June 28, 2015 Grilled Steak and Pasta Primavera

June 28, 2015 Grilled Steak and Pasta Primavera

We started the day eating the croissants we bought from Le Quiche Bakery yesterday at the Farmers’ market, where Suzette also bought a red and a large green cabbage and three bunches of radishes.  There was a new mushrooms grower who was selling several unique varieties of mushrooms, so we bought a six ounce carton of Hungarian black mushrooms and a cinnamon mushroom.

After breakfast and catching up on the Sunday morning news and a bike ride for me and a walk for Suzette we went to the Albuquerque museum to see the high heel shoe exhibit, which was fabulous. 

 Then we went home and made chicken sandwiches with the French sour dough bread we also bought from the Le Quiche Bakery with avocado, cheese, marinated zucchini strips Janis made for Friday night dinner.  

I thawed out a steak and we decided to make pasta to go with it, since we had an additional zucchini and use the new mushrooms In a primavera sauce.  I chopped about 4 Tbsp. of red onion and pulled two garlics from our garden and cleaned them and sliced 4 cloves of garlic into rounds.  I then julienned ½ orange bell pepper and the zucchini. 

I then made the Béarnaise sauce

½ cup off white wine vinegar

½ cup white wine

1 large shallot, chopped 

1 Tbsp. Fresh tarragon 

A dash of salt and white pepper

I boiled that above ingredients down by 2/3 and strained the liquid off and let it stand to cool.  

I removed the tarragon and shallots from the enameled sauce pan and put nine egg yolks into the snd stirred them mix thoroughly.  The recipe calls for three egg yolks, but we had nine left when Suzette made her cloud cake on Friday, so I used all of them.

After I stirred the egg yolks in the sauce pan I added back the liquid and added 10  oz. of cold butter to the mixture over a low heat until the mixture began to thicken.  I then poured it into a pitcher and chilled it in the freezer to cool it quickly.

Primavera Pasta

Suzette heated a large pot of water and when it came to a boil, added  about ½ lb. of spaghetti .  While the pasta was cooking she sautéed the onion, bell pepper, garlic,  and zucchini,  then put in the mushrooms with olive oil  and  butter. I diced about ¼ lb. of fresh mozzarella and put into a large serving bowl.  When the spaghetti was cooked we drained it and put it in the serving bowl with the mozzarella and some chopped up Irish cheddar and then added the sautéed vegetables. 

When the steak was grilled to medium rare, I sliced it we served it with the pasta dish and the Béarnaise sauce.  We opened a bottle of 2007  that tasted amazingly like a heavy Bordeaux that was a bit tannic at first but soon opened up into a smooth luscious jammy wine.  ThanIs to Pierre, who is both a masseuse and s sommelier.

Bon Appetit