Or, Grilled Steak With Spicy Shallot Sauce Recipe — ThaiTable.com.
[This is not a Thai cuisine web page, so I’ll skip the wordplay here].

We love Thai food, and we’re just getting on a bit of a roll making it at home. This recipe is not hard hard at all, and you really get maximum wow-factor because it’s VERY Thai tasting. You just need to make sure you have a few key ingredients at hand. Like fish sauce (nam pla, which you can get for a buck at any Asian market).

We made this on Saturday, and it was superfantastic! It really reminded me of a Chimichurri from Peru we did a while back. Same basic idea: perfectly grilled and sliced steak, ladled with something piquant and sour and green. YUM!

You’re really just making a condiment here, and putting it to use on an amazingly cooked piece of meat. That’s the beauty. Shallots or onion, very finely chopped, mint/basil/cilantro coarsely chopped, fish sauce, lime juice, and fiery red chilli (fresh or dried). It should be a loose sauce/salsa texture, less pourable than spoonable.

We put the steak and the sauce over rice for a dinner, with some pea pods on the side. Next time, I’ll try it as a salad, when cucumbers and tomatoes are good. Look at the Google Image Search for Nua Yang for ideas. [Trick: whenever I want to figure out a new dish or method I G.I.S. it! It helps immensely.]

Your steaks could be marinated too, with tamarind and stuff, like this Waterfall Beef Salad. But really, if you know how to get your steak perfect, who needs marinade?

Try it!! It’s really impressive.

This is so cool I had to make a special Not Steak category just for it.

It’s a SteakFeed-like directory, more regionally focused to the Pacific Northwest, about sushi places and sushi!

I love sushi. But not as much as the STEAK.

In fact, failing to make proper Val-Kilmer-tine’s reservations early enough has caused me to concoct the brilliant plan to bring home sushi instead. From one of SushiMonsters’ highly rated places, Koibito!

steak shrimp valentine

Originally uploaded by sand dragon.

“from corporate America

where meat isn’t just meat;
it’s a Valentine treat. “

Happy Valentina-versary Steak Lovers!

 Sweetheart Steaks : a tragic gimmick

I am just discovering that there’s this weird old “supper club” Valentine’s Day tradition called the Sweetheart Steak. Lots of times these would be served with a couple lobster tails.

Lobel’s Butcher Shop offers this description:

“[the] goal [to] your honey’s heart, Lobel’s Sweetheart Packages—featuring our Sweetheart Steaks—are the diamond lane to your destination.

A Sweetheart Steak is a 20-ounce Boneless Strip Steak or Boneless Rib Steak butterflied into the shape of a heart.

I can’t quite figure out why you’d want to jam yourselves full of so much richness and protein on V-day, unless it’s a plot to get us feeling bloated and unsexy so we relax our romantic expetations.

As a matter of fact, now I’m thinking about it, champagne does the same thing. And creme brulee. It’s a conspiracy! All the rich “romantic” dinners you’re supposed to fill up on, leaving you feeling too fat to f*ck! Shocking! Simply SHOCKING!!

Anyway here are a couple different takes on the Sweetheart steak.

First we have Baking Betties’ Sweetheart Steaks:

This is a really old-school looking ultra-marinade recipe that must have come from a Betty Crocker or some other Better Homes type of cookbook of yore.

The picture looks nice, and I’m guessing this would be something you’d do if you had some really fat thick rib-eyes around, and your Sweetheart really doesn’t like the actual taste of steak.

Any steak recipe that starts out by saying “In a small saucepan, combine the first 15 ingredients” is too complicated for me.

Bitch bitch bitch! I know. It’s like a barbecue sauce or something. It’s probably really yummy. But why isn’t it heart shaped??

And then there’s this monstrosity:
Sweetheart Steak With Mushroom Bordelaise Net Carbs 11 from Carb-less.com. Just zoom in on that sucker and try to keep down your lunch.

Not your father’s Surf and Turf …

So Saturday was my birthday, and the Fiancee is one million percent excellent so she took me out to dinner at a new favorite little Italian place in Lacey (98503) called Ricardo’s (I’m not sure if it’s ‘ristorante’ or ‘restaurant’, it depends on where you look). Her boss, Dr. Mike, had hosted their office Christmas party there, and it was really really good, so we chose to go back and do some free-choice dining, cause we were stuck with the ‘beef or chicken’ drill at the party.

So, after reading the PDF menu Ricardo’s put up on the internet, I really had my heart set on this bastard :

Big Momma’s Steak $29.95
Nebraska Beef at its best… ” USDA PRIME ” Thick cut rib-eye seasond & char broiled to perfection
(Medium Rare) then topped with a fresh mediterranean salsa & finished with roasted red potatoes,
( This will be the best Thrity bucks you’ve ever spent )

On the one hand, I was really disappointed because it wasn’t on Saturday’s menu. On the other hand, it gives us a needless excuse to go back to Ricardo’s for more steak. And on the third hand, I got to have the Surf And Turf from the specials menu. Our server said that the prime rib special was filling in for the Big Momma, and recommended it, but I’m not yet recovered from a really awful prime rib from years ago. We’d both had excellent little filets at the Christmas party, so I chose to extend that a bit with the S-n-T. My lovely companion chose some “do the truffle” ( or something? ) special of a 5oz filet with black truffled mashed potatoes. We was not disappoint! (Although, are truffles known for being, erm, gassy??)

Both (little tiny) steaks were perfectly medium, with a lovely outside — seared and carmelized — and practically fork-tender inside. ‘Course it’s a cliche , but the words “like buttah” were said at least twice.

The surf part of my dinner was way above average: crab cakes done absolutely correct with TONS of crab, and great flavor; and some wild Mexican white prawns that were slightly over cooked but had great flavor. All this was sauced nicely with a white truffle Bernaise sauce, and great big roasted red potato wedges, with some barely noticeable field greens or basil or something. Who cares? The truffle-bernaisey filet was heavenly. I didn’t miss having “the veg” at all.

We didn’t spend much time looking at the wine list, because it’s way over our heads (especially budget-wise). And we already knew from the office party that the house pours a great chianti for six bucks. I had a 6 buck primitivo, and it was great too.

Bottom line, GO HERE!!! Ricardo’s is a winner on every point except one: the decor. Which I won’t really pick on, because it’s adorable, and you know, A for effort and all that. But, who cares? You really can’t go wrong with this place. I haven’t had a better steak anywhere within about 300 miles of here, except that Argentine place in Seattle which I keep forgetting to write about.