Happy Valentine's Day: A Chocolicious Entry

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Marc and I celebrated our V-day dinner last night. It took FOREVER to make (or so it seemed), but it was ridiculously delicious. We prepared some blackened rib-eye steaks and baked potatoes. For dessert? Flour-less chocolate cake.

Ingredients

For the steaks:

1 Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons sweet paprika

1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon packed light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Kosher salt

2 Rib-eye steaks

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter

For the gravy:

4 strips of bacon, diced

1 medium onion, chopped

1 Tablespoon all purpose flour

1/2 cup whiskey

3 cups chicken broth

2 bay leaves

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter

Kosher salt

Black Pepper

Procedure:

1. Mix cocoa powder, paprikas, brown sugar, cayenne pepper and salt

2. Rub on steaks and allow steaks to come to room temp (about 20 minutes)

3. Meanwhile, cook bacon until crispy 

4. Remove bacon from heat and set aside 

5. In the same pan add onion, cooking till soft

6. Add the flour and cook for 1 minute

7.  Remove from heat and add whiskey (allow flames to die out if it ignites)

8. Return to heat and bring to simmer until thickened

9 Add chicken broth and bay leaves

10. Bring to a boil and cook until reduced by 1/4

11. Whisk in heavy cream and simmer until gravy coats spoon (took about 10 minutes)

12. Stir in butter, diced bacon, salt and pepper

13. Reduce heat to just keep gravy warm

Going back to the steaks that should be warm now:

14.  Heat cast iron or stainless steal pan over high heat

15. Add butter and allow to melt (will happen super quick)

16. Add steaks and sear on each side - approx 3-4 minutes per side

17. Allow steaks to rest on cutting board for 5 minutes before serving.

Pictures:

Our spices

Smeared in awesome

We don't drink whiskey, so we busted out the top shelf stuff.

After thickening 

After the heavy cream addition

Om nom, keeping it warm

Steak with gravy and baked potato

The baked potato was nothing special. Poked it a few times with a fork, then rubbed olive oil, salt and pepper over it and popped it into the oven at 375 while I worked on dinner. It cooked for about an hour and a half or so.

Be VERY aware that blackening the meat might just cause the house to fill up with smoke and have all of your smoke alarms go off while your infant is trying to sleep. It's also super easy to cross the line from blackened to burned. The gravy REALLY helps re-hydrate it a bit and have a balance between crunchy and soft.

We have a bunch of the gravy left over, so we are re-purposing it to use as a gravy/sauce/marinade for some asparagus with dinner tonight. I really adore not wasting food and I think this is awesome. 

Looking for the chocolate cake I mentioned? You'll have to come back tomorrow for that. =)

What did you do for Valentines? Did you make something special or is it just another day on the calendar in your house?