Spanish Spice Steaks

From Grill It! by Bobby Flay (page 34), this is Spanish Spice-Rubbed Steak with Red Wine Vinegar Steak Sauce. There are very few things better in this world than a sizzling New York Strip on the grill! About 15 minutes before grill time, I took the steaks out of the fridge. The steaks came from Tag'z Five Star Meats earlier in the day, so they had not been in the fridge very long, but you still want to bring them to near room temperature before they hit the grill. I put together the Spanish Spice rub with paprika, cumin, dry mustard, ground pepper and just a little olive oil. With the back of a spoon I rubbed the spices into one side of the meat. With spices this big, you shouldn't rub on both sides - one side is plenty - remember it's the steak, not the spices that should be the star of the show. The steak sauce took a little longer, but was well worth the time. I first roasted some red bell peppers, then chopped them up. Into a processor went the red peppers, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, honey, molasses, Worcestershire, Kosher salt and ground pepper. The processor turned all of this into a thin sauce - but I didn't want a thin sauce, so I put it all in a small pan over the grill and let it reduce down until thick. You can see the consistency of the sauce in the photo and also see that red pepper color. It was all excellent together - steak - sauce - rub!

Wisdom of the grill. With a little knowledge and some practice you can get a lot of function out of a grill. It doesn't have to be just meat over flame. A grill can be like an oven, like a fryer, like a toaster and it can also be a steamer. The veggies in the photo were steamed on the grill. Given a choice between veggies and a hunk of meat - I take the meat. I think veggies are just garnish to the real meal. But if you must do veggies, you should at least do them right. I first took green beans, carrots, califlower and brocoli, put some butter spray over them, added salt and ground pepper and tossed them in my open grill skillet. Its an "open" skillet because it has small holes all over the bottom to allow direct heat up through. The veggies stayed in the skillet only a short time. I pulled out two sheets of foil, added more butter spray and then scooped the veggies onto the center of the foil. I added more butter, salt and pepper, then folded the foil over enclosing the veggies in a packet. The packets went right back on the grill. After about two minutes I flipped the packets and poked holes in the top of the foil with a fork. When I did this steam came streaming out of the holes. I left the packets on the grill - steaming - for another five minutes. Be careful when you unfold the foil - the remaining steam will be ready to escape. The veggies went right from foil packets to the plate in one step. We have a regular, in-house, veggie steamer, but when we use it the veggie flavor seems to leave with the steam, and its difficult to season the veggies over boiling water. The on-the-grill foil method traps the flavor and holds the seasoning. Like I said, if you must have veggies, you might as well do it right!

Grilling - its all about doing it right! Paul