June 30, 2014 Dinner Grilled Steak and Baked Potato and Salad with Red Onions sautéed with lavender and honey

June 30, 2014   Dinner   Grilled Steak, Baked Potato, Red Onions sautéed with lavender and honey and salad

Tonight I had not special plan so I thawed out a steak to make an old Texas favorite; grilled bone in rib eye steak with a baked potato and salad.  Around 6:00 we picked the rest of the garlic in the garden and put it out to dry and I picked some of the lettuce growing in our yard, where the wind had blown seeds and it had grown and then some from the raised beds also. 

The wind came up so Suzette brought the lavender we had picked last weekend into the house and plucked the fragrant flowers off their stems.  Suzette wanted to cook some fresh lavender with onions, so I mined 2/3 of a medium red onion and Suzette sautéed that with the lavender and added a tablespoon of local honey to the pan after the onions had cooked for about ten minutes and begun to caramelize. 

I added olive oil and the juice of ½ of a lemon to my bottle of Cesar salad dressing.  At around 5:00 I had gone to Charlie and Susan’s house to discuss tomorrow night’s meal and borrowed three baking potatoes.  

When I returned home around 6:00 Suzette was at Home.  I punched holes in the potatoes and baked them on a cookie sheet for 1 hour in a 400˚ oven.

Suzette said she wanted a good wine with dinner so I went to the basement and grabbed a bottle of 2008 Wellington Mohrhardt Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon.  We like Mohrhardt Ridge Cabs a lot.  The have an elegant smooth taste and a full bodied grape flavor, which is a pretty good combination.  I opened the wine to let it breath for a few minutes and went to the garden and picked seven or eight stalks of chives for the potatoes.  I minced the chives and Suzette fetched the Latin American sour cream ($2.29/lb. at Pro’s Ranch Market) from the fridge.   I also made a bowl of guacamole by combining minced red onion, three cloves of fresh garlic, a dash of Herbs de Provence, a dash of lime flavored red chili sauce, and the juice of a lime.

Then we plated our plates with slices of steak garnished with the sautéed red onions, one half of a potato each, salad drizzled with Cesar salad dressing.  Suzette declared this dinner, “The best.”

After dinner I pitted and sliced cherries and added them to the PPI apricot and raspberry mixture left from Wednesday night’s cobbler.  I added the last 2 Tbsps. of PPI Prager Aria White Port and 2 Tbsps. of Grand Marnier to the fruit and put the fruit into the fridge to absorb the alcohol overnight.  The brandied fruit will be an ingredient to make Clafoutis for tomorrow night’s dinner with Charlie and Susan.

Bon Appétit