The Riverside Dirty Ribeye

Without question, our signature dish at The River Room was our Dirty Ribeye, a 12-ounce cut of choice steak from the rib section of the cow, which we would purchase in 15 pound Cry-O-Vac hunks and hand cut. We’d buy these slabs of beef for about $125 each and sell the resultant 20 steaks for $500, served with a starch, a vegetable and a salad; with that sort of mark-up, you’d think that any idiot would be able to make a living in the restaurant business – obviously except for this idiot.

This manner of preparation, i.e. ‘dirty’, came from Dhoubi, our stoner chef from Kansas City, who got the recipe from our favorite restaurant in Kansas City, Il Trullo, which sadly is no longer in business. Il Trullo shut down shortly after we moved to the mountains, and I swear its demise was due in large part to the loss of our revenue, as I’d dropped bucket loads of money there both with business dinners and personal meals.

One advantage to the Dirty Ribeye was that we could make a steak taste exceptional without using a wood-fired grill – good for us, as the kitchen in The Riverside didn’t have a wood fired grill, only a flat top griddle upon which a steak could be cooked. Another nice feature of the recipe involved the ability to ‘dirty’ the steak - which gave the steak its superior flavor - early in the day and finish it quickly to order during the dinner rush, this becoming a necessity as our cooking staff dwindled to one during the last six months of our operation.

Also included is our recipe for a poor man’s Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale, officially known at The Riverside as Balsamico a Basso Costo delle Montagne, which we drizzled on the steak; it is essential to the dish.

Serves Four, providing you buy four steaks

- 1” Thick, nicely marbled Ribeye steaks – choice for certain, prime if you can find them

- About one dozen Hardwood chunks – mesquite, hickory, apple, cherry, pecan – roughly the size of a kid’s fist

- A cast iron skillet

In a charcol chimney, get the wood to blazing, then dump it in your grill. Let it simmer down for a minute or two, until the flames are mostly gone and you’re left with glowing, red-hot chunks of wood. Throw the meat directly on the glowing embers, no more than 90 seconds per side. That’s it! Take them off and set them aside. They’ll have some ash, some burn marks, maybe even a little grit on the exterior – no worries, as that also is digestable. Most importantly, what they’ll also have is a seared, smoky char infused into the buttery fat which is inherent in the cut. (You can do this step early in the day – cool them covered in the fridge.)

When you’re ready to eat, make sure your cast iron skillet is hot; not white hot like you were blackening redfish, but pretty damn hot. Finish the steaks in the skillet to your likeness, no more than two minutes per side, which shouldn’t result in a temperature any more than medium rare. If you like your steak cooked beyond medium rare, I would suggest you skip the first three steps of this recipe, as I see your journey to Belly Blissville involving a trip to a Golden Corral.

Slice the steaks on the bias into ½” thick strips, fan out on your plate and drizzle generously with the balsamic. We rested the steaks over a small mound of arugula; the smoky meat, the sweet tang of the balsamic and the peppery arugula resulting in an exceptional marriage of flavors, as if it were always meant to be.

Balsamico a Basso Costo delle Montagne

One 16-oz bottle of inexpensive balsamic vinegar
2 – teaspoons corn starch
2 – tablespoons corn syrup

Empty the balsamic into a sauce pan, wisk in the corn starch, and simmer until reduced by half. Stir in the corn syrup, let cool and pour into one of those plastic, pointy-tipped condiment dispensers that chefs use to make drizzles and spiky swizzles on plates. They sell them in the kitchen gadget section at the Walmart for a buck.

This stuff can also be used in salads, over fresh tomatoes when making Caprese, and anywhere else you use a good balsamic – possibly even over Little Debbie Bars or Cheez-Its with excellent results.

Better yet, if you can afford pricy, aged Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale, dispense with the aforementioned culinary skullduggery and enjoy the real thing, imagining while you enjoy this feast… that you are dining Riverside.