The Perfect Summer Dinner

Two nights ago, we had the most stupendous summer meal we've ever had.

I can't pinpoint the centerpiece of the meal. I think it must have
had four centerpieces, separate but equal, divisible in theory but
inseparable in practice. Of this meal, we must neither confound the
parts nor divide the substance.

First, the steak. It was a flank steak, locally raised. The
marinade was simple in the extremest way--just a bit of olive oil,
garlic, salt and pepper. It was grilled to a delicate somewhere-
between-rare-and-medium-rare and sliced thin.

Next, the fresh tomato salad. Again, simplicity. Locally grown,
perfectly ripe, summer tomatoes, sprinkled with the tiniest sprinkle
of salt, a fuller amount of pepper, and a bit of olive oil (the good
kind) and red wine vinegar (the cheap kind--but not the kind that can
go wrong). The tomatoes were topped with fresh mozzarella--
stunningly fresh . . . just perfect. Then freshly-torn basil (you
never want to use a knife on basil) from our own window boxes was
tossed on top. Just magnificent.

The grill also produced the bread. It was fresh ciabatta bread
grilled (and I was proud of the lovely grill marks on the bread this
time) to perfection--with exactly the right shade of dark brown
around the square outside of the bread.

A red wine finished off the delightful meal. That wasn't exactly
local--it was an Australian Syrah--but it fit well with everything else.

What a stunner of a meal! It was the essence of summer. We ate it
on the back porch, and the weather cooperated with us for a change:
we hit the only high-of-eighty day in a week of highs-in-the-mid-
nineties.

ds