If you really want to impress your date with a home cooked meal there are some things about flavor that you need to know. You have spicy, sweet, sour, bitter, savory, and salty receptors for tasting with, and in todays world satisfying just one is not enough. Chefs have been working for centuries to find the perfect combos – Sweet and Spicy, Sweet and Sour, Bitter Sweet, Spicy Savory, and some have even dared to do a triple combo Spicy Sweet and Savory. It takes a rebel to mix up flavors like that because if you get the wrong one – Sour Bitter Salty – disaster can unravel.
Well I wouldn’t call myself a rebel, but I am most certainly mischievous and sparking fires is my specialty. I found a recipe that is a quintuple combo kick! It is savory, sweet, spicy, sour, bitter, and salty but all subtle enough flavors that they don’t overpower one another. It is the haven of delicious flavor that will keep you and your date salivating all the way through dinner. He/she might even stay for dessert.
Apricot Grilled Steak
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook time: 20 minutes | Yeild: 4 servings
Ingredients:
All of these ingredients can be bought locally from your Butcher or your Farmers Market except for the hot and spicy oregano, you may have to grow that yourself.
For the Steak
- 4 New York Strip Steaks (Savory)
- 3Tbsp Olive Oil (Savory)
- Sprinkle of Hot and Spicy Oregano (Spicy)
- You can always substitute regular oregano with a few drops of hot sauce
- Salt and Pepper to Taste (Salty)
For the topping
- 1/2lb. Apricots sliced in halves and pitted (Sweet)
- 1 head of Radicchio chopped(Bitter)
- 1/4 cup Goat Cheese (Savory)
- 3 Stalks Mint leaves (Spicy, Sweet)
- 1/8 cup Red Wine Vinegar (Sour)
- 2 Tbsp Brown Sugar, heaping (Sweet)
Instructions:
You can cook this on the BBQ which is the way that I prefer, but for the sake of convenience I will tell you how to cook it on the stove.
Preheat a skillet over medium high heat on the stove. While the pan warms up you’re going to want to prepare all of your ingredients because you really want to watch your food as it cooks. There is a moment of perfection with this recipe and you don’t want to over do it.
To prepare all the ingredients: Season the steaks with salt and pepper and set aside. In a bowl mix together the mint, red wine vinegar, and brown sugar. Toss in the apricot halves and radicchio to evenly coat them in the mixture.
Throw the steaks into the pan and cook them less than 5 minutes on each side until they are about medium rare to medium all the way through. When the steaks are cooked drizzle them with olive oil and sprinkle oregano over the top. Slice the steaks thinly about 1/8″ thick.
Place the apricots and radicchio leaves into the pan face down to sear and caramelize them on one side. 
Just when they start to get a charred look on the bottom (moment of perfection!) lay them over the sliced steak. Add some goat cheese to the top and drizzle with the red wine vinegar mixture from before.