Kobe at Home

Left alone for Christmas Eve, I decided to treat myself. On my last visit to Coastal Seafoods, the day before, I decided to fork in a few bucks and head for the meat case and buy a Kobe beef rib-eye. As I have indicated before in this blog, I am not much of a meat eater, but now and then I enjoy a steak, and Kobe beef is just the one that can easily make it into an exception. You can see in the picture at the right, how beautifully marbled it was.

I know just how to cook it. Kobe beef should never be put on a grill. It has too much fat (the good kind) and the drippings will result in flames that make it char too fast. Kobe beef is best cooked on a very hot flat surface, like a cast iron pan. My biggest problem was figuring out what to serve with it.

I knew what to have for dessert. That was easy. As I was coming home from the store the day before, Nancy, one of our neighbors, had left some home-made macaroons (left), one of my favorite pastries. But still, the vegetable and starch were escaping me.

Lately I have been developing a strong taste for wilted greens. More particularly the sturdy ones like Swiss chard. So I opted for making that with some very smokey bacon, garlic and olive oil. For the starch, I decided to make smashed potatoes (which have already appeared in this blog due to their deliciousness). These are basically boiled potatoes that are then smashed and cooked in a hot oven with plenty of olive oil, salt and pepper until they get crispy on the outside. Those came out perfect.

To top the potatoes, I added some home-made preserve-lemon and garlic mayonnaise that I made a few days before. Served with a glass of Cabernet, I have to say, I had little to complaint. Being alone, I ate in front of the TV where I watched a good ol' classic movie via Roku (courtesy of Netflix): Serpico.