March 2004 - Steak Teriyaki

There is much to like in issue #25 and a lot of different recipes to choose from. The cover recipe a warm sweet potato, bean & blue cheese salad with crispy prosciutto looked so very good, the only problem is that I am not keen on blue cheese. I will eat small amounts of it and have made a nice blue cheese dressing in the past but chunks of it in a salad are just not to my liking.

I came close to making Geoff Lindsay's Steamed silken bean curd with chinese black vinegar and chilli. It looked really good in the picture in the magazine and some thing that would be nice, light and easy to make for dinner one night. I have not really done a lot with tofu and I am interested in using it some more. I decided though that I would leave my experimentations with tofu for a dish with more flavourings.

Interesting diversion, there was some rather large explosions happening outside which scared my cats and intrigued me. When I went out the front door there was a bunch of fireworks going off somewhere very nearby my house. I am still intrigued as I was under the impression that fireworks were illegal to possess and use in Australia for the average person. I will have to chat with the neighbours tomorrow and find out if they know anything further. There was a number of other people out in the street watching.

Back to the issue at hand. There is a great article on Sophie Grigson accompanied by some terrific recipes, a number of which I want to make. I am having visitors next week so I am thinking of making the pot-roast pork with star anise, ginger, tamarind and port. It sounds so luscious, although I am not exactly sure what ruby port is, I will have to do some googling on that. There are two different desserts one of which I am champing at the bit to try, raspberry & earl grey jellies. It just sounds so good. I would have made them for this post but there is a dessert recipe in a later issue that just had to be made this month.

The regular feature, simple food, is Easy Asian by Jill Dupleix in this issue. The Steak Teriyaki recipe sounded so easy. I love the teriyaki flavours, I have used the pre-made supermarket sauces but decided that it would be great to make this one. I decided not to serve it with the bean sprouts that Jill did as I can only buy bean sprouts in pre-packed bags that usually look wet and slimy to me. I had a beautiful thick cut piece of scotch fillet steak. I managed not to overcook this one, instead I undercooked it. It was fine to eat but was just more rare than I would have liked. I am starting to get frustrated with cooking steaks at the moment. I just cannot seem to get them cooked just to my liking lately. I used to have no problems. My trouble started when I moved and changed from a gas hob to a very old electric hob. I just cannot seem to get the hang of cooking steak on it. I ended up serving it with jasmine rice and greens sautéed with chilli and oyster sauce. I really enjoyed the whole meal and I am sure that I will make this one again.

Steak Teriyaki

• 4 x 150 g scotch fillet or eye fillet steaks
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil)
  

Teriyaki Sauce

• 2 tbsp mirin
• 1 tbps sake or dry sherry
• 1/4 cup soy sauce (I used light soy sauce)
• 1 tsp caster sugar

Method:

• Combine ingredients for sauce and stir to dissolve sugar. Set aside.
  
• Heat oil in fry pan over a medium to high heat.
  
• Brown steaks on all sides quickly and then cook to your liking then remove from pan to rest.
  
• Remove pan from heat and add ingredients for sauce.
  
• Return to the heat and bring to a boil and cook for stirring until sauce thickens a bit, about 2 or 3 minutes.
  
• Slice steak and arrange on bed of rice. Drizzle sauce over and serve.