A Ribeye Birthday

A couple days ago my mother had a birthday, and I was lucky enough to be able to fly out to my hometown to celebrate with her. So I decided to make her a special birthday dinner. Both my mother and I love red meat, so I went to the store (Berkeley Bowl is AMAZING by the way) and bought us a couple 100% grass fed, organic ribeye steaks, along with some purple carrots and baby artichokes.

I cooked the steak by pan searing it on an iron skillet for a few minutes on each side to seal in the delicious juices, and then finished it off in the oven. This was the first time I'd cooked a steak this way on my own, and in this novice state I mis-remembered that the most commonly used fat for pan searing is butter, and thought it was olive oil. Well, it turned out that my mother was out of olive oil. This made me  nervous, here I was with these beautiful cuts of meat, making my mother's birthday dinner, and I had to cook them with coconut oil? But they turned out great. In fact coconut oil has an extremely high smoking temperature, which makes it ideal for this kind of cooking. Sometimes I find the taste of coconut oil to be a bit overwhelming, but this time it remained relatively subtle, which was great as I really wanted to let the ribeye itself be the star of the night.

My mother doesn't drink at all, so I couldn't fall back on the pan sauce method I've used before of sauteing onions or garlic in the left over steak juice, adding some herbs and maybe some other vegetables such as mushrooms, and a liquor such as wine or whisky. Instead I added more coconut oil, some minced garlic, salt, and a heaping handful of fresh basil. I sauted it all for just a short bit so as to not let the garlic burn, and then poured it over the steak. The end result was a bit plainer than I normally would make a steak, but still quite delicious and beautiful as well!

The vegetables were very easy. I simply coated them in coconut oil, spread them out on a baking pan, and baked, sprinkling a bit of salt on top at the end. 

Happy birthday mom!