Bloody Mary Skirt Steak

This recipe was one of Matt’s infamous “surprises” for me. We had only been dating a few months… maybe. When Matt called me one day and told me that he had a surprise for me and to head over. Well, at this point I had come to realize that with Matt you had no idea if surprise meant to wear a dress or a hard hat. On top of this, the feeling in the pit of my stomach grew stronger with dread when I heard his best friend Dan laughing manically in the back ground.

Dan you must understand is a character, even in our group, which can have a tendency to be made up of quite diverse company, Dan sticks out. Well, Dan would stick out almost anywhere. He is a tall man with a Jew fro and scraggly beard that insist on speaking in Russian a good portion of the time just because he can. A fair amount of the rest of the time is spent speaking German. When a hairy, foreign sounding guy, who spent much of his life in a bathrobe, is laughing manically at the word surprise one tends to step back and examine their life for a moment along with the impending decision.

Here is where I went against my better judgment: I gave into the wishes of my new boyfriend and proceeded to get in my car knowing I was almost certainly making a bad decision.

When I arrived at his place, the two conspirators were in the kitchen and I could smell they had been cooking, although as to what I was clueless.  This deepened my fright of what this “surprise” may be. Matt is a great cook and I trust him implicitly in the kitchen, except when he is around Dan. Dan is know for cooking things that should not be cooked, and mixing things that at the very least should have stayed separate. One staple ingredient that he likes to use in his diet (or at least the diet he like to portray to others for his and/or their amusement) is pickle juice. Yes! Dill pickle juice as a staple ingredient in anything is absurd. Trust me on this one: I have not had any concoction of this nature that was anything I would choose to eat on a regular basis.

At their call, because I feared it was too late to turn around, I went into the kitchen.  Matt then asked me to try a bite of this meat he had on a plate. It did not look too harmful, but just to be on the safe side of things, I asked him, “What’s in it?”

He then responded with, “If I told you it would ruin the surprise.” Now, completely aghast, I refused to consume the item in front of me until I knew what it was because there is no trusting those two when they get together.

Finally, after much begging and pleading on his part, I got my way, and he broke down and confided that it was Bloody Mary skirt steak.  At this point, I have no desire to eat this steak. I don’t like Bloody Marys. In fact, I completely loathe the drink entirely. I pretty much refuse to eat a tomato or anything that is tomato based. However, unfortunately for me, I had made a promise that if Matt told me what it was that I would eat it. So reluctantly, I reached out for a fork and slowly progressed to stab into the meat, trying to delay the inevitable. To enable my disgust at the dish before me even further, when my fork penetrated the thin strip of meat more of the red, strongly tomato-flavored juice ran out of the meat and down the rim of the plate. Adding to my discomfort, Dan had his quirky half smirk on his face full of anticipation. This could only lead me to believe that something terrible was coming because Dan only is excited by the prospect of fooling others for his amusement. Then as if in slow motion, I sliced through the meat with a knife that, despite praying there in the kitchen, was not dull. Soon the parcel was making it way to my mouth of my own volition, and I could not stop. The watchful eyes of amateur chefs were upon me, sucking all the air out of the room in anticipation for this first taste test.

Now I know what you are thinking, “This is where she tells us how good it is, and that we should keep open minds…” Umm, no. The steak was terrible. I mean it was egregious, but one look at their faces told me that this was not another “make Amanda make an icky face” moment but a genuine effort. My conscious would not let me dash their hopes that I would like it. However, over time I convinced them to scale back the lemon juice and put in place rigorous taste testing.  I still had to sit through many of a meal and pick at many of skirt steak I did not care for, but now their little surprise experiment is a hit with all of our guests. Everyone loves it, and so much so that I started boiling down the marinade to make a sauce. This was especially helpful when the marinating times were short. The process to this recipe was a long one, but now I can’t even here the words Bloody Mary and not think steak. The hearty meat flavor and the sting of Bloody Mary just seem to go together.

Bloody Mary Skirt Steak

Serves: 2

Prep Time: 1 hour to overnight

Cook Time: 30 minutes

1lb Skirt Steak

1 can of spicy V8 (12 ounces)

10 shakes (approx. 2 tablespoons) of Worcestershire sauce or to taste

10 shakes (approx. 2 tablespoons) of hot sauce or to taste

the juice of one lemon

1/2 tablespoon of season salt

fresh ground pepper to taste

½ tablespoon of sugar

1. Combine spicy V8, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, lemon juice, season salt, and pepper in gallon ziplock bag.  Place meat in ziplock bag, making sure that marinade covers all the steaks.

