Tag: steak (Page 1 of 2)

A foodie in San Francisco: House of Prime Rib

June 11, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

It’s a three quarters of a century old, but can it satisfy modern palates?

House of Prime Beef is a San Francisco institution. The busy restaurant has been serving slabs of beef, sides and desserts for generations – it turned 75 years old this year. And yet I hadn’t heard about it until a few years ago, when photos of decadent dinners there started showing on a local foodie Facebook group. Surely, I must have come across mentions of the restaurant before, as I have been patronizing Bay Area food newsgroups since the 90’s, but I probably just never paid attention. Given how easy it’s to cook steak at home, I’ve never seen the point of paying many times more to visit a steakhouse. So when my non-vegetarian daughter mentioned she wanted to go to a steakhouse for her birthday, House of Prime Rib is what popped to mind.

Alas, House of Prime Rib is not the kind of restaurant where you can make a last minute reservation – and by “last minute”, I mean “with less than six months notice.” House of Prime Rib opens its reservations a year in advance, and prime spots are taken pretty much immediately. You can go when they open and hope you get lucky and get a table, but I’m too old for that. Instead, I made reservations for her birthday at Bix (lovely place, great for a special meal) but also took the first available reservations at House of Prime Rib for a weekend night at a reasonable time. That turned out to be almost seven months later. We had a good enough experience that I already made reservations to return next year.

Despite the difficulty in getting reservations, House of Prime Ribs is a rather large restaurant, boasting several dining rooms in addition to the crowded bar area. They serve 600 people every evening. Each dining room, however, feel rather intimate, like a restaurant in itself. I loved the atmosphere of the one we were in, it looked like dining in someone’s old fashioned library. It was darker than this photo suggests, but light enough to be able to see our meals. It was busy but not terribly noisy, we could hear each other well. Dress was business casual – most men had collared shirts and, this being chilly San Francisco, long pants. The restaurant was a nice temperature but you do have to walk outside.

The menu at House of Prime Rib is quite limited, your choices are Prime Rib or, as a concession to those who absolutely can’t eat red meat, fish. You can choose how your prime rib is cut and how well it’s cooked, whether you want salad, or whether you want your potatoes mashed or baked. Otherwise, your only choices are of drinks and of desserts. Service is by old time professional waiters who bring you back to another age and make you feel special. Indeed, feeling like you’re back in the 50’s is a big attraction of this place.

We started our dinner with cocktails. They bring you both the glass and the mixing bottle – which has enough for another cocktail. As the cocktails are not very big, this is a good thing. I got a Cosmopolitan ($15.5); I asked for it to be made weak and it was. It was delicious, particularly at the bottom where I could really taste the Triple Sec. Next time, I’ll order it normal. Both Mike and Camila thought it was very sour, but it didn’t feel like that to me. Mike had the Lemon Drop ($15.5). He liked it very much and would have it again. Camila had a couple of Shirley Temple mocktails ($3) and we both thought they were very good as well.

The meal itself started with white bread and salted butter. The bread was served warm, it tasted fresh, and it was very good. It took effort to not fill ourselves with it. Later, they brought us little warm corn breads which I thought were delicious, though I’m a huge fan of warm cornbread in general. Camila, who is not, gave me hers.

After the bread, the waiter brought a cart featuring a large bowl with ice and a large salad bowl inserted into it. I thought that the salad would be mixed tableside, but it comes already mixed, all the waiter does is very ceremoniously add the salad dressing, spin it and toss it. It’s sort of a show. Unfortunately, the show was better than the salad. I was concerned that the salad had beets and chopped eggs, two things I disliked, but fortunately those ended at the bottom of my plate. Unfortunately, I found the dressing too acidic for my taste and just not very tasty. Camila agreed – we both barely ate any a few lettuce leaves before deciding it just wasn’t for us.

You can only omit the salad by ordering your Prime Rib a a la carte, but you currently you can only get Prime Rib slices if you do so.

I knew that I wanted to get dessert, and that meant that I would not be able to eat a steak by myself – thus I decided to share a King Henry VIII cut ($68) with Mike. The sharing fee is just $10 and they bring you your own plate with salad and sides. The King Henry cut is thick and includes a bone. It was the perfect size for two not-too-hungry people. It was also delicious, perfectly cooked medium rare, juicy with a melt-in-your-mouth feel. I’m not a particularly big fan of Prime Rib – give me a grilled or pan-seared steak any day – but you could feel the quality of the meat as well as the expertise in cooking it and cutting it. I’d clearly have it again.

