Last Week's Dinner

Last Sunday we had Barbara and Jerry over for Father's Day dinner, and I just realized I never posted my menu. We started off with a really pretty "arranged" salad I saw in Fine Cooking:
 
That's a bed of baby arugula (one of those 5-oz. tubs) covered with garlic croutons (see below), 3 tomatoes (cored, seeded, diced), 1 hothouse cuke (seeded, diced), ½ lb. feta cheese (diced), and 1 cup Kalamata olives (pitted, quartered). It would have looked prettier with the dressing all over it, but I didn't want to scare off the kids. Here's the recipe:

½ cup really good olive oil
¼ cup red-wine vinegar
2 Tbsp finely chopped shallots
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
1 tsp mashed oil-packed anchovies
kosher salt & black pepper

You know I hate mustard, and I hate anchovies even more, but you don't taste those specific flavors—it's just yummy. That being said, any vinaigrette would be fine here, although be sure to include some oregano, which goes so nicely with the other Greek flavors in this salad.

I didn't have time to make my own croutons, so I bought the ones they sell in the bakery department at Whole Foods instead. Then I heated up ⅓ cup olive oil with 2 thinly sliced garlic cloves for a few minutes, poured it through a strainer onto the croutons in a bowl, and tossed the croutons in the oil along with 2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley, 1 tsp finely grated lemon zest, ¼ tsp kosher salt, and a few grinds of black pepper. Most excellent.

For the main course, I marinated a couple of flank steaks (this is double the marinade recipe):

8 large shallots, chopped
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup dry red wine
1 Tbsp dried thyme

After a few hours, we grilled the steaks. Yum, yum, yum. Then watermelon and cookies—not bad, eh?

Comments

[LA Blogger Gal]

looks yummy! I love chopped salads.

[Kelly]

The salad looks divine. Yum.

[Elena]

Great menu, and very summery. I am shocked, though, to see that you were brave enough to serve tomatoes! ;-)

[Karen]

These were from Whole Foods, where I carefully read the signs that explained that they were not the variety that were involved in the salmonella scare.