Steaks on the Grill

                I should have had my husband take a picture to post of the meal we made last night, but we were entertaining and enjoying, so I decided just to write. My husband and I have been craving New York Strips on the grill, so we had friends of ours over to share our evening.

                I started out with selecting 4 juicy strip steaks and seasoned them with a blend of Montreal steak seasoning (regular and spicy), black pepper and bayou seasoning. I left them out to get to room temp because experience has taught me that it is harder to cook steaks evenly when they are too cold to start with.  My husband threw them on a med heat grill for about 6 minutes a side to a perfect med/rare doneness.  For my potato, I quartered about 12 small red skin potatoes and tossed them in a baking pan with a chopped whole onion and tossed with kosher salt, rosemary and olive oil. I love roasted garlic, and I had 2 heads that needed used, so I sliced the top third off of each of them, drizzled them with olive oil and tossed them in to bake as well. We enjoy mushrooms with steak so I tossed a package of sliced button mushrooms in a pan with s&p, butter and a 1/4 cup of red wine and cooked them off to top the steaks. I like to serve a veggie, but instead of hot, I went with a cold salad. I used a bag of store bought broccoli slaw and chopped up a couple stalks of celery and sliced some grape tomatoes in half to add to it. I made a simple dressing of mayo, Dijon mustard, lots of fresh cracked black pepper, crumbled blue cheese and a bit of blue cheese dressing and tossed that with the veggies. It was sort of a spin on the traditional Cole slaw and turned out to be a great compliment to the main meal. Our friends brought along some artisan bread that we heated up and served on  the side.  

              We chose to serve an Argentinian Malbec and a Califonia Red Zinfandel with our meal. Both were very tasty and stood up well to all of the flavors. Our guests brought individual homemade chocolate souflees that they made to top off our meal. They were so rich and chocolaty and hot, oh, they were to die for.  The entire meal was just wonderful, the company was fantastic, the wine was delicious and it was great to have the grill fired up in January.