What is your favorite family recipe? For me it was what my family called Spanish Steak. I can just smell it frying.
Now mind you we have absolutely no Spanish blood but still my father’s mother made what the family called Spanish Steak. Where this recipe came from I can only speculate. We lived in California and my father’s family had come during the gold rush and his mothers side had mostly been there for several generations also. Maybe it was from the early Spanish Californians or the later immigrants from the Azors that were the family’s neighbor. My fathers mother was known to me simply as Gay. Now Gay was not a sophisticated woman. She was a ranchers wife and what we would have called tough as nails. She loved her flowers and belonged to the Visalia garden club. Like most women of her generation she spent lots of time in the kitchen and while she was not a fancy cook she got most of the basics correct. Her kitchen was not large, but it had a large round oak table at one end. The stove was to the right by the back door and the sink and drain board was directly accross from the table while the refrigerator was to the left next to the opening into the living room. Gay was a short woman I do not think she was much over five feet tall. She always wore a dress and most often she had a large bib style apron on over her dress. If we were having Spanish steak we would more then likely also have asparagus and roasted potatoes.
Putnam Family Spanish Steak
1 lb. beef Round Steak 1/2″ thick
1 egg beaten
2 tablespoons of water
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper or to taste
salt and peper
Cut meat into 2 serving -size pieces. Place meat between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Pound lightly with meat mallet until well tenderized, remove plastic wrap.
In a shallow dish combine egg and water. In another shallow pan combine flour, cayenne and salt and pepper. dip meat into flour mixture then egg mixture and then again into flour mixture.
In a cast iron skillet cook meat in hot oil over medium heat until brown, turning once.