Steak and Salad

Monday was a partial epic fail on the grilled steak and accompanying salad.  Here's the evidence.

The stuff for the lemon vinaigrette, thyme, lemon juice, red pepper, honey, shallots, olive oil and salt.

The finished dressing.

The salad fixins, strawberries, endive, raddicho, and boston lettuce.

The steak ready to hit the grill.  Here's where the epic fail part comes in.  At this point, I had let the grill run for 25 minutes or so and it hadn't gotten above 275 degrees.  I gave it a quick shot on the grill and quickly realized that it wasn't going to work.  So I switched to a cast iron skillet on the stove.

I'd say it worked out all right.

The final plating.

Duck Hash

This dish has a much more elequent name, however given that the final presentation didn't work out the way I wanted because I didn't have milk for the yellow corn meal pancakes, hash made more sense.  This was supposed to be barbecued duck with yellow corn panckaes and mango tomatillo salsa.

The stuff for the barbecue sauce.  Onions, tomatoes, garlic, brown sugar, cayenne, honey, worchestshire sauce, ketchup, paprika, dijon mustard, and ancho chile powder.

The onions and garlic got sweated in a bit of butter.

In go the tomatoes.

The rest of the ingredients go into the pool.

The stuff for the duck.  Duck legs, the finished barbecue sauce and chicken broth.

The duck ready for a three hour sauna in a 300 degree oven.

Duck 2/3 of the way through.

The finished duck.

The stuff for the salsa.  Limes, tomatillos, mango, jalapenos, cilantro, honey, salt and pepper.

The completed salsa.

The stuff for the duck hash.  The completed duck, cilantro, corn salt and pepper.

The corn got fried off in a bit of olive oil.

Everybody in the pool.

The finished plate.  I had envisioned a pancake on the bottom topped with the duck and salsa but alas this was the result.

Photo Dump Time

Man I'm way behind, so we're just going to go on an all out photo dump of my exploits over the last week.

Last Sunday was marinated grilled chicken thighs with a papaya tomatillo salsa.

Monday night was vegetable soup I ended up serving with a couple of brats.

Tuesday was a crab cake po boy sandwich.

 Wednesday was angel hair pasta with shrimp and tomatoes and a spinach salad.

The last night was beef braised in wine.