My Valentine’s Surprise

What are you doing for Valentines Day? I know…It’s a Sunday, the restaurants are going to be booked, it’s so commercial…Why not stay in? It’s so nice and cozy, no hassles.

Being a blogger means that all of my holidays are celebrated twice. Once to set up for the blog and then again when the holiday arrives. You would think it would get old but it really makes the celebration more special. On Saturday I had to run some errands. I ventured into the cold and dreary day so Steve took matters into his own hands to prepare an amazing Valentines celebration for us.

I returned home to a softly lit house with out wedding music playing in the background (Steve recreated the playlist in iTunes…he thinks of everything, doesn’t he?). I’m very surprised by all of this. Usually I orchestrate the meals then we do the preparation together.

We are both Francophiles and to celebrate this he set up an appetizer platter with pate, French bread and cornichons. He even went down to where we keep our special wines and pulled an amazing bottle off of the shelf.

For Dinner he prepared a special salad with citrus, eggs, cheese and baby lettuces.

The main course was his special Steak. Did you just roll your eyes? This is not just any steak. Steve is very proud of perfecting this method and I have to say I look at steaks in a whole new light. The first thing he does is to search out the best steak there is. Luckily we have a Whole Foods just down the street so I’m on a first name basis with all of the butchers, who custom cut all of our steaks. I keep Steve stocked in the best rib eyes on the planet, they are cut about 1 ½ “ thick, the bone is left in, essentially this is a miniature prime rib.

Given Steve’s love of all things meat we have steak usually about once a week. He had been plotting this and pulled one out of the freezer from where it was stored. After he thawed the steak he will let it set for an hour or two at room temperature to take the chill off. He preheats the oven to 275, inserts the oven probe into the meat and connects it to the oven and sets the internal temperature to 125. Steve just loves to watch the oven at work. It will tell him the internal temps at a glance. Once the steak reaches 125 degrees, he pulls it out of the oven, covers it with foil and lets it rest for 30 minutes. This is an important step as it redistributes the juices in the meat. Just before we are ready for the main course he fires up the cast iron skillet and sears the steak thoroughly all over. Once it is transferred to the cutting board he slices is and you can see how it is perfectly done all the way through.

Now Steve served his steak with just steak, we did end up smearing some of the pate on it and that was just so decadent….

We finished with an amazing dessert brownie I had picked up at the local bakery and some ice cream. To top off the evening we had a glass of our favorite Liquor. Here’s to Steve and our pre valentine’s celebration. Now what is he going to do this weekend to top it???