This is the story of realizing that I forgot to marinate the flank steak and had to come up with something quick for dinner using whatever I had in the pantry. The result is a delicious “romesco sauce” so easy it could be prepared by a literal gorilla.
One of the core tenants of Side Dish Mafia’s cooking philosophy is thinking ingredient-forward, looking at the individual affordances and advantages of a given food when considering how best to use it. Flank steak generally loves to be marinated. Its inherent leanness and fibrousness can make it tough and chewy when handled indelicately, but also let it maintain body and bite when subjected to a long tenderizing soak. Moreover, while not as fatty as other cuts, flank steak is still intensely flavorful in an iron-rich, bloody way that affords similarly strong flavor pairings. This recipe, however, is focused on how to marry an unmarinated flank steak.
There are a number of preferential or logistical reasons one might choose not to marinate a flank (I forgot to and had no time), and in those cases it’s important to consider the best ways to complement its strengths. Its texture, body, and juiciness want something creamy to both round it out and soak it up. While flank lends itself as a canvas to punchy marinades, it also synergizes with smoother conduits of its own meaty profile. Today’s romesco sauce falls more into that latter category, and while flavorful and bright on its own, it serves, both in taste and texture, as an excellent supporting actor.
Because we are forgoing marination, which typically allows for acids (and sometimes enzymes) to break down the muscle fibers, we have to rely on a more manual tenderization. Most people use a meat mallet and whack it all over, but in the absence of one you can also beat it up by hand like Rocky Balboa. Depending on my mood I also tend to lay it down on a safe surface and give it a thorough percussion massage while playing spa music. Either way, season it well. Additionally, when we cook this beef we need to make sure we hit it with high heat for a short time on each side to get a nice sear but keep a medium-rare. While meat doneness is ultimately a matter of preference, flank steak can get too tough too quickly if you let it cook all the way through. Well-done flank steak is also bad.
As for the aforementioned sauce, a typical romesco is going to have you roasting bell peppers, garlic, and tomato before processing them with an array of other ingredients, including almonds and stale white bread. That’s definitely a route you can take, and given ample time, ingredients, and infrastructure, not at all difficult. However, our goal today is to make a quick and delicious, foolproof sauce without needing to cook any of our ingredients. Minimal skill, minimal room for error, maximum speed. Our secondary goal is, through a judicious and inventive combination of flavors (as a consequence of access), to further develop and expand upon the traditional foundation we’re starting from.
One of the best ways to char bell peppers for romesco is to flame-roast them bare on a gas stove, rotating them as needed with some metal tongs, but not everyone has a gas stove. Moreover, within the framing anecdote of this recipe I didn’t have any fresh bell peppers to roast. The idea for romesco started when I found a lucky 16oz jar of fire-roasted bell peppers in the pantry. While I don’t usually lean on pre-prepared ingredients like this, as my budget and pride have me doing most things myself, having a jar like this handy makes for a very convenient and foolproof romesco base. Throw it in the blender.
Next, I didn’t have time to let some bread get stale, and the only bread I had out was some grainy, seedy, Dave’s Killer, so I popped a couple slices in the toaster. Toasted them, cut them up, threw them in the blender. I let those soak in 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.
No time for roasting a head of garlic, so I pressed 3 mini-bulbs (about 6 cloves) of black garlic and 2 big cloves of fresh garlic into the blender, alongside a hearty shake of garlic powder, thus attaining a range of garlic profiles and a touch of that deep, molasses sweetness from the black. No time for roasting tomato, so I added a heaping dollop of tomato paste to get some of that umami, sweetness, brightness, and body. In order to get a little more of the smokiness that belongs in a sauce like this, I dropped in a heaping half teaspoon of smoked paprika and a pinch of katsuobushi. In order to smooth it out and capitalize on the nuttiness of the whole grain bread, I plopped in a generous dollop of almond butter, some pepitas, some sunflower seeds, and a few chopped dry-roasted macadamia nuts. A little salt later and it was tasting pretty good. However, something that creamy sauces like this often leave me craving is some heat, and the fat from the olive oil and nuts would be such a smooth conduit for it, so I threw in a few serrano peppers, which were marvelous. I should note that I made another spin on this base more recently where I tried to incorporate dark chocolate and make an experimental kind of five-spice romesco mole, and in that instance roasting the chili peppers was excellent for procuring an extra layer of smokiness and complexity. However, leaving them raw here works fine too.
Once all that’s prepped and in the blender, it’s ready to become a beautiful, bright, harmonious condiment to what I hope is a perfectly cooked steak. I paired this with roasted cauliflower and rice cooked in a saffron-infused chicken stock (highly recommend). Then I garnished with a little lime, cilantro, and finely chopped macadamia nuts. Bada boom bada bing, looks fancy but it ain’t no thing.
Fast and Easy Romesco Sauce
Equipment
- blender
Ingredients
- 16oz jar of roasted red bell peppers (or 16oz of freshly roasted red bell peppers if you have the time and energy)
- 2 slices Seedy, whole-grain bread (I used Dave's Killer) toasted well but not burnt, then chopped
- 2 tbsp Red wine vinegar
- 4 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
- 1.5 tbsp Tomato paste
- 2 tsp Garlic powder
- 2 cloves Fresh garlic
- 6 cloves Black garlic (3 small bulbs of single-clove garlic)
- 2 tbsp Almond or mixed nut butter
- 5 Dry-roasted macadamia nuts
- 1-2 Serrano peppers chopped
- 1/2 tsp Smoked Paprika
- 1 tsp Sea salt (add more to taste)
Instructions
- Start toasting the bread.
- Prep and add all ingredients into a food processor or blender.
- Purée until the mixture is smooth and uniform, adding olive oil if too thick.
- Taste and season if needed.
- Plate it with a fancy smear and enjoy your dinner and your life.