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The Perfect Steak

11 Jan

I was just on BBC Radio 4′s Woman’s Hour discussing how to cook the perfect steak. It’s a complicated issue that’s difficult to cover in 10 minutes of airtime, but the basics are helpfully recapped on the Woman’s Hour website. I typed this up yesterday as a more in-depth summation of the whole process.

The Perfect Steak

serves 1

aged sirloin steak, 300-500g (3-5 cm thick)
smoked sea salt
black pepper
vegetable oil

The perfect steak has to start with really high-quality meat. It won’t be cheap, but then steak is not an everyday food. In general, you should look for breed known for complexity of flavor, such as Aberdeen Angus, Longhorn, or if you’re really feeling flush, Wagyu. But even among meat from the same breed, not all steaks are equal – different diets produce different results, and of course aged beef will taste different (many would say better) than beef from a freshly slaughtered cow. Look for meat that’s well-marbled; it should have little ripples of fat integrated with the muscle fibers. Whether or not to go with aged beef is a matter of personal preference, but there are certain benefits to beef that’s been hung for a few weeks. As the meat ages, it dries out slightly, which concentrates its flavor. As the cow’s cells break down, they release enzymes that start breaking down other molecules into smaller ones, producing new, intense flavors, and degrading proteins that cause toughness in the finished steak. Aged meat turns dark and dry along the exposed surface; this part of the beef can be chewy and can harbor harmful microbes, so your butcher should trim it off before portioning your steaks.

If you take a highly precise, scientific approach to cooking the steak, it becomes a prohibitively complicated endeavor. The food chemist Harold McGee dedicates no less than 17 pages to cooking meat in his encyclopedia of kitchen science, and his conclusion is still to use your intuition and senses when cooking a steak to perfection. “Cookbooks are full of formulas for obtaining a given doneness, but these are at best rough approximations. The best instruments for monitoring the doneness of meat,” he writes, “remain the cook’s eye and finger.” There are so many variables in cooking steak – pan temperature, thickness, cut, fat content, age, etc. – and trying to monitor and account for all of them is practically impossible. It is best to stick to a few rules of thumb, but always bear in mind that they may not always yield exactly the same results. You have to trust your instincts, and remember: if meat is undercooked, you can always cook it longer, but overcooking is irrevocable. Always err on the side of rare.

Start with a frying pan with a good, solid base that distributes heat evenly. Blast it with heat on your strongest burner; let it sit on the heat for at least 5 minutes to get really screaming hot. The high heat will ensure the steak develops a gloriously flavorful, toothsome brown crust. You should start with a steak at room temperature, but if you’ve forgotten to take it out of the fridge ahead of time, don’t worry. Just remember that it will take a little bit longer for it to cook through. Rub the steak all over with generous amounts of smoked sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a neutral vegetable oil (I use rapeseed). The smoked sea salt is optional, but I find it lends a pleasant barbecue-ish flavor. Now it is time to cook.

For a sirloin, start the cooking by laying it in the pan on the edge with the thick band of fat. Fat does not conduct heat as well as meat, so the meat along this band will take a little longer to cook. Cooking the fat first also renders off dripping, which will help lubricate and flavor the rest of the steak. After the fatty edge has cooked for 1 minute, turn it onto its side. In general, for a medium rare steak, cook for 1 minute plus 1 minute per centimeter of thickness per side. So if your steak is 3 cm thick, it will be in the pan for 7 minutes; if it’s 5 cm thick, 11 minutes. For medium, add a minute; for medium well, another minute, and so on. Turn the steak frequently; if you leave the steak for too long on each side, the intense heat will cause it to overcook along the edge, so instead of a consistently medium rare steak you get a steak that’s medium rare in the middle but well-done on the outside. I turn my steaks every 30 seconds, although some chefs turn every 15 seconds. If you’ve got a really thick steak, it’s best to cook it in the oven and then just finish it in the pan to develop a crust.

When the steak is finished, take it out of the pan and give it a squeeze with your fingers. There’s a test you can do which is not tremendously accurate, but it’s still one of the best ways to gauge doneness. Hold your hand out with the palm facing you and let it hang limp. Feel the inner heel of your thumb (the big fleshy bit inside your palm). This is approximately the same feeling you get from poking meat that’s raw or cooked blue. Now pinch your thumb and index finger together, but don’t squeeze. The heel of your thumb now feels like a rare steak. Thumb to middle finger is medium rare; thumb to ring finger is medium well; and thumb to pinky is well done. If your steak feels like this, abandon all hope. You’ve ruined dinner.