The steak comes with creamed spinach and we asked for mashed potatoes. Mike loved the creamed spinach, he actually made us try it, though to me it tasted just like the abomination that creamed spinach is. But hey, if you don’t think cream spinach is Satan’s own invention, you might like it too. The mashed potatoes were great, though a bit too runny. I’d have wanted a spoon to eat them with. I did love the gravy they came with, it had a deep meaty flavor that I’ve seldom actually encountered in gravy. If I could have eaten any more, I’d have asked for more mashed potatoes. I don’t think the sauce the steak came with was the same gravy, however, as I was less fond of it – it lacked that meatiness and had little depth.

The meal also came with a Yorkshire pudding and this was a revelation. I’d unsuccessfully tried to make them myself once, but I don’t know if I’ve ever actually eaten them at a restaurant (surely when I went to England? but I can’t remember). In any case, they weren’t at all what I expected. One flattish Yorkshire pudding, cooked in a small pan, was cut in three and served to us. It had an airy but very eggy consistency, sort of like a very eggy crepe. I’m not a fan of egg myself, but I liked the silkiness of the texture and the subtle egg flavor. I just wish I had liked the sauce the meat came with better.

Camila had the City Cut ($59) which is their smallest serving, and had it well done. She only ate about 2/3rs of it as it was. She thought it was very good; I thought it was dry – but that’s what you get for ordering “well done” beef. She was underwhelmed by the baked potato, however. It had sour cream and chives but no other seasoning, so she mostly left it uneaten. She also skipped ordering the spinach.

House of Prime Ribs has a long list of delicious and very classical sounding desserts, but I had decided on the Strawberry Shortcake ($12.5) in advance. Though the desserts are listed as single serving, this one, at least, was large enough to share. It was delicious, but mostly on account the of the strawberries and cream. I don’t think the cake was a shortcake, it was too sweet with an annoying vanilla flavor, and too light. I daresay it may be the same sponge cake they use in the trifle. Still, the strawberries were fresh, ripe and sweet and the natural syrup from them was delicious. Back in Argentina, strawberries and cream is a common restaurant dessert and I really don’t know why it’s not in the US. It really doesn’t get better than that.

Mike had the Creme Brulee ($12.5), which was also a very generous portion. It was also very good, but not spectacular as I think there isn’t much that can be done to improve creme brulee from its classical presentation. Still, as far as creme brulees went, this was very well executed.

In all, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the meal. These were all American classics, not gourmet food in the least, but well executed and very universally appealing. I also really enjoyed the atmosphere of the restaurant. The one minus is that the whole meal went very fast. We were in and out in just an hour. Now, it’s not that we were rushed – though it’s obvious the name of the game for them is turning tables – but that the dishes were cleared so quickly (albeit after we’d finished) and new ones were brought right away. As we were with an impatient teen this wasn’t totally a bad thing, but if I went there with adults, I’d like to enjoy a more leisurely meal – which I guess we’ll have to force ourselves through pacing our own eating.

House of Prime Rib
1906 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA
1-415-885-4605/6
M - F 5 - 10 PM
Sa - Su 4- 10 PM

Chain Restaurant Reviews: Black Angus Has Gotten Expensive

May 18, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

Then again, so has every restaurant.

I’ve never been one to go to steak houses. Cooking a steak is among the easiest and quickest things in the world* and it’s far, far cheaper to do so at home. Still, after years of getting Black Angus flyers in the mail, I finally decided to give it a try and was surprised that I liked it. The steaks were fine, nothing special, but the advertised Campfire Feast came with plenty of other food that I was far less likely to cook, and was overall a good deal. Over the years before the pandemic, we visited the Black Angus in San Lorenzo many times, then the pandemic came and I pretty much forgot about Black Angus – as our local one doesn’t have outdoor dining.

For some reason, I’ve been having a hankering for food from chain restaurants lately. I can’t explain it, but just in the last week or so I’ve ordered from Panera and Panda Express and got a craving for Black Angus. Nothing specific, just the whole experience. I looked up the Campire Feast and was somewhat amazed at seeing that it now cost $69 ! That’s a 40% increase over the 2020 price ($49). Yes, I know that both food and restaurant prices have gotten ridiculous – but I thought this increase really exemplified how inflation has hit lower middle class Americans – the ones that will eat at Black Angus as a special treat. Salaries most certainly have not gone up by 40% since.

