Tomahawk Steak for 7!

 7 for 7

- that's how it went this Sunday evening when we hosted a dinner of 7 people starting at 7pm.

Prior to the dinner I had a scavenger hunt on my hand having set myself the task of sourcing Tomahawk Steaks. Not easy! 

With a search that took me from Dun Laoghaire to Rathmines and beyond, I finally settled upon two 30 day aged steaks from the butcher in Ranelagh, hitting about the 2kg mark in total.

Cooking these bad boys normally involves a reverse sear method and a very smokey kitchen - which isn't great for an open plan kitchen and no dinner guest likes to be sitting in smoke!

So this time I decided to the reverse of the reverse sear method and instead seared the steaks when guests arrived and while they had a pre-dinner drink in the front room. After searing a nice crust on each of the steaks I popped them in the oven with a meat thermometer set for 52 degrees celcius in order to achieve a rare cook.

It all worked out perfectly with no smokey kitchen and, after a starter of a blue cheese wedge salad, followed by some tomato meatballs on a small ring of pasta and some smoked salmon blinis (with cream cheese and sweet chilli sauce), we all enjoyed the meat along with brocolli and hasselback potatoes. 

I sure was glad it worked out because (1) I didn't want to ruin the good meat and (2) truth be told I was very nervous about cooking for 7!!

What's better than a dessert after dinner?!

Why 2 desserts of course!!

Fiona brought a delicious chocolate cake (Darina Allen receipe) while I made a strawberry cookies and cream "ice box cake"

Both so so good!

And the empty wine bottles all tell a story :-) 

And conveniently I signed up for a glass bottle bin collection service so the next morning clean up was very little hassle with the bottles all just getting put in the bin in the garden with no trip to the bottle bank having to be organised. I highly recommend this service.