Sasha's Kitchen: Kobe Roast Beef Sandwich

I love kobe roast beef.  Its absolutely the best beef out there and the only kind of roast beef worth eating in a sandwich.  The best roast beef sandwich I've ever had is at a place in Park Slope called Bierkraft.  Bierkraft is a huge beer emporium, which also makes excellent sandwiches and has a fabulous selection of cheeses and charcuterie.  The kobe roast beef sandwich at Bierkraft, served with cheddar, tomato, arugula and horseradish mayonnaise is my absolute favorite.  It's always a treat to pick of their sandwiches for lunch.  I decided to recreate the bierkraft sandwich tradition in my own home for my husband and I with some Kobe style Wagyu roast beef from FreshDirect.  I bought a nice local Vermont cheddar, some fresh locally grown Jersey arugula, a tomato and whipped up my own horseradish mayonnaise.  I also threw in some cornichons which made the sandwich absolutely perfect.

Sasha's Kobe Roast Beef Sandwich (makes two)
1/2 lb Kobe Wagyu Roast Beef
Sliced cheddar cheese
handful of fresh arugula
sliced tomato
1/3 cup mayonnaise mixed with 2 tsp horseradish
cornichons

Spread horseradish mayo on both sides of foccacia roll and assemble sandwich as shown above. Yum - just like my favorite Bierkraft tradition.

Sasha's Kitchen: Kobe Roast Beef Sandwich

Sasha's Kitchen: Rib Eye Cheesesteaks

I know I have written about cheesesteak before, but I could not help myself. I made this a couple of weeks ago and it was just too good not to share on A Kitchen In Brooklyn. Sure, I love the Philly style cheesesteak with thinly slice steak, onions and liquid cheese, but this at home "dressed up" style cheese steak made with rib eye is pretty good as well. There's plenty of ways to make a great cheesesteak or steak sandwich, but this one incorporates my preferences - grass fed rib eye, caramelized onions, provolone cheese and roasted red pepper, on a delicious long sandwich roll. My love for this sandwich comes from my college days at Haverford College and some great steaks at Genos and Pats.


Sasha's Rib Eye Cheesesteak

3/4 lb rib eye, thinly sliced

two onions, sliced

2 T of sugar

canola oil  or olive oil

2 long Italian rolls or hoagie rolls

1 roasted red pepper, sliced

provolone cheese (1/4 lb)

To prepare the meat, we chose to season and cook the steak on a grill pan, about medium. A the end of the grilling process, my husband sliced the rib eye thinly using an electric meat knife. It is worth noting that I used grass fed rib eye for this recipe, which is the healthiest type of red meat to be eating if, like me, you care about your body and your planet. You could also slice the meat before cooking if you prefer and it might cook much faster. But I found my method to work just fine.

Then I prepared the onions by sautéing them with the sugar and canola oil to caramelize the onions. I prepared the sandwiches with the hoagie rolls, onions, roasted red pepper slices and cheese and put both sandwiches in the oven to toast until the cheese was fully melted.  The result was mouthwateringly good! I like mine plain, but feel free to douse with hot sauce or steak sauce if you prefer.

Sasha's Kitchen: Rib Eye Cheesesteaks

Sasha's Kitchen: Alice's Lapsang Souchong Tea Infused Chicken Sandwich & Cucumber Sandwiches

Another great recipe from Alice's Tea Cup from the new Alice's Tea Cup Cookbook - for lapsang souching tea sandwiches. These sandwiches were always my favorite for lunch or brunch in the restaurant, and the ones I made using their recipe came out just perfectly. You actually steam the chicken breasts in Chinese lapsang souchong tea, which you can buy from the Alice's website, or elsewhere.  It is a tea from the lapsang souching province in China. You have to plan ahead with this recipe, because the breasts need to marinate for two days, so just keep that in mind when you are planning your meals for the week. This is a pretty cool way to incorporate tea into a recipe that you normally wouldn't think of making with tea.

And for those of you who are longing for more of my cupcake posts, never fear, I am making Jets-Patriots football themed cupcakes for the big game tomorrow and will be posting those very soon!

Alice's Chicken Marinade
2 T lapsang souchong tea leaves
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup plus 2 T balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 small cloves of garlic, diced
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
4 tsp dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Combine the tea in 1/2 cup of boiling or hot water and allow to soak for three minutes before discarding the tea leaves by straining. Combine all the remaining marinade ingredients above, plus the tea-water and two cups of cold water. Place the chicken breasts in the marinade, and marinate for two days. The book says you can even let it go for three.

To prepare the chicken, season with 2 T of Chinese five-spice powder, salt and pepper. Using your steamer, add 1/2 cup of water and 1/4 cup plus two tablespoons of the tea leaves, and steam the chicken to cook it over the tea leaves. This will infuse the chicken with the flavor of the tea as it cooks, and it is also quite healthy. Flip the chicken breasts over about halfway through. It should take about ten minutes to cook, and you can use a meat thermometer to check the chicken, which should reach but not exceed 160. When the chicken is fully cooked, allow it to cool for about 20 minutes, before slicing thinly using a sharp knife

Alice's Herbed Goat Cheese Spread
1 small clove garlic
8 oz goat cheese
2 T cream cheese
3/4 tsp dried tarragon
3/4 tsp dried chevril (I left this out)
3/4 tsp minced fresh chives
3/4 tsp fresh thyme
pinch of salt
pink of black pepper

Roast the garlic and puree all of the ingredients for the goat cheese spread in a food processor.

Alice's Chicken Sandwich
Sliced chicken
sliced green apple
toasted bread
goat cheese spread
1 cup mesculin greens

Spread the goat cheese spread on the toasted bread and combine the other ingredients into a sandwich. the steamed tea flavored chicken is the perfect combo with the herbed goat cheese and tart green apple. My husband loved these sandwiches too!

You can also make these delicious cucumber sandwiches which are quite heathy and easy too! I dreived the simple recipe from the Alice's book.

Cucumber Sandwiches

Sliced cucmber

toasted bread

1/2 stick of butter pureed with 2 T of chives to make the chive butter spread (you will have some leftover)

Sasha's Kitchen: Alice's Lapsang Souchong Tea Infused Chicken Sandwich & Cucumber Sandwiches

Sasha's Kitchen: Philly Cheesesteak (North of Philly Version)

I spent four years living outside of Philadelphia during college, when I was an undergrad at Haverford College.  Most of my memories of food during college involve the mediocre typical college dining hall meals.  I certainly wasn't doing much cooking in those days because I loved in the dorms rather than the apartments that were a trek from the center of campus.  However, whenever I did take the less-than-reliable SEPTA commuter rail into Philly, I couldn't resist a cheesesteak from Pat's or Geno's.  Eric, my fellow guest blogger, and I both went to Philly-area schools and have a similar fondness for the cheesesteak as one of our favorite Philly cuisines.  Thus, we decided to have a friendly challenge where we would each make a cheesesteak that reminds us of our Philly college days and cheesesteak nostalgia, and write about it here on A Kitchen In Brooklyn.

In fairness, most of my cheesesteaks were inhaled in minutes, usually after drinking, so I wasn't paying much attention to the finer culinary points of the cheesesteaks during my college visits to Pats and Genos.   What I remember, is the melted cheese and the thin, delicious steak, and also that I loved cheesesteaks with sauteed mushrooms and onions.  When attempting to create this recipe, some years removed from college, I had the urge to caramelize the onions before adding them to the steak.

I purchased some quality Italian rolls from my local Italian market and butcher, M&S Prime Meats.  In addition, I decided that a thinly sliced rib eye was the way to go with the steak, since it isn't quite as lean as a cut of filet or sirloin would be.   The rib eye wasn't as thinly sliced as a Pat's cheesesteak, but it was cut into nice thing slices that my grill pan could easily handle.

To prepare the cheesesteaks, I seared the meat and cooked it through with a bit of canola oil in my grill pan.  I caramelized the onions with a bit of sugar (sliced one onion and added two tablespoons of sugar and a tablespoon of canola oil to the pan).  I sauteed the mushrooms in olive oil.  I used sliced baby bella mushrooms.  In addition, I bought a large roasted red pepper at the Italian market that I felt would be a perfect fit with this cheesesteak, so on it went.

