New Idea

Well, this isn't going so well.

I'm really bad at this whole blog thing. The problem is, I can't think of anything to write. That's where you come in, dear readers. Name a topic. Give me something specific enough that I can write a fairly concise article, rather than a book. I'll do some half-hearted research and throw something together in far too short a time. Don't expect anything academic; I'll forget to cite a source or two, and it may or may not be because I just pulled something out of my ass. This may be because you picked some boring dry old bugger, and I need to add some drama to make things interesting, or it may be because I got lazy and didn't feel like doing any more research.

How to cook a steak indoors

Lots of people screw this up in a number of ways. Usually, by not using enough heat, or a heavy enough pan. Here's how to do it right.

You need:

- A steak [1].

- Salt and pepper [2].

- Neutral oil with a high smoke point [3].

- Good butter [4].

Optional, but highly recommended:

- Fresh thyme.

- Fresh rosemary.

- Garlic.

Directions:

- Get your steak out of the fridge so it can come up to room temperature. When it's not frigid, pat it dry and season it with salt and pepper.

- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

- Get out your grandma's old well-seasoned cast-iron skillet, and put it on high.

- Put a good coating of oil in your pan. You don't want a little dinky pool, but you don't want to deep-fry the steak either.

- When the oil is *almost* smoking hot, gently lay the steak into the pan. Don't fuck with it; just leave it be and occasionally lift it up a tiny bit to peek under to check on the progress.

- Smash a couple cloves of garlic with the side of a knife, and slip them out of their skin. Plop them into the pan, off to the side somewhere. Toss in a sprig each of thyme and rosemary.

- When the steak is nice and brown on the bottom, flip it over. Pile the garlic, thyme, and rosemary on top. Put a nice big pat of butter on top, too.

- Shove the whole thing into the oven.

- After a couple minutes, the butter should be melted. Pull the pan out of the oven, tuck the herbs under the steak, and spoon the butter/oil/juices over the steak. Shove it back in the oven.

- Pull it out and poke it now and then.

- When it feels like the flesh between your thumb and index finger when your hand is in a loose fist, it's done (should take about five minutes in the oven, but it depends on the thickness). Pull it out of the pan and put it on a cutting board to rest for ten minutes tented with foil.

- Eat.

If you want to make a fancy sauce, while the steak is resting, do this:

- Set the hot pan over high heat.

- Pull out the bits of garlic, herbs, etc. with tongs.

- When the meat juices have browned a bit and stuck to the pan, pour off the fat.

- De-glaze with a splash of red wine.

- Drop in a cube of frozen super-concentrated beef broth [5]. Pour in any juices from the resting steak.

- Off the heat, stir in a pat of butter.

- Season with salt and pepper.

[1] The steak should be reasonably thick, but nothing crazy. If you're trying to do this with a really damn thick steak, like one of those two-inch filet mignon things that seem to be popular, this method won't work. If it's over an inch thick, don't bother trying to do this; it will be raw and cold in the middle. Maybe you like that, but I don't. I like ribeyes about an inch thick.

[2] Don't use table salt. It has sodium silicoaluminate in it. Do you know what that is? I sure as shit don't. Kosher salt is readily available and reasonably priced. The frog-eaters make a decent sea salt that comes in blue (fine) and red (coarse) cardboard tubes with a whale on them. There's also fancy fleur de sel stuff that's great for finishing, but totally over-the-top unless it's a special occasion.

[3] I keep two oils around for cooking---a cheap, Lebanese extra virgin olive oil for lower-heat stuff, that I buy in vast quantities, and a smaller bottle of safflower oil that I use for stuff like this and for stir-fries when I want a high smoke point.

[4] I don't use much butter. When I use butter, it's for the flavor of the butter, so I get good butter. Plugra is good and reasonably available. There are much pricier boutique butters out there, but they're a waste for cooking. Use them for spreading on good bread. And buy unsalted butter for cooking, especially baking, so you can control the seasoning.

[5] Keep this around. I'll explain it in a future post and put the link here.

Happy New Year!

It's 2010, and that means it's time for me to promise to update this thing more often, then stop doing so after a couple of months.

Anyway, I think what I'm going to do is combine this blog with my food blog, so it will just be one rather eclectic blog. All this means is that the food posts that I don't post on Tiny Kitchen in Dearborn will be food posts that I don't post on here instead. That way, I have twice as many posts to not write, but I'm only procrastinating on one blog rather than two. That made sense, right?

I'll probably have a few book review posts on here in the near future, and many of them will be cookbooks, so I think that's a good tie-in to combine the blogs. I might also re-visit some of the stuff I've done over on Tiny Kitchen, take better pictures, and post them in here.