Steak and Arugula Salad

For many of us spring has arrived. Sunny days and warm temperatures call for grilling, and tonight I just so happened to have access to a grill...and a steak. 

Before grilling the sirloin steak rare I coated it with just a little bit of olive oil, salt, and fresh-ground black pepper. After the grill was nice and hot I cooked the steak for just a few minutes on each side, leaving it seared on the outside and tender and rare on the inside. After removing it from the grill I let it sit for a few more minutes before slicing it, allowing the juices to circulate and settle. 

While the steak cooked and sat, I prepared an arugula salad as the final resting place for the lovely steak. Before I ate it, of course. The salad was simple--just baby arugula, chopped fresh cherry tomatoes, and finely chopped red onion. I tossed it all together with a vinaigrette composed of blood-orange olive oil, lemon juice, salt, black pepper, crush red pepper, and a raw egg yolk. 

I tossed the dressing with the salad and topped it with the sliced steak. It's a simple and absolutely delicious dish for these delightful spring days.

Flatbread Company

While I haven’t been to Portland, Maine, since August (insert sad emoticon here) I still have some food posts from my last trip that never went up—one of them being about the tasty pizzas at Flatbread Company, located right on the water at 72 Commercial Street.   

I like Flatbread. It’s got a sweet vibe to it. The restaurant feels nice and spacious and you can watch your pizza being made and tossed into a blazing open wood stove. Inside is welcoming and warm, but when it’s nice out I recommend sitting outside by the water.  I'm biased toward a New York slice, but I've found life is much better when you just open yourself up to different variations on a good idea. My favorite pizza so far at Flatbread is the Homemade Sausage. I love the taste of the sausage—it’s nitrate free with a pleasant combination of subtle sweet maple and a bit of a bite from the fennel. The pizza also comes with organic sulfate-free sundried tomatoes, caramelized organic onions, organic mushrooms, whole milk mozzarella, and Parmesan cheese with organic bread dough and homemade organic garlic oil and herbs.  

Everyday they offer a vegetable and a meat special pizza, and they will also let you order a pizza half-and-half so you can try both without having to order too much food. On one visit we ordered half Coevolution and half of the meat special for the day. Coevolution is composed of imported Kalamata olives (guaranteed to make a good pizza even better), fresh organic rosemary, organic red onions, Sunset Acres goat cheese, fire-roasted sweet red peppers, and whole milk mozzarella on organic bread dough with homemade organic garlic olive oil and herbs. The meat special came with tiny Maine shrimps and a Thai peanut sauce. It had a little bit of heat to it and was also topped with peppers and snow peas. A success all around.  

A crisp Maine Root root beer is a nice accompaniment to the pizza, especially on a hot summer day. They also have nice options for beer and wine at the bar inside.  

One of the interesting aspects of Flatbread is that their menus are made from children’s drawings, some of which are highly entertaining. I am a seaweed! I am a cloud! I am a strawberry! I am an orphan?  

Pumpkin Ravioli Awesomeness

For dinner tonight I made pumpkin ravioli tossed with caramelized onions, minced garlic, baby spinach, olive oil and topped with goat cheese and crushed red pepper flakes.

Not too shabby. Not too shabby, indeed.

Onion Rings

“The secret to making onion rings is confidence.”
—Tara Rook

What’s better than homemade onion rings at 3 in the morning? Well, I can think of one thing that could be better, but that’s another story.

My sister Tara is an expert at making onion rings, and I had the pleasure of trying them last weekend. Apparently the secret to making onion rings is confidence, but you’ll need a few other ingredients as well:

Onions
Breadcrumbs
Flour
Eggs
Confidence

Start off by cracking the eggs into a bowl and stir them up with a fork. Then combine the flour and breadcrumbs in another bowl. If you want to add salt, pepper, or other spices then this is the time to do it.

Slice the onions into rings—you can go for either thick or thin rings depending on your preference. Be sure to separate the onion slices so you’re not doubling up the rings.

 

While you are preparing the onions you can get some oil started on the stove. Make sure it’s nice and hot before you put the onions in.

Take the onion slices and dip them into the flour mixture, then into the eggs, then back into the flour. Now you’re ready to place them in the oil. If you are immersing them in oil then just throw them in and wait until they turn golden brown before removing them. And if you are using a shallow pan then make sure that one side has reached that golden-brown perfection before turning it over to finish it off.

They taste great served up with a sprinkle of salt and some Sriracha on the side for dipping. Just remember, if you don’t maintain confidence during this process your onion rings will be inferior!

Porthole

If you go to Maine everyone will tell you that you have to eat a lobster roll. It’s just one of those things—like hot dogs at Coney Island, cheese steaks in Philadelphia, grits in the South, and cow meat in Texas. So on a gray and overcast Portland day, my lovely hostess, Susan, and I headed out to the Porthole for a lobster roll.

Well, the Porthole doesn’t exactly offer a classic lobster roll but rather they serve a Lobsta Sandwich. Their menu describes it as “our spin on a lobster roll. We start with fresh picked Maine lobster meat, aioli, lettuce and pile it on our own buttery brioche bread.” So if you are looking for the more common lobster meat on a hot dog roll then you need to go elsewhere (though you won’t have to go far in Maine). But if you want a delicious interpretation of the lobster roll then you’ve come to the right place.

First we ordered a cup of clam chowder, New England style of course, garnished with thick chunks of crispy bacon. The chowder was nice and creamy without being too heavy. I was actually able to eat the whole serving and still had room for more afterwards—this is a major feat for me! I often avoid creamy soups if I plan on eating a lot more at the meal because it usually fills me up too much. There were big pieces of potato and lots of luscious little clams, and all the flavors melded into the creamy broth. It was superb.


Next came the lobster sandwich. I’ve never had a huge affinity for lobster nor have I had a great dislike for it. Lobster to me is good, but it’s never high on the top of my list. Until now. When the sandwich arrived it was overflowing with chunks of lobster that were white and smooth and tinged with the most beautiful red coloring. It looked fantastic, and when I took a bite I realized that it's not that I'm not thrilled about lobster, I’d just never had it the way it was supposed to be—fresh. I have to believe that the lobster was literally picked out the ocean, thrown in a pot of water, and put on my sandwich. And then it went in my mouth and made my taste buds and me very happy.


My favorite thing about seafood is that no matter what incarnation you get of it, it always taste like the ocean. And yet each sea creature embodies the flavor of the ocean in a different way. Lobster has more of a meatiness to it—it’s tender and light and yet still hearty and it captured the brininess of the Atlantic ocean exquisitely. The Porthole respected the flavors of lobster in their preparation of it for the sandwich, allowing the fresh ocean taste to shine with the aioli and delicate, buttery brioche.

The fries that accompanied my sandwich were fantastic, but Susan's onion rings were on a whole different level. They were the way onion rings are supposed to me, sliced thin, lightly battered, and fried until crispy. There was none of that thick, overpowering batter that distracts from the onions and makes them heavy--these were absolutely amazing. Next time I'll be ordering the onion rings for myself.


With salt in the air and a cool ocean breeze coming in across the water, sitting outside at the Porthole and eating fresh, delicious clam chowder and lobster was the perfect introduction to Portland, Maine. I’ll definitely be back.

Song of the Week: Glass Onion