Beef Pinwheels with Brown Butter Hollandaise, Happy Birthday Buddy

My foodie doodie turned 3 recently so for his birthday dinner I made him this meal.  He ate it pretty well but then saw the cake and it was all down hill from there.  Oh to be 3 again and get to have your cake and eat it too, but us adults that cannot live by cake alone must have some sustenance.  This meal provides just that.

For this recipe I used beef skirt steak.  The skirt comes in two forms, maxi and midi.  Just kidding there are inside and outside skirt steaks.  The inside skirt is the tranversus abdominus muscle.  The outside is part of the diaphragm (the other part is called a hanging tender or hanger steak).  Maxi and midi would be better I guess but we are stuck with the names for now, maybe we should start a petition.

These muscles are long, thin and often tough but very flavorful.  To deal with the tenderness issues these cuts are tenderized using a mechanical device. I like the Jaccard.  They can also be tenderized using marination with acid, like fajitas (these are the traditional fajita muscle).

If you’ve never used brown butter  before I highly recommend it.  It is a great little trick to change the flavor of a recipe and give it a little nuttiness.  Brown butter doesn’t come from brown cows, how now brown cow, but is made by cooking the butter in a sauce pan until the milk solids in the butter brown.

There are two reactions going on here Maillard browning of the proteins and carmelization of the sugars, both reactions create the unique nutty flavor that you get from brown butter.  Brown butter is da bomb, do people even say that anymore?

Also I know I’ve already done a hollandaise sauce, but really can you go wrong with it?  I mean it’s sooooo good.

Recipe

Serves: 4-6

Prep Time: 15 min ;  Cook Time: 25 min

Ingredients

• Pinwheels
  • 1 1/2 lbs of skirt steak
  • Feta cheese
  • Fresh spinach
  • Kosher salt
  • Pepper
  • Cavender’s Greek Seasoning (optional)
• Brown Butter Hollandaise
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice

Preheat oven to 475

Pinwheels

Start by trimming your skirt steak of excess fat, then tenderize it using your Jaccard, they really are essential tools.  Be sure you hit every part of the skirt steak with the tenderizer.  The beef will flatten out.

Season your steak on both sides with a little kosher salt and pepper.  Mix your feta with some Cavender’s if you’d like (I likes a lot).

Press the feta on to the flattened steak, then cover with a double layer of fresh spinach.

Start from one of the short ends and roll the steak up like a cinnamon roll, yum…. cinnamon…..  Sorry, the meat fibers should run parallel to the direction you are rolling.  Toothpick the end of the steak back into the rest.

Season the outside with salt and pepper and cook for 25 min.

Slice in 1 inch think “rolls”.

Brown Butter Hollandaise

Melt the butter in a sauce pan on medium heat, shake the pan occasionally.

Once melted it will become foamy, keep cooking and shaking, or stirring, occasionally until it clarifies and brown flecks appear, about 5 min.  Cook a little longer, until the butter smells a little nutty.  Turn the heat down to low.

1. While the butter is cooking, whisk the egg yolks and lemon juice.  Then add it slowly, while whisking, to the melted butter.  Don’t stop whisking ever, if you add the egg and lemon too quickly the egg will cook and coagulate and you’ll end up with lumpy hollandaise rather than smooth and creamy hollandaise. Smooth and creamy is always better.

Serve while warm, pour over the pinwheels and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.  Seriously this nutty flavored hollandaise is quite dreamy.