Day 113: Saturday Night Feast

99 times out of 100, we go out for dinner on Saturday night (oddly, this is highly provable now that I am into the second hundred days of this blog!).  Tonight, however, I had a strong desire to stay home so we prepared a feast on the grill.

30 days ago, I wrote an entry called "Farewell Fig Season :-(" but tonight we discovered that late season figs (or those that were picked awhile back and somehow stored) are quite good if cooked on the grill.  Just lightly coat them in olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and cook for a few minutes, turning frequently to prevent them from bursting.  We mixed them into a salad with fresh arugula, blue cheese, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.

The grill also provided us with yummy steaks and veggies tonight.  We marinated some mushrooms, a red bell pepper, half a large zucchini, and an onion in my favorite bottled salad dressing for a couple of hours.

We also peeled a sweet potato and cut it into wedges which we marinated in olive oil, garlic, rosemary, salt, and red pepper flakes for a couple of hours.

The steak marinated for 5 hours in a homemade Chimichurri sauce.  This recipe came from a Williams-Sonoma cookbook called Essentials of Grilling: 

1/4 cup olive oil

2/3 cup sherry vinegar

3/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

3 T chopped fresh oregano

6 large cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

3/4 tsp salt

All ingredients were mixed together in a dish just large enough to hold the steaks.  We made one porterhouse and one rib-eye, just to see which was better (I preferred the strip side of the Porterhouse).  The meat should marinate in the fridge and be flipped every hour or so to ensure both sides have a chance to suck up the yummy flavor of the marinade.

Quite a feast indeed!  I'm thinking we should do this more often - like, at least once every 50 days or so!