Best. Flank. Ever.

We’re definitely fans of flank steak, and Sunday night we had one to grill up.  Looking through my fridge, I didn’t have a marinade I wanted to use, so I checked my standard default cooking idea site – epicurious.com.  Little did I know that a simple search would result in the BEST FLANK EVER!

I didn’t have that many ingredients on hand, so I was planning a simple marinade with soy sauce and lemon, since we always seem to have those.  Typing in “lemon soy sauce marinade” brought me to only a few options, and I clicked on steak in lettuce rolls.  I wasn’t planning on serving anything in a lettuce roll (seems more like an appetizer to me), but I thought it would give me a nice marinade plan.  Of course, the recipe immediately looked like a winner in every way: it was specifically for flank steak, it was from David Chang at Momofuku, and it included a scallion salad.  I have so many scallions growing in the garden that I can’t find enough things to do with them.  The salad also called for chiles, and since I have a multitude of jalapenos in the garden, it seemed like a quick and easy substitution.

The marinade included slices of onion with instructions to remove them from the marinade once the steak was on the grill and then cook them on the stove to add to the steak later.  Instead, I thought it would be interesting to reduce the entire marinade, onions and all, to make a sweet sauce.  And what to serve with the steak, salad, and sauce?  Since I was out in the garden, Swiss chard, which we still have tons of, seemed like the obvious choice.

The results? The steak was cooked perfectly and the marinade was excellent.  The chard was as delicious as ever.  But what really made the dish was the scallion salad and the marinade sauce.  The sauce was sweet and the salad (which we ate like a sauce) was the perfect salt/vinegar combination.  In fact, the scallion salad was so delicious I made a double batch of it again today and had it on my eggs for breakfast (happy Labor Day!).  Click the link above for the entire recipe, but here’s the salad:

Scallion Salad

• 1 large bunch scallions, finely chopped
• 2 red chiles, seeded and thinly sliced
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
• 1 teaspoons dark (toasted) sesame oil

I know this picture isn’t as good as the pro-food-bloggers out there, but I think it’s close.  It’s hard to spend time photographing food when you want to eat it so badly! (And I don’t know how to edit photos like Lynne, so this isn’t touched up)