It tasted good, with hints of good.

I had an unusually fancy dinner planned for last night considering it was Wednesday and just J and me. It gave me the silly notion to do a foodie entry. Silly because I love red wine more than anything but am certainly no expert, and silly because a foodie blog should have beautiful photographs and there is something wrong with my camera and I’m currently relying on my crappy, three year old cell phone for taking pictures.

The fancy dinner was simply a result of wanting to use ingredients I had on hand. I realized this morning that but for the butter, bread, salad dressing and wine, the entire meal was made from ingredients purchased at Costco. The Costco ingredient list consisted of garlic powder, sea salt, black pepper, steak filets, vine ripened tomatoes, olive oil, salad mix, and blue cheese. If when you die you go to heaven and heaven is different for each person and it’s that person’s own idea of nirvana, then when I die I’m going to Costco. There is nothing as cathartic as buying in bulk.

I’ll start with the wine. Last Monday, J and I went to BevMo!. I always enjoy my trips there because I use it as an excuse to buy copious amounts of wine. I purchased several bottles of red all in the $15 range. Last night, I opened the 2003 Hess, which is a Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley. The bottle says the wine has a youthful flavor, or something like that, and it is aged 14 months in small oak barrels.

I thought it was good, not wonderful, but perfectly pleasant. I tried to be professional about my tasting and began by looking at its legs. It had discernable legs, but wasn’t clinging to the glass like some other wines I’ve had. I then came to grips with the fact that I have absolutely no idea how to write notes on wine. It had nice legs, not Rockette material, but nice? I did do that draw air in and gurgle thing and I thought I tasted a bit of strawberry, but I really don’t know. Let’s just say it was probably worth the $15.

Dinner consisted of store bought mixed greens tossed in a store bought balsamic vinaigrette dressing, roasted vine ripened tomatoes with blue cheese, grilled steak fillets and sourdough garlic bread. To prepare the steaks, I rubbed them with olive oil, ground sea salt, ground black pepper and garlic powder and then grilled them four minutes on each side (two minutes, twist, two minutes, flip, two minutes, twist, two minutes, off the grill to rest 10 minutes). The tomatoes were halved, cored, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with fresh ground sea salt and black pepper and roasted for 15 minutes at 400 degrees. I then put crumbled blue cheese on top and roasted an additional five minutes. The garlic bread was nothing more than slices of Trader Joe’s seeded sourdough bread topped with butter, ground sea salt and garlic powder and broiled.

One tip about the steak, I like to buy a whole loin from Costco and then trim it and cut it into steaks myself. It provides me several meals for not too many dollars and the steaks are the perfect portion – sort of on the small size, but really the amount we should be eating. I learned the technique from Alton Brown’s Good Eats, Tender is the Loin.

The meal tasted wonderful and was quick and easy. I would recommend it for a fast weeknight meal or for entertaining.