Steak Night

Well, I decided it was to be steak night, this had a lot to do with the fact that I had gotten home from a week of camping and had so much in terms of vegetable matter than had to be consumed, that I spent Friday and Saturday eating mostly vegetables at home. I figure, I am allowed a nice juicy steak. There were not a lot of preparation pictures, as I figure, it is just not that tricky to prepare a steak.

Since I spend much of the past week eating food cooked over a fire, I had little taste for more smoke, so it was to the cast iron pan, ripping hot, dry and ready to go. I oil and salt the steak, no pepper, then into the cast iron pan. Seared for 2 minutes a side and pulled to rest.

Steak resting

I has some fresh English Peas and decided the classic of Peas and Mushrooms for the steak was a good route. I sauteed up some onion, added the mushrooms and a little butter, rasied the heat to drive off some liquid and char the onions a bit. Oh, about the butter added after the onions, I use grapeseed oil to saute or fry, it is very high heat stable. The butter is just for flavor. In any event, the peas were added for just a few minutes to heat through, but, barely cooked.

Yes, I meant for the onions to be that color!

I ended up slicing the steak, and eating just 1/2 of the steak, it felt like a better portion and let's face it, I need better portions. There was a little garlic bread points to finish the plate. Here is a close-up of the meat, as I figure nobody comes here for the peas.

Too red? NO!

For me, this is a perfect rare-medium-rare, I really prefer these steaks on the just rare side of medium rare. The cast iron pan did it's job, putting a nice crust onto the steak, just enough to complement and caramelize the surface. A little black pepper after the rest, so there is no bitter, burned pepper smell or taste. Perfect dinner.