Hokkaido Beef with Local Vegetables

Try to buy local when you choose your ingredients, even if it means paying a bit more. How did we end up in a world where buying local lamb costs more than lamb imported from New-zealand, half-way around the world..?!
This dish is -almost- as local as it can be (for me!) Beef from the country, long beans and eggplants from Kyoto. I could buy beef from Kameoka, just outside of Kyoto, but at 5 times the price, principles are confronted with the reality of the wallet...

The beans, though, I got from this nice old lady that sells a few vegetables on the Shijo-bridge. They are (organically!) grown at the Kamigamo temple, in the northern part of Kyoto.

Kamigamo-jinja

Grill slices of eggplant in olive oil, season with herbes de provence. For the rest, the pictures says it all, except the name of the wine: 'Sirocco' from Tunisia. And the laptop ? IBM Thinkpad! :-)
Don't forget to deglaze the pan the maximize the use of the beef flavor! Use the resulting sauce to pour over the vegetables.