Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Dinner Tonight: Steak Sandwiches

As annoying as she can be, and as wrong about the actual time it takes a normal person to cook her meals, I like Rachael Ray.  Her food is usually pretty good.  Tonight's recipe is in her cookbook called "365 No Repeats" or something like that.  Someday I will take a picture of what my copy of the book looks like.  Let's just say that it has seen better days, and I am so glad I now have a gas stove because electric ones stay way too hot.
Anyway, Rachael's recipe for these yummy steak sandwiches is for some reason hard to come by online, but thankfully my trusty google came through for me eventually and I found it here.  Of course, as is almost always the case when I cook her recipes, I changed a few things.
I used sirloin instead of flank steak.  I think I've mentioned this before, but it really bothers me that flank steak is considered a "cheap" piece of meat.  I've never seen it on sale and it costs at least $8/lb at my stores.  Sirloin is a fairly good piece of meat and I've gotten it on sale for as little as $2/lb. 
Even though I do generally cook about four portions just for the two of us (hubby eats a lot of meat and I keep my 2nd portion for lunch the next day), two pounds of meat to make four sandwiches is just ridiculous.  I used one pound and still had enough to make at least six sandwiches. 
Hubby wouldn't eat the onions, so I only cooked a small onion instead of two big ones.  I used about 1/4 cup of chicken stock instead of the 2 cups the recipe indicated.  It just didn't seem necessary to waste all of that liquid if you were just cooking it all off, even though I know it might have provided an extra depth of flavor.  Since I was the only one eating it, I was okay without that. 
Though it took me about an hour to finish dinner, the result was very tasty.  I overcooked the meat a bit, trying to make sure it was done enough for hubby, but the flavor was still fine.  The onions were really yummy.  I added some dijon mustard to my sandwich just for kicks. 
I served with Terra chips, not only because Rachael Ray always suggests them as a side dish to most of her burgers/sammies, but because I got them for free!  They were definitely more exotic and interesting than regular potato chips, but unfortunately they didn't taste that great.  The texture was a little weird and inconsistent with so many different types of vegetables.  They were okay but I'm glad I didn't have to pay for them.
Ideally this meal would have been great with a nice salad or some asparagus, since it was lacking in veggies and those seem like they would go with the French aspect of the dish.

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Estimated cost of meal

Steak: $2
Marinade: $.75
Onion Mixture: $.50
Cheese: $1 (used provolone from Wal-Mart deli)
Croissants: $1 (on clearance at the Wal-Mart bakery since they were near their sell-by date!)
Chips: Free

Total: $5.25

Former life total: Lunch @ Andre's (they sell croissants, it's the best I can do): $32

Leaner Life Savings: $26.75 or 83%!!!

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