But I digress. I found a Groupon that had the meal for $54, and decided to head there a Thursday night in April, with my husband and younger daughter. I was not overly surprised at how empty the once viving restaurant was. In our pre-pandemic days, there was always a wait and it was always full. No longer.

I don’t think I like Black Angus as much when it’s so sleepy – I think perhaps some of the attraction of chains is the energy you get from other people -, but besides that, it hadn’t change much. Service was good and friendly, and the food was very close to what I remembered.

The Campfire Feast includes a single appetizer, two entrees, four sides, and a dessert. There are several options to choose from within each category, some at a premium, usually $2 to $10. My daughter is not a big eater, so she decided she’d share with us and only order a side salad.

We started with their warm molasses bread which is served with whipped butter (photo taken after we’d consumed most of it). My daughter is particularly fond of this and she enjoyed it as usual. I think the main thing this bread has going for it is that it’s served warm, but different strokes for different folks.

As an appetizer, we all shared the steak quesadilla ($15, $2 supplement to Campfire Feast). I think they might have changed the cut of steak they use in the last few years, it was tougher than I remembered and less juicy. But the quesadilla was fine. It no longer comes with guacamole, which is an additional $2.

I ordered the ribeye steak ($33, $5 supplement to Campfire Feast) with a side of mac & cheese and a side of au gratin potatoes. The au gratin potatoes were pretty good. They were cooked in a thin cheese sauce, and while I’d had preferred a stronger cheese flavor, there was enough of it to cover the potatoes.

As for the steak, it was on the thin side. I was expecting this based on reviews I’d read, and would have preferred a much thicker one (and it’s definitely not worth the $33 full price), but it was OK. It was cooked medium rare as I ordered it, it didn’t have an inordinate amount of grizzle, and it was pretty tasty. It made me think I should consider cooking my steaks on herbed butter (though to be honest, it can be a bit too rich). It was large enough that on top of the potatoes and part of the quesadilla, I couldn’t finish it and I took about half of it home.

Mike ordered a full slab of BBQ pork ribs ($33, $6 supplement to Campfire Feast) to share with my daughter, and two sides of broccoli (given that each one is only a couple of florettes). They both were happy with both choices, though the ribs had too much sauce for their liking. Solid food, nothing amazing.

My daughter also ordered a Caesar salad as a side ($7 as an extra side). She liked that the croutons were made from the molasses bread and overall liked the salad.

My daughter wanted the Chocolate Chip Cowboy Cookie ($9) and really, it’s delicious. It’s hot out of the even, with melting, gooey chocolate chips. It needs perhaps a little bit more of ice cream, as without it it’s too sweet. There was enough of it to satisfy the three of us – though only because Mike only had a bite. It’s more of a two-person dessert.

My daughter had the pomegranate lemonade ($5) and she liked it. It comes in a very large glass and tasted quite fresh to me.

Service was fine, and friendly, and the whole meal ended up costing around $100 after tax and tip – not bad for these post-pandemic times, but not a bargain either.

Black Angus
15800 Hesperian Blvd
San Lorenzo, CA 
(510) 276-1400
M - Th 3 PM - 10 PM
F - Su 12 PM - 10 PM

* How to cook a steak: Heat up a skillet to medium high. Trim the steak. Place the trimmings on the pan, allow to melt, and then coat the bottom of the pan with the melting fat. Add the steak and cook for a minute, turn and cook for another minute. Turn heat to medium and cook for 3-5 minutes, depending on thickness. Turn and cook for another 3-5 minutes. You’re done.

Where’s The Beef?

October 3, 2021 / marga / 0 Comments

Review of Cardenas Markets’ T-bone steaks

Cardenas Markets is a relatively small chain of mid size Mexican supermarkets in California. They have regular groceries, an expanded section of Mexican and Latino groceries, as well as a bakery and deli which offers a small variety of hot meals. I discovered it when it joined Instacart during the first year of the pandemic. I have since ordered from it occasionally, it’s the only market serviced by Instacart that carries empanada shells (albeit the Goya brand).

I don’t usually order beef at Cardenas – though I was very happy with the beef chuck I got from them over the summer -, but their T-bone steaks were on sale ($6/lb), so I decided to give them a try. I was grossly disappointed.

