Gazpacho

Fall means harvest time and we were passed a ton of heirloom tomatoes from my Uncle. One giant yellow one was too old and ripe to eat by itself so I thought a gazpacho would be nice to cap off the last of the summer harvest. I looked up recipes for inspiration and then made my own. Sorry, the picture should really feature the gazpacho in the top right corner and not the rest. =) But what a colorful meal no?

Tomatoes

Cucumber

Purple Onion

Garlic

Balsamic Vinegar

Lemon Juice

Cayenne Pepper

Cumin

Tomato Juice

Olive Oil

Basil for garnish

Just puree everything raw, add S&P to taste and enjoy! 

Salmon was seared with rosemary, garlic, S&P. Salad is bagged kale salad mix from Costco. And basmati rice...leftover from Indian take out. 

Green Steak and Ham

A MEAT post!!! Finally! ...but no ham in this...I was just thinking about Dr Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham book.

My husband told me about a cilantro mint chutney that his coworker shared with him once. It's simply:
A bunch of fresh mint
A bunch of fresh cilantro
Thai chilies (as many or as little as you like....I would recommend at LEAST one)
A spoon of sugar

And then blend it to a saucy consistency.
We only have the Magic Bullet...and had trouble with the leaves sticking to the walls and not coming down. So we added about 1/3 cup of olive oil. It ended up being a thick paste. Keeps for a couple weeks in the fridge.

What's great about it, is that it can be used to marinate ANY meat. In this case, I used it on steak. I thinned out several spoons of the paste with some grapeseed oil since it was going into the BBQ. In hindsight, I should've only used grapeseed oil since olive oil burns in high tempuratures....like in the BBQ. Here I've got some rib steak marinating in the green goodness:




And after grilling to a beautiful medium rare, I took more chutney, added some lemon juice and minced garlic to make a chimichuri sauce for the steak. SO GOOD.



The sides are a quick Asian pickles and grilled cauliflour.

Pickles:
Cucumbers
Couple spoons of white vinegar (you're supposed to use rice vinegar)
Spoon of sugar
Minced garlic
Spoon or two of soy sauce
few drops of sesame oil

Grilled cauliflour was tossed in grapeseed oil, salt, pepper and parmesan cheese.