Greek dinner with friends

“I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, 'Don't even act like I didn't get that doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... It's in my file at home. ...Under "D".”

 - Mitch Hedberg

Ok so the quote has absolutely nothing to do with this post but it made me laugh so hard that I had to use it!  Yesterday we had two good friends come over for dinner, Kaylee and Jay.  We've been planning to get together with them for a while but never got around to it until now.  We decided the best thing to do would be to hang out at our house for dinner and walk over to this cute little gelato shop after for a sweet ending.  

Jackson's Bistro

The coffee actually looks like this

Outdoor seating with view of the channel

Their pineapple gelato with a scoop of lemon on top

Are you jealous yet?  This is just one of the many reasons I love living in downtown Tampa!  So I figured they could come over to our house and it would be a relaxing evening.  Plus I'm not going to lie I love any excuse to cook for others and try new recipes.  However, I had a hard time thinking of what to cook this time.  Jay is from Ireland and for some reason it always intimidates me when I think of cooking for people from other countries.  I think I associate other countries as having better chefs = better foods = pickier eaters.  Anyway I finally decided on a Greek themed menu of grilled flank steak, greek salad, pita with Tzatziki dip, and orzo pasta.  I found the recipe for the steak and dip through this amazing downloadable recipe book written by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.  The nice thing about their recipes is for the most part they are low in salt and fat!  You can download the recipe book for free here.  Warning... it is 160 pages long so you may not want to just push print, but you can save the PDF version to your computer and pull up the recipes you want and just print the (which is what I did for this recipe).  The whole meal turned out great and I love Greek food so I'm so excited to add this to my recipe repertoire!  Two of the recipes are below!

Greek-Style Flank Steak from NHLBI


Ingredients: 

Nice way to plate your steak

1 1lb flank steak
For Marinade:
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp fresh oregano, rinsed, dried, and chopped (or 1/2 tsp dried) (I used fresh)

1 Tbsp garlic, minced (about 2-3 cloves)


Combine marinade ingredients in a large bowl
Place steak in a gallon size ziplock bag
Pour in marinade
Let the steak marinate for at least 20 minutes or up to 24 hours turning several times
*I used a ziplock bag rather than just putting it in a dish and pouring the marinade as I feel it better distributes the marinade when it is in the ziplock bag
Grill or broil!
To Grill: preheat grill and grill until both sides are slightly charred and center is still slightly pink
To Broil:preheat oven broiler on high with rack 3 inches from heat source, broild steak for 10 minutes on each side
Remove steak from heat source (Grill or Broiler) and allow to sit for at least 5 minutes (so juices distribute)
Slice across the grain!  This is really important if you slice with the grain you'll end up with tough meat but across the grain produces a melt-in-your-mouth meat


Greek Tzatziki Sauce (Tangy Yogurt Sauce) from NHLBI
Ingredients:
1 C cucumber, peeled, seeded and minced

glass dishes are perfect for tzatziki

1 C nonfat plain yogurt (I used Greek yogurt for added protein and tangy-ness)
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp fresh dill, rinsed, dried and chopped (or 1 tsp dried) (I used dried)
1 Tbsp garlic minced (about 2-3 cloves)
1/2 tsp salt (I used sea salt to keep with the authentic Greek taste)


Combine all ingredients for yogurt sauce
Set aside for at least 15 minutes or up to 1 hour (refrigerate)
* I needed to make this in advance so I combined the yogurt, dill, garlic and salt and placed them in 1 dish and placed the chopped cucumber in another and last minute mixed the lemon juice, cucumber and yogurt mix together
This would make an awesome dip for a party!!!

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