2nd Anniversary Dinner:

We stopped into the Wegman's supermarket on Tuesday night to look for a suitably special meat selection for our anniversary dinner and saw a couple of strip steaks that were just about the perfect size and at a decent price.

In thinking about what to do with these, I wanted something that was simple enough so as not to overpower the perfection that is a nice steak, but also something that would be a good mixing of our American and Japanese cultures. What I found was a recipe for Chimichurri sauce, a light, flavorful steak sauce that is popular in Argentina, that I modified to take advantage of some Japanese ingredients that we had in the pantry.

Chimichurri is usually made with white wine vinegar, parsley, cilantro, garlic, onion, and lime juice. I substituted rice wine vinegar, shiso for the cilantro, and kabosu juice (kabosu is somewhat similar to yuzu for those familiar with these asian citrus fruits), and what resulted was a nice, sparkley sauce that helped cut through the richness of the beef (and the egg, as pictured).

To go with the steaks, I sauteed some mushrooms in garlic and olive oil, Mina made some dinner rolls, and we had a nice salad. A nice California zinfandel topped the meal off.