Grilled Steak with Mushroom Wine Sauce

Seems like it had been some time since I grilled steak.  In general, this year, I have been eating much less beef than I have in the past.   I probably eat steak about once per month.   I wanted to something different with the steak and I found this Cooking Light recipe for a Filet Mignon with Mushroom Wine Sauce.

 Randy Mayor; Bob Gager

The recipe calls for cooking the steak on the stove, but I wanted to grill the steak.   I trimmed some of the fattier pieces off of the steak and cooked them over the stove to brown the pan and create some drippings for the sauce.   I prepared the sauce as directed by the recipe using the pan I cooked the trimmings in and substituting a California Black Muscat for the Sweet Marsala wine called for in the recipe.    I had a glass of the wine while I was cooking and it was really nice.

I grilled the steak and then we poured the sauce over the steak on our plates.   I served the steak with a baked potato and zucchini sauteed in olive oil.   The dinner turned out great.   And this is the first time I have ever served steak with a sauce.   This is definitely a recipe I will make again.

Thai Beef Tacos with Lime-Cilantro Slaw

After the lasagna earlier in the week, I was in the mood for something a little lighter with more exotic flavors.  I decided to make Thai Beef Tacos with Lime-Cilantro Slaw using a Cooking Light recipe I found on myrecipes.com.

Photo: Becky Luigart-Stayner; Styling: Jan Gautro

 Although the recipe calls for marinating the steak for only 20 minutes, I let the steak marinate for a couple of hours in the refrigerator.   I grilled the steak over a charcoal grill using indirect heat.   I like to arrange the charcoal in a ring around the grill leaving the center open.   I place the meat in the center area and move the meat to the outer edge for searing when needed.

 Ring of Fire

My wife made the slaw for the tacos using the Cooking Light recipe and we used Smart and Delicious Light Flour Tortillas from La Tortilla Factory.  

The slaw was great and the combination of the cilantro, lime juice, ginger, and steak was wonderful.   We really enjoyed this dinner.

Steak Fajitas (Chevy's Style)

This is a repeat of a dinner I made last May using the Chevy's restaurant recipe for the marinade.   Like last time, it turned out great.   Really delicious.   I don't think its as good as Chevy's, but still the best Fajita recipe I have found.   This is one of my wife's favorite dinners and she told me she could have this once per week, she likes it so much!  

Like the last time, I used Smart & Delicious Tortillas from LaTortilla Factory which are about half the calories of a normal flour tortilla.  

Middle Eastern Steak and Chicken Kabobs

I was hungry as I scanned through my list of recipes this afternoon to decide what to make for dinner.  It was almost two o'clock and I had not eaten lunch yet.   When I am really hungry something grilled, usually steak, always seems to get my attention.

I decided to make a middle eastern dinner tonight with grilled steak and chicken kabobs, Jerusalem Salad, plain rice, and hummus.    For the kabobs, I use a marinade recipe I got from a Cooking Light Chicken Shawarma recipe.    I made the steak kabobs using the same marinade back in Feburary.

 Jerusalem Salad

I started using my other charcoal grill a few days ago and I guess I am still getting used to it.   The cooking surface sits a little higher above the coals and this grill is a couple of inches larger in diameter.   I switched to this grill because I thought the increase in cooking surface area would work well with my method of pushing all the coals out to the outer edge of the grill as it would give me more cooking surface area not directly over the coals.   And while I do get more center area to work, I wasn't getting quite enough heat at the center and so the kabobs took more than twice as long to cook and I got impatient and took everything off, moved the coals back to the middle and then left the meat on the grill just a few minutes too long resulting in some charring.   The meat was a little dry but the the flavor was really good.   Well, live and learn, I guess. 

My wife usually puts the Jerusalem salad together.   I did all the prep work for her so she could throw it all together.   The salad was delicious.  And the hummus always turns out great. 

Hummus

Steak Fajitas (Chevy's style)

The last time I made Steak Fajitas in February I mentioned wanting to try a marinade that was supposed to taste like the marinade used by Chevy's restaurant.   I finally got around to trying it this weekend and I would say the steak fajitas had a similar flavor to Chevy's but I still think Chevy's (on a good day) is better. 

My wife really liked the fajitas and said that they were better than Chevy's.   Anyway, the recipe for the Chevy's marinade is on Big Oven and I do think they were the best Fajitas I have ever made at home.

The recipe says to marinate flank steak overnight... which is a good idea if you are using flank steak.  I didn't have that much time, so I paid more for some very lean and tender New York Strip and marinated the steak for about three hours.

Since I started a diet back in April, I have been avoiding flour tortillas due to the high sodium and calories.   But, I recently discovered Smart & Delicious(TM) Light Flour Tortillas from La Tortilla Factory.  They are about 1/3 fewer calories than regular flour tortillas and much less sodium, and they taste great.   They are a little thinner than the tortillas I am used to eating, but with such delicious steak inside, it all worked.

I also sauteed bell pepper and onions to put in the fajitas along with the steak.   I ate two steak fajitas for dinner with about 2oz of steak in each fajita, a little sour cream, onions and bell bepper and some salsa and the whole dinner was about 600 calories.   That's a little more than I have been eating for dinner, but I still stayed within my calorie budget for the day.

Moroccan-Style Beef with Chickpeas

A few minutes before I needed to leave work to go to the grocery store, I logged onto myrecipes.com to get some ideas for dinner.   I was hungry and immediately decided to make the Cooking Light recipe featured on the myrecipes.com home page today.    The recipe is Morrocan-Style Lamb with Chickpeas.   My wife does not like the ground lamb called for in the recipe, and I was in the mood for something chunkier, so I substituted chopped sirloin steak for the ground lamb.

Overall the flavors were good and my wife really liked this dish.   I served the dish over the couscous with arugula as suggested in the Cooking Light recipe.   Overall, I was a bit disappointed.  The flavors are very similar to some other "Cooking Light" recipes which I like a little better.   Maybe, the cinnamon and nutmeg were just not that appealing to me this evening.   It was good, just not great.   I will probably not eat the left overs tomorrow night.

Thai Beef Salad

A Thai salad is often a great choice when we feel like we want something "different."   The combination of fresh mint, cilantro, and fish sauce give this Thai Beef Salad a really fresh and exotic set of flavors and aromas.   This is another Cooking Light recipe from myrecipes.com.

I made this dish once before and it turned out well.   Tonight's version was probably a little better than the first time because I marinated the steak a little longer and I used New York Strip instead of flank steak.   I also added rice noodles to the salad which makes the meal more filling.   Its a little too light without the extra calories added by the rice noodels.

When I grilled the Tandoori chicken the other night, I banked all the coals in my charcoal grill around the outside of the grill which seemed to create a more optimal grill temp in the center of the grill.   I did that with the steak for the Thai salad tonight and it worked well with the steak cooked almost perfectly on the inside and just a little charring on the outside.   I think I can do even better with the grilling if I continue to work on it.   I realize now, after the last two meals, that I have been putting way too much heat on the meat.

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