Dinner this evening....

[Guest guest]

Dinner this evening was an interesting thing. My wife had a couple of

steaks she picked up for us, so I pulled out two skillets and set to work.

First I did my standard startup for meat -- I chopped onions and garlic,

then sauteed them in almond oil with just a little butter. After they'd

sauteed a bit (I did it on a fairly low temp so as NOT to scorch the minced

garlic), I added the steak and trimmed off the fat. At that point I ground

some 6 peppercorn blend pepper on top, a little kosher salt, then a hint of

majoram. This I poked and rubbed into the top of the steak. After a while,

I flipped it and did the same to the other side.

Eventually, when the steak had cooked to about medium, I cubed it. Then I

added a couple of quick splashes of soy sauce -- not much, mind you, just

enough to get a bit of flavoring in there. We'll call it a tablespoon tops.

I continued stirring this around in the skillet a while, to make sure

everything mixed up well and the flavors mingled nicely. Then I took a

couple of heaping tablespoons of flour, mixed it with about a cup of water,

and added this to the skillet while stirring (making a flour gravy). (BTW,

you can use any flour here you like, or a little corn starch if you prefer.

Likewise, you can skip the gravy step altogether.)

The final result was fantastic. The beef took on a sweet taste from the

onions, garlic, marjoram, soy and flour while still grabbing a salty flavor

from the soy and salt and even still having a bit of spicey flavor from the

pepper. A very nice blending of the various flavors. The gravy added

texture and picked up the remaining juices from the skillet, not to mention

the little bit of onions and garlic that were left. The kids loved it (and

they're not particularly big on beef at all, let alone steak.)

Since this was a bit of a comfort food run, I made it just a tad fattier

than I probably should have. Nothing says it couldn't have been made

less so, I simply chose to do so on this particular dish. I could see this

being served over a pasta or noodle perhaps, also with rice, or eaten plain

(which is how I ate it). To modify the flavor, you could also add sliced,

fresh mushrooms towards the end. You could also chop some vegetables

(carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, whatever) or add whole vegetables (such as

peas) to make this into something of a stew. Lots of possibilities with

what this could be combined with to get the end product.

Of course, this was a phase 2 dish. I watch my sodium so I do not use

very much salt or sodium containing ingredients -- the whole dish, which

could comfortably serve 3 I'd think, had maybe 1000mg of sodium. I use real

butter -- a personal deviation from the diet as I'm not willing to take in

the transfats that come along with the others -- so this had a bit more fat

in it than most of my other dishes. To keep the butter from scorching, I

used about a tablespoon of almond oil Whole wheat flour is fine on P2 and

it adds an interesting flavor element to dishes like this (usually a subtle

sweetness). Since I like onions and garlic, this had about 2 1/2 cloves of

garlic and about a fourth of a large onion (roughly 3/4 cup chopped, I

suppose).