School Night Steak & Spinach

How we make it.

*serves 2-4*

Steak

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 ribeye steaks
1 tablespoon butter
Splash red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper, to taste

Season ribeyes on both sides with olive oil, salt and pepper. Let sit at room temperature for 10-15 minutes before cooking. Grill or cook it in a hot cast iron pan on the stove top for a few minutes per side to desired doneness. Transfer to a plate when finished cooking and top with a tablespoon of butter and a splash of red wine vinegar. Let rest for 5 minutes. If you're serving four, slice steak up once rested and put back in plate juices to soak up all that vinegar and butter before serving.

Spinach

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 - 10 ounce bag baby spinach
Dash nutmeg
Dash garlic powder
Salt and pepper, to taste

*Note - if you want a little kick, add some red pepper flakes.

While steak rests warm olive oil in a large skillet on medium high heat. Add the whole bag of spinach. Season with garlic powder, nutmeg and pepper, stirring to combine. Cook for 3-5 minutes until wilted. Then add salt, stirring to combine. Salt will draw out moisture so it's added at the end to prevent wet spinach. Gross.

Plate up and enjoy the simplest, most iron rich dinner of your life.

Why we make it.

School Night Steak & Spinach is one of those dinners that's so simple and so constant in our house that I didn't even think to call it a recipe. It's the easiest, most reliable dinner I make. It takes like two seconds to get from fridge to table. It's nutritious, not too expensive and requires no planning. What more could you want? A potato? I usually do throw in some sort of potato if I think ahead enough. Sauteed spinach is probably the best vegetable you aren't making. Mild in flavor, quick to cook and packed with nutrients. If your kids (or you) hate vegetables I testify that this is a preferable one to choke down because it requires less chewing than some fibrous others. Not that I would know! Of course I know. I spent the fullness of the 90's hiding raw broccoli on a tiny shelf under our dinner table. I gagged on so many Jolly Green Giants I still retch if I catch sight of a can. You could fill volumes with post mortem photo essays of the baby carrots I have dodged and the various dehydrated, fungal states in which they were eventually found, months after the dinners they weren't eaten in. This spinach is personal. You might be surprised by the addition of vinegar to a cooked steak but I swear by a sprinkle of acid mixed with some butter fat to finish a ribeye. You could also use a splash of lemon and we often do. Clearly I am passionate about the pragmatism, the enjoyability, the ease of this dinner. And that's why we make it. Sorry it took so long to tell you about it.