I'm Just Here for the Food_ Version 2.0 - Alton Brown [29]
Application: Broiling
Combine all ingredients except the steak in the bowl of a food processor and process until the onions are puréed. Pour into a large (1-gallon) zip-top freezer bag. Add the steak and carefully squeeze or suck out as much of the air as possible.
Place on a shallow tray (just in case the bag springs a leak) and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.
Remove the steak from the bag, pat it dry thoroughly, and let it come to room temperature. Preheat the broiler on High and place the rack and broiler pan so that the surface of the meat will be no less than 2 inches from the element or flame. Cook for 3 minutes per side for rare, 4 minutes per side for medium.
Let the steak rest on a resting rig for 5 minutes, then thinly slice it on an angle, across the grain.
Yield: 6 servings
Software:
1 cup chopped yellow onion
4 cloves minced garlic
⅓ cup white wine
¼ cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon fresh minced ginger or
¼ teaspoon ground
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black
pepper
1 flank steak (see Beef Blueprint)
Hardw
Food processor
Large zip-top freezer bag
Shallow tray or baking dish
Broiler pan
Resting rack
Broiled Chicken Salad
It’s a good idea to occasionally leave home to cook in other people’s kitchens. It’s kind of like culinary Outward Bound: it forces you to focus, to improvise, to think. I recently found myself in just such a predicament.
I was working with an associate at her house one day when hunger struck. Take out didn’t ring true so, fancying myself a cook, I headed into the kitchen to “whip something up.”
First I surveyed the refrigerated edibles and found the following:
1 whole chicken
1 toy14 box cherry and yellow pear tomatoes
Scallions (they’re in every refrigerator, including yours, right now)
1 bunch arugula (my friend often picks up farmstand items, which she then allows to rot in the refrigerator; luckily this bunch was perfect)
1 (6-ounce) package Montrachet cheese
Next I checked out the hardware and what I found frightened me badly. It was as if one aluminum pie tin had been melted down and cast into 15 different pots and pans, each of which had then been adorned with a rotting balsa-wood handle.
Despite the fact that it had been built in the mid-1950s, the oven still had its broiler pan. Rock-solid and gleaming clean, I had found my port in a storm.
Next I perused the pantry. Here’s what I found:
A bottle of very nice garlic-flavored olive oil A jar of mixed whole olives (black and green, in brine) Half a loaf of good sourdough, stale, but not rocklike An old but viable-looking bottle of champagne vinegar
And on the counter:
A peppermill
I heated the broiler. I found the biggest knife in the joint and butterflied the chicken by placing the bird spine down on a large cutting board, inserting the knife in the cavity, and cutting straight down, first on one side of the spine then the other. Flipping the bird over I opened it up so that I could see the connective tissue over the keel (breast) bone. I made a shallow slit running from the junction of the wishbone down to the end of the breast, then folded the bird open so that the incision popped open revealing the bone beneath. This I levered out with my fingers on either side. The effect of all this is that I was left with a chicken as flat as a book with a broken binding. I moved the bird, breast up, to the broiling pan, lubed it with garlic oil, and seasoned it liberally with pepper and kosher salt (I always travel with a small supply).
The bird went under the broiler, second slot from the top.
After washing every item the raw meat had even so much as looked at, I pitted a couple handfuls of olives (lay them on the counter, apply palm pressure, pop), sliced the tomatoes in half (about 1½ cups total), and snipped 3