Leftover Steak, Leftover Salad: Steak Salad!

     Down in South America and around the Pacific, they make ceviche, which would be sushi if it wasn't for the citrus juice or other acid, which as-good-as* cooks the fish, and if it had fewer ingredients.  By the time the dish had worked its way as far north as Mexico, some clever cook had looked at carne apache, and dreamed up a beef version of ceviche.

     One of the Broad Ripple brewpubs has had a "ceviche salad" on the menu for years.  It's good, but it uses cooked beef, which is more suited to pub fare.  (I don't know if they cook it ahead of time or keep it sliced in thin strips and ready to go on the grill; either way would be quick and safe).  I like it, and have kept the notion filed away for trying at home.

     Monday night, I had leftover rare steak and leftover salad with plenty of fixings; on Sunday, I taken Tamara to the grocery hungry and ended up cooking three steaks for the two of us that evening. Steak number three was left over.  Grilled steak keeps well for a short time; I ziplock-bagged it, squeezed out the air and put it in the freezer.

     So there I was, thawing steak in the microwave (ours has a "thaw" function that works pretty well).  I fried a strip of bacon while the steak was thawing.  Once thawed, I sliced the still-cold steak into strips about 1/8" by 1/4" by an inch, browned it quickly in the bacon fat and set it on paper towel on a plate under a saucepan lid to drain.

     The salad was a "spring greens" blend, to which I added celery, carrots, sliced green onion, red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes and black olives.  I snipped up the greens with scissors -- I love greens, but there's no need to munch through a whole leaf at a time! --added the cut-up veggies, dressed (a good Italian), added the steak and mixed like a madwoman.

     It was marvelous!  The steak still had plenty of the grilled flavor and aroma, and all the freezing, thawing and recooking had only made it more tender.  It's a dice roll whenever you do something like that, but it worked out nicely this time.
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* In terms of flavor, that is.  Wikipedia goes on about the risks, which are the same as the risks for sushi.