover marinade onto mine, and next time I’m definitely setting aside more than the recommended amount. The sauce would also work great with chicken, but why mess with something so close to perfect? After my first bite of these, there was only one thing I could think of saying to Father Leo: BLESS.

Zuppa!

As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I really, really love soup. I apologize if you guys have reached soup overload, but I still haven’t reached my fill. As some friends and I were discussing over lunch (which, yes, included soup) at Panera today, soups are great because they are usually very nutritious, filling, inexpensive to make, and are a good way to get your fill of veggies even if you’re normally not a big fan. When Allison and Mohamed came over for dinner a few weeks ago (the same dinner where I made the Korean Beef), we started out with this soup I found in Eating Well Magazine. I highly recommend their daily newsletter – I’ve never had a bad suggestion from them, and they are usually very simple to make!

Garden Tortellini Soup with Italian Meatballs (adapted from here)

What You’ll Need

• 2 green zucchini, sliced and quartered
• 2 large carrots, peeled, sliced and quartered
• 1 large white onion, diced
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 plum tomatoes, diced (about ½ can)
• 32 oz low-sodium vegetable broth
• 1 package turkey sausages, Italian style, with the casings removed
• 2 cups (one small bag) frozen tortellini, preferably spinach & cheese or plain cheese
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp dried rosemary
• 2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar

What To Do

After chopping the vegetables, heat your Dutch oven or large pot plus the olive oil on medium heat. Once it’s hot, sauté the onion and carrot for 1 minute uncovered. Slightly reduce the heat, cover the pot, and cook for about 6 minutes, or until the veggies start to soften and the onion is translucent. Uncover, add the garlic and rosemary, and cook for 1 more minute.

During the 6 minute cooking period from Step 1, remove the casings from the turkey sausages by cutting a slit down the length of the sausage with a sharp knife. The casing should peel right off, leaving the slightly gooey meat. Divide each sausage into 3-4 small balls and form mini-meatballs. In a medium skillet, cook the meatballs on medium heat, turning frequently so that all sides are evenly cooked. There should be no need for oil as the meatballs will give off their own fat.

After the meatballs are cooked, remove them from the pan and set aside. Into the pot with the veggies, add your vegetable broth and zucchini; increase the heat slightly and bring the soup to a boil. Once it boils, reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for about 3 minutes.  Add the cooked meatballs, frozen tortellini, and plum tomatoes. Let this cook for about 10 minutes, or until the tortellini plump up and are fully cooked.

Just before serving the soup, stir the red wine vinegar into the pot and mix well. Serve with crusty bread while piping hot.

The ratio of tortellini to other ingredients was way off in this bowl of soup, primarily because I was also spazzing and trying to get the other parts of our dinner ready at the same time. This soup was a huge hit – we all had full bowls before dinner and would have kept on eating it if not for the other dishes waiting for us. I’ve experimented with this recipe since my first time trying it, and I think I even improved it a little bit. The second time I made it, I used dried tortellini with a pesto filling, skipped the turkey meatballs, and added an entire bag of baby spinach with the stems removed. I also added the entire can of plum tomatoes, half a bag of frozen peas that I found in the back of my freezer, and 2 heaping tablespoons of Spike Seasoning on top of the spices already listed in this recipe. I suggest playing with the spices to fit your taste – this would obviously be best with fresh herbs, but I tend not to buy them in the winter as I always have leftovers that go bad before I can use them up. I brought this every day for lunch the week after I made it, and all of my coworkers kept asking what I was eating because it smelled so great!