September 9, 2012 Dinner- Grilled Rib Eye Steak and Eggplant with Cucumber and onion Salad and Bernaise Sauce

Suzette was attending to her booth at the Chile Festival in Los Lunas all day so I was free to do some shopping, so Saturday evening we decided to prepare a meal using as many of the ingredients from our garden as possible and we decided to grill a steak with slices of eggplant from our garden and prepare a salad with fresh lettuce and cucumbers and onion from our garden. 

In the morning I went to Pro’s Ranch Market and bought four large avocados ($.69 each) 2 lbs. of Mexican limes (3 lb. for $.99), a pound of brown onions (4 lbs. for $.99), ½ lb. of ham ($1.65) and 1 lb. of Mexican Sonoran Crema con sal ($.179/lb.).

Then I went to Costco and bought  a bottle of Rioja Tempranillo Reserva RATED 92 BY PARKER FOR $9.99 from Elciego, Spain, which is where the famous Riscal Winery is located , a rack of lamb that had been cut into chops and sold for the chop price of $7.99 instead of the rack price of $11.99 and four ribeye steaks, three of which were beautifully marbled and one that was a throwaway without marbling and a lovely piece of halibut.  Something I discovered at Costco today.  If you want only a portion of a package of meat, you can ask the Butcher Department to repack a package.  For example, the package of Halibut I selected had a lovely center cut steak and a small boney tail piece of fish and I asked the butcher to pack only the large center cut steak for me and he did it with only a small grimace on his face.  I did not have the courage to ask him to re-pack the steaks to get rid of the throwaway piece of meat.

When I got home I watched a little football and then went for a bike ride and then Willy and I drove to Los Lunas, to help Suzette with her booth and then to help her dismantle the booth and load it into the Land Cruiser.

When we got home Suzette was tired and sat for a while, while I peeled and sliced two lemon cucumbers and an Armenian cucumber and some red onion and dossed that with about 1 1/2 Tbsp. of Rice Wine Vinegar and about ½ Tbsp. of sugar and put it in the fridge to pickle a bit.

Suzette then came into the kitchen and asked what she could do to help with dinner and I said, “Grill the steak and eggplant.”  As she was doing that I started making a Bernaise Sauce by picking about two Tbsp. of fresh tarragon in the garden and plucking the leaves from it and then mincing a head of shallot that was about 1 ½ Tbsp.  and putting that in an enameled sauce pan with a little more than a ½ cup of white wine vinegar and 14 cup of white wine (California Chardonnay) with a dash of white pepper and salt and heated that rapidly until the liquid reduced by 2/3.  Willy sliced ½ lb. of butter and I added about half of that to the liquid, when I realized that I had forgotten to add the two egg yolks that would thicken the sauce, so I took the sauce off the heat and separated two egg yolks and Willy beat them briefly and I then added them to the cooled liquid and then put the pan back on a medium heat and beat in the last five or six slices of butter and when the sauce began to thicken I reduced the heat and after a minute or two more turned off the  heat  and stirred for another five or six minutes to allow the sauce to cool and not separate.   Miraculously, it held together although it did not thicken as much as it would have if the eggs had been added before adding any of the butter.  Suzette had asked me to tell her when the process was about ten minutes from finishing, which is when she started grilling the steak and eggplant.  So as I was completing the sauce, Suzette was grilling and Willy was sautéing 8 shishito peppers from our garden in olive oil.  When Suzette brought the steak and eggplant came into the kitchen, about ½ of it was still very rare and so we sliced it and put the slices into the pan with the peppers to cook a little more.

I poured the Bernaise into a pitcher to cool it and so it could be poured onto the food.  We then plated up the steak, eggplant, grilled peppers and put Bernaise sauce on the table with a bottle of Forefront Cabernet Sauvignon by Pine Ridge Winery.   The wine had a dark and deeply complex flavor that was perfect for the meat and eggplant eaten with pieces of pepper.

I had a few bites of Brie cheese after dinner with the wine and that was delicious and then a few chocolates that were okay also, although the heaviness of the wine interfered just a little bit with the flavor of the cheese and chocolate because it obscured their flavor because it was so heavy.   

Bon Apétit