We don’t eat a lot of beef, so when we do, it has to be yummy. High-quality steak, usually. I bought a dry-aged rib-eye steak from Whole foods (we split it because it was huge), and I seared it in a cast iron pan. The only way to cook a steak, in my opinion. Tonight was date night – jazz, wine, candles, and dinner at the table instead of on the couch in front of the TV.
– The potatoes were excellent. Larry wants them again. They were really simple to make, and can be made ahead.
– The greens were also excellent. I liked the mixture of spinach, kale and chard. I used two different kinds of kale. Larry had seconds. It wasn’t an overpowering dish, so it went well with the steak, which was the star attraction. Larry picked this recipe out of a cookbook he got me for Valentine’s day (sweet guy!).
– The cake was delicious as usual. My ganache didn’t break this time.

• Seared Dry-Aged Rib Eye Steak
• Mustard and Rosemary Roasted Potatoes (Fine Cooking #42, December 2000, p. 53)
• Winter Greens with Currants, Pine Nuts and Brown Butter (Fields of Greens, Annie Somerville, p. 254)
• Chocolate-Amaretto Heart

Wine: The Maiden 1998 Red Wine (Napa Valley, CA). We decided to open a special bottle of wine tonight in the spirit of Open That Bottle Night. This was the first expensive bottle of wine we ever bought. It was good, really good. Really tannic, so it could have sat in the basement for another few years. Very concentrated and a little hot, in my opinion. We decanted it and drank the whole bottle.