Grilled flank steak & vegetables

Again with the winter grilling! It was pouring rain but very warm out so we grilled on our porch. It's on the second floor, covered & screened in so it's an ideal all-seasons grilling perch. The only trick is to not burn down the apartment building...

I bought a little more than 2 pounds of flank steak at the venerable DeKalb market. I sawed off a piece to use in stir-fry later in the week (undoubtedly, the next post will cover that adventure) and covered the rest of it in a marinade of salt, pepper, minced garlic cloves, red pepper flakes, olive oil, worcestershire and a little red wine. It hung out in the fridge until about a half hour before grill time, during which I let it rest at room temperature. Sliced 2 red peppers and covered with olive oil, salt and pepper. Cut 2 sweet potatoes into 1/2" slices and steamed them for about 7 minutes, until a little more than halfway cooked through, then added to the red peppers, with a little more olive oil, tossed gently. Brian started the grill for me, which was kind of him, and it burned very hot. Melanie kept me company on the porch as first the flank steak went on, flipped about every 3 minutes or so, then red pepper, then sweet potato, as room became available. The flank steak probably took about 10-15 minutes total, but the veggies just got pulled off as they developed nice char marks. Put the sweet potatoes in their own bowl, tossed with the juice of half a Meyer lemon, and surrounded the flank steak with the red peppers.

I accidentally also made what Jeremy kept calling "croutons" and he said he liked them, even though he doesn't normally enjoy crunchy bread (?). Melted a lot of butter and a little olive oil in a pan with 4-5 cloves minced garlic. Added small rounds of a baguette (sidenote! the DeKalb market appears to have stopped making my usual double ficelle loaves and in the place that I used to find those, there are now bags of misshapen, long, squishy things marked "country baguettes." they still come 2 to a package, so I guess they are the new hotness. They are actually pretty good and I have no qualms, I just think it's weird that I can't find the bread I used to get there), and tossed them in the butter-oil-garlic mixture until well-coated. Spread them on a baking sheet, made sure the garlic was well distributed, sprinkled a little parmesan on top, put them in the oven at 350 degrees...and promptly forgot about them while grilling. Brian eventually pulled them out of the oven and they were a very crunchy, tasty counterpart to our grilled foods.

We had this insane peachy pound cake with a caramel-bourbon sauce for dessert. It was leftover from a party that Melanie went to earlier where all the girls were on some no-pound cake diet, so we destroyed the ample leftovers. It was incredible. Also for dessert: my new Lava Lite that Brian got me for Christmas. It warmed up and started looking pretty groovy by the end of the evening.