Beautiful and Delicious

Today was all about homey things with my mother. We made good food, ran some errands, sat around and talked. Ate that good food. I've been visiting more frequently for shorter visits. Lately, Mom's been finding fabulous cuts of meat, and this time she stumbled into a "cote de boeuf."  It's known by a more popular name, but in the interest of cultural sensitivity I use one of the alternative names for this cut. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it ~

A highly marbled, and exquisitely tender and flavorful steak . . . 

It was an interesting experience to prepare this beautiful piece of meat. How to prepare it and draw out all the wonder and flavor of it? It's easy to ruin a beautiful steak. It's not difficult to prepare a beautiful steak. 

This one was probably three inches thick, with the long rib bone attached. Mom mentioned that the butcher would not cut the bone from the steak and suggested I do that before cooking it. I trusted the wisdom of the butcher in this. 

Mom has a ridged grill pan and the steak fit diagonally on it. I figured four to six minutes, medium to medium-high heat, on each side and then twelve minutes in a 375 degree oven. It was perfect. Before grilling, I pressed salt, pepper, garlic powder, and basil into the meat after having brought the steak to room temperature. At the end of each grilling on the stovetop, I turned the steak 180 degrees to get a cross-hatch grill mark pattern. After the steak came out of the oven I put about a teaspoon or so of butter with a bit more thyme and let it melt while the steak sat for ten minutes on the pan before I sliced it. It was perfectly rare.   

We had it with a beautiful salad of butter lettuce, avocado, cucumber, and grape tomatoes. Poppyseed dressing. The rest of my bottle of Tempranillo. Beautiful and delicious. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.