Ode to the best Sammich, THE PHILLY CHEESTEAK

I don't think any sandwich could top the Philly Cheesesteak "sammich".  Steak... GOOD.... onion...GOOD... Green Peppers...GOOD... Banana Pepper GOOOOOODDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!  Alright, alright I ripped that one off from " Friends", but found it fitting for this post.  The first time I made these out in Minot I had trouble even saying the word Cheesesteak, it just kept coming out as Cheesecake, Philly Cheesecakes hmmmmmmm I might have to copyright that phrase.  Our grill was not working so I had to put my skillet over the burners on the stove top.  This resulted in the smoke detector going off multiple times and our house smelling like fried meat for about 2-3 weeks after this particular cooking experience.  Meeehhhh what can you do?

I am sure the cheesesteaks that I make would have any Philadelphian shaking in their boots. These babies lack cheese wiz and sometimes I add *gasp* red or green bell peppers, but what can I say I am a quint essential Minnesota girl from the land of lard, lefse and lutefisk.  To be truthful I have never cooked with lard or made either lefse nor lutefisk, but I do like to put my own spin on recipes. 

At the time I made these we were house sitting/ dog watching for my parents so I actually had sufficient counter space to work with and an awesome grill right out the deck door.  We had some homemade leftover pizza dough that I had to use up so I made a couple of sub rolls and plopped them into the oven.  I believe I baked them at 425 until they are golden, but don't quite remember due to the fact I made them in August, whoops.  Next time I think I will use store bought or a different roll recipe. The subs turned out a little dense much like the cook, baaahhh dom ching.

Here we have the roll, which kind of looks like a potato.  I contemplated cutting them old school Subway style, but settled for slicing them in half to make them easier to fill.

As you can see I have sliced and diced up our onions and green bell pepper.  I also sliced the Ribeye steak as thin as I could.  This is where a meat slicer would come in mighty handy, but lets face it I have very little room in my horribly tiny kitchen so I will stick to the manual labor on my part.

Ooooohhhhhh can you smell what the Rock is cooking!  I fried up the onions in brummel and brown and a little olive oil to put a somewhat healthy spin on the sammich, but you can also use butter or more olive oil.

Stirring up the yummy goodness.  I cook everything on a cast iron skillet that I found at walmart for around $15.00.  It works great and if it gets too damaged I won't feel too guilty about chucking it.

They are starting to fry up nice, hence the 80's thumbs up.  Please pay no attention to my lack of manicured nails.  If you know me I hardly every do my nails or get them professionally done.  I cook with too much turmeric so I refuse to spend the time or money.

Lots O pictures.

That's a whole bunch of meat.  Every recipe that I have read states that in Philly they cook these until well done.  I tend to follow those directions the beef chops up into smaller pieces that way.

Adding some banana peppers for some extra zip.  These really make the sandwich!!

I tried to do a close up, but it ended up blurry due to the fact I had left my tripod at home, but you get the picture.

I decided to go against my better judgment and try to be creative.  Here I did a blue cheese cream sauce.  Unfortunately I did not have any cream so I combined blue cheese crumbles, skim milk and a little bit of flower.  This sauce ended up overpowering the actual sandwich so next time I will stick with provolone cheese or perhaps even try the traditional cheese whiz, I mean come on what's better than processed cheese in a jar that is shelf stable until 2030?  I will answer that NOTHING.

The end result.  I poured the cheese sauce over the top of the pile of meat, peppers and onions, then divided the pile into two, place the sliced sub rolls on top to warm up and then...we devoured them.

These were  THE MOST AMAZING sandwiches and if I wasn't trying to be somewhat healthy I would probably make them every week.  Well I hope to be blogging more that just every 7 months and am going to try my darndest to make that happen.  I also hope to get better at my photography skills and actually capture how yummy some of these recipes are.  Until next time, you stay classy San Diego.