By The beach trip. Port Aransas. Three hundred and twelve dollars. Two nights at a campground. Seven people in a van that smells like bread and has no AC and makes a sound on the highway that Luis says is "just the transmission being dramatic." We left at 4 AM on Thursday — bakery schedule, because 4 AM is the only time my body knows how to start a day — and we drove nine hours across Texas with the windows down and the radio on and Camila singing along to every song including the ones in English she doesn't fully understand, which meant she improvised the lyrics, which meant the radio was background music to a five-year-old's freestyle concert for nine hours, which was either torture or joy depending on your tolerance for creativity at volume.
The ocean. My children had never seen the ocean. I had never seen the ocean. Forty years old and I had never seen the ocean because the ocean is far from Anapra and far from El Paso and far from every place I have ever lived, and the first time I saw it — standing in the parking lot of Port Aransas beach at 2 PM with the wind in my hair and the salt on my lips — I cried. Not because it was beautiful, though it was. Because it was big. Because it was the biggest thing I had ever seen, and I am a woman who has seen poverty and violence and death and birth and a bakery rising from nothing, and none of it was as big as the ocean. The ocean made everything small. The ocean made my problems small. The ocean was Rosa's caldo de res in the sky — vast, warm, nourishing, impossible to finish.
Diego ran into the water and was knocked down by a wave and came up laughing. Sofia stood at the edge and let the water touch her feet and declared the ocean "salty, which makes sense." Isabella read on the beach. Luis Jr. body-surfed with a confidence that is either brave or foolish (both, probably). Camila ate sand. Actually ate it. She put a handful of sand in her mouth and tasted it and said, "This is crunchy," and I cleaned her mouth out with a water bottle and thought: of course. Of course Camila's first response to the ocean is to eat it.
I cooked on the campground grill — carne asada, grilled corn, rice from a pot on the camp stove. Beach carne asada. The smoke rose and mixed with the salt air and the combination — mesquite smoke and ocean — was a new smell, a smell I had never smelled, and I added it to the library of smells in my head, the library that includes Rosa's kitchen and the bakery at 4 AM and the desert after rain and now this, the beach at dusk with meat on the grill and my children's laughter coming from the direction of the water.
At night we slept in the van and in a tent we borrowed from Carmen. Luis and I in the van. The older kids in the tent. Camila wherever Camila wanted to be, which was everywhere. I lay in the van with the windows cracked and listened to the ocean, which sounds like nothing I have ever heard — not like music, not like traffic, not like the bakery oven or the neighborhood dogs or any of the sounds that make up my life. The ocean sounds like breathing. The ocean sounds like the world inhaling and exhaling, and I thought: this is what rest sounds like. This is what it sounds like when the world is not asking anything of you, when the bread doesn't need making and the children don't need driving and the only sound is the world breathing. And I fell asleep. And it was the best sleep I've had in years.
The carne asada I made that night at the campground was nothing fancy — just meat on a grill, the way I’ve done it a hundred times — but the smoke and the salt air turned it into something I will never be able to fully recreate and will spend the rest of my life chasing. This chimichurri steak is my closest answer: the same fire, the same simple cut, but with a bright herb sauce that tastes like the wind off the water, like garlic and parsley and something green and alive. Make it outside if you can, with the windows open at the very least, and let the smoke do what smoke does.
Steaks with Chimichurri (Churrasco)
Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 2 lbs skirt steak or flank steak, trimmed
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
- Chimichurri:
- 1 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, packed, finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup fresh oregano leaves (or 1 tbsp dried)
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
Instructions
- Make the chimichurri. Combine parsley, garlic, oregano, red pepper flakes, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Stir well and let sit at room temperature for at least 15 minutes so the flavors come together. The sauce can be made up to a day ahead and refrigerated; bring to room temperature before serving.
- Season the steak. Pat the steak dry with paper towels. Rub all over with olive oil, then season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, and smoked paprika. Let it rest at room temperature for 15 minutes while the grill heats.
- Heat the grill. Preheat a charcoal or gas grill to high heat (about 450—500°F). For campfire cooking, let the coals burn down to glowing red with a light ash. You want intense, direct heat.
- Grill the steak. Place steak directly over the high heat. Grill skirt steak 3—4 minutes per side for medium-rare, or flank steak 4—5 minutes per side. Do not move the steak while it sears — let it develop a dark crust before flipping. Cook to an internal temperature of 130°F for medium-rare.
- Rest and slice. Transfer steak to a cutting board and let it rest, uncovered, for 5 minutes. This keeps the juices in the meat. Slice thinly against the grain — this is not optional, it’s the difference between tender and tough.
- Serve. Arrange sliced steak on a platter and spoon chimichurri generously over the top. Pass extra chimichurri at the table. Serve with grilled corn, rice, or warm tortillas.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 520 | Protein: 42g | Fat: 37g | Carbs: 3g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 610mg