March 15, 2015 Dinner at the Palmer’s Sous vide steak, with asparagus, Brussels sprouts, Sautéed spinach, Pan Roasted potatoes, and chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream

March 15, 2015 Dinner at the Palmer’s Sous vide steak, with asparagus, Brussels sprouts, Sautéed spinach, Pan Roasted potatoes, and chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream

Suzette had to drive to Santa Rosa today, so Susan Palmer and I made arrangements to dine with the Palmers to avoid Suzette having to cook when she arrived home from her drive to Santa Rosa and back.

After Suzette arrived and had a short scotch we took the chocolate cake I bought at Pastian’s Bakery yesterday, caraway seeds and a bottle of the 2010 Marchessi Monasterio Chianti Superiore over to the Palmer’s.

Susan had everything pretty much ready. There was a platter of fresh vegetables was a bowl of Ranch dressing as appetizers.  Charlie was grilling the sous vide steak on their new gas grill to add a little char broiled flavor to it.

Susan had baby organic spinach from Costco that she thought might be make a good salad, but I suggested we sauté some of the spinach in olive oil with fresh garlic.  Susan said, "Go for it!”, so I heated a large skillet, put about 1 Tbsp. of olive oil into it, squeezed two cloves of garlic into the skillet and filled the skillet with spinach leaves.  It took a couple of minutes for the electric stove to heat up, but soon the spinach was sizzling and cooked rather quickly as I stirred it constantly.  Suzette came over and we tried to stop the spinach’s cooking process before the spinach completely collapsed like Mondo Italiano in Taos does it (sort of a warm Italian spinach salad).

We were then ready to eat.  We served ourselves roasted potatoes, spinach, roasted Brussel sprouts with caraway seeds, steamed asparagus, and steak and drank red wine with it.  Susan loves vegetables and Charlie does not, so dinner parties are an excuse for Susan to make lots of vegetable dishes.  I could not finish my plate of food, perhaps because I wanted to leave room for cake.

After a few minutes of sipping the last of the red wine, we decided to serve dessert.  I had bought a ¼ sheet chocolate cake with chocolate icing.  We made up plates with scoops of Blue Bell Vanilla Ice Cream (our collective favorite ice cream) and cake and Susan made a lovely pot of ginger and peach herbal tea.

It was a lovely evening of food and conversation.

Suzette and I decided that sous vide solves the basic question of how to get the meat to the right temperature or done perfectly, but does not address the issue of flavor, so it actually requires two steps to get a completely satisfying dish.  Charlie’s lightly grilling the steak solves part of the flavor issue but Suzette and I do not believe it fully satisfies the flavor issue.  Suzette did believe that sous vide is a great way to have properly prepared meat ready for final prep at a restaurant, but we both agreed that the char grilled heavy beef we had prepared on Saturday night had a far superior flavor.  My fear is that in trying to replicate that level of char grilling with sous vide would destroy the benefit of sous vide.  More research is needed on this topic.

I saw recipes on the internet and my friend Dee Simpson sent me a recipe for the perfect steak, which recommends cooking the steak in a very hot iron skillet (over 500˚ is preferable) and turning the steak often, like every 15 to 30, which the recipe says cooks the steak more evenly and breaks down the collagens better.

Alas, we are still in search of the perfect steak cooking method.

Bon Appétit