You don’t need to hire an expensive private chef to enjoy a delicious gourmet restaurant-quality meal at home. With the right fresh ingredients, a great recipe, and a creative drive, you can cook your very own gourmet dinner, like this Steak Peperonata from Sergio Howland.
Most of the time, with our hectic weekday schedules, we don’t consider dinnertime to be a particularly special event. We work or go to school, maybe run some errands, come home, and rush through a familiar recipe to make sure our family has something to eat. Day to day, dinner is simply another part of our busy routines, and although we all enjoy the great flavors of a restaurant’s menu, it’s not practical to eat out every night!
That being said, we all deserve a little luxury in our lives – especially when it comes to healthy dinner meals! Sergio Howland, a professional chef who trained at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, recently created a new Steak Peperonata recipe that looks extravagant, tastes amazing, and only has four steps. In only forty minutes, you can enjoy a gourmet homemade meal with restaurant-quality flavor!
The secret to any great recipe is to choose high quality fresh ingredients. Real chefs at the best restaurants seek out the best ingredients, so if you’re looking to take your dinner up a notch it’s important that you do the same. Luckily, there’s an easy way to find premium cooking vegetables at the store: simply look for the Craft House Collection®, a carefully curated selection of premium greenhouse grown vegetables.
Sergio chose Craft House Aurora Long Sweet Peppers for his Steak Peperonata because of their sweet flavor that holds up well and caramelizes perfectly at high temperatures while offering rustic, Italian flavor. This dish is a tradition in Calabria, Italy, so these gourmet peppers are a great choice to lend that authentic flavor.
How to Make Peperonata
To make this delicious recipe from scratch, Sergio starts by sautéing onions and garlic over medium heat until they begin to turn translucent. Diced Aurora Long Sweet Peppers are then added with a pinch of salt and pepper. Take a moment to savor the sweet aroma of the peppers mixing with the onion and garlic.
Once the peppers have softened slightly, add peeled Tomatoes on-the-Vine to the pan along with fresh rosemary, thyme, olives and capers. If you thought this peperonata smelled amazing before these fresh herbs will transport you to another time and place on the Mediterranean seaside. Let that mixture simmer for about ten minutes before turning off the heat and adding basil, lemon zest and juice.
Next, it’s time to make your own fresh salsa verde. Get out your blender and add olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, cilantro, basil, garlic, capers, and a mix of coriander, cumin and mustard seeds. Blend it all together on high speed until it’s a thin green paste. Like any chef, this is the time to taste and adjust your recipe.
It’s now time to cook the steak. Make sure you’ve let it rest for an hour before cooking so it can come to room temperature. If you cook it when it’s too cold, it won’t cook evenly. Season the steak with salt and pepper then, press a sprig of rosemary and thyme into the steak.
Preheat a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat with olive oil. Once the oil starts to smoke you can sear the steak. A nice crust will begin to form on the bottom, which means it’s time to flip the steak. Add some more fresh herbs with a knob of butter. Gently baste the steak in the butter and herbs for another four minutes. Set the steak aside to rest for five minutes.
Finally, it’s time to enjoy your gourmet restaurant dinner at home: Steak Peperonata. For an impressive presentation, serve two thick slices of steak in the center of a plate topped with the authentic Italian peperonata, salsa verde and fresh micro greens.
For Sergio’s Steak Peperonata recipe, click here.
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