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Foodie In Training

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Some Good Things, some bad things

A few weeks ago when it FINALLY started to get warm out, we bought some steaks and we were ready to get the grill going. We also bought some shallots at the store and I wanted to use them in some sort of pasta dish. I'm not trying to be mean, but the steak and the grilled onion did not turn out very good, but the pasta dish was actually pretty good especially for totally winging it.
Ryan seasoned the steak with a lot of things, too much seasoning which was the reason it wasn't very good. Some of the seasoning was jerk seasoning I bought in Jamaica and other spicy things. It was waaayy to spicy for me so I didn't eat much of it. The other thing we made was grilled red onions. We have done this before and it is really good, grilling the onion brings out all of the sweetness and I swear it's better than any fried onion ring I've ever had. We made the mistake of just cutting the large red onion in half and grilling it. We made a balsamic dressing to pour over the grilled onion, but that couldn't save it either. It didn't cook all of the way and I don't really enjoy chomping on raw onion, so I didn't really eat much of that either....
My "winging it" shallot pasta actually turned out really well. I started by sauteing shallots in about a 1/3 cup of olive oil and once those had softened a bit, I added fresh garlic, minced. I did a trick that Ryan does when seasoning a sauce, I added crushed red pepper flakes to the hot oil and let the red pepper flakes flavor the oil instead of just having every other bite be spicy. Once the shallots and garlic were nicely cooked I added about a half cup of white wine and I also added basil and lemon zest. After the penne was finished cooking I drained it and added it straight to the saute pan to combine with the olive, shallots, wine and herbs. I added a little more wine and some lemon juice and let that flavors heat through a few minutes and it was ready to serve! Once in a serving dish I grated some Parmesan cheese on top. I must say, the pasta turned out great, it was a light sauce but the flavors of the white wine, lemon juice worked really well together.

We also made some green beans and just seasoned it simply with salt, pepper and olive oil.

We learned some lessons in this meal and proved that we are still foodies in training.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I was wondering how you would suggest properly grilling an onion. Was the only mistake that you cut it in half?

Ryan said...

I think we should have cut it rings. Like big slices. I haven't successfully done it on the grill yet, just a grill pan.

I will be sure to let you know when/if I succeed.

Other cool veggies to grill: Bell peppers, eggplant, zucchini, squash, asparagus, etc.