Finally, it wouldn't be a cheesesteak without the cheese.  Some of the recipes from Philly that I looked at actually use cheeze wiz, but I certainly wasn't about to do that!  I decided that a sliced deli cheese was best and went with provolone.  The proper way to make a cheesesteak likely involves drizzling melted cheese, but I toasted the buns, assembled the sandwich and put it in the oven with the cheese at 350 for about five minutes until the cheese was melted.

In summary, here are the ingredients you will need to prepare my version of the cheesesteak.

Sasha's North-of-Philly (Brooklyn) Cheesesteak (makes two large sandwiches)

3/4 lb rib eye, thinly sliced

one onion, sliced

2 T of sugar

sliced baby bella mushrooms

canola oil  or olive oil

2 long Italian rolls

1 roasted red pepper

The end result was delicious.  Those Pat's and Geno's cheesesteaks had a special place in my heart from my college years, but my new cheesesteak is great for a new decade, although it was so big that I only ate half during dinner.  The flavors of the caramelized onions, roasted red peppers, sauteed mushrooms and provolone all combined nicely with the succulent, juicy rib eye.  The quality of the meat that I used is surely much better than a standard Philly cheesesteak, but keep in mind that this sandwich's main competition is my memories of Philly as a 19 year old college student.  Regardless, I was happy and nostalgic about this rendition.  This might just be the best Brooklyn cheesesteak out there!

Sasha's Kitchen: Philly Cheesesteak (North of Philly Version)

Mixueer's Kitchen in Toronto: Party Goodness!

Often, the joys in our lives are marked by special occasions. This weekend was my father's 60th birthday party, and what a party it was! There was much joy and laughter accompanied by great food - much of which I created. As I have written before, I'm trying to eat as healthfully as I can and planned the menu accordingly.
My first recipe for Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies turned out perfectly the first time! I ended up making five times the recipe as we were feeding thirty people. Beware that it's a bit fiddly to drop such small bits of dough on the cookie sheets. Given that I made five batches, it felt as though it took forever but it was an easy recipe and everyone gobbled them up!
http://www.weightwatchers.com/food/rcp/index.aspx?recipeid=50634
My next recipe was a delicious take on Egg Salad. I smeared it on low fat bread and made finger sandwiches. These also went very quickly, with guests going back for more! The only difference was that I used green onions finely chopped instead of the chives, and I used fat free Miracle Whip instead of the mayo.
http://www.weightwatchers.com/food/rcp/index.aspx?recipeId=108261
Next I decided that we needed another sandwich, seeing as I only had enough to feed half an army and needed to feed ALL the troops. My parents had some tins of salmon, so salmon salad sandwiches were in order. I made this up on the fly:
Curry Salmon Sandwiches
1 tin salmon in water
1 tbsp fat free Miracle Whip
1/2 tbsp chutney (I love Mrs. Balls chutney)
1/2 - 1 tsp turmeric (to taste)
salt (to taste)
I just mashed everything together in a bowl with a fork, spread the mix on white bread and sliced with a bread knife into finger sandwiches.
Next, I made some lovely rainbow trout fillets with my famous mustard sauce. I got this recipe on a one of the early Food Network shows from the '90's called "Taste" with David Rosengarten, sadly since cancelled. (Rosengarten is my pick for food expert that Food Network should bring back). I can't seem to get onto Rosengarten's site to post his link, so see the recipe below:
Grandma Hitchcock’s Mustard Sauce
Recipe By: David Rosegarten’s grandmother-in-law
DRY INGREDIENTS:
1/4 cup dry mustard
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons kosher salt
WET INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup white vinegar
2 cups heavy cream
4 whole egg yolks — beaten (if using small eggs, use 5)
1. Combine the dry ingredients in a saucepan.
2. Whisk in the vinegar, cream and egg yolks (beaten), blending well to combine. Place over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened and smooth. Serve warm if possible.
I personally use 1% lactose-free milk for my sad lactose intolerance. This sauce takes some minding and some time to reduce properly, but is well worth the wait and effort! This sauce goes beautifully over fish, chicken or pork; I’ve even put it on lamb to great success. I make extra and freeze it so I have it for a quick meal. I spread it on some rainbow trout fillets with some salt and a sprinkling of Bolthouse Farms' amazing Salad Herb mix and bake on a cookie sheet at 375 F for 20 minutes. Serve the sauce on the side so guests can add extra.

Mixueer's Kitchen in Toronto: Party Goodness!