Catalina Steak Tacos

This is a kinda weird – but very tasty – taco combination that may leave some of the taco purists out there cold and dismayed.

I don’t really care, these were fine – if ‘untraditional’ – tacos, and, they helped deal with a bunch of leftovers after my husband left for a long-ish bidness trip.

See… our market had this terrific deal on three New York Strip steaks, and so we thought we would have a nice steak dinner before he left.

Y’know, the whole thing, marinated grilled steaks, Korean potato salad (because that’s how we roll around here) and a nice chopped romaine salad with feta and onions and tomato and such.

The steaks were kinda hoooge, so I am glad I only marinated and grilled two because, look at the leftovers.

What to do?

Well, I also had leftover Korean potato salad, that tossed salad, and there was a nicely smelly chunk of Provolone in the cheese drawer from my favorite Italian deli; so, I naturally thought: “TACOS!”

This is really more of a concept and method than a recipe, but I will give you a list of ingredients, if not actual amounts used. Play around with it and have some fun.

INGREDIENTS
Tacos:
•1 tbsp butter
•1 tbsp olive oil
•Grilled NY Strip Steak, sliced
•1 sweet onion, peeled and sliced
•Sliced peperoncini, drained
•Provolone cheese, sliced
•Catalina dressing*
•Flour tortillas

Toppings:
•Shredded lettuce
•Chopped tomato
•Diced onion
•Feta cheese
•Thousand Island dressing*

*A note on the salad dressings. The nice folk at Kraft foods have really cleaned up the contents of all of their dressings, elimination artificial flavors and colors, but, if you’d like more control of your food, here is a very respectable Catalina substitute which is ALL real stuff and contains about 1/4 of the sugar of commercial dressings. Likewise with the Thousand Island, I used Marie’s because I had a jar in the fridge. Again, if you’d like to make your own, I also have a couple of very fine options for you to try; here and here.

Salad dressing controversy out of the way; melt the butter with the olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.

Add the sliced onion and peperoncini and cook, stirring often, until the onion is soft and tender, about eight minutes.

Toss in the sliced steak, then continue to cook for another minute or two.

Drizzle with Catalina dressing and toss to coat. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, still stirring often, until everything is nicely warmed and some of the steak and onion slices are a bit charred on the edges – mebbe five more minutes.

Arrange the slice Provolone over the top, cover the pan, remove from the heat and let rest until the cheese has melted.

Hmmm, mebbe I shoulda called this a pepper steak taco?

Whie the cheese is getting all ooey gooey over the steak, warm another skillet over medium high heat, then lightly toast flour tortillas, two minutes or so per side, until each side has some browned or lightly blackened patches.

Remove to a platter and keep warm while you repeat with the remaining tacos.

To serve, spread one side of each tortilla with the Thousand Island Dressing, then arrange the cooked Catalina steak and Provolone mixture in the lower third of the tortilla.

Add the toppings of your choice (because I was using leftover chopped salad, mine had lettuce, red onion, carrot strips, Feta cheese, and crispy rice noodles), and enjoy.

I think I need to make me some more leftovers…

soon.

This entry was posted in Beef and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.