Recipe for disaster.

Springtime seems like a much better season to start eating healthy than New Year's. Spring produce is arriving in the stores. The weather is warming, the sun is shining, the days are longer, all bringing thoughts of outdoor activities and beach bods. 

What happens at New Year's? You make a desultory resolution in the dark and cold, surrounded by leftover cookies and candy from Christmas. Yeah, that's got a chance of working.

Of course, just because it's spring doesn't mean the food is going to be awesome. 

I found a recipe in a spring-themed store handout that caught my eye, and I couldn't wait to try it. It was for marinated London broil served with a strawberry-rhubarb salsa. Unfortunately I did have to wait to try it, as there was no rhubarb available for a few weeks yet. 

There were a few things about this recipe I dug. For one, the salsa reminded me of the orange salsa I make with chicken, a recipe that's been a winner in the family for decades. Several of the same ingredients. And strawberries and rhubarb are just made for each other. Who doesn't like strawberry-rhubarb pie? Communists, that's who. 

Furthermore, I was enticed by the marinade recipe and method recommended. London broil can easily be tough as a catcher's mitt, but this was a method I had not tried, pan-seared in cast-iron and finished in the broiler. 

The recipe was a lot of work, including pounding the hell out of the steak and marinating it for a day, blanching the rhubarb, chopping up a dozen things, but I figured in the time and made it for Sunday dinner. It made a lovely presentation. Then we dined. 

The salsa tasted like a lot of nothing with a little strawberry, and the London broil was tough enough to use for a catcher's mitt. 

Where did I go wrong? It's unclear. It may be that I left the meat in the broiler half a minute too long, and that was enough to ruin it. Or maybe it wasn't the time of spring to get the really good rhubarb, the stuff that doesn't taste like sour grass. Possibly the fault was not mine; I've worked on recipe text in books and magazines for decades, and I can tell you that sometimes space requirements lead to leaving out a few tips and tricks, things that might make the difference for the home cook, things the professional recipe writer might not think are important but are. It happens. 

Finally, it's an often-lamented problem with healthy eating that produce is always a little uneven, as are other fresh ingredients lauded by the health pushers. But Doritos? Twinkies? Fig Newtons? They are exactly the same every time. It's hard to argue with success.