Believe it or not, one of the things I miss most about college is the food. Meals at university dining halls may not seem so inspiring to most, and of course Virginia Tech had its own share of unsavory cafeteria meals. But we have West End Market, which makes up for it all. Serving up steak by the ounce, fresh lobster, gourmet soups & salads and mouthwatering wraps, it is hands down the most popular dining center on campus. Built relatively recently in 1999, it has since received several awards, most recently earning Virginia Tech the title of No.1 Best Campus Food in the United States in the 2010 edition of The Princeton Review! You read right, NUMBER ONE in the nation, bitches.
The dish I miss most from West End Market is without question the London Broil. It’s marinated just right, cooked to perfection, and the mushroom sauce that it’s topped with harmonizes so well with the steak. I still suffer from cravings for it, three years after graduating from Tech. I’ve talked to some other alumni and it appears that this is a common condition that hits during post-college life. I just do not have the same luxury that most of them do to make the 4-5 hour drive down from DC to quench such cravings every so often, since I am now on the opposite side of the country from my beloved London Broil.
The other day, as I was daydreaming once again about those moist, tender cuts of steak, I got curious and tried doing a search to see if there was a recipe out there to replicate West End’s signature London Broil. Sure enough, there was. I nearly peed my pants with excitement! I scurried off to the supermarket to gather the ingredients and set to work on preparing my favorite college meal. Instead of marinating for 3-4 hours as the recipe instructed, I let the steak soak in the marinade overnight to make sure the flavors really sank in. Also, we don’t have a gas grill that we can use, so we had to improvise in the way that we cooked the steak — I seared them a couple minutes on each side on the stove, then stuck them in the oven for approximately 7 minutes.
…and devour it I did. To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed. The London Broil itself came out pretty good, although it probably could have been better had it been cooked on an actual grill. I think the failure was mainly in the mushroom sauce. I’m not sure if the recipe has it all wrong or if the type of teriyaki sauce I bought was too strong, but all I could taste was teriyaki, and it kind of ruined the London Broil altogether. Absent were the flavorful notes and subtle mushroom taste that I had loved so much in West End’s London Broil. It just wasn’t the same. And so my quest for West End’s London Broil continues. If one of you Hokies out there has mastered how to recreate this nostalgic dish, please share your recipe with me! Because if I don’t find a way soon, I may just have to kidnap one of the cooks at J.P.’s Chop House at West End to personally make it for me….
P.S. This was the 100th blog post on our blog! I’m personally impressed with myself that I’ve been able to consistently stick with this blogging project thusfar. Truth be told, it’s me blogging 95% of the time and Dan only 5%, so I’m not sure if you can really call it a couple’s blog… ::sigh:: Gotta step it up, hubby!