Finally, an important but often overlooked step: resting. The muscle fibers in meat constrict when they’re hot, forcing moisture out like a sponge being squeezed. If you cut the meat before the meat has cooled slightly, you’ll lose precious juice. Rest your steak for at least half the cooking time before serving.

And there you have it: the perfect steak. Serve it with whatever you like, but don’t obscure the beef’s flavors with overpowering sauces; you paid for it and no doubt fretted over it, so you’ll want to taste it! Some nice, buttery mash and maybe a little horseradish are all you’ll need.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Sphere (Part 3)

3 Jan

Okay, this post actually has nothing to do with spheres, I just like the pun and I want to use it as much as possible. This post is about what I cooked for New Year’s Eve, one of my most delicious yet simple dinners to date.

The first course was inspired by a dish I had in Paris, of langoustines baked inside little ceramic pots with red wine and butter, topped with little rounds of toasty brioche. Owing to slim pickings at Sainsbury’s, I had to swap out the langoustines for lemon sole (they had NO shellfish except pre-cooked prawns!) and the pots for ramekins, but never mind all that, because the dish turned out nearly perfectly. It was always my intention to use soy sauce and sake in place of the red wine, and I topped it with a bit of challah and a poached duck egg. It was a gorgeous, buttery, umami mess. And it couldn’t be simpler to make: Get your oven on to 200ºC/400ºF and skin four fillets of lemon sole or other flatfish. Chop ‘em up. Rub a couple ramekins liberally with butter, then press the sole into them, but not too firmly. Top with a nice chunk of butter, then a little splash of sake, and a littler splash of soy sauce. Slice challah to form a cap on the ramekin. Bake for about 15-20 minutes. The butter, sake, and soy sauce all melt together and flood into the fish, and it is so so so good. While the fish is baking, poach a duck egg. Keep the yolk runny! Fish comes out of the oven, egg goes on top of the toast, a little grind of pepper and course one is done. For a dish with only six ingredients, the flavor is huge, and I’ll bet if you use cornbread instead of challah it would be even better.

For the main course I decided to try my hand at one of Heston Blumenthal’s signature dishes: Salmon Poached in a Liquorice Gel. Now, I knew I would never be able to perfectly recreate this dish, even though it is one of his less complicated recipes, because it involved ingredients that were simply impossible to get at such short notice (and would have been a bit extravagant at any time): black truffles, 15 year old Balsamic vinegar, transglutaminase, two kinds of gellan, etc. Not to mention the equipment – I would have needed a vacuum sealer and a thermal immersion bath to really do this recipe right. Luckily, that was never my intention: I just wanted to test out what seemed like unlikely but potentially mind-blowing flavor combinations, namely salmon + licorice + vanilla + grapefruit.

What I wound up doing was simply making a seared salmon dish with a semi-set licorice sauce instead of the gel, but other than that, and the missing truffle, the dish was more or less the same as it appeared in the Fat Duck cookbook, and none too difficult. First, get your sauce going. Pour a bottle of stout into a pot with a little bit of water, a little bit of soy sauce, and some powdered dashi. For the licorice, I’d recommend pure licorice if you can get it; I used soft licorice candy, and it wasn’t quite strong enough and didn’t dissolve properly. Anyway, chop up a good handful of licorice and toss it in the pot and simmer everything. When the licorice is nicely incorporated (use a hand blender if you have to) and everything is simmering, add a leaf of gelatin and cook a while longer.

Next, prep your garnishes. Peel some asparagus (or don’t – I didn’t) taking off just the outermost green layer, leaving the tops intact. Scrape out a vanilla pod and mix the seeds with about two heaped tablespoons of good mayonnaise, or better yet, make your own mayonnaise. Put 250ml or so of Balsamic vinegar in a pan and reduce into a thick, black syrup. Now comes the tricky part, but it actually is worth the effort, and it doesn’t have to be perfect – your home is not a Michelin-starred restaurant, so chill out! Get a nice, ripe pink grapefruit. Peel it carefully. Strip away the outer membrane from a segment, and gently tease out the individual cells without breaking them. Using a toothpick or a paring knife or tweezers, separate each individual cell from the segment. Discard any broken cells. You’ll need about one segment worth of cells per plate.

