Dinner Menu Planning...Stage 2

Now comes the percolation and wait.  I have a long list of dishes I would like to make for our dinner party on Saturday, but a menu still needs to form from them.  A few more days thinking about it and then a trip to the farmers market on Saturday morning to see what is best - will it be the watermelon, the peaches, the corn, the eggplant...? That trip should decide what ends up on the menu that night.  So many possibilities exists right now for a fine meal. Let's hope we can pull it off!

Dinner Party Menu Planning

I started working on a menu for dinner with friends next Saturday.  First thing I usually start with is brainstorming a list of all kinds of things I might want to make, taking into account what is in season and what type of cooking is most seasonal.  Right now, I'd prefer to use the oven as little as possible and focus on something grilled, and watermelon is in season as well as corn, peppers, eggplant, squash, etc.  Once I have my brainstormed list, it's time to start fleshing out what goes with what and what I could do with each vegetable, fruit or meat.  So, on the watermelon front it might be frozen watermelon margaritas or watermelon sorbet. If we go the margarita route, might have to throw some fajitas on the grill or make puerco pibil - the latter very amenable to a slow cooker, which I can put out on the porch to avoid heating up the house.  We had such amazing pibil at Border Grill in Santa Monica, CA several years ago that we walked away with their cookbook (http://bordergrill.com).  I rarely pick up a restaurant cookbook, but this time I couldn't resist and wasn't disappointed.  Their recipe for puerco pibil turns out great.  If we go with watermelon sorbet lots of other options come to mind.  I found a great sounding watermelon sorbet recipe to try from A Sweet Pea Chef, a fellow blogger's website: http://www.asweetpeachef.com/ice-cream/watermelon-sorbet/.  This is one of my favorite parts of the dinner planning process - so many ways one could go and time to think about building on flavors, textures and design. It's a pleasurable creative process for me.  Based on what we get in today's CSA share I might get other ideas for next week.  More thoughts later...

Happy 4th! Steak and Potatoes

What could be more quintessential than grilled meat and potatoes for Independence Day in the United States?!  While there are more and more Americans choosing to be vegetarians and vegans (and yes, you are cool), there are still plenty of us carnivores. The farmers market this past weekend had beautiful fingerling potatoes, which are so easily cooked in a variety of fashions - steamed, roasted, grilled, etc.  Serve with a little herbed butter and life is good.  The potatoes pair wonderfully with a grilled steak, and one of our favorites is a marinated flank steak.  Grill and slice it thin against the grain and serve over arugula - divine. Here is our go-to marinade for flank steak, which was given to me by a dear friend many years ago.  Of all the marinade recipes we have, we almost always use this one for flank steak.

Steak Marinade

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup or more dry red wine
• 3 Tablespoons olive oil
• 2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 large clove garlic, sliced
• 3 scallions, sliced (I found purple scallions at the farmers market)
• Generous pinch of celery seed (do not use celery salt)
• Juice of 1 large lemon
• 1 flank steak, scored on edges and across grain diagonally

Preparation

Mix all ingredients together and pour over flank steak.  Marinate for 2-12 hours and turn steak halfway through marinade time.  Remove flank steak from marinade and grill to desired doneness.  Discard marinade. Be sure to let the flank steak rest for 5 minutes or so after removing from the grill, then slice thinly across the grain.

An Experiment - #1 - Cucumber-Thyme Infused Vodka

The CSA bundle this week, thanks to friends who have graciously donated their share to us while out-of-town, had oodles of cucumbers. What to make?  We recently revisited our frozen watermelon margaritas that includes grinding up cucumber as well as frozen watermelon chunks - the cucumber adds a layer of cool slightly savory flavor that rounds out the recipe - delicious!  This refreshing cocktail gave me a thought...infuse vodka with cucumber.  That sounds potentially interesting, but why stop there?  Maybe another layer of flavor is needed...perhaps thyme.  Who couldn't resist adding a herb that is growing heartily just a few steps from the kitchen door.  So, here starts the experiment.  I'll let you know in a few weeks how it turns out and what we make with it!