flatiron steak

Flatiron, Butler's steak, Oyster blade. Shoulder top steak cut from the chuck. The area has a serious flaw -- tough connective tissue, fascia, running through the center, that must be cleverly removed before anything can be done with this. It benefits greatly from marination.

Well then, marination it is. In amounts to suit you. The surplus can be reserved to form the basis for a sauce.

* Olive oil

* wine

* parsley (I used cilantro because I'm all, eh, with the parsley)

* chive ( I used onion because I wanted something stronger)

* pepper

* sea salt

* dry mustard

That's what I used for the marinade and for the sauce. If I would have thought of it I'd have included rosemary. The sauce had extra beef broth, fresh wine, and finished with butter. It made an excellent sop for the leftover bisonburger buns from yesterday which served very nicely as today's bread.

The steak is rubbed and stuffed inside a Foodsaver™ bag, the air sucked out to compress the marinade against the meat. I left it in the refrigerator overnight. It might not have needed to be that long. The bits scrapped off, patted dry, rubbed with oil, set into a very hot cast-iron pan. Seared on both sides, finished under the broiler for a few minutes. Less than you might imagine. Removed to a plate, the hot pan repurposed to put a sear on the broccoli. Water thrown into the hot pan to steam the broccoli because it wasn't going fast enough. The surplus marinade then boiled in that same pan already used twice. See? One pan!

The pan cannot be cleaned in the ordinary way with strong detergent. It gets special treatment to preserve its carefully cultivated no-stick patina. I take it down to the river and rinse it out -- the cold clear-water high-mountain river that flows through my imagination.