Friday, July 3, 2015

Date Night Menu with Ricardo Cuisine!

Happy Fabulous Friday y’all! Hope you all had a great Canada Day. The weather in Ottawa was changing at rapid speeds so we did a mixture of celebrating on Parliament Hill with the kids, relaxing at home and having a BBQ with friends. It was also our wedding anniversary so it’s always nice to have a holiday together on your special day. This weekend we’re heading up to the cottage with some friends for good food, good wine, good fun.

Speaking of food, tis the season for BBQ-ing! Some of you may brave the BBQ in the winter but generally, outside grilling is where it’s at in the summer. Ricardo Cuisine asked me to try some of their barbecue recipes and after browsing through the recipes, I was game. It was a great way for Mr. Fix-It and I to have a “date night” last week and I saw that one of the recipes called for halloumi cheese. Heard of it? I hadn’t, until Mr. Fix-It and I started buying these pre-made kabobs from the grocery store that had this amazing cheese on them. The best part, is that it doesn’t melt all over the BBQ. Win!
So…the night before “date night”, I made up the marinade for the Flank Steaks with Chimichurri Sauce. Sounds yum eh? Flank steak is not a piece of beef that you want to pick up and throw on the grill. It needs time to get happy and tender.

The marinade was really easy. It called for olive oil (I find that olive oil burns so easily on the grill so I swapped it out for canola oil), red wine vinegar, shallots, a bunch of fresh herbs (oregano, thyme & cilantro – I’ve been growing the cilantro and love it, so added a little more in there for extra yum) and a dash of red pepper flakes.

I added the steak, put it in the fridge overnight and let the magic happen. Then, all it needs is a hot BBQ and a few minutes on each side…depending on how rare you like it.
Next up, Halloumi Cheese and Roasted Bell Pepper Miniature Skewers. Sounds good eh? These were also easy peasy.

I soaked the cheese in a bowl for an hour and put it aside, chopped the red peppers into strips and made up the sauce - oil, red wine vinegar, fresh garlic, fresh cilantro (it called for rosemary but I swapped it out), salt & pepper. Then you just give the sliced peppers a toss in the sauce ;)
Cut the cheese into cubes so they will fit on your sliced peppers.
After cutting the peppers, I realized I hadn’t cut them long enough so it was hard to string them on the skewers wrapped around the cheese. So, I just folded up a little tinfoil package and placed them right on the grill. They just needed a few mins to get toasty.
I cooked up some wild rice and voila…Date Night menu complete.
We waited till the kids were asleep and everything was ready pretty fast. I love menus where you can do the prep work the night before. The food was delish, I definitely recommend these two recipes if you’re looking for a yummy meal for the weekend.
TGIF!

Keep it Beautiful.

2 comments:

  1. Looks delish. I'm in a BBQ rut, so I poked around and found the Ricardo recipe for smoked shrimp. How easy is that? So smoking this weekend!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...