flank & tosca

certain someone was going to the market hall to get some bones for the dog so i asked him to bring "a flat piece of meat". he responded by asking "you mean like a flank steak?", he used that exact word...seems he's been reading my cooking magazines...

we had decided to grill the flank steak despite the fact that it's been raining for 3 days. the grilling was somewhat wet business...anyhow, here's the final result, delicious if i say so myself... 

i marinated the flank in soya sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, lime juice, grated garlic & ginger, chopped lemon grass and chili. sorry, there really isn't a recipe here, little of this, little of that...

i use a sturdy plastic bag, the clean-up is so much easier this way. had it marinating in the fridge for 6 hrs, took it out 1 hr before grilling. it's best to scrape off as much of the bits and pieces so that they don't burn on the grill...

for the salad "bed" i used shredded cabbage, sliced carrot (this slices with a peeling knife), ride noodles (with sesame oil), sauteed sweet onion (pictured here)...

...and blanched runner beans and sweet corn.

for the dressing i mixed soya sauce, sesame oil, lime juice, grated ginger and garlic and chopped chili and some sugar. firery stuff, but in a very good way.

whoa! obviously i didn't all the bits and pieces off. the flames did tame off, grilled the meat approx 4 mins per side.

let it rest for a while...

...before slicing part of it...

...to top off the salad, added lots of cilantro and parsley. we pigged out, the was only a tiny portion left of the salad, and about half of the meat. leftover meat will make great sandwich filler.

whilst doing whatever else i cooked up a veggie stew with roughly chopped onions, thinly sliced carrots, chopped celery sticks, chickpeas, crushed tomatoes, chopped zucchini and bell pepper and rye pasta (yep, there is pasta with 24% rye in it, very tasty), added some chicken stock for more flavor. this will make several lunches and/or dinners for both of us to take to work.

i (gasp) bought a tosca cake few weeks ago and although it was very good it seemed to fall short on what i'm used to. there was a time in the good old olden days when my mom made tosca cake very often. it's relatively easy to make and when it's perfect it's divine... but what you'd expect with all that butter, sugar, almonds and cream.

despite having well over 100 cookbooks i didn't find any "good" recipe for a tosca cake in them. i also searched the internet, but most of those recipes seemed to be just semi-clever variations of the real thing...so what is one to do? call mom...i have no idea where she has picked up this recipe:

for the cake:

4         eggs
2.5 dl  sugar
5    dl  all-purpose flour
3    tsp baking powder
200 gr butter, melted and cooled
1    dl  cream (or milk)

beat eggs and sugar until fluffy, add flour+baking powder mixture alternating with butter and cream. pour batter into two 20cm round loose bottom baking tins (or one 20x30 cm deep baking tin) and bake in 175C oven for 15 mins (until browned a bit and almost set in the middle)

for the tosca topping:

100 gr     butter
2     dl     sugar
2     tbsp all-purpose flour
2     dl     cream (or milk)
200 gr     sliced almonds

place all ingredients in a heavy bottom pot (i used a frying pan), mix well and let simmer for a few minutes until the mixture thickens a bit...

cakes are ready to be topped with tosca...

after dividing the topping between the two tins, they were baked for another 15 mins in 175C oven. as i forgot to rotate the pans mid-baking this one remained a tad undone in the middle and the tosca caused a sinkhole in the middle...but not to worry, it's still very, very delicious.

this is how both of them were supposed to look...

next time i will halve the amount of butter in the cake part. don't get me wrong, not trying to lighten this up, just think that smaller amount might do the work quite sufficiently. i will have some for breakfast tomorrow...