Grilled Southwestern Steak Salad

March. One year of the pandemic. I do not know how to mark one year of something that is not over — it is not an anniversary, not a celebration, not a memorial. It is a counting. One year of masks and distance and porch plates and vaccines and slow cookers and highway and the specific endurance of a woman who drives through everything and stopped for nothing and cooked every night and fed every mouth and wrote every blog post and worked on a cookbook proposal and raised four children and kept a mother alive and carried a dead sister and a dead father and a marriage and a mortgage and a 12-volt slow cooker across the state of Nebraska, fifty-two weeks, three hundred sixty-five days, one year.

I am tired. I do not say this because I am a Novak and Novaks do not say they are tired, they say they are fine, and the fine is the lie that holds the family together, the structural lie, the load-bearing lie. I am fine. I am also tired. Both are true.

The literary agent called. A publisher is interested in the cookbook proposal. 'Interested' is a word that means maybe, and maybe is a word that means hope, and hope is a word that I carry carefully, the way you carry a bird — loosely, so it can breathe, tightly enough so it does not fly away before it is ready. The publisher wants to talk. I said yes. I said yes to a phone call with a publisher about a cookbook written by a truck driver, and the absurdity and the pride and the terror of it all coexist in the same sentence the way they coexist in the same life.

I made the chili. Week 258 of this blog, and the chili is still the through-line, still the constant, still the thing that started it all and that continues through everything. Ground beef, kidney beans, tomatoes, onion, chili powder, cumin, brown sugar. The recipe has not changed. I have changed. The kitchen has changed. The world has changed. The chili is the still point in the turning world, and the still point is the comfort, and the comfort is the meal.

The chili gets the credit — it always does — but what I didn’t say in that paragraph is that on the night the publisher called, I couldn’t stand at a stove. I needed the same flavors — the cumin, the chili powder, the heat that means home — but I needed them fast, and I needed something that felt less like endurance and more like arrival. This Grilled Southwestern Steak Salad is what I made: all the boldness of the chili pantry, rearranged into something fresh, something that says maybe ‘interested’ becomes ‘yes,’ and maybe the next year looks different than the last.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs flank steak, trimmed
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
8 cups chopped romaine lettuce
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup frozen corn, thawed (or grilled fresh corn kernels)
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 avocado, sliced
1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves
1/4 cup crumbled cotija or feta cheese
For the dressing: 3 tbsp fresh lime juice, 3 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp honey, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp chili powder, salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Season the steak. Pat the flank steak dry with paper towels. In a small bowl, combine chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Rub the spice mixture evenly over both sides of the steak, then brush with olive oil.
Grill. Heat a grill or grill pan over medium-high heat. Grill the steak for 5–6 minutes per side for medium-rare, or until it reaches your preferred doneness. Transfer to a cutting board and rest for 8 minutes.
Make the dressing. While the steak rests, whisk together lime juice, olive oil, honey, cumin, chili powder, salt, and pepper in a small bowl until emulsified. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Slice the steak. Cut the rested steak against the grain into thin strips.
Assemble. Arrange the romaine on a large platter or divide among four bowls. Top with cherry tomatoes, black beans, corn, and red onion. Lay the steak slices over the top.
Finish and serve. Add avocado slices, scatter cilantro leaves and cotija over everything, then drizzle the dressing across the salad. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Grilled Southwestern Steak Salad — The Still Point in the Turning World