These days, we have not had the luxury of cooking with premium ingredients. That setback has actually proved to be instrumental in the refinement of our cooking and our approach to ingredients. I am not jumping on the comfort food bandwagon; I am just exploring possibilities. It’s easier to make great food when you start with top-tier ingredients. Our challenge now is to find out what we can do with the unrivaled quality of more accessible items. I am looking at and asking about what is possible on a budget.
These skirt steaks are a prime example of our use of refinement with often overlooked ingredients. Sure, flank and skirt steaks are the quick-grilled and fajita-loved staples of Saturday afternoons. What if we could use a few simple techniques to change these perceptions?
Growing up, I remember steak and eggs at the Georgia Diner on Queens Boulevard. They called it Romanian steak and eggs, and it was only many years later that I learned that Romanian steak was actually skirt steak. This was one of my favorite breakfast treats because the meat was so tender and flavorful. The hash browns and eggs were more of an afterthought, appreciated but unnecessary. At the time, it was a cut that I never encountered anywhere else. Because of this, it was a dish that I looked forward to savoring on the weekends when we went out for breakfast.
While we were exploring Korean and Filipino markets the other day, we wandered into Ottomanelli & Sons in Woodside. They happened to have beautiful prime skirt steak. In this instance, we seasoned the skirt steaks with salt, gave them a pass with our Jaccard, and then dusted them with Activa. After an overnight compression, we have double-thick skirt steaks with the marbling of an ideal steak and a uniform consistency for cooking. I believe we have been able to find a means to replicate the taste and texture of a ribeye cap at a much more approachable price. Furthermore, we do not need to find a use for the center cut of the ribeye once we have removed the cap.
Of course, while we have refined the skirt steak and now have a great and relatively inexpensive steak to eat and work with, we still need to find a way to present it. The perfect steak dish still hovers just out of reach, and once again we will attempt to capture it.
As for other seasonings, a bit of flavored brine—from bacon to blue cheese—could certainly add a distinct level of character to the skirt steak. We’ll just have to wait and see what moves us.
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