Valentine's Day Feast

Since we had a blast cooking our V-day dinner last year, we thought we would do it again this year. Not only do we get to spend time together, but it's a really great excuse to get some high-ticket items for dinner. Last year, we got some fresh truffle for Osso Buco, this year it's Kobe beef!

We've ordered from 1-800-kobebeef.com before (seriously, that's the name of the site), and were very happy with their A5 Japanese Kobe beef. Previously we've cooked it sous-vide to make sure it's perfectly rare. This time however, since the steak we got this time was a bit thinner, we were worried we might overcook it with the final searing if it started off already a bit cooked. Also, since we got the steak a few days early, we decided to "dry-age" it a bit more, to give it a better crust. Kobe beef needs no embellishment at all, so Uly just threw it on the grill for about a minute on each side. When you've got beef this good, no sense covering it up in sauce, or even salt and pepper for that matter. The end result was a nice crust on the outside and nice juicy fattiness on the inside. I do think sous-vide would be a better choice for a thicker steak, since it cooks more evenly, but this piece of beef still puts other steaks to shame.



For our sides, we needed something worthy of the steak. I decided to reprise my truffle mac & cheese since it was so tasty the last time I made it. Having both the truffle oil and the jarred black truffles really made a difference in the flavor, fresh truffle would have been wasted since the dish was going into the oven anyway. For our vegetable, we sauteed some swiss chard, loosely based on this recipe from Epicurious, but using shallots instead of the onions.




We had a special steak, so it definitely needed as special wine to go with it. We had gone to Ridge for a Monte Bello tasting the day before, and were very tempted to open the half-bottle of 1987 vintage Monte Bello for dinner. However, we decided a half-bottle wasn't enough, and we wanted something younger to go with the meat. We then opened a 1999 Monte Bello that Uly bought a while back. At a little over 10 years, it had enough complexity to suit our sophisticated meal, but still had enough tannins and bite to stand up to all the rich food. I think we'll probably just drink the '87 with some cheese.

Since the Kobe was so rich, and we didn't want to be spoiled by eating something beforehand, we decided to skip the appetizers altogether. For dessert, we still had some leftover Kara's cupcakes from the package I sent him last Friday, so we just decided to have those instead. Saved me the trouble at least of having to run into the kitchen after dinner and so we just got to sit and enjoy our wine for a while. Once we were done, we just had a nice sherry to go with our cupcakes. We may have had some big-ticket ingredients, but at least the effort was not...it actually only took us a little over an hour to prepare everything.

Counting both the food and the wine, we actually spent more on this dinner than we did at Commis the night before, but it was well worth it. What better way to spend Valentine's day than to cook and eat great food, and drink great wine with the one you love.


Thanks babe for the flowers...they were gorgeous! :)