Today is a special day. Jake and I got together and cooked for the sake of the blog! Great, right? Anyway, we decided to make "Philly" inspired cheese steak sandwiches, and they were awesome. We will have pictures up soon, but let's get started on the magical beefy journey.
So, in shopping, we chose items based on how good they would be while trying to be frugal and labor intensive. So, we got a large loaf of flat ciabatta bread (take and bake style, where it's partially baked and you brown it at home). We also got about a pound of stir-fry style pre-cut beef. This saved on time, and saved us from remembering what cut of beef fares well to fast, hot cooking. We bought a green pepper, and while Jake had mushrooms and onions, keep in mind to get the styles you like. We used the generic button mushrooms, but a portabella and steak sandwhich is pretty rockin', too. As far as onions go we like a strong and sweet onion, so white and yellow varieties do well. Yellow is my favorite, but white has a bit more "bite" to it, but gets sweet while sweating or carmelizing.
ANYWAY, we chose provolone cheese, and I think that mozzarella would have been a bit less stringy and with a bit more flavor. At any rate, here is the way we did it:
We started by cooking the beef in about a tablespoon or so of canola oil. We had a cheap bag of flavored rice, so we started the water boiling for that as well. These sandwiches help to have a couple saute pans, but it is not necessary, as you can cook the beef first and have it sit while you cook the vegetables, this will all be baked as well. We chopped the veggies fairly coarsely, and dropped them into about a tablespoon-tablespoon and a half of hot oil. We were going for a caramelized effect, so medium heat with fairly frequent stirring. When the beef was almost done, we seasoned with a bit of salt, pepper, and garlic powder, (it should be at temp or slightly below) we turned it off and set it aside.
The vegetables should have been started earlier than we did, but oh well. We kept turning them in the oil and got them to a point before caramelization, but after sweating, so they were tender but not quite soft. What you do is up to you, if you like crunch do a quick saute, otherwise set aside time to properly caramelize.
With a pre-heated oven of about 400 degrees (450 would have worked better, it doesn't matter really, a good broil would do too), we assembled the sandwiches with meat on the bottom of a split/buttered/garlic ciabatta roll, veggies on the top, and cheese over the whole thing. We baked them until the cheese was translucent and the oils of the cheese were released, with the edges browning. We could have left it longer, but we were hungry fatties and gobbled them up like crazy.
The sandwiches were delicious. The meat was great, the bread was good (could have been browned more), the cheese was superb and melty, and it all worked well together. We chose a rice and butter sauce to go with it (one of those cheap Lipton ones) and it was a good quick meal. The cost was kind of expensive (around $20), but, the portions could have fed a family (the fatties strike again), and we could have been a bit more cost effective if we had tried harder. The meat was about $5 a lb, the bread was $4, and the cheese was $4. You could probably get vegetables for about $4-5. So, if one really wanted to save, it's possible. However, we thought the cost of the sandwiches was outweighed by how freakin' good they were.
Seriously, they were amazing, easy, and while probably not great for us, it was a good indulgent meal if you want something of substance in ya. If you feel badly, you can justify yourself by saying it had vegetables in it. The combinations that you could do with this sandwich are endless, you can do different breads, cheeses, vegetables, meats, etc etc etc. If you want a french dip-style, try making an au jus (simple, google it) and before your meat is fully done, put it in the hot jus to finish it. Then use the au jus for dipping!
Anyway, this happened last night and I am getting hungry again... perhaps another fat amateur adventure is upon us. Anyway, if you have any questions/concerns/comments, let us know!
-Tim and Jake
