Ad hoc recipes

I enjoy browsing through my cookbooks and planning menus for the week ahead, but good recipes come from many sources. Over the weekend, I used the recipe -- more just a technique -- for flank steak that appeared in the NY Times Dining section last Wednesday. You rub the steak with salt, cracked pepper, rosemary leaves and garlic slivers and let it sit for an hour. Preheat the oven to 450 and put a cast iron skillet in to warm up a half hour before cooking. Then sear the steak in the pan (in the oven) for 5 min. on the first side and 3 to 4 min. after you turn it over. It works quite well, leaving the steak seared and tender. Ours had quite a bit of fat on it, so it was nice and juicy. To serve, slice on the diagonal and drizzle with olive oil. The recipe for what Italians call tagliata goes on to add parmesan shavings and arugula but we did fine without that. Instead, I paired it with a broccoli crustless tart from Elizabeth Minchilli that I pinned on my Recipes to Try board on Pinterest. Essentially a quiche -- you bake the cooked broccoli with a mix of eggs, cream and cheese -- it worked really well with the steak.

For a solo dinner yesterday, I stopped by The Fishery and decided once again to try shad roe. After reading some 30 Nero Wolfe mysteries with each one mentioning shad roe at some point, it's hard not to keep trying. This time I went to Google (Epicurious, oddly enough, had never heard of shad roe) and found some nice treatments. I ended up gently sauteeing the pair of roe sacs in butter in a cast iron skillet, and then serving with some caramelized shallots and a lemon caper butter sauce. I cooked a rice pilaf to accompany, though it turns out basmati rice is not ideal for this. Still not totally sold on shad roe. It's an acquired taste and hard to acquire if you have it only once a year.