I’ve been writing about food for well over 25 years and all the prominent foodies have a secret saying about restaurants: “Valentine’s Day is for amateurs”. The rush is too much and the menus are too formulaic, plus they really want quick turnover. It’s distracting and well, unromantic.
You can really put together something luscious at home, even if nobody trusts you to bring something to the family get-togethers. Really, you can do better than most restaurants with the quality of meats available at Meat N’ Bone. I was happy to be hosted to experience it!
They are proudly transparent about the grading of each of their meats, including Japanese, Australian and USA levels. That really lets you know the marbling and flavor of what you’re getting. The 400 categories of meats were developed with Michelin chefs.
For years, I thought I didn’t know how to cook meat: I don’t have a grill and they never turned out right. I was basically trying to cook beastasauruses. As it turns out, when you use the best, you barely have to do anything to have a masterpiece!
The meats come packaged in individual portions that are just right.
Now, I don’t want you to stress about putting on a whole Broadway show as dinner. With such a star for the entree, you can keep it simple for the sides. So, budget-wise and convenience-wise (like if you are under a snowmageddon), you can raid your cupboards and freezer to do something off-beat and tasty.
Do you know about Wagyu beef? It’s originally a Japanese protocol of raising beef with special diets — can include beer! — massages and relaxing treatment. It makes for well-marbled, extra tender meat.
There’s now an American Wagyu level of beef, Meat N’ Bone carries it too. Their filet mignon is a Wagyu-Angus cross. I’ll admit — before I tried Meat N’ Bone’s filet mignon, I didn’t care for the cut. It was always so lean and minerally, like a mouth full of nickles. This is in a whole different universe. It was incredibly tender, even very-well seared as they suggested. I cooked the inside to rare, which works well when there’s no fat cap. It has some sweetness.
So, rummaging around my freezer, I had some homemade lobster stock. The thought was to make a seafood wine sauce. But then, I discovered I didn’t have any white wine in the house. Ah, but I had some Vermouth! So, I looked up using that in a seafood sauce. I had an almost full bottle. But then I read something about taking it out of the refrigerator. I mean, I thought it being a fortified wine, it didn’t need that? The interwebs suggested to sniff for skunkiness and taste. I wasn’t super happy about the scent and it tasted like bad water. Did you know this about Vermouth? Am I the only one? How embarrassing.
I do have tuna vodka and hot chili vodka, so, voila! That and some whisked in butter made for a perfect sauce. The last of the balcony farm rosemary was employed as a little aromatic.
Sides were some truffled potatoes gratin I had in muffin cups in the freezer and Yul Brynner’s recipe for marinated mushrooms.
Meat N’ Bone sells jars of butcher Maldon sea salt, some of the most coveted in the world. Years ago, when I was just getting into food writing, I got to meet the Lee Brothers, the famous foodie guys from Charleston. They mentioned that one of their first assignments was to rank salts and they had tried 200. They pronounced Maldon as the best. I’ve tried some very fancy salts from around the world and some can be too chemically or burning. The Maldon flakes are gentle and taste of the sea. Meat N’ Bone recommends it as a finishing salt, watch it melt as you sprinkle at the end.
Iberico pork is from Spain, where the piggies feast on acorns, grass and grains. I understand that in our colonial days, wild boar used to eat acorns in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The diet makes pigs rich. These chops are rib chops. I had a double-thick chop that was a perfect dinner size.
So, I checked out their You Tube instructions for cooking it. They were definitely insistent on not overcooking the babies, so I didn’t. I was in the middle of the storm and carefully husbanding my resources. I had some frozen bacon fat and rubbed the pork with it. I seasoned it with some Spice House Herb blend and Maldon salt. For a hot umami bomb, I topped with some Momofuku truffle chili crisp.
They were meaty, juicy and sweet. They’re not like country ham, they’re not at all gamy. They’re so easy to work with! They don’t throw off fat, so they stay juicy. I didn’t have to marinate them or anything.
Sides were some leftover carrots put into duty grated into a terrific sweet slaw: homemade sour cream, vanilla high protein yogurt, Blue Plate mayo, golden raisins soaked in apricot liqueur, chai and baharat seasonings with a little vanilla bean salt. Also, I had some frozen cream of butternut squash soup that I topped with a little heavy cream. If you squirrel away good stuff in the summer and fall, you won’t get caught flat-footed in a winter storm!
Denver BMS7+ Wagyu steak is a domestic product from Meat N’ Bone. It has a fascinating background: “The Denver Steak is a relatively new cut of beef. It was born in 2009 as a result of a research project called “the Beef Checkoff.”
The project was led by meat-science professors at the University of Florida and the University of Nebraska. The goal of the program was to identify and promote new and potentially more affordable cuts of meat and they were VERY successful at it.
How successful? Well, lets just say the Denver steak is the fourth most tender muscle section of a heifer, steer, or cow. They are also extremely juicy and full of flavor.
The Denver comes from the chuck of the steer; so essentially sliced chuck eye steak. In Japanese restaurants it is commonly used for shabu shabu or yakiniku grilling. It was featured in Wall Street Journal’s 2019 “Grill Stars”. Rich, buttery smooth flavor. Think of a NY Strip mixed with a short rib.” They also strongly recommend not to overcook it: I seared it on all sides and let it rest. It was perfectly medium rare and juicy, elegant.
I topped the steak with my homemade sour cream made into a horseradish sauce, along with the Maldon and freshly cracked Kampot black pepper. Sides were truffle pasta e ceci, along with marinated mushrooms.
Luxe & Down-Home Cuisine/Culture/Travel/Style 