Saturday, September 17, 2005

Welcome to Greg's Food: Steak and Caramelized Onions in Red Wine with Sauteed Eggplant and Squash

Well here it is: the first post in my food blog. I figure this will be a good place to share the food that I make. I don't know if anyone would want to try making the food that I have here, but I will include what I did just in case. Let me know if you try any of these :)

This was my lunch today, and it was good. I was given a London Broil by the Oakleys, so i figured I would use that. I went over to thier house today and picked some vegetables - 2 eggplants, 2 squash, a green pepper (not spicy) and a red pepper (spicy). I brought them back to our house and started.

Steak and caramelized onions with eggplant and squash.

1 London broil, 1.5-2 lbs.
2 medium yellow onions, cut into half moons.
1/2 cup red wine (I used Merlot - use a wine for drinking and cooking, none of that cooking wine stuff)
2 japanese eggplants, diced
2 small yellow sqaush, diced
1 cherry pepper, julienned
1 green (not spicy) pepper, julienned
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
salt
pepper
paprika
dried parsley

Heat up a skillet with olive oil to medium heat. Add onions. Let them cook for a couple of minutes, then salt and turn down to low.
Rub london broil with salt, pepper and paprika on both sides. Cook to medium-rare (or whatever you prefer; My preference is a cast-iron grill pan, but you can cook it however you want). Medium-rare is about 8 minutes on each side.
Back at the onions - after they have been cooking down for about 10 minutes and are starting to get a little bit brown, add the wine and let the alcohol boil away. This should leave red-looking onions. Remove the onions to a plate.
In the same pan, add some more olive oil and turn up heat to high. When the oil is hot, add the squash, eggplant and peppers and parsley. Heat through for a couple of minutes, then turn down to medium and add in the garlic. This will keep the garlic from burning.

When the steak is done, let it sit for 10-15 minutes, or all of the juices will just spill out onto the plate (boo!).

Assemble to your preference - I put down some of the onions and placed a few slices of the steak on top. You could leave the steak whole and put the onions on top and serve family-style. I put a couple of spoonfuls of the vegetables on the side, and sat outside on my picnic bench with some red wine.

It was really nice. The steak was perfect; letting it sit for 10 minutes really helped it stay flavorful. The onions were great, the sweetness of the wine and caramelization were playing with the salt that I added. The vegatables were great; by having relatively big pieces of spicy pepper, it gave some variety to the bites- some were spicy while others weren't.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are amazing.....I wish you were cooking for me. Anyway I will be saving all these for the cookbook that I am planning on putting together....wait and see.....

Love you.....mom

Anonymous said...

Greg and Antonia,

These recipes were a blast to read. I love your word choice when describing the food experience. You definitely have a love affair going with food. I wish you were closer so we could do some cooking together. Miss you and hope all is well.

Keep cooking.......Susan