Finally, let’s cook. Get yourself a nice big hunk of salmon and get the skin off and the bones out. Heat some good olive oil or avocado oil in a pan until it’s nice and hot, but not smoking. Sear the salmon on both sides for about 4-5 minutes, cooking for 8-9 minutes in total. Meanwhile, sauté the asparagus in olive oil in a lidded frying pan, so they steam as they sauté. It will take about the same amount of time as the salmon, but less time if you did peel them. To plate, streak a little vanilla mayo on one side of the plate, and place a little patch of grapefruit cells along the other. In the middle, spatter a bit of the Balsamic reduction. Rest the asparagus across the plate, then rest the salmon across the asparagus. Spoon on some licorice sauce, season to taste, and you’re done.

And it was good – the combination worked, and in fact it was the vanilla mayonnaise that really tied everything together. I loved how the different elements offset and underscored each other without becoming lost or muddled. It was surprisingly subtle, too, and I can only imagine how good it would be if prepared by the man himself.

Lastly, dessert. The dessert didn’t turn out quite right, if I’m honest, but it still tasted nice, so here it is. Coconut milk, milk, sugar, cream, and vanilla in a pan. Bring it to a boil. Add a leaf or two of gelatin and stir to dissolve. Break up some white chocolate into smallish chunks in a bowl, then pour on the hot coconut mixture and allow to melt. Whisk gently to dissolve any remaining chunks. Cool in the fridge for a good two hours. Meanwhile, chop up a couple ribs of rhubarb. Simmer them with lime juice, rose water, water, and sugar until very soft and syrupy, then allow to cool. Whip some cream to soft peaks, then fold into the coconut white chocolate to form a light mousse. Allow to set in the fridge for another two hours. To assemble, break up some ginger cookies and place them at the bottom of bowls or glasses. Sprinkle in some dessicated coconut, then add a spoonful of the rhubarb compote. Fill with the coconut white chocolate mousse, and top with more compote and more coconut.

Simple, yes, but I still managed to screw it up! What went wrong: I didn’t give the gelatin enough time to set, so the mousse turned out more like a kind of thick eggnog. But hey, ain’t nothin’ wrong with eggnog! We cleaned our teacups just the same, and rang in the New Year with satisfied stomachs, expensive sake, moderately priced beer, and cheap champagne.

MMXI will be MMXIting.

Boozy Toozday

23 Sep

DSCF5551

Yesterday my mom presented me with a challenge: cook a meal using only what we have around the house. We needed to use up stuff.

It actually wasn’t that tricky. We had flank steak in the freezer, and green beans in the fridge, and fresh rosemary and cheese and whole wheat flour and all kinds of lovely things to eat. But as always, I thought it would be nice to try something new. But how to do it, with all these old things?

I have been craving a Bloody Mary lately. I don’t even particularly like Bloody Marys, but there was a can of V8 in the fridge, and this house seems to never run out of vodka, so the idea simply haunted me. So today I made that Bloody Mary. I made it just how I like it, with truckloads of hot sauce and horseradish, and then I put it in a plastic bag with the flank steak.

That settled the entrée: Bloody Mary-nated Flank Steak. It also settled the theme: cooking with booze. As a side I decided to bake beer bread, fancy beer bread with interesting bits and bobs scattered throughout. And as a veg, I ultimately took a gamble on what I will call haricots verts à la gin gimlet, using my Great Aunt Gloria’s homemade kaffir lime marmalade.

The boozy meal was a success. The flank steak, that most underrated of steaks, was juicy and tender and flush with a peppery tomato tang and the pungent umami of Worcestershire sauce and vodka. The bread was soft and sweet and dense and fragrant. The beans were zesty and crunchy and sweet and moreish.

Booze: it’s not just for breakfast anymore.

