Coffee-Rubbed Steak

Once a year - usually in December - I clear out my stack of food magazines.

I typically keep the current year under the coffee table and the prior year stacked on the bookshelf. At the end of the year, I go through the issues on the bookshelf, tear out the recipes I want and recycle the rest. Then, I move the current year to the bookshelf to make room for the upcoming year's issues.

While I'm going through the magazines from two years ago I often find recipes that I bookmarked to make back when the magazine was new, but for whatever the reason, never got around to making.

This coffee-rubbed steak was one of them. Leaner cuts of beef were on sale last week, so put it on for last week.

For the most part I really liked this. The potatoes were just OK, and I accidentally cooked my steak longer than I should have, but the rub was delicious.

I love coffee, and mixed with the chili powder and the Mrs. Dash Spicy Blend that I used as a swap for the steak seasoning, it gave what would have been boring piece of steak a nice kick.

I even made the parsley butter, but that didn't add anything to the final dish. I love butter, but with all the spice you couldn't even taste it. If I'm going to add a lot of extra fat/calories to a dish it has to be really worth it. And honestly, it wasn't in this case.

Lastly, instead of the succotash that came with the recipe I did a bastard-ized version with black beans and jalapeno. I followed the same method, but used an entire jalapeno with some of the ribs left intact and left out the thyme. Worked well and was great on lettuce with the leftover steak the next day.