Cooking up a Storm

Edited 10/30/12 – Hoping everyone in the hurricane’s path is safe and sound. Sending thoughts and prayers to everyone affected. . .

Oh Sandy. . .you’ve really made a mess of things, and you haven’t even arrived quite yet. A run on bread and batteries, closings all over the place, and a threat to my flight home for the NYC Marathon on Wednesday. We will all be happy to see you go. I wouldn’t totally mind a marathon postponement though. . . I could do with another year of training.

What to do when a storm is looming, it’s Sunday, and you are tired for too much Halloween partying? Cook up a storm!

In addition to a pumpkin chocolate chip bread, I also made a pretty epic dinner which included espresso marinated steak tips and tomato bread pudding.

To make the steak tips, I simply made six shots of espresso using my new Philips Syntia espresso machine and marinated the steak in it for about eight hours. About 10 minutes before cooking, I removed the steak tips from the fridge, dried them off and tossed them in a mix of cacao powder, chili powder, and hot paprika. I cooked them up on a very hot grill pan, and they were absolutely amazing. I had wanted to make steak marinated in coffee after our anniversary dinner at City Landing, and I was so happy with how this turned out. The coffee and cacao added a richness to the meat, and the coffee really tenderized it. The paprika and chili powder added a nice little kick.

The second and even more amazing part of dinner was a savory tomato bread pudding that was inspired by my newest Wine Road cook book. I’ll share the complete recipe in another post; we’ll be eating this bread pudding for days, and I think it will only get better.

If you’re in a storm-stricken area, how have you been preparing?