DSCF5553

Bloody Mary-nated Flank Steak

1 1/4-1 1/2 pound flank steak
olive oil

For the Mary-nade:

12 ounces V8 or tomato juice
1/2 cup vodka
1/4 cup hot sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
2 heaped tablespoons horseradish
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons dill pickle or olive brine
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 pepperoncini, chopped
celery seed
celery salt
onion powder
garlic powder
salt
pepper

For the rub (make about 1/3 cup, all of the following in equal measure):

salt
pepper
onion powder
paprika
celery seed

  1. Trim excess fat and pull membranes from flank steak.
  2. In a sealable plastic bag, mix all marinade ingredients. Seal bag and shake to combine.
  3. Add flank steak to bag and marinate, refrigerated, for 8-24 hours.
  4. Remove flank steak from marinade and drain. Pat dry with paper towels.
  5. Mix rub ingredients in a bowl. Rub half into each side of the dry flank steak.
  6. Boil leftover marinade to use as a jus.
  7. Heat olive oil on a griddle to high heat. When oil is very hot, sear flank steak on both sides for 4-5 minutes. Let rest 5 minutes before serving. Slice against the grain and serve with hot jus.

Parmigiano, Rosemary, and Kalamata Olive Beer Bread

3 cups whole wheat flour
12 ounces beer (use a fairly robust beer, such as a pale ale)
1 1/2 cup shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
6 kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
2 large sprigs fresh rosemary
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
butter
pepper

  1. Preheat oven to 325ºF.
  2. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl, reserving 1 sprig rosemary and 1/2 cup cheese. Add beer and knead to combine. Dough should be sturdy but still slightly limp and sticky.
  3. Turn dough into a buttered or oiled bread pan. Bake for 65-80 minutes.
  4. Mix remaining rosemary and cheese with butter. Sprinkle on top of bread about 10 minutes before the end of baking.
  5. Allow to cool at least 1/2 hour before slicing.

Haricots Verts à la Gin Gimlet

about 3 cups green beans, trimmed
2 tablespoons gin
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon lime marmalade
1 tablespoon lime juice
salt
pepper
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup fresh basil, torn

  1. Mix gin, honey, marmalade, lime juice, salt, and pepper in a bowl.
  2. Toast sunflower seeds in a dry pan.
  3. Boil green beans for 5-6 minutes, until just tender. Drain, return to heat and add gin mixture, sunflower seeds, and basil. Toss to coat and serve.

Super-Duper Chocolate Cake with Irish Cream-Hazelnut Ganache

28 Jul

cake2

Am I alone in the belief that the word “ultimate” has no place in the title of a recipe? One of the many joys of cooking is the experimental aspect of it. Even if your aim is to make a dish perfectly, exactly as it was meant to be made, chances are you’ll still have to tweak the recipe a bit to get the finished product just right. “Ultimate” means final. The end. The zenith, the conclusion, the last word. So when a recipe is presented as the “ultimate” of something, I take that as a challenge to do it one better.

For Laura’s birthday a few weeks ago, I made a cake. The recipe I used was called “Ultimate Chocolate Cake,” which I chose because it seemed to be the densest, fudgiest chocolate cake recipe out there. As far as I’m concerned, chocolate cakes ought to be rich, dense, and dark – essentially, my ideal chocolate cake is actually a brownie. So this “ultimate” recipe, which calls for sordid, indecent quantities of dark chocolate, butter, and sugar with flour kept to a bare minimum, looked just about perfect.

And it was. The resultant cake was weighty, moist, and as dark as earth; it was chocolate first and cake second. It was, in fact, so rich that I decided to make tart currant-nectarine sauce to offset it. But as exquisite as it was, the recipe as written ought to have been named “Penultimate” chocolate cake, for I swapped out the original, basic ganache for an experimental frosting formed by alloying Nutella with Bailey’s – making this even more debauched and delicious.

cake3

Of course, I could never presume to call my cover version of this cake the “ultimate,” either, and so I’m giving it a new, more accurate name. Please do tailor it to your own taste!

Super-Duper Chocolate Cake

For the cake:

200 grams high-quality dark chocolate, chopped
200 grams butter, cut in pieces
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules, dissolved into 1/2 cup cold water
85 grams self-raising flour
85 grams plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
200 grams light brown sugar
200 grams golden caster sugar
25 grams cocoa powder
3 medium eggs
5 tablespoons buttermilk

  1. Butter a 20- by 8-centimeter cake tin and line the bottom. Preheat oven to 160ºC/325ºF.
  2. Melt chocolate and butter together with coffee over low heat in a medium saucepan.
  3. Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, and cocoa powder into a large bowl. Beat eggs in a separate bowl and stir in buttermilk.
  4. Pour the chocolate mixture and the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. Batter should be runny and smooth.
  5. Pour batter into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour 30 minutes-1 hour 45 minutes. Cake is finished when a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely for 3-4 hours.

