Feeding Umi

I don’t know whether Ryan is not getting enough iron or what, but he’s been craving red meat lately. And full disclosure, except for rare instances where we go to Shake Shack, we really rarely eat red meat. We mostly eat a lot of pork, chicken, or shellfish. However, these days, we’ve been eating steak at least once a week. (At most, we eat it twice a week in small amounts. We don’t regulate it, but it just sort of ends up that way.) Ryan loves to grill meats, but we’re mostly stuck indoors. (Last week, we went over to Amy’s over at Laundromat to use her building’s new grill. We just picked up some pre-marinated meats at Wholefoods, some asparagus, and spring corn.) Recently, Ryan’s picked up some grilling technique via the cast-iron skillet we have and marinated and cooked some pretty mean steaks.

I’ve cooked some steaks on the cast-iron, too, although mine are usually salted, instead of marinating. Salting? No, I’m not talking about “seasoning” it. In fact, afterwards, I wash it off and pat COMPLETELY DRY. I’m talking about this technique. It’s mighty good. Ryan, on the other hand, swears by miso-marinading the steak and broiling in the oven.

He’s perfected the method, starting out with a pretty tough flank steak to our last rib eye, both from Wholefoods. This time, he wanted something special and looked up specialty butcher shops. We found a great one near Bedford Ave in Brooklyn and took a trip there.

Marlow and Daughters
95 Broadway
(between Bedford Ave & Berry St)
Brooklyn, NY 11211

This place is a little bit of a walk from the Bedford Avenue L train station, but really worth a trek. This shop has tons of lovely things like organic vegetables (picked me up some rainbow chard!), cold cuts (picked some up), sausages (I’ve never had hand made hot dogs, so we bought a couple and plan to eat them tonight on a toasted potato bun), cheeses and yogurts (picked up a tub to make frozen yogurt). You definitely go there for one thing and come out with $50-$100 worth of stuff. Anyway. This is how we ended up with a little over a pound of dry-aged NY Strip Steak. We were looking at the dry-aged rib eye, but it was lofty 2lb monster with the bone… so yeah.

They butcher in house and a lot of steaks were left over from requests from restaurants from that day. The meats looked really great and fresh, if more expensive for the authentic butcher experience. The people that work there are super attentive and helpful, and of course, knowledgeable about their meats. Unfortunately this isn’t the type of place I would trek to once a week, but a splurge per month is definitely in the picture.

Red Miso Marinaded Steaks

This is Ryan’s recipe for steaks, which resembles the Japanese miso-zuke technique of marinading fishes. It makes the meat really flavorful and the mirin allows the outside to caramelize (the sugar content – so if you’re cooking a thinner steak and you suspect the cooking time to be less, then add more mirin for more of an instant char). Use around 3 table spoons per pound of meat with a splash of mirin or more if the steak is on the thinner side. Our steak last night was over an inch, so the mirin was minimal. Marinade at room temperature for an hour. If you want a stronger flavor, marinade in the fridge for some time and leave out for the last hour.

Twenty minutes before cooking, adjust the bottom rack of the oven to be around 6 inches from the flame. Set the oven to broil and leave in your cast-iron pan. Once the steak is good to cook, be careful and take out the cast iron and heat on the stove at the highest setting. (Please double up your oven mitts, as the one touching the cast iron was blackened.) The idea is to char the steak of a super hot surface. Place the steak on the skillet and brown each side for 30 seconds-1 minute. Depending on the thickness of the steak, once the meat is browned, throw into the oven (still on broil) for 2-4 minutes. I like mine medium rare, where the very center is still rare (less cooked than pink), so we left the steak for 2 and half minutes. Finally, take the steak out of the oven and rest on a cool surface for 10 minutes. There will be drippings from the meat that you can use later for sauce.

The meat was just SO tender and buttery. The dry aged meat gave the steak a real beefiness. And in fact, the miso didn’t detract from that, since it added a slight funkiness, tang, and saltiness and didn’t taste over powering-ly like miso. It was definitely one of our most memorable steak moments at home. The cut and quality of the meat is so important. Once we bought this flank steak that was just so chewy, even after marinading (and then it was full of artificial flavor, but not much meatiness, you know?) it was still one tough mo-fo. That moment made me really appreciate better cuts of meat. And personally, I’m not a big filet minion fan. It’s tender, but lacks a beefy/meatiness. Eh.

Roasted Kale

The kale, I kept simple. After washing the kale, I dried it thoroughly before tossing with some virgin olive oil. I added salt, pepper, garlic powder (see a pattern?), cayenne pepper (TONS), and Japanese shichimi chili flakes (7 variety). I cooked for a couple of minutes until the edges of the leaves are slightly crispy and everything else tender and dark green.

Sauteed Rainbow Chard

To accompany this dish, we roasted some kale (left overs) and sauteed some rainbow chard. We kept it easy and cooked it with 4-5 cloves of garlic and olive oil. I sprinkled some garlic powder, salt, and pepper for good measure.

I like the trim the chard from it’s stems and cook the stems extra long. I divided them up, and initially cooked the stems in oil and garlic for 5 or so minutes. I used around one clove of garlic and reserved the rest for when I sauteed the leaves. I put the stems aside and heat some additional oil and throw in the rest of the garlic into the pot. I used a pot to contain all the chard, but the leaves quickly wilted and shrunk to 1/4 it’s size. After 5 or so minutes, I threw the stems in, tossed around, and took the pot off the fire. Just sprinkle some lemon and grate some parmesan on top. Delicious.

Bon appetite!

We plated the steaks on top of brown and white rice respectively, each tossed with a small slab of butter, lime, salt, and parmesan (we know how to do it up!).

Feel free to adapt this for the grill. You just need to get the temperature really high. Let us know if there are any steak recipes that you recommend!!

Next post: We’ll report back on their hot dogs and yogurt (although I tasted that it was definitely yummy! I love that the 3 ingredients next to the yogurt are: organic whole milk, cultures, and vanilla) tomorrow!