Friday Night Dinner
Dinner recently has consisted of Tuna Helper (I KNOW! I know.), pizza, supermarket scrounging, or hastily prepared chicken or fish. The whole AU House has been retardedly busy. bostonsappho is getting ready for her enormous yearly convention, norwichtoboston has been getting spat up upon seven days a week, the Wife just started her summer program, and I am getting ready to be to descended upon by 250 high school students. It's a good time for all of us.
We finally took some time on Friday to cook together. The lettuce in the garden was ready for picking and we had some steak that needed to be cooked so we came to the very clever solution of making a steak salad.
I also decided to make strawberry shortcake, so I started by macerating the strawberries in balsamic vinegar:
I marinated the steak in some sesame ginger dressing, worcestershire sauce, crushed garlic, fresh grated ginger, chopped shallot, fresh chives, and fresh parsley. I didn't take a pic of it because, frankly, marinating meat never looks all that good.
When we were finally ready the Wife fired up the grill:
If you're astute, you'll realize that that's the pic from the kebab dinner I posted last. But it's a pic of the Wife grilling, and it's the only one I currently have.
While she did that, I went out to the garden to dig up some lettuce:
Bostonsappho made me pose with the lettuce:
Once inside, Bostonsappho took care of the lettuce and I toasted some pine nuts:
And sauteed some asparagus:
At some point, Bostonsappho made the outrageously good suggestion to turn an end of her wife's hommade baguette into garlic bread crumbs:
And then we toasted them in oven:
These have been added to the list of foods that I want at my last meal. Not on lettuce, because srsly, there's not going to be a vegetable in sight at my final meal, but somehow I will work these in. Yum. Holy cow. I actually had to slap Norwich's hand when I'd noticed she'd eaten half the tray.
We picked some peas from the garden, crumbled some feta, chopped some tomatoes, and waited for the steak to be ready. Once it was, I sliced it, and we assembled the salad:
Y'all, if there were going to vegetables at my last meal, it would be this salad. It was really, really good. And I made a fresh vinaigrette that turned out nicely. I didn't have anything to mix it in so I used the martini shaker.
After we recovered a little, I started on desert. First I made the dough for the shortbread and put them into the oven to bake. I thought I'd taken a pic of them, but I guess I didn't!
While they were baking, I made a port wine reduction and added the syrup to the strawberries that had been macerating for... a few hours, at least. While they sat a little more I made the whipped cream:
Really. Nothing beats a fresh whipped cream.
Once everything was ready I assembled it on a classy paper plate. For the extra touch of élégance I drizzled a little of the port wine reduction on the plate:
We finally took some time on Friday to cook together. The lettuce in the garden was ready for picking and we had some steak that needed to be cooked so we came to the very clever solution of making a steak salad.
I also decided to make strawberry shortcake, so I started by macerating the strawberries in balsamic vinegar:
I marinated the steak in some sesame ginger dressing, worcestershire sauce, crushed garlic, fresh grated ginger, chopped shallot, fresh chives, and fresh parsley. I didn't take a pic of it because, frankly, marinating meat never looks all that good.
When we were finally ready the Wife fired up the grill:
If you're astute, you'll realize that that's the pic from the kebab dinner I posted last. But it's a pic of the Wife grilling, and it's the only one I currently have.
While she did that, I went out to the garden to dig up some lettuce:
Bostonsappho made me pose with the lettuce:
Once inside, Bostonsappho took care of the lettuce and I toasted some pine nuts:
And sauteed some asparagus:
At some point, Bostonsappho made the outrageously good suggestion to turn an end of her wife's hommade baguette into garlic bread crumbs:
And then we toasted them in oven:
These have been added to the list of foods that I want at my last meal. Not on lettuce, because srsly, there's not going to be a vegetable in sight at my final meal, but somehow I will work these in. Yum. Holy cow. I actually had to slap Norwich's hand when I'd noticed she'd eaten half the tray.
We picked some peas from the garden, crumbled some feta, chopped some tomatoes, and waited for the steak to be ready. Once it was, I sliced it, and we assembled the salad:
Y'all, if there were going to vegetables at my last meal, it would be this salad. It was really, really good. And I made a fresh vinaigrette that turned out nicely. I didn't have anything to mix it in so I used the martini shaker.
After we recovered a little, I started on desert. First I made the dough for the shortbread and put them into the oven to bake. I thought I'd taken a pic of them, but I guess I didn't!
While they were baking, I made a port wine reduction and added the syrup to the strawberries that had been macerating for... a few hours, at least. While they sat a little more I made the whipped cream:
Really. Nothing beats a fresh whipped cream.
Once everything was ready I assembled it on a classy paper plate. For the extra touch of élégance I drizzled a little of the port wine reduction on the plate: