Thursday, December 6, 2007

Theme III, Cooking

I'm not sure why I didn't think fo this before. I love to cook, I do it quite often, and I'm good at it. I'm not sure how many cooking blogs are out there: I assume many. Since I am not a professional chef, it would probably be more of a journal of learning experiences.

I haven't cooked as much as I would like to this semester. My roommate is rarely around for meals, and we don't go shopping together. Part of the reason I enjoy making food is to share it; since he isn't here, that sort of destroys my motivation. It's a lot of work to cook decent meals for one person, and almost cheaper to grab something for take out. In college, forget getting a large group of people over for dinner.

Part of the reason is, simply put, most people assume you're full of shit. No one believes you can cook. They're shocked when you do. The second is, perhaps this is just me, most of my friends are flakes. They would more than likely back out at the last minute, and there I am with 50 dollars worth of food and no one to feed.

Here's something simple:

Heat oil over medium high heat in a heavy skillet.

Place a steak (preferably rib eye) in pan and sear on both sides until cooked to your liking. Remove steak, cover in foil, and set aside. Keeping the pan hot, but discarding the oil, add one cup of good red wine. I use a chriaz for this.

Boil the wine and reduce by half. Add any juices accumulated in the foil packet from the cooked steak, one half cup of beef stock, and two dashes of soy sauce. Once again, reduce by half.

Remove from heat. Slowly add three tablespoons of butter, one tablespoon at a time, stirring constantly. Pour sauce over steak and enjoy. A lot of people who assume they knwo everything about steak are hesitant to pan fry a steak. However, when combined with a good simple pan sauce, you really don't lose anything. In fact, with a hot, heavy skillet, you can get a really perfect crust and sear on the meat this way. Don't worry.

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