A T-bone steak gets its name from the T-shape form in which the vertebra is cut. It includes a strip steak on one side, and a filet mignon or tenderloin in the other. It’s supposed to let you indulge in the tenderness of the filet and the flavorfulness of the strip, without having to compromise for either. They are supposed to look like the photo below, which I took from the Cardenas page at Instacart. What I got, is what you can see in the photo above. It was basically a bone-in strip steak with little to no tenderloin. I felt ripped off – $6/lb is super cheap for a T-bone (but supermarkets often have loss leaders), but I still expect to get a T-bone when I order a T-bone. If you are going to put a photo of a T-bone and call it a T-bone, make it a T-bone

Cardenas Beef T-Bone Steak — The second problem was that the steak was cut very thin. As Cardenas does not indicate the grade of meat they sell, I’m going to guess they are “select,” the grade with the least marbling and therefore toughest meat. If these are particularly tough, it makes sense that they cut them thin. But be forewarned that that’s what you get.

Now, flavor-wise they weren’t bad. They were pretty generic, tasty steaks. The type I did grow up eating as everyday fair for lunch without giving it much thought. Nowadays I expect a little more from a steak, of course, though for $6/lb perhaps I shouldn’t.

In all, I wouldn’t buy them again.

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Note: the link to Instacart is a referral link, if you subscribed immediately after you click on it, I might get $10 credit and you would as well. You probably can get a better deal elsewhere, though.

Review: Hello Fresh’ Sirloin in a Mushroom Sauce + Recipe

September 23, 2019 / marga / 0 Comments

Rating: 7/10

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Hello Fresh seldom offers steak as part of their regular offerings. Instead, dishes with steak are usually considered “gourmet” and require an additional supplement. These are usually a very poor value, so I never ordered them. I did this time because when I added to my cart, HelloFresh showed that the 65% off discount that I had applied to the supplement as well. Alas, when I checked my account I realized that I was charged the full supplement price, which makes me feel defrauded. Still, it’s a lesson learned and in the future I just won’t order any meals that require paying a supplement.

This meal kit for Sirloin in a Mushroom Sauce with Caramelized Onion Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Carrots was pretty good, if a little too much work. It basically had 5 components that had to be cooked separately: the steak, the mashed potatoes, the carrots, the onions and the mushroom sauce. I think one (the onions) could have been skipped without losing much beyond cooking time.

But all ingredients were very tasty and, in particular, the mushroom sauce was phenomenal, which helped elevate both the meat and the mashed potatoes. I’ve had similar mushroom sauces before, but I liked how simple and quick this one was (recipe below).

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All the ingredients were included and they were mostly fresh (the carrots were a little wobbly) and good quality. The steaks were very, very thick but at least they were around the same thickness.

I paid a little over $20 for this meal kit, including the supplement, or about $10 per person.

Mushroom sauce

I recommend you double the sauce

3 Tbsp butter, divided
4 oz white mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 Tbsp. beef demi-glace
1/4 cup water
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Melt 2 Tbsp. butter over medium-high heat in a pan, preferably one you used to cook steak. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until softened – 2 to 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the demi-glace and the water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and stir in the mustard. Simmer until slightly thickened. Stir in the remaining Tbsp. butter.

Review: Gobble’s Blackened Top Sirlon Steaks with Mashed Potatoes & Baby Carrots

May 25, 2019 / marga / 0 Comments

Rating 7/10

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This was a perfectly acceptable, but unexciting dish. Of course, I should know better than order any kit featuring top sirloin, a cut that is neither tender nor tasty. The blackening spice helped, but still, I wasn’t thrilled. A NY strip, tri-tip or ranch steak seasoned with just salt is better.

This kit, as too many of Gobble’s, required that you start cooking the steak and carrots on the stove and then transfer them to the oven. This, to me, is an unnecessary step and a waste of gas. So after slicing the carrots and seasoning the beef, I cooked both on my iron skillet on the stove. Once the beef was done, I removed it and added a couple of tablespoons of water to the carrots, covered it and cooked for a few more minutes, until the carrots were softish.

The mashed potatoes only required mixing with a pre-mix of poblano peppers & corn and then warming up. As my daughter doesn’t like poblano peppers and I don’t like corns and the two were mixed together, I just skipped that. I did add the cheddar cheese afterwards. I found the cheesy potatoes pretty tasty, but my daughter didn’t like them.

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All in all, I wouldn’t order this kit again.

I got this kit for free due to credits and a welcome back promo code. Use this referral link to get a free kit for 2 with your first box.

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Note: if you use my referral link I *may* get some credits in return, if I happen to be subscribed to the meal kit service at the exact moment you use the code – which is unlikely.

