These past few months, we’ve sometimes depended on food deliveries for our meals at home. However, because only a few restaurants were open, our choices were limited.

With the easing of the quarantine restrictions, more restaurants have opened and our choices of meals now include gourmet dishes from top restaurants.

We can hardly wait to order from Marriott Hotel (www.manilamarriott.com, tel. 0917-6595420), for instance. This five-star hotel has recently made some of its most loved dishes available for delivery or takeout. From Marriott’s Cru Steakhouse, you can order US Certified Angus prime rib steak served with four side dishes. The choices include black truffle risotto, whipped potatoes, five-cheese baked macaroni, creamed spinach, maple glazed carrots, and steamed broccoli. For the sauce, choose from black pepper sauce, red wine sauce and forest mushroom sauce.

But if you wish to cook your own steak, you can order either the Tasmanian grass-fed steak, US Certified Angus prime rib or the Australian rib eye wagyu. Each order comes with two ready-to-eat side dishes and one choice of sauce. (Prices start at P2,500.)

For comfort food, you can order maybe a bowl of wonton noodle soup (P770) or beef caldereta made with braised Australian beef rump, spiced tomato sauce and organic local vegetables (P760).

The pizzas look tempting, too. The choices include the classic Margherita, with toppings of plum tomatoes, basil leaves and mozzarella cheese (P730) or the pepperoni pizza, which has generous helpings of pepperoni, meat ragout and mozzarella cheese (P880)

The good thing about ordering from Marriott is that they have Delishvery, Resorts World Manila’s own delivery service, so you can just phone in your order (tel. 79088885) and pay either by credit card or by cash on delivery.

Surprises

Another restaurant that now accepts takeout orders is Kimpura (www.kimpura.com.ph). Sunday being Father’s Day, our daughter Clarissa surprised us with a feast of gindara teriyaki, assorted tempura, California maki and unagi maki, which she somehow managed to order for us all the way from Singapore, where she lives.

However, since Kimpura doesn’t do delivery, we had to pick up the food from their restaurant in Greenbelt, Makati. The trip was worth it, though, because the dishes were as good as we remember them to be. Another surprise we had on Father’s Day came from our other daughter Pia, who lives in California. Through the power of the internet, she was able to order for us from Pacific Bay (www.pacificbay.com.ph) a generous slab of Kagoshima Japanese Wagyu A5 steak. This high-grade, well-marbled steak was buttery, meltingly tender and so rich in flavor. I cooked it based on the method of chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt in his very informative book “The Food Lab.”

Unlike other cooking methods that prescribe turning the steak only once, Lopez-Alt recommends flipping the steak frequently, until it is of your desired doneness (medium rare or medium). Our ¾-inch Wagyu A5 steak came out perfectly cooked, to a doneness that was between medium rare and medium.

Here’s how I cooked our high-grade Wagyu steak.

Japanese Wagyu Steak

(Based on chef J.Kenji

Lopez-Alt’s method)1 slab rib eye steak at room temperature, about 400 g, ¾ -inch in thickness

Salt and pepper

¼ c vegetable oil or olive oil

3-4 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp chopped garlic or chopped onions

Pat the steak dry using paper towels. Season both sides with salt and pepper.

In a skillet, heat the oil to smoking point. Carefully lay the steak in the skillet and reduce the heat to medium. Cook for about one minute. Turn the steak over and cook this side for another minute. Flip the steak again and add the butter and chopped garlic or onions.

As the butter melts, spoon some of it and some of the garlic or onions on the steak. Let the steak cook for another 30 seconds to one minute, if you want a doneness that’s between medium rare to medium. (Note that this is for a ¾-inch thick steak. You may have to cook it a bit longer for thicker steak.)

Transfer the steak to a serving platter and let rest for five to 10 minutes. If desired, pour some of the pan drippings over the steak before serving.

Note: You can use this same method of cooking for T-bone steak, porterhouse and striploin.