Steak with Fresh Herb, Red Wine and Balsamic Butter

I like steak.

Just FYI – I deleted a 3-paragraph long rant about the paleo diet from this part of the post.

There’s something special about steak. It’s simultaneously delicious, iconic, celebratory, refined, complex and exceedingly simple.

We can eat steak on a simple weeknight, or seek it out for special celebrations. We can grill it quickly in the backyard, or wait patiently as it’s cooked to perfection by a world renowned chef. We can buy it for two bucks a pound, or spend an unholy amount of money on a single cut.

In this case, my buddy and I spent a not-unholy amount of money on two beautiful T-bones at Shawn and Ted’s, a full-service natural meat-market in Renton, WA. It was a celebration of sorts: my wife and his fiance were away doing wedding-associated activities, so we entertained ourselves with a Sounders match and beer, steak and wine, and finally, cigars and scotch. It was wonderful.

The best thing you can do with a good steak is nothing. Well, next to nothing.

In this case, all I did was season each steak with salt and pepper, and grill them over medium-high heat for 3 minutes on each side.

That’s it.

Nothing else needed.

The butter that I made to go on this steak was a different story. This should be prepared in advance.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup red wine
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinaigrette
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter – cubed
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil
• salt and pepper

Mix the red wine and balsamic in a small soup pan, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer the mixture for 10 minutes, which will reduce it by about half. Remove from the heat.

Stir in the butter, one cube at a time, and allow the mixture to cool slightly. Stir in the herbs and a dash of salt and pepper, and then transfer the mixture to a piece of wax paper, ramekin or bowl. Cover and refrigerate for up to two weeks.

Serve the steak with a dab of the butter on top (or on both sides – it’s that good), and enjoy!