bistro dining

Another evening of dining with just my husband at home. Kind of nice. With just one year left of full-time on-site parenting, I need to get used to it. Greg has always traveled, but he's home this week and when he's home he really appreciates any home cooked meal. Today I grilled for lunch and did a quick "bistro dinner" with leftover barbecue tri-tip (perfectly cooked on Saturday, so served cold tonight), caramelized onions, green salad and goat cheese crostini. Greg prefers to call the crostini "cheese toasties", but whatever you call them we love them. I believe we've discussed the joys of a baguette sliced into thin rounds/ovals, brushed with olive oil, topped with a bit of goat cheese and grilled or baked until the cheese is melted. They are so good we just discussed them again.

A few weeks ago I picked up burrata cheese at Whole Foods after reading about

it in Gourmet, Bon Apetit and my favorite, Fine Cooking. Burrata is mozzarella cheese filled with cream. It comes wrapped in a white liner and a pretty green paper tied with raffia in a plastic container. It has a short shelf like and surely is not a food mentioned in Cooking Light. Ah, but life is short and food should be savored so buy some burrata! If you are in Whole Foods I highly recommend their freshly prepared bruschetta topping to go with the burrata cheese. Their bruschetta topping is made with garlic olive oil, basil olive oil, regular olive oil and of course tomatoes and basil among other things. But the trio of oils makes it rich and wonderful. Everything in moderation. Or if not in moderation, tomorrow is another day when you can make healthier food choices.

Now that you have the cheese and the bruschetta topping, buy a nice baguette and slice it into nice rounds/ovals. Rub a peeled whole garlic clove over the bread on both sides. Brush lightly with olive oil on both sides. Grill, broil or bake until just turning golden brown.

Still with me? Okay now you need to make a decision: do you have some yummy leftover steak? Do you have some lovely leftover rotisserie chicken? Do you need meat as part of your meal? I answered that yes, indeed I needed meat and since Greg had been gone I had not had red meat in a week and I needed steak (not wanted, really I needed steak). So I rubbed a nice flank steak with olive oil and ground sea salt and telicherry peppercorns all over it before searing it nicely on the grill. I let it rest while I made a salad and thinly sliced it to serve.

Salad for me can be as simple as a nice serving of crisp romaine, salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar (okay, so I prefer pinot grigio vinegar and there really isn't anything simple about that is there?). A new favorite prepared salad dressing is Garlic Expressions Classic Vinaigrette. Delightfully fresh from a bottle and a little sweet. Perfect with my bistro dinner.

That's it. I served a little flank steak, a nice portion of salad, a good serving of bruschetta topping, slices (or pieces, more like it) of burrata with the crostini on each of our plates. It all just kind of went together in a bit of this, a spoonful of that kind of way. A good glass of wine helped too.