Last Saturday was my husband Dan’s 64th birthday. On Saturday night, for his actual birthday, we had our traditional joint celebration with one of our best friends, Richard, whose birthday falls the very next day, on February 1st, of the same year. In the spirit of reducing our joint restaurant expenditures, his wife, Nancy, a wonderful cook, and I put together a pot luck dinner at our house. The celebration included a command performance by the birthday boys of the Beatle’s famous ode to getting older, “When I’m 64.” The line, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me?,” seemed very apt. But that is a story for another time.
But on the birthday eve, I wanted to create a very special and intimate dinner for two to honor Dan’s last birthday before he officially becomes a senior citizen next year. I decided that to be truly special, the meal had to center around something that I knew the boy was craving, but which he’d denied himself for years. I knew what it had to be—steak! A little background is in order. Dan is the original cholesterol kid. He’s been watching his diet for 30 some odd years because he was the first kid on his block diagnosed with high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Not one to do anything in moderation, he practically gave up food – at least any food that tasted like anything. Steamed vegetables and tofu was his daily fare. Yuk. Then we met and became and item, and I took him under my culinary wing. Or to put it more precisely: I was born to feed! And feed him I would! Thanks to my abilities in the kitchen and my talent for concocting healthy recipes, he learned to love food again. But the one food he continued to eschew was red meat. Sure he’d have the occasional pot roast at one of our moms, and even a burger or two at the rare Fourth of July cookout in someone’s backyard. But something full-blooded like steak? Not on your life. He was afraid that even one bite would send him down the slippery slope of hardening arteries.
Not that he hadn’t been dropping hints for a while. He visibly drools over the lamb chops I order at our favorite Greek restaurant. And looks longingly at the steaks in the restaurant’s refrigerator case. So I decided that the most special thing I could make for him was a steak dinner. But not any steak. No supermarket feed-lot steer for him. No, it had to be great steak.
I happen to work just a few blocks from one of the premier grocery and butcher shops in New York City: Citarella’s Greenwich Village. I often do my shopping there at lunchtime to bring home in the evening on the train to Queens. So I trekked down there at lunchtime and proceeded to have a lengthy confab with one of the butchers, a nice young man who had a sincere vocation for meat. He recommended the boneless rib eye, but I thought they had too much fat. My eye landed on the bone-in prime aged shell steaks that look looked like my fantasy of steakhouse steaks. The butcher concurred that they were a fine choice. I will not divulge how much I paid for them, because, frankly, it was obscene (can you say “down payment on a Manhattan condo”?). But they were a birthday present after all. To round out the meal, I also picked up a bag of perfectly beautiful and shiny baby red potatoes and a pound of fresh thick asparagus. At the instructions of the butcher, I sprinkled the steaks with Maldon sea salt and freshly ground pepper and grilled them for 4 minutes to the side on a very hot Cuisinart grill pan (lovely piece of equipment, that). Absolute perfection! The potatoes were roasted in the oven (halved, tossed with a fruity Sicilian olive oil, kosher salt, pepper, and paprika and roasted cut side down on a baking sheet for 30 minutes at 400 degrees). I also roasted the asparagus, which I coated in the same olive oil and some lovely balsamic reduction I bought a while ago at Whole Foods (6 minutes at 500 degrees). For our wine I chose an excellent bottle of Chianti Classico Riserva, which was a bit of a splurge for me, but the difference showed. The potatoes, by the way, were truly the best I’d ever made. I could make a meal just out of these (if the low-carb police didn’t drag me away from the table, that is).
I did not forget dessert–Coffee Haagen Daz with a topping of Kalhua. Simple, but delicious.
All in all, I had one very happy husband. He swooned over the food. He went total carnivore on me, gnawing his bone down to the nub, after which I handed him my bone and watched in awe as he stripped it bare. Despite the fact that I practically had to take out a second mortgage on our co-op to afford these Festival du Meat, I now realize that there really is a reason some steaks cost more than others. I’ll never scoff at steakhouse prices again. Then, again, I think it’s more fun to do it yourself at home and enjoy watching your appreciative birthday boy’s inner cavemen devour the bounty of the hunt.
Loved the birthday dinner story – the way to a man’s heart and all… And welcome to Roobies!