Marinate in the refrigerator for a minimum of one hour, but preferably overnight.

2. Fire up the grill or skillet. Place steaks on the grill or skillet and cook to medium rare. 3-4 minutes on each side.

3. While grilling the steaks, take the remaining marinade and place in medium sauce pot over medium high meat. Add ½ tablespoon of sugar (optional). When mixture begins to boil, reduce heat and let simmer. Serve steaks with reduction sauce over them.

Gangis Grill

I enjoy the science of cooking. Anyone who is familiar in the chemistry of a kitchen knows what I am talking about, the rush that comes with combining ingredients that you have never put together. Some kitchen scientists are meticulous and calculating. They take careful note of what they add to their concoction and in what amounts. Still there are others who spawn memories of the villainous mad scientist of our childhood cartoons. They grab ingredients seemingly at random and dashing unmeasured amounts into whatever they are brewing. A few stirs, a quick taste test, and they are running off across the kitchen for something else. It is in this mad, chaotic atmosphere that I learned to cook. My boyfriend taught me how to let go of my controlling and meticulous habits for the sake of good food. “The kitchen is a place that can’t be controlled. Some try to bring in structure, but things will still go wrong. Every dish is adventure and should be embraced as such. You have to be willing to grow with your dish, and let go of your recipe to do what is right for this particular preparation.” It is like having a Gandhi and Emerald in your head at once.

                  Mixing ingredients is far and away my favorite part of cooking. It is nestled in a sandwich of boring steps. The first of which is prepping. This step is usually the most tedious. It involves chopping and cutting, slicing and paring, and for what? Maybe I just feel lazy sometimes, but I always thought it would make more sense to figure out a way to sell things already prepped. Then after combining your ingredients comes the cooking stage. This is where you simmer, stir, or sauté for too long in anticipation of your meal. Throughout this process you have to check that the rice or pasta is softening, and that the meat is not drying out. It becomes overly tedious and heaven forbid that anything start to go wrong now.

                     This is why I like Gangis Grill, a new restaurant on Hwy 119 in Hoover. They allow me to not only enjoy the dish that I ordered by they allow me to combine the dish as well. This brings my two favorite parts of cooking together, building the dish and demolishing the dish, without the other steps in between. There restaurant centers on the practice of building your own “bowl.” To start, they bring a prep bowl and sauce cup to your table. Then you make your way to their pre-prepped assembly line of ingredients. Don’t worry, for those not as experienced or daring in the kitchen you can follow one of many “recipe” cards that tell you what ingredients to put together to make a certain dish. For the more adventurous, you may combine any number of ingredients in any amount on the ingredient bar if it will fit in or on your prep bowl.

                  First when going to the ingredient bar you come to the meats. These are uncooked, but pre-chopped and in tubes submerged in ice. They have selections from your standard white meat chicken breast, sliced beef, and chopped steak to turkey breast, shrimp, crab meat, tofu, and more. After you have selected your meat or combination of meat (I have had chicken and crab before. That was interesting.), you make your way to the spice section. Here sit somewhere between twelve to eighteen different spices. Some of these boast familiar names such as seasoned salt, red curry, yellow curry, and black pepper. Others have to be taste tested (for which they provide spoons), because I doubt anyone has a point of reference for spices called dragon salt. 

                  Next along your path you will find the vegetable additions. These are quite numerous and take up a healthy 3/5ths of the overall bar space. These options sprawl before you like a freshly prepped garden. I personally prefer to keep it simple with bean sprouts and mushrooms being an easy favorite, but others pill on vegetables until they have a mountain to balance atop their bowl. Anything you could want in a stir-fry and maybe a few things you don’t can be found here. There are staples such as onions, mushrooms, peppers, olives, and carrots. There are also more exotic options such as bamboo and cilantro. They have also added eggs at the end of this section for an additional protein option. This category definitely boasts the most variety at the bar.

                  The last, but arguably the best, section is the sauces. Here you are first going to want to taste test. Yes, there are spoons provided. There are twelve sauces ranging from regular soy sauce to salsa and marinara. They have curry sauces, soy, honey soy, island teriyaki, salsa, marinara, dragon something, and plenty more. I have tasted them all and settled on a combo of 50/50 honey soy and red curry. I know it does not sound right at first but by experimentation I have determined that it is delicious. And if you are one for extra sauce, there are extra sauce cups available for you to have as much as you want. (I recommend an additional cup for each additional starch).

