I’m often impressed, if not merely satisfied, by the quality of the food we enjoy at home. Rhonda and I both very much love going out to dinner, but it’s nice to not only know your way around the home kitchen, but also to be able to make such abiding memories.

Porterhouse Steak and Potato Gratin

One of the nice things about Rhonda being home in the summer is that she picks up some special groceries when she’s out. This week, she stopped at Marcacci’s, our most frequently visited butcher, and picked up two porterhouse steaks. She had them cut to order, with the idea that we’d attempt to recreate our visit to Osteria in Philly.

I cooked the steaks sous vide at 128 degrees for a few hours; I rub them with olive oil, salt, and black pepper before confining them in a vacuum bag. After a bath in the tank and a short rest at room temperature, I finished them on the grill: lots of lump charcoal = lots of heat.

Meanwhile, Rhonda made a potato gratin, as well as the pearl onions and mushrooms that adorned the preparation we enjoyed at Osteria.

The potato dish was something Rhonda saw on Facebook, and there wasn’t a recipe for it, so she had to wing it. It came out great, though. And boy does it make for good pictures.

We enjoyed some of Bellview’s Argento red with dinner. I’m having some right now, in fact.

Breakfast Sammy

On Saturday, I had a three-egg omelette myself, but I made one of these for Joe. It’s a Bays English Muffin, with two fried eggs (prepared in a ring mold on the Blackstone), three strips of bacon, and two slices of Cooper Sharp. Oh yeah: buttered the muffin, too.