For many of us spring has arrived. Sunny days and warm temperatures call for grilling, and tonight I just so happened to have access to a grill...and a steak.
Before grilling the sirloin steak rare I coated it with just a little bit of olive oil, salt, and fresh-ground black pepper. After the grill was nice and hot I cooked the steak for just a few minutes on each side, leaving it seared on the outside and tender and rare on the inside. After removing it from the grill I let it sit for a few more minutes before slicing it, allowing the juices to circulate and settle.
While the steak cooked and sat, I prepared an arugula salad as the final resting place for the lovely steak. Before I ate it, of course. The salad was simple--just baby arugula, chopped fresh cherry tomatoes, and finely chopped red onion. I tossed it all together with a vinaigrette composed of blood-orange olive oil, lemon juice, salt, black pepper, crush red pepper, and a raw egg yolk.
I tossed the dressing with the salad and topped it with the sliced steak. It's a simple and absolutely delicious dish for these delightful spring days.
This year's Thanksgiving was one of the best. It's truly one of my favorite holidays--good food, warm fires, conversation and laughter, and eating, eating, eating. I'm still full from Thursday.
Seriously.
This year we started off in the afternoon with bowls of mulligatawny soup, meat, cheese, crackers, shrimp, and veggies as the fragrance of roast turkey and mulled wine filled the air.
When dinner was served we indulged in fennel salad, cranberry sauce with pears and oranges, ambrosia, rosemary and garlic smanging mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts with walnuts and garlic, and stuffing muffins.
The turkey was one of my best yet--I think I've really perfected my technique. The skin of the turkey was golden and crispy after being coated in butter, sage, rosemary, and thyme (cue singing now), and the flavors of apples, onions, garlic, celery, and carrots flavored the turkey from the inside out. I also made a killer gravy from the buttery drippings to accompany the turkey.
And of course no meal is complete without a nice glass of wine. Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving this year. Cheers!
Sitting at the bar with my older sister at Boda and enjoying creative cocktails with Thai tapas, as rain outside mists the streets of Portland, Maine, is an excellent way to begin any evening. Especially when those cocktails involve Thai Basil and ginger, and the cuisine entails oysters, quail eggs, fiddleheads, pork belly, and quail.
I ordered the Thai Basil Tom Collins, which was light with citrus flavors and dancing with just bit of spiciness and anise flavor from the Thai Basil. Sonya sipped on a ginger cocktail, the exact ingredients unknown to me, alas. In any case, I can vouch for the tastiness of the drink. Both of these cocktails made lovely pairings for the Thai food we’d soon be devouring.
First up were oysters served raw with chili-lime dressing and fried shallots. Each oyster not only delivered the quintessential Atlantic Ocean brininess, but also surprised the taste buds with spicy chili and citrusy lime. The fried shallots were a little over the top but still pretty good. If the flavor of the oysters is overpowered by the shallots then you can always take some off, but the crispiness added an interesting texture when juxtaposed with the raw, slippery oysters. The delightful sea flavor of the raw oysters doesn’t really come through until after the initial flavors of the garnishes wanes. It’s an interesting experience with waves of flavor and texture, but in my opinion plain raw oysters are still the way to go if you want to really be at one with the oyster.
Well, well, well--we've come to the last competitor in the throwdown. Pat busted out two pounds of bacon in an attempt to win over the judges. Because, come on, who doesn't love bacon? On his menu was German potato salad, pineapple-jalapeno margarita with candied bacon, and a steak slider with grilled peppers and onions and a blue cheese sauce.
I became seriously nervous when I saw that Pat had bought all that bacon. One pound went into the potato salad and the other was used for candied bacon. The idea for candied bacon on a pineapple-jalapeno margarita was brilliant. To make the candied bacon he just coated the pieces of bacon in brown sugar, lied them flat on a baking sheet covered in foil, and cooked them in the oven until the sugar had caramelized and the bacon was cooked through. The jalapenos added a nice heat to the margarita (though I added a little more to mine for an extra kick), and the candied bacon was certainly an interesting and delicious garnish. Candied bacon is definitely making an appearance at the next bacon party.
Pat used a family recipe for the German potato salad, and I hated to admit that it was one of the best potato salads I've tasted. He also grilled up some steak, onions, and peppers and the slider and created a lovely blue cheese concoction for the slider. The steak was cooked perfectly--nice and rare--and the sauce was . As I sampled and enjoyed Pat and Sonya's culinary creations I started to worry that I was about to be put to shame in this slider throwdown.
It was time to the face the judges--who do you think would win? Would it be my mango-avocado dip with fried wonton chips, hibiscus margarita, and seared Ahi tuna slider? Or would it be Sonya's waldorf salad, apple-pear margarita, and sausage slider? Or would it be Pat's German potato salad, jalapeno-pineapple margarita with candied bacon, and grilled steak slider? Place your bets!
While I was satisfied with my hibiscus margarita, seared Ahi tuna slider, and avocado-mango dip, I knew Sonya and Pat were forces to be reckoned with in the kitchen. Sonya used apple to tie all her dishes together and created waldorf salad, an apple-pear margarita, and a sausage slider.
Sonya even roasted her own red peppers to create a tasty mayonnaise spread for the sliders. She roasted them on the gas top stove and then placed them in a ziplock bag. The steam in the bag made it easy to remove the skins, and they tasted so much better than store-bought roasted red peppers in a jar. It's definitely a neat trick that I'll be using myself in the future!
The salad was crisp and delicious, the margarita was nice and smooth, and both complemented the slider perfectly. The best part about Sonya's dishes is that they all went together really nicely--a sip of the margarita made you want to take a bite of the slider, and a taste of the slider made you want a forkful of waldorf salad. The incorporation of apple into every dish was a nice touch. Maybe too nice...
