Bone-in Ribeye Steak with Béarnaise + Oven-fried Potatoes + Turnips and their Greens + Dirty Gin Martinis

This was my first time ever cooking steak at home and probably the most meat I've ever eaten in one sitting so I decided that I had to go for toooppp quality stuff. Lucas and I went to this really cool butcher shop here in Williamsburg called Marlow & Daughters where they only sell free range meat and dairy. We spent a pretty penny on our steak so I had to be extremely careful about cooking the thing! The whole experience was completely crazy and I almost lost my mind, but thank god for my new instant read thermometer!

I've always wanted to try steak with béarnaise so I decided to give that a try. Here's what I did -

First, I cut up a bunch of potatoes and tossed them in salt, pepper and olive oil before roasting them at 425 degrees until they turned nice and crispy and brown. For the béarnaise I combined about 1/4 c of sherry vinegar (only vinegar I had, but you could use whatever kind you'd like) about 1/4 c of white wine with a sliced shallot, some thyme and a bay leaf. I let that reduce down to about half. Next, I whisked in two egg yolks off the heat and then slowly emulsified about 3/4 of a stick of butter. I added in a ton of chopped tarragon, and although not traditional, I also added in a bunch of chopped parsley.

Cooking the steak was crazy and you really don't even wanna know what I did. Well, it actually started out pretty well. I got a ton of advice from Lucas' dad Stephen who cooks a mean steak but after that everything got a little crazy. Basically, what he does is cook the steak in the oven at 300 degrees until it reaches 90 degrees. From here, he sears the steak for a minute or two on each side and by then it should reach an internal temperature of about 115. From here he rests it and during this time the steak should then reach 125-130 degrees for a nice rare-medium rare.

So, I did the whole oven thing and then seared it and then it just wasn't a high enough temperature on the inside, so I let it sear a little longer. I then took it out of the pan and rested it and it was still less than 110 degrees. Then I put it back in the oven for a little while, took the temperature and from there everything was ok. Phew. This might not sound that chaotic but I can promise, it was. The steak turned out pretty great but the béarnaise was definitely the star!

Anyways, while the steak was resting, I cooked the turnips and their greens in a little of the leftover fat from the steak. And that was our meal! I'm looking forward to next time, after having learned from my first experience with steak.

As for drinks, we had a couple of dirty gin martinis, my favorite drink of all time!