For the ganache:

150 grams high-quality dark chocolate
1 tablespoons golden caster sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons butter, melted
3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur
3/4 cup Nutella
6 Ferrero Rocher, crushed

  1. Pour Irish cream into a saucepan and allow alcohol to cook off over medium-low heat for 15 minutes. Do not boil.
  2. Add chocolate, sugar, cocoa, butter, and Nutella stir until smooth.
  3. Allow ganache to cool to room temperature, then pour 1/3 ganache into a separate bowl and stir in Ferrero Rocher.
  4. Slice the cake into two layers. Spread the ganache with Ferrero Rocher pieces onto the bottom layer, then replace the top layer. Spread remaining ganache evenly over the entire cake, smoothing with a pallette knife.
  5. Serve with fruit sauce and fresh mint.

cake1

Smokehead Paradox Steak with Herb and Marmite Onions

15 May

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a recipe. But last week, inspiration struck as I sipped a lovely little beer called Paradox Smokehead… and decided I didn’t really like it. The beer comes from Brew Dog, which for my money is the UK’s most creative brewer, and it is one of many Paradoxes, a series of imperial stouts aged in Scotch whisky casks of varying origin. This particular batch was matured in barrels formerly occupied by the aptly named Smokehead whisky from the Islay region.

As a fan of big stouts as well as Islay whiskies, I had hoped this brew would be a nuanced and complex interplay between uniquely earthy Islay smokiness and the mocha, dark fruit, and roasted flavors of a good stout. Instead, it was disappointingly two-dimensional. Other Beer Advocates disagree with my assessment (mine is the lowest score this beer received), apparently uncovering subtleties that I failed to locate. To me, it was just dark, smoky sweetness. I didn’t feel the urge to finish it, but I recognized that where Paradox Smokehead failed as a beer, it would excel as a marinade for beef! That dark, smoky sweetness, I thought, would be the perfect accent to a good steak.

I was right. Last night I marinated a hunk of sirloin in the brew, with a few embellishments, then fried it up in a pan today for lunch. The result was a tangy, tender, sweet piece of meat with a touch of smoke – almost, but not quite, as if it had been charcoal-grilled. I liked it so much I may buy the beer again just to use as a marinade… I’ll bet it would be good with pork, too. Enjoy!

steak

Paradox Smokehead Steak with Herb and Marmite Onions

Note: If you can’t get Paradox Smokhead in your area, try any stout aged in Scotch casks. You could also use a smoked porter, or you could simply mix a shot or two of Islay whisky into an ordinary stout for a similar flavor.

Steak:

2 250-300 gram sirloin steaks, trimmed
12 ounces Brew Dog Paradox Smokehead
5-6 sprigs fresh thyme, torn
1 clove garlic, smashed
1/8 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon Bovril (optional)
cumin, to taste
smoked paprika, to taste
black pepper, for seasoning

Onions:

butter, for sauteing
1/2 large onion, sliced
1/2 teaspoon Marmite
1 teaspoon Herbes de Provence or mixed Italian herbs (use more if herbs are fresh)
black pepper, for seasoning

  1. In an airtight container or plastic bag, mix together Paradox, thyme, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, Bovril, cumin, and paprika. Submerge steaks in marinade and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.
  2. Melt butter in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat and add onions and pepper.
  3. When onions have softened slightly, add Marmite and herbs and toss well.
  4. Continue sauteing for 4-5 minutes, until onions begin to brown.
  5. When onions are quite soft and brown, move to the sides of the pan. Remove steaks from marinade and season on both sides with black pepper, then lay them in the center of the pan.
  6. Cook steaks as you like them. Spoon marinade over them while cooking.
  7. When steaks and onions are finished, remove from pan. Pour in some of the marinade and use it to deglaze. Pour the resulting jus into a bowl or cup and serve on the side.
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