Steak

Lundulph judges restaurants based on how good a steak they do. Last week we went to the butcher's and fell for the juicy looking steaks in the window. There were three kinds - fillet, rump and rib eye. We went for the rib eye, because Lundulph reckoned that's the tastiest one.

I'd been planning to do Hasselback potatoes so this was a good opportunity for this. I also made some beans plakia for "greens".

Given the build up Lundulph and I worked ourselves up to, I was pretty nerveous about getting the steaks right. We decided to just season them. I quickly read up on how to deal with steaks in The Lore and Science of the Kitchen book. The thing about steak is that it is a tender type of meat that requires very short cooking time to avoid losing the moisture. Short cooking times are achieved by pan frying or grilling and we opted for grilling. But there is a danger - the temperature in a pan or under a grill is quite high and the surface of the steak will go very hot, thus risking a dry out, before the middle bit of the steak even begins to warm up.

The book said it's notoriously difficult to tell when a steak has been cooked to perfection, but made the recommendation to bring the steak to room temperature before cooking begins, that way the temperature difference between steak surface and steak middle will be lower, this will give more control in the cooking.

So I preheated the grill very hot, seasoned the steaks and put them on. Kept an eye and as soon as the colour changed a little, I took them out, turned them and seasoned on the other side. Then back in again until the surface changed colour.

Now the surface was sealed, I lowered the heat to low and kept turning the steaks every minute. I did 2 minutes in total on each side like this and served immediately with the potatoes and beans on a bed of spinach.



All I can say is YUMMY! The steaks were perfect and pink in the middle and ever so juicy.