Even with taste compromised by cancer treatment, I’m telling you, I can enjoy my meals.
I’m at about 85%, at the most, of my usual ability to taste. It goes up and down, but has plateaued presently. Some things taste more like themselves than others. And as usual, I listen as hard as I can to my body. It lets me know what it needs.
It’s funny, because I’m eating a lot of meat and eggs right now, along with fats and salt, which I would usually think of as unhealthy. But when I consider why my body is asking for these things, I realize the need is for protein and fat. If I don’t pay attention, I start losing weight again. I like the weight I’m at now, but falling under it makes me worry about losing energy. So I listen, and I hope I learn.
Last night’s dinner was just fabulous. And I want to share it, because the way I cooked the flatiron steak is the best for those of us who love our beef really rare. ‘Bleu’ as the French say, which is one step rarer than ‘saignant’ for rare. Almost raw.
I love steak tartare. Which is raw, of course. I love my cooked steak nearly raw. And flatiron steak is so thin it’s hard to get it well seared on the outside, and still tender and rare on the inside. But I did it last night. Personal best.
First off is the shopping. I found a great bargain on a local grass fed piece of flatiron, a cut that usually is reasonably priced, mainly, I think, for the difficulty in cooking it mentioned above. This was a thin cut, maybe ½ an inch at the thickest point. A problem. If you cook it too much, it’s just tough. But, it turns out, if you cook it bleu, you get a tender piece of really beefy beef.
That was what I was after. So what I needed was a really hot pan, and a really short cooking time. I also needed not to cook the really hot pan on the stove top, since my house is an open one, and the smoke would just never clear, even with the vent going full blast. I wanted to use a cast iron ridged pan—love those blackened ridges on my steak—and it was just too dangerous on the stove top. I didn’t trust myself with it, not even with the fireplace gloves I wear for bread making.
In the mountains, I have a gas oven. So the very bottom of the oven is flat, and heats up over the gas flame. If I took out the oven racks, then heated the oven to 500 degrees, with a ridged cast iron pan on the bottom shelf, and then put the steak onto the pan (with tongs, wearing fireplace gloves), left it for one minute, then turned it over (with tongs, wearing fireplace gloves), left it for another minute, then pulled it out (with tongs, wearing fireplace gloves), leaving it to rest for a few minutes while I brought the corn to a boil and pulled it out onto a towel, would that work?
Yes. That would work. Although gilding the lily is always an option. So before I proceeded, about an hour before, I coated the steak with an olive oil/spice blend. I used a Penzey’s BBQ spice blend (love that Penzey’s, don’t you?), mainly because I’d never tried it before and I was feeling too lazy to make my own. I did add a little Penzey’s lemon pepper (love that Penzey’s, I repeat), and a little more garlic powder. Dredged the steak and let it sit at room temperature, while I sat down and had a glass of a local vineyard’s red wine—Roxy Anne’s Honor Barn, in case you’re wondering, fabulous every day wine. (Note: don’t listen to those people who tell you not to put red wine in the fridge. I don’t drink much these days, and a bottle of red, if it’s good to start with, is still good five days in. Also a little chill is nice on these summer days.)
Then I tried my experiment. And you know what, the steak came out absolute perfection—for those of us who love their steak practically raw, anyway. (For rare, or ‘saignant’, just cook it two minutes on each side. If a thicker steak, experiment. I’ve done three minutes on each side for a steak of about an inch, and that was perfect for me.) Beautiful blackened grill marks on both sides, super rare inside.
I sliced it thinly and laid it on a bed of shredded lettuce I’d brought home in a to go box with some Thai chicken and Chinese sausage lettuce wrap I’d had for lunch. Put it next to the corn. Sprinkled it with a little finisher of Maldon salt.
The beef was terrifically tender. The corn was sweet. Another half glass of the wine was perfect. I read some interesting recipes from an old tour book of post war Italian restaurants. The view of the meadow was beautiful in the fading light.
And I was happy to be alive.
Still am, as a matter of fact.
As I hope you are, every day, too.