A Sinfully Easy Romantic Dinner

If Joseph can cook, so can you.

People in both genders know that a romantic dinner can make for a fun evening, especially when the only other option is Shit-cobeck. What I’m going to do in this post is let you in on a real “cool tool,” a simple dinner that looks looks fancy, tastes great, and only takes a minimal amount of work, although you might want to have some good prep time.

The menu includes a good steak, tomato salad, Italian bread, and chocolate covered fruit.

Other Advantages to the Joseph McMahon Special:
- You’re eating reasonably healthily, but I wouldn’t eat this every day. You could definitely do worse.
- You have almost no dishes to do afterwards.
- You get to use delicious fire.
- You’ll attract the attention of other fine ladies/gents who will smell what you’re making.
- You’ll spend less than you would at Outback. Outback sucks anyway. (This dinner cost $35 for two)
- You’ll feel more accomplished when you’re done cooking.

Let’s break it down into separate dishes, and make a list of ingredients.

First, you’ll need to get some charcoal, unless you use a gas grill, in which case you’ll need to get a pair of balls. Just get straight-up black charcoal, forget the smoke flavorings and other balderdash. Kingsford makes a “BBQ Bag,” a fair deal for a college student, and you can just light the whole bag on fire. If not, get some lighter fluid, too.

Chocolate Fruit

This is actually the hardest part of the operation, and will take you the longest. In the baking section of the store, get some good chocolate chips. Skip the semi-sweet, go for milk or dark, depending on taste; you’re not adding any extra sugar. You can also buy “dipping chocolate” or “melting chocolate,” but it’s all the same stuff.

Get some fruit. Strawberries are awesome. Get some that look good to you, if they look too dark or bruised, find another box. I usually have to throw out only one or two strawberries from each pack. Bananas are good too, as are oranges (which you’ll want to segment) and grapes. Stay away from stuff that’s too soft. Raspberries are a mixed bag, I think they’re too seedy. You’ll also want to get some waxed paper.

Once you have your fruit and chocolate, wash the fruit and pat it dry. The next part is tricky. Chocolate burns very easily, burning chocolate gives off an unpleasant odor and starts to “crust.” Gross. In order to avoid this problem, make a double-boiler, that is, fill a pot with some water, and put an empty pyrex bowl on top of it. Put the pot on medium heat, and dump the chocolate into the pyrex bowl. The steam from the water will melt the chocolate, and it won’t burn so easily. Once the chocolate is melted, glossy, and smooth, turn the stove off. Rock and roll. Line a plate with the waxed paper, start spearing the fruit with a fork, and dip those puppies. Transfer to the wax paper, one at a time, until you’ve made a huge mess and/or you’ve run out of fruit. Immediately put some soap in the pyrex bowl, and dump the hot water into it to soak. The pot is already clean, unless you’re really anal about water and pots or something.

Send the fruit to the fridge, the chocolate will be set within 2 hours.

We kind of ate some before I could take a picture. This was simple strawberries and oranges.

Tomato Salad

Get some good, medium-sized tomatoes, good olive oil, and red wine (or balsamic) vinegar. ‘Nuff Said.

Get a good-sized ball of mozzarella cheese. They cost about four bucks, if you need help, ask the deli dude.

Get some fresh basil. If you can’t find fresh, powdered will do, but here’s a tip: you can keep fresh basil in a freezer for half a year, and nobody will know the difference. Slice the mozzarella cheese and tomatoes, and arrange them on a plate so they look like this. Add basil too. In this example, I put a little Ms. Dash Italian Medley (dried shit) on top, but that’s optional.

Drizzle some olive oil, vinegar, and salt on the tomato salad right before serving.

That was really easy, wasn’t it? All you had to do is slice some vegetables and cheese.

Italian Bread

Go buy some from the store. The stuff at Giant is really good, and it costs $1.69. You don’t have to heat it.

The Steak

You’ll need to get a couple of steaks. Steak is good stuff. Don’t worry about getting filet mignon or the most expensive cut there is, it’s not worth it. You can’t go wrong, though, with a standard t-bone. They’re moderately priced and easy to spot in the store. Try and find one that has good marbling, that is, with some white fat in the middle. A lot of the fat melts away on the grill (that’s what falls in and causes flare-ups), but you’ll want to trim the excess fat off the sides.

What else do you need? Nothing, really. Don’t marinade a t-bone. If you get a cheaper cut, like a strip steak, or flank steak, (still perfectly good cuts of meat, but you get what you pay for) you can put some sauce on it, but you shouldn’t need to marinade a really good steak. I usually rub some olive oil on the outside (keeps it from sticking to the grill), add a couple of peppercorns, salt, and some garlic powder. That’s all you need.

Steak cooks better at room temperature, but if that grosses you out, don’t worry about it. I usually rub the oil mixture on the steak just before cooking it.

Dump some charcoal in that grill, or light your BBQ bag. If you go the former route, let some lighter fluid soak on for a couple of minutes. LIGHT THAT SUCKER. BOOM!!!! The grill is NOT READY for delicious steak if there are flames coming out of it. When the charcoal is ashed over and glowing red, you’re set. See if you can get your hand to within a few inches of the grill grate. You can’t do it without burning yourself, and neither can the steak, but the steak is already dead, so it doesn’t mind being cooked. Use tongs to put the steak on the grill.

The trickiest part about grilling steaks, and making meat in general, is testing for doneness. Eventually it will become intuitive to you. People will attempt to teach you how to “touch your hand” to test, but that never worked for me. If you got a t-bone, and you like your steak cooked like most people do, cook it on one side, uncovered, for five minutes. Flip it over and cook it for another four minutes. Touch the tongs to the center of the steak; it’ll have some give, but won’t be “squishy.” Cover the steak for the first five minutes, and leave the cover off after the flip.

Put the steaks on a clean plate, ignore the blood. Seeing some blood is actually another sign that you’re eating meat that’s cooked enough to eat. Don’t ask me why. Let the steaks sit for a couple of minutes, and serve with the tomato salad and bread.

This is how my steak looked.

You shouldn’t need any sauce or anything, unless you really, really like sauce. I like putting a few drops of the Chipotle Tabasco on mine, but that’s like on everything I eat.

That’s that! All you’ll have to clean up is a couple of plates and a pyrex bowl.

My test subject for this operation approved.