                  Finally, you go to the counter and hand over your ingredient bowl and sauce cup(s). Here is where you tell the cook which starch you would like in your “bowl.” Each diner has six choices (I believe): sticky rice, fried rice, brown rice, udon noodles, pasta, or tortilla. Now the marinara and the salsa make since, right? These selections help cover the picky eaters in all of our lives. Once you choose you have the option of ordering double or triple servings of your starch! Please if you do, do not attempt to eat it all in one sitting. However, the plus side is you will definitely have leftovers, and I swear Gangis Grill gets better after a day in the fridge once the favors sink into the food better. It is the only place I have ever eaten where the leftovers can rival the original meal.

                  After you wait and ten minutes later you have a fully customized meal. I can’t see what it not to like about this restaurant. 

Nick's 'N The Sticks

Nick’s Original Filet House, or Nick’s in the Sticks as it is affectionately known to local’s and out-of-towners alike, lives up to its name.  You have to drive down 15^th street and out to the sticks to get to the small restaurant.  Before this journey I had never ever ventured as far as Stillman College in this direction, and at least as far as many university students and GPS’ are concerned, this is where Tuscaloosa ends. Once I past Stillman my GPS started pointing my car in the other direction, subtly hinting that I am entering the sticks, a place I am not known for inhabiting well. However, if you travel about seven more miles and ignore the protests of your GPS, you will find Nick’s in the Sticks.        

            The restaurant looks like a little shanty on the right side of the road. It could be easily ignored except for the cars pilled into the gravel area on the side of the building. The waiting area is a porch and the inside is about as big as my living room and crammed full of tables, barely leaving room for the waiters to pass though. The ceiling is covered with decorated dollar bills giving the restaurant a personable feel as soon as you walk in. Unfortunately, because of the size wait times can be long. Our party of six had to wait almost an hour for a table during early dinner hours on a Thursday. I can only imagine what wait times would be during dinner rush on the weekends, or even worse, on game day.

            From the décor to the service, the place exudes a rustic charm. The tables are simple black tables with black cushion chairs seen in many a restaurant started on a budget. The waiters are sweet and smiling, but even they speak to the simplicity of this country hide-away. Our attentive server was carried the humble moniker Spoon. The food is served on unadorned metal plates. The drinks are served in plastic cups akin to those used at your family, summer bar-b-ques.  Even the alcoholic beverages are served in Styrofoam cups famous in Tuscaloosa for being carried by the hosts of house parties in big stacks while yelling “Put it in a cup!” My first impression on Nick’s reminds me of my first impression of Tuscaloosa: a little dirty, a little sticky, but something about its charm is just irresistible.

            As the official name would suggest, Nick’s is known for its filets. You will find no weights for the steak dishes on this menu – just the simple designations of small and large. If I had to guess the small is about 6 oz. and the large is 9 oz.  The filet is served at your chosen temperature wrapped in a strip of bacon skewed with a stick to hold the piece together during the cooking process. I order my steaks medium rare and am particular about them being over cooked. Nick’s filet is thick so it holds little chance of over cooking. The meat is juicy and tender enough that the slightest pressure applied with the steak knife sends a piece cascading away from the rest of the meat. The meat is perfectly seasoned with subtle spices so that patrons are truly able to enjoy the exquisitely cooked meat. Each dish is served with a side, a large basket of dinner rolls, and a salad. The salads are brought with all three dressings on the side allowing for ultimate customization for those who are picky about overdressing salads.

            Another delicacy that I highly recommend at Nick’s is the onion ring appetizer. Nick’s onion rings are crispy fried, but they have a slightly unique taste to the batter. It is sweeter than most onion ring batters that I have experienced in the past. It reminds me of being at the infamous Café de Monde in New Orleans. Their beignets are made with a batter about as sweet and the same consistency. However, coupled with the onion instead of powdered sugar it is not enough sweetness to overpower the rest of the meal. Instead, it just charges up your taste buds just enough to anticipate the forth-coming meal.

            Nick’s in the sticks is also famous for its Nickademas, which is their house alcoholic specialty. Remember when I mentioned the Styrofoam cups reminding me of house parties? Well, the picture is easily completed with a Nickadema, which taste a lot like infamous Tuscaloosa hunch punch. It is even served out of a orange cooler behind the bar. However, a lemon wedge on the cup rim and two cherries dropped into the drink classes the drink up a bit from house party standards. The drink is a red punch concoction mixed with either rum or vodka. My alcohol taste buds want to say rum, but I would not quote me on that. The Nickadema is a drink where you get what you pay for. You should either order it early in your meal, be prepared to wait around a few minutes after you finish, or have a designated driver on call. After you finish this house recipe, you will definitely know it. Some say since they have started making the drink in large batches to keep up with demand, it is not as strong, but I say that it is still plenty strong enough. I mean after all patrons do still have to drive home from the sticks. 