Review: Plated’s Steak au Poivre with Crispy Fingerling Potatoes

March 30, 2019 / marga / 0 Comments

Rating 8/10

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Sometimes, often times, it’s in the sauce. Indeed, in this recipe of Steak au Poivre with Crispy Fingerling Potatoes, it was all the sauce.

The steak, sirloin, was fine but unexciting. The potatoes were blah – I mean, good, but just potatoes. But the sauce was very good and therefore, so was everything else.

The dish also included creamed kale. I wasn’t going to eat it, so I didn’t bother making it.

But this kit was another winner.

I paid around $16/$8 for this kit/per serving. Again, I thought it was worth it.

Sauce au Poivre

This sauce is to be served with steaks. I’ve doubled the quantities but it will probably still serve 2.

2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp cracked black peppercorns
1 shallot, chopped
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 tsp Dijon mustard

Add olive oil to pan where steaks were cooked and heat over medium heat. Add peppercorns and shallot and cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes, until the shallot starts to soften. Add wine and cook for 1-2 minutes, scrapping up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the cream and mustard, stir and cook for an additional 30 seconds.

Review: Plated’s Sherry-Marinated Steak with Potatoes and Creamy Tomato Sauce

March 30, 2019 / marga / 0 Comments

Rating 8/10

I was pretty lucky with my Plated kits last week – flavor wise, at least. Indeed, this kit for Sherry-Marinated Steak with Potatoes and Creamy Tomato Sauce was much better than I had expected.

I’m not generally a fan of sirloin, as it’s a pretty tasteless and tougher-than-it-has-a-right-to-be cut, but the tomato sauce was good enough to make up for the meat’s deficiencies. It was one of those sauces that was weird at the beginning, but then really grew on you. And while the potatoes were sort of blah on their own, they were great with the onion mixture.

All in all, I really enjoyed this dish. I liked making it too.

All the ingredients were fresh and stayed fresh until I cook the meal. However, while the potatoes pictured in the recipe were baby potatoes that had to be halved, the ones actually provided in the kit were four regular red potatoes – the oven time obviously worked differently for them.

I paid around $16 for the kit, or $8 a portion, for this kit – using a “come back” promo I got in e-mail. That was definitely a fair price given that I got basically a restaurant quality meal out of it.

Meal Kit Review: HelloFresh’ Sirloin and Horseradish Cream Sauce with Garlic Bread and Roasted Carrots

February 28, 2019 / marga / 0 Comments

Rating 5/10

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This meal kit for Sirloin and Horseradish Cream Sauce with Garlic Bread and Roasted Carrots may be the first HelloFresh kit that really failed to impress me. It was acceptable dinner fare, but very pedestrian. There were no new flavors here, no tricks, no recipes I’d care to copy and repeat. It was ultimately what it looks like: meat with carrots and garlic bread, with some onions and sour cream. I’ve had it all before (indeed, I had pretty much the same dish concept from EveryPlate – HelloFresh’ cheaper meal kit brand). Moreover, it seems to me that HelloFresh is trying to cut corners and send out cheaper ingredients and ask cooks to include more and more staples of their own to the meals.

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The main ingredient of this meal was the sirloin and I was unimpressed with the quality. The meat was tough and wasn’t particularly flavorful. The two steaks sent had very different shapes from each other and, as you can see above, they were partly discolored, which took from their visual appeal (at least before cooking).

The steak was stopped with sliced onions cooked with beef stock which were fine, but unremarkable. I wondered if HelloFresh was cutting corners by not including demi-glace instead of the stock concentrate.

The accompanying horseradish sauce was also disappointing. It was basically sour cream with a few green onions and horseradish powder. I think it might have been better with some prepared horseradish.

The carrots were just carrots – not my thing but my husband happily ate them just like he has every other time a kit has included carrots.

Finally, the garlic bread included the same “semi-baguette” buns that were included in the EveryPlate meal I referenced above. Once again, I really liked the consistency of the buns. I didn’t like that I had to provide my own butter – I understand that from EveryPlate, but I expect more from HelloFresh -, and I specially didn’t like that the kit included garlic powder instead of fresh garlic.

At the end of the day, however, I am likely to blame for choosing this kit. But I’ve noticed that I’m not particularly excited by many of HelloFresh’ kits – I’ll be suspending for several weeks now as I can’t find much in their upcoming menu I actually want to eat.

Update: I have 3 referrals for 1-week free of HelloFresh. E-mail me if you’d like one.

