Fajitas (deconstructed)

NOTE INCOMPLETE AND MOSTLY ROUGH NOTES ON RECIPE IN PRODUCTION

Idea

Deconstruct a Fajita into its flavor elements, elements I've defined are:

• • Meat portion 

  • Marinade sauce

  • Tortilla

  • Carmelised vegetables, typically carries some beef flavor

  • Cold lettuce

  • Cheese element

  • Palate cleansing guacamole

  • Tart flavor of lime

This meal turned into Texmex Sashimi, as in when you are done plating this it will be like eating at a sushi restaurant, but taste like you're eating some texmex.

Ingredients

Sauce

• • 1/8th cup of soy sauce

  • 1/8th cup of balsamic vinegar

  • 2 scallions

  • 3 cloves of garlic

  • cumin (to taste)

Remaining Stuff

• • 1 beef ribeye, roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lbs

  • 1 avocado

  • Squeeze of Lemon or Lime Juice

  • A lot of Crushed Pepper (very coarsely crushed)

  • 1/4th yellow onion

  • 1/4th red onion

  • 1/2 red bellpepper

  • 1/2 green bellpepper

  • 1 to 2 fresh jalapenos

  • 1 tbsp olive oil

  • 1 tbsp butter

  • cumin to taste

  • chili powder to taste

  • 2 tortillas

Prep

Sauce

Mix soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, finely chopped scallions, 3 cloves of garlic finely chopped and cumin to taste in a bowl, allow to sit all night in the fridge and allow flavors to combine.  (This step might be completely unnecessary with the concept change <shrug>?)

Cutting

Cut your bellpeppers and onions into thin 1 inch long strips, this makes them very easy to pick up with chopsticks.

Cut tortillas into 1/4 inch wide strips about 2-3 inches long

Cut jalapeno into paper thin slices or thicker if you prefer hot and spicy food

Cut avocados into slices and then put in a ziplock bag with 1 to 2tbsp of lemon juice, put in fridge for later

Cooking

I ended up cooking the tortilla strips first, figured it'd be nice to get this out of the way, I just tossed them in the deep fryer at 325f and allowed them to cook until they turned golden brown.

After cooking the tortillas I knew I was ready to finish up the rest of the stuff.  Put your sauce into a small pot and simmer until it gets syrupy, the idea behind this was that it will stick to the beef better than it would in a thin liquid form.  Stop cooking this when it gets syrupy.

Lay out the crushed pepper on a plate and coat both sides of your ribeye in pepper.  Think Steak Au Poivre without the salt, you'll have plenty of salt content in the sauce.  Heat up a pan large enough for the steak with olive oil and butter, medium to high heat.  I always get thick cut ribeyes roughly 1 to 1 1/2 inches in size.  I cook to rare/medium-rare which is roughly 3 to 4 minutes per side (your mileage may vary).

After cooking the steak set it aside to rest, resting is key to carving up steak, especially if you want it to be cut thin (please have a sharp knife).

Now in the leftover steakfat/butter/olive oil, toss in your bell peppers and allow them to cook for 2-3 minutes, then add onions.  Add cumin and chili powder to your liking.  I prefer mine a little crisp which is about another 2-3 minutes in.

After cooking the vegetables you're ready to start plating and carving.

I ended up plating the ingredients before carving the meat, I like resting it personally, so I put down the paper thin jalapeno slices, tortilla crisps, avocado slices, sautee'd bellpeppers and onion, and poured some of the thickened sauce into a soy sauce ramekin.  Finally carve your beef up into thin slices, cut against the grain.  I believe my slices were ~1/8th an thick and plate.

Eating

If you're using chopsticks, to get the fajita experience I found it best to eat in this process:

dip beef in sauce, relocate back to plate

put a slice of jalapeno on the beef, this reminds me of the wasabi experience

follow it up while chewing with the onion/bellpeppers that you can grab with your chopstick

grab a tortilla strip

then take a bite off the avocado to cleanse your palate, similar to the concept of pickled ginger

If you've done this right it will taste like a fajita had graced you.  I plan on adding more stuff to this later, maybe some creme fresca or something, and some cheese in some capacity to complete the fajita flavor profile.

Footnotes

This was a fun experience because I have never deconstructed food before.  Also the Next Iron Chef's episode on East meets West was influential.  

One of the fun things was the night before having shots of sauce proportions.  I had this crazy idea in my head to not use too many traditional things, partly influenced by Alton's skirt steak recipe, but wanted to go even further and remove the lime and stuff that makes it Mexicana.  I poured out the appropriate portions of a marinade I made in the past with vinegar, sugar, oil, lime juice, etc.  I then poured several portions of just soy sauce and balsamic vinegar together in various shot glasses.  I would taste the real marinade and then taste a faux-marinade.  I came to conclusion that 1:1 ratio of balsamic and soy sauce actually tasted very close.  

Another note was I originally set out to plate this a little more like a classic presentation, I was going to make a bed of sauce for the beef in a whole portion to sit on top and then plate the bell pepper and onion hash up top, sprinkled with tortilla crisps crunched up a bit.  Then off to the side was going to be the avocado.  While I was prepping this I actually realised I didn't make enough sauce to do such and thought it'd be interesting to take the plating japanese style and changed the concept up mid-cooking.