            Nick’s in the Stick’s offers a truly southern, Tuscaloosa-style dinning experience. The restaurant’s character matches that of the city it outskirts. Eating at Nick’s is a little like having a backyard summer cook out or having a classy tailgate before a football game, so it fits perfectly into the memories of Tuscaloosa that many of its current and former residents hold dear. The unique dinning experience is one that is definitely memorable if not unforgettable. While it isn’t the first road-side restaurant to cook a steak, it is one of the few who do it well. 

Family Food Memory

Pfefferkuchen Platzen may at first look like a scramble of letters, but it is German for pepper or spice cookie.  This recipe has been in my family for longer than anyone knows. I am sure Oma (Grandmother) may have had some idea, but any indication of its origin died with her. All I know about where it came from is that Oma brought it over from Germany when she left in the late 1950’s and I became consciously aware of the sweet, crumply cookie with the thin, tart glaze some forty years later when I was five years old.

            The cookies only made an annual appearance in my life, Christmas. They are traditionally a winter dessert, and as such, that is the season when Oma would prepare them for our family. I did not know it at the time but this labor was the pinnacle of cooking out of love. She knew that my cousins, my sister, and I would look forward to the treat each year.  The preparations and cooking took about two days for each batch of dough she made. Oma made several batches every holiday season because she was active in the German-Birmingham based community, and she would prepare the dish for multiple families. Then I am sure on the edge of exasperation, she would prepare the final batch: ours.

            After Oma died it did not really seem much like Christmas without the cookies. Even when she was really sick her last Christmas she still got out one batch for us. It was these memories that inspired my sister, my mother, and I to try to make the recipe some years after she died (I want to say about three or four, but no promises on being exact). The first challenge we had to overcome was translating the recipe. This was a two-fold process. First, we had to decipher Oma’s handwriting. Then second, we had to translate the recipe from German. Oma was fluent in English, but she chose to cook and keep her recipes in her native tongue. It was hard and time consuming that first year to try and decipher handwritten German in order to translate it to English when the only members of my family that speak German, my mother and her sister, only speak it passively.

            That first time baking the cookies brought up memories of Christmas when I was little. Oma, Opa, and my mom’s family (aunt, uncle, two cousins) would have festivities on Christmas Eve, and sometimes this might very well be the first time we had seen each other since the previous Christmas Eve (despite the short geographical distance separating us). Between all the catching up among the adults, and the four children trying to cause distractions, there was ample opportunity for stealing pfefferkuchen. My cousin, and the younger of my aunt’s sons, Eric, and I were masterminds of the cookie stealing operations, being only one year in age apart gave the advantage of teaming up against the other two.  Now Christmas probably would have been easier on everyone without me, my sister, and my cousins running around playing cloak and dagger with cookies, but us waiting until after dinner for our favorite cookie that was only available one day a year was never going to happen. Sometimes we would get caught and sometimes we would get away with our schemes, but we always managed to get a few cookies before dinner. Eric would get the jelly filled and I would get the non-filled. 

Although the memories of Oma’s cookies were delicious, I can not say the same for our first batch. We faced a number of difficulties. One being that the recipe calls for a native German spice that does not translate and is not available, as far as I know, in the U.S. So we ordered some of the internet. Since my mother, sister, and I’s first attempt we have found a recipe that is simple spice mixture, and works as well in placing of the real thing. I have included this recipe as well at the end of this piece. Further, there was the challenge of learning to use a gram measuring cup as opposed to the English version many of us are accustom. This cup is cylindrical much like are American/English measuring cups, but it is shaped like a funnel instead of keeping consistently the same diameter. However, these measurements that involve grams can be converted to our accustomed and beloved English measurements, but in order to stay as authentic to Oma’s recipe as possible my family continues to operate, for this recipes sake, in metric measures.

 If translations and cultural measurement barriers were not enough, my mother, sister, and my baking experience is limited. In this field where Oma excelled, we were all highly limited, probably because she did enough baking for everyone. If cooking was rare in our kitchen then baking was practically extinct. If anything was baked it came from pre-made dough or a box calling for two eggs and some milk. This was another reason why the cookies held so long in me and my sister’s brain is because you could taste the homemade. In our house the term ‘homemade’ could have been used to describe Easy Mac that we made ourselves. If it had not been for Oma we would have probably never learned to appreciate what the term really meant.