Meal Kit Review: Plated’s Seared Steak with Blue Cheese Butter and Spinach-Beet Salad

February 10, 2019 / marga / 0 Comments

Rating 9/10

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After writing a whole post reviewing this Plated meal kit for Seared Steak with Blue Cheese Butter and Spinach-Beet Salad, I realized that I had started a review the very night I made it. So I’m incorporating what I wrote then here:

I am impossibly backed up with all the meal kit reviews I need to review, but I can’t help but start with the one I made tonight: Plated‘s Seared Steak with Blue Cheese Butter and Spinach-Beet Salad. It was absolutely delicious – and a very quick recipe to make to boot.

I’m amazed at the simplicity of it: fresh baby spinach tossed with olive oil and salt and topped with beef sirloin slices, toasted pecans, blue cheese butter (a mixture of just blue cheese and butter) and a packet of balsamic glaze. There were also supposed to be seared sliced beets, but no one in my family likes beets so I skipped them (I’m thinking of using them to make an amuse bouche for my Christmas Eve dinner).

But all the flavors together – including the juice from the beef – were just magical. They worked to contrast and compliment each other. I definitely have to make this myself, though that means making my own balsamic glaze, which is easy, but time consuming. If I find commercial balsamic glaze, I may even make this very simple salad for Xmas Even dinner.

The meal wasn’t perfect, however. While most of the spinach was nice and crispy, some of the leaves had started to wilt. Given that I only received my box yesterday, I’m not sure the spinach would have survived if I’d taken longer to make this kit.

Another problem was that the two steaks were terribly different in thickness – one was twice as think as the other, which made cooking them at the same time difficult. This is not the first time I’ve encountered this problem and I wish meal kit companies would be better at this. The beef, however, was very good quality and very tasty.

Finally, I don’t think the portion was large enough for an adult. Perhaps it would have been if I had included the beets, but I’ve found that many of the meal kits that don’t include a carb leave me hungry.

I paid $8 for this kit for 2 people, using a $40-off Black Friday promo.

Meal Kit Review: Home Chef’s Texas-Style Steak on Toast with smashed red potatoes and red onion gravy + recipes

December 20, 2018 / marga / 0 Comments

Ratings: 8/10

Last week, it was my time to sample Home Chef meals, and all in all, they did pretty well. This kit for Texas-Style Steak on Toast with smashed red potatoes and red onion gravy not only produced a very tasty meal, but it taught me recipes/techniques that I didn’t know and would use in the future.

First of all, who would have guessed that white bread brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt before baking in the oven would be so tasty? Of course, I’ve made crostini plenty of times, but the white bread seems to incorporate the flavor of the oil and remain soft inside in a way that crostini doesn’t.

The steak itself was better than I would have thought, and I enjoyed the onion sauce very much. Once again, demi-glace showed its power.

I usually make mashed potatoes with large russet potatoes that I peel before boiling. I really enjoyed the convenience of making it out of small red potatoes that I only needed to half before cooking. It was a much faster approach (plus I hate peeling!) and the resulting mashed potatoes were very good. The peel actually included some festive color to them. I’m considering using this recipe to make mashed potatoes for my Christmas Eve dinner, but I’m not sure they’ll keep as well as my regular mashed potatoes.

The meal was simple to cook and the portion was adequate – in particular because mashed potatoes are filling.

I got my first week of Home Chef at a discount, so I paid only about $10 for this meal. Regular price would be $20 – which is a better deal than other home meal kits.

Smashed Red Potatoes

serves 2

12 oz small red potatoes
2 oz sour cream
1 oz butter
salt & pepper to taste
2 green onions, sliced

Wash potatoes and then cut in half. Place potatoes in a cooking pot and cover with about 1″ of water. Add salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.

Drain the potatoes and return them to the pot. Mashed them with a potato masher, then add sour cream, butter and salt to taste and mix well. Serve, garnished with the sliced green onions.

I got my first week of Home Chef at a discount, so I paid only about $8 for this meal. Regular price would be $20 – which is a better deal than other home meal kits.

Red Onion Sauce

serves 2

2 tsp olive oil
1 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp smoked paprila
2 oz red wine
2 tsp beef demi-glace

Heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and saute, stirring occasionally, until it starts to caramelize, 6-8 minutes. Add paprika and red wine and continue cooking until the red wine has almost evaporated, 2-3 minutes. Mix together the demi-glace and 1/4 cup of water and add to the pan. Lower heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until it thickens, 2-3 minute. Serve over steak.

Tag: steak (Page 1 of 2)

A foodie in San Francisco: House of Prime Rib

It’s a three quarters of a century old, but can it satisfy modern palates?