Tonight we wanted to have fun with dinner and try cooking some new things (along with some old favorites).  So we made ceviche, steak with a special Texas Spice Rub, Hasselback potatoes (they look cool and taste delicious), and apple crisp.  The cevice and the Hasselback potatoes were the new things, and the steak and apple crisp were old favorites.

Here is what the full meal looked like:

Ceviche:

For the ceviche, we used a recipe from the cook book: United Tastes of Texas (thanks again Jay and Jean).   First we cleaned and cut up shrimp and mahi-mahi into bite size pieces.  Then we juiced 1 lemon and 2 limes.  We added tequila to the lemon/lime juice and then let the fish sit in the juice/tequila mixture for 2 hours (in the fridge).  The lime/lemon juice “cooks” the fish. This is due to the acidity in the juice. Then we chopped up green onions, cilantro, and tomatoes and added that to the mix.  It’s important to add the vegetables at the end; otherwise they get soggy. We used trifle dishes to plate the ceviche.  Ceviche is basically fish cooked without heat, but with lemon and /or lime juice instead.

Texas Rubbed Steak

For the steak, we made a Texas Spice Rub (salt, chile powder, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper and paprika), rubbed it on the steak and let sit an hour, and then grilled them on each side to get them brown and for the grill marks and finished them in the oven.  This recipe is from United Tastes of Texas as well; we just don’t use quite as much chile powder as the recipe calls for.

Hasselback Potatoes

For the hasselback potatoes, we sort of followed a recipe we found on the food network fromRee Drummond (“Pionneer Woman”).  These are so fun to make: first you scrub a medium potato, then you slice down into it but not all the way through.  You can rest the potato on chop sticks and only slice down to the chop sticks to keep from cutting all the way through.  Then you coat the potato with a mix of melted butter, olive oil and chopped green onions and salt and pepper.  (The recipe calls for softened butter and chives, but we thought if we melted the butter it would get further down between the slices of potatoes.)  Then you cook at a preheated oven (450 degrees) for at least 60 minutes.  We found that they weren’t completely cooked through even then so we turned the oven down to 350 and cooked for another 15 minutes.

Apple Crisp

Finally for the apple crisp, we peeled and chunked 5 apples. Then we mixed a little sugar, flour and cinnamon with the apples. For the topping, we creamed butter with sugar and then added flour, oats, and more cinnamon.  We sprinkled the topping all over and baked it…unfortunately we ate it before we took a photo of the final thing but it was yummy.