Needless to say, this first homemade baking experience was just that – an experience. First once the supplies had been gathered, we had to hand shell, crush, and grade the hazelnuts. You can buy the already pre-graded, finely crushed nuts, but Oma always insisted on fresh nuts. She would say that the flavor was better, and in accordance with her instructions and in honor of her memory, my sister and I sat there for hours learning how to shell hazelnuts. If you also insist on fresh, I suggest a nut blender (I am not sure of the actual name for this appliance, but it works like a blender but with nuts. It makes this step way easier). Second, the dough has to be kneaded, and because of the involvement of flour my mother told us we had to wear aprons. This was an exciting thought for mostly we had no idea we even owned aprons (and to this day it is the only time they are used). Our excitement was short lived. We soon realized how much work kneading dough correctly could be, but after this step you are rewarded. Not with the cookies, but a night off for the dough has to sit at least twelve hours in the refrigerator.

The next day comes the hardest step in my opinion: cutting the cookies. It sounds easy, but the dough has to be rolled out and evenly dispersed. All the cookies in your batch need to be the same size (this is important for baking purposes). Every time we have ever baked these cookies together my sister and I constantly argue about whether we have rolled it even and/or if the dough is rolled too thick or thin. If the dough is rolled to thick then the cookies will not have the correct consistency and can fall apart when you pick them up and if they are rolled to thin then they will become too hard. It is a delicate balance, and one my sister and I feel we have both mastered at this point but can never agree upon.

The first batch, and the hardest, was also our worst. Our nuts were not fine enough so that consumers could see patches of nuts. Some were too thick and made a fluffy cookie while others were thin and made hard cookies. In the glaze, we added too much lemon juice and it was too tart against the cookie. In short, our experience with homemade baking was a disaster. These cookies are meant to be soft with a slight crunch (and with no visible detection of nuts), and the glaze is meant to be a sweet, savory compliment to the nutty flavor of the cookie. In my opinion, a well-made pfefferkuchen tastes of perfection.  

After this first round of cookies did not turn out quite perfect, we did not give up and have continued to make the recipe every year since. Now our cookies are still not on par with Oma’s, but then we do not have the fifty or more years baking experience that she had. Over the years, our renditions of her recipe have gotten consistently better, and I am sure that with enough trial and error we will someday be able to reproduce her creation that was so beloved by our family.

Even with our pfefferkuchen not being as good as Oma’s all of her decedents appreciate our efforts. My cousin still take his fair share of jelly filled cookies every holiday and we are able to send a dozen or so to many of our other relatives. The story of pfefferkuchen in our family has changed over the years, but it is a dish that we all treasure and can call our own.

Pfefferkuchen Cookies

250 gr sugar

500 gr flour

1 pkg chocolate pudding powder (not instant)

2 ½ tsp backing powder

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground cloves

4 tbsp lebkuchen spice

1 fresh lemon peel, grated

200 gr honey (@ 7 0z.)

2 eggs

5 tbsp milk

¼ lb butter, softened

½ lb roasted, finely ground hazelnuts

Powder sugar for icing

Lebkuchen spice:                                                       

2 tbsp ground cinnamon                                            

2 tsp ground cloves                                                    

½ tsp ground allspice                                     

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground coriander

½ tsp ground cardamom

½ tsp ground ginger

½ tsp ground anise seed

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and the chocolate pudding powder. Stir in the sugar, cinnamon, cloves and the lebkuchen spice.  Add the grated lemon peel and the ground hazelnuts, mixing together well.  Mix the eggs and milk together and add to the dry mix along with the honey.  Stir together.  Add the butter and mix until a sticky dough is formed.  Sift a little flour onto the dough board and put the dough in the middle of the board.  Knead slightly and form the dough into a round ball.  Place the dough in a ball and refrigerate covered overnight.

Sift flour onto the dough board and place a small amount of dough on the board.  Sift flour on top of the dough as well and roll the dough out evenly, using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the board or the rolling pin.  Dough should be about 3/8 inch thick.  Cut the dough into cookie with cookie cutters and place on a baking sheet.  Bake cookies in a 350 degree oven for 8 – 9 minutes until slightly brown on the edges.

Let cookies cool before icing.

Icing:

Powder sugar

Lemon juice

Vanilla extract

Put powder sugar in a small bowl or cup.  Add a few drops of vanilla extract and a few drops of lemon juice to taste.  Add small amounts of water and stir until a smooth icing is formed.  Food coloring can be added to the icing.

Using a pastry brush, ice and decorate the cookies