Grilled potatoes

Batali's recipe for grilled potatoes caught my eye and it seemed like a simple recipe for a weekday. Equally simple was Sara Jenkins' recipe for grilled skirt steak with cucumber and avocado garnish, so it had the makings of a great weekday meal.

With the potatoes, you essentially end up with a warm potato salad. You parboil the Yukon gold (or other waxy) potatoes in salted water -- he says for 6 minutes but his potatoes were smaller than mine so I let them go longer, maybe a bit too long. You cut each potato into 3 or 4 thick slices and toss the slices in a mix of olive oil, celery seed and sliced scallions (which I forgot to buy so used shallots). Then you thread them, horizontally, onto skewers, about 5 per skewer. You grill them for 15 min., he says, though my time was a little shorter because of the longer parboiling, and get a nice crust on them. Then, you remove the potato slices from the skewers and toss them again in a mix of oil, Chianti (or other red wine) vinegar, and Dijon mustard. Delicious!

After I took off the potato skewers, I put on the skirt steak, seared it on one side for 2 min., turned it, sprinkled salt and pepper on the cooked side, and grilled the other side for another 2 min., removed the steak from the grill, turned and sprinkled salt and pepper on the unseasoned side and let it rest 5 min. before slicing it. A mix of diced avocado, cucumber (peeled, halved, scraped clean and sliced into half moons), basil, oil and lemon juice goes on top of each serving of meat.

We had a very nice, and very cheap, Spanish red wine to accompany.