Deep Fried Kudzu

The other day at the bookstore, I saw that Rachael Ray has a new magazine - it's Every Day with Rachael Ray (not Everyday with Rachael Ray). She seems to be on Food Network a *lot*, but for some reason I've never watched any of her shows....just a minute or two here or there.

I brought the magazine home, and it was really better than I expected - in fact, I'm going to subscribe (the link for the magazine is here).

The contents are written in a very 'familiar' way - for instance, her letter is called "Rach's Notebook", where she writes, "...come on, get closer! We Every Day-ers don't bite, unless we're hungry." There's a glossary of "Rachael-isms" (like 'EVOO' (extra-virgin olive oil), 'Yum-O', and 'Eyeball It'), and in the recipe that I made, it was noted not to 'freak out' when the oil smokes. Anyway, it's just different from other food magazines....I don't mean that it's different in a bad way....I guess the idea is that the contents seem more Rachael Ray throughout, rather than just having her on the cover & using her name...which I like.

Sooo...I decided to make one of the recipes in the section called 'Bowl Games' - it's a section for food that's perfect to snack on for game-day. The recipe is called 'Super Bowl - Mashed Super Skins with Steak-and-Pepper Hash':

Ingredients (I halved the recipe set for 4 (the quantities below are for 2 servings)...and we still had *lots* of leftovers):

2 large Idaho potatoes
salt
olive oil (she calls out for vegetable oil and butter, but since this is a meat dish I used olive oil exclusively)
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 scallions, chopped
1/2 lb. sirloin steak, thinly sliced into pieces about 3" long and 1/4-1/2" wide
freshly ground pepper
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce (I used a little more than that, and used Dale's instead of Worcestershire)
1 poblano chile pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced
2 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 lime, cut into wedges
soy milk (I used soy milk - she calls out for 1/4 c. milk, 1/4 c. sour cream, and 5 oz. shredded sharp cheddar cheese. The purpose of this is to make the mashed potatoes creamy.)

Directions:

Cut the potatoes into chunks and add them to a pot with cold water covering them. Bring to a boil, season with salt, and keep cooking until they're tender - which for me was around 18 minutes.


Over low/med heat, add olive oil, garlic, and scallions to a small skillet and cook until they get to be a nice golden color (she says to cook for about five minutes):

When they potatoes are tender, drain the water from the pan they're in, mash the potatoes, add the cooked garlic/scallion mixture (above), and add the soy milk or the dairy products until you get a nice mashed potato consistency.

Heat a large skillet with olive oil over high heat. Season the steak and add it to the pan. Brown the meat, and season with the sauce.


There wasn't room in the pan to add the vegetables like she suggested, so I just let the steak rest in a plate, and added the red onion and poblano peppers at that time:


I cooked the onions and peppers together for a few minutes, then added the steak back to the pan, and put in the thyme. I stirred this around for a couple of minutes, and it was all set (at the very end, squeeze the lime juice over this).


Here's the dish all put together...the mashed potatoes on the bottom and the steak mixture (including the juice/sauce from that pan) on top. It's not a fancy dish, but it was pretty good...especially for one of those days when you just want something simple: