MaW’s Blog

I wandered into the Co-op after my recorder lesson last night looking vaguely for something to have for dinner, as I’d not really made any plans and dislike doing rapid defrosts in the microwave of things which I forgot to get out earlier. The Chinese takeaway is closed on Tuesdays, so I was saved from that particular vice at least.

Now the Co-op have a reasonably-sized chiller cabinet full of ready meals, and another one that’s usually pretty devoid of uncooked meat and fish products, because their selection is typically terrible. Imagine my surprise when I found there some very nice-looking packs of sirloin steak (British, too) for a slight reduction in price. Okay so it’s still not cheap, but I’ve not had steak for ages…

Five minutes later the steak was mine (and an 8 for 6 pack of cans of Coca-Cola, a weakness I should probably do something about). Ten minutes after that I was home, and spent the next forty-five minutes or so battling with the SNS connection, which has switched to a new billing system and thus needed complete re-registration, required the installation of anti-virus and anti-spyware software and generally made itself a pain. I should’ve registered from Linux, it might have given me less hassle that way.

So eventually I made it into the kitchen, put one of the two steaks in the pack in the freezer for another day, and stuck the other one in my wonderful frying pan, which had been heated until rather hot. No oil necessary. Just put it in and leave it for a number of minutes, turn it over, leave it for another number of minutes, then remove it to a warm place to rest. The number of minutes of course depends on how bleeding you like your steaks (please don’t think I’m trying to tell you how to cook a steak, no doubt all my readers already know. I’m just telling you how I did it for the purposes of documentation). I was aiming for slightly pink, which is my usual preference, but by the time I’d finished cooking some onions in the pan (exploiting the juices which leaked out of the steak after it had rested for a little for extra flavour) and toasting a couple of rolls drizzled with olive oil, the steak was rather less pink than intended. Not steak and chips I know, but I don’t have a deep fat fryer. Or any potatoes, for that matter.

And there I had it. The steak had gone just past pink and was the very very earliest stage of being brown all the way through, but it was still surprisingly tender and generally extremely fantastic. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the other piece, but I suspect it might be something similar, although it may also involve the creation of a sauce. I’m quite keen on expanding my sauce-making skills.

Does anybody know any good sauces to have with steak that don’t involve cream? I’m not a huge fan of creamy sauces, but the real reason to avoid it is that it’s a pain to get cream and keep it in the fridge, which has these days virtually no space for me at all.

Speaking of that, does anybody know how much little fridges are?