Hits and Misses

This Monday night I wanted to make a fresh summer dinner for us to go with the stellar weather we've been having here. After trolling through Pinterest and the Barefoot Contessa's Foolproof cookbook, I settled on a menu of gazpacho, steak, and a basil parmesan mayo. I hardly ever make steak because quite frankly getting it right terrifies me, especially since my man likes it as close to rare as you can get it. But I decided to try it anyway.

Gazpacho is a light, cool, refreshing soup to serve and goes well with proteins like beef, chicken, and fish. To make it you will need:

2 cloves of garlic
1/2 of a red onion
5 Roma tomatoes
2 stalks of celery
1 large cucumber
1 zucchini
1/4 cup of extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons of sugar
Several dashes of hot sauce
Dash of salt, dash of black pepper
4 cups of good-quality tomato juice

To make, mince the garlic, cut the onion into slices, and dice the celery, cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes. Then toss the garlic, the onion, and half of the other vegetables into a food processor.

Add the vinegar, sugar, hot sauce, salt and pepper, then pour in 2 cups of tomato juice and blend well.

Pour mixture into a large bowl and mix in the remaining vegetables. Stir and then add in the other 2 cups of tomato juice. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed, then refrigerate for at least an hour before serving, Garnish with a dollop of sour cream.

When I made this, I had no clue that Justin wasn't really that fond of cold soups, but fortunately he said it was pretty good and cleaned out his bowl. I really liked it, especially with the sour cream mixed in. It's very flavorful and like eating salsa, which I love!

Oooh I'm so embarrassed about the steak I almost don't want to talk about it. But every good cook shares both their successes and failures. Basically I cooked it wayyyyy too long and it was extremely overdone. All of the juice had drained out of it and it was very dry, borderline inedible. We both ate it, the saving grace being the basil parmesan mayo that I served with it.

Here's my butchered steak:

Even the basil parmesan mayo gave me a run for my money. I ended up having to make it twice because it was beyond salty even though I only put in what the recipe called for. To make it you will need:

2 extra large egg yolks at room temperature
3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard
1/2 cup of chopped fresh basil leaves, lightly packed
1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic
Kosher salt and black pepper
1 cup of vegetable oil at room temperature
1/2 cup of good olive oil

Place all ingredients except for the oils into a food processor (add as much salt and pepper as you deem appropriate. The full tablespoon that the recipe called for was ridiculous). Process for 20 seconds until smooth.

Combine the oils in a measuring cup and stir. While the processor is running, pour the oils in through the top slowly to make a thick emulsion. Taste to make sure it's seasoned well and then refrigerate. This mayo will keep for a week and you can use it on all kinds of things. Once I got it right it was truly delicious and I put it on grilled turkey sandwiches yesterday for lunch. Hopefully we'll use it on some more dishes this week!