Monday, May 9, 2011

Carne Asada with Mojo Sauce


Isn't it great and helpful when bloggers share the perfect holiday recipe after the fact? Sorry about that. My Cinco de Mayo plans were to host dinner on May 6, so I didn't have much to offer those of you who were planning to celebrate on the real day. But next year, I'll link to this entry in advance and we'll all feel good and prepared, right? Right.

I decided to use Tyler Florence's recipe for carne asada tacos, with plans to offer carne asada and classic chicken tacos with a variety of toppings. Tacos are easy peasy, but steak, as we've discussed, needs a marinade and that means you must set aside prep time.

So at 8 a.m. on Friday, before getting ready for work, I was christening my mortar and pestle with 4 cloves of minced garlic, minced jalapeno, a handful of cilantro, salt and pepper. Believe me, no matter how much I washed my hands, I stunk at work that day.


Mash, mash, mash. It was kind of fun, like I was an old-timey chef, but Sean tells me it was not easy to clean later. You're forewarned.


Then I squeezed the juice of two limes, and one orange.


Put both mixtures into a Rubbermaid with some white vinegar and olive oil and shook my heart out.


And finished by popping a flank steak in mojo sauce. It can marinate for 8 hours, but longer than that, the steak might get mushy.

It was pouring rain outside, so we ended up firing up the old grill pan and ended up with just about perfect carne asada for our tacos.


Ta-da! As long as you're willing to do a little prep in the morning, this delivers a flavorful and delicious meal at dinnertime. I topped mine with store-bought pico de gallo (no time to make my own!) and it was really great.

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