steak, salad, corn

The steaks are fried on medium high for a mere few minutes. This pan, I'm tell'n ya, it exaggerates all the time. For some reason it starts smoking when it's only medium hot. I'd prefer the pan to be rocket-hot but it smokes too much. The meat sits on the counter for longer than the Health Department would allow, if they would allow it at all. It's important the meat be at room temperature before it touches a HOT surface. No oil. The meat will release its own fat and loosen itself when it's ready. If you try lifting before it's ready, you'll just tear off the caramelizing surface. Sensitize to the energy force of the heat, Padawan, and feel the moment to flip.  I've been totally ace at this since I was ten, and if dunce of klutz as myself can do this to perfection then a swan like you most certainly can. 

Madeira is splashed into the cooling but still hot pan. It foams and fizzles, and sputs and spatters, boils violently and evaporates rapidly. Quite the little show there for a moment. It reduces by at least half almost immediately, thickens slightly, picks up the fond, seared bits of meat, tiny chunks of taste-nuggets that tend to break down in the liquid. Cold butter is dropped into the liquid which magically thickens slightly more as it melts. The butter is added in increments, not all at once, because that's just ... just ... just wrong. Butter is akin to a pre-made sauce in stick form awaiting something to thin it out and to introduce flavors that match the thing it will be saucing up.  

Review: So you have four great things right there in the pan; rendered fat from the meat that was cooked or that was introduced to cook the meat, fond from the caramelized meat that is stuck on the pan, Madeira or another wine, even sake, or any other liquid, broth, stock, or even milk to lift off the fond, and finally cold butter. 

My parents never did this. Mum would make pan gravy, yes, on occasion, but she also regularly discarded the fond in the pans for things like pork chops, fried chicken, fish, etc., which when you're talking about meals for a large family was considerable amounts of fond there. Thinking about the stupendously large amounts of flavorful fond that went wasted over the years, tediously scrubbed out of the pan at the end of a meal, like something undesirable, something messing up the pans, makes me a little bit depressed. 

Where's that Madiera? Gim'me that. 

*drinks* 

There. I feel better. 

↑ Purdy, innit? 

There was only three tablespoons of liquid,

,

but quite enough to moisten the plate.

Simple salad, lettuce and red bell pepper, simple dressing, olive oil and rice vinegar. Ya know, this salad tasted really good. Sometimes I forget how wonderful simple things are. My tendency is to get carried away and toss in everything that I can scrounge up. I didn't do that tonight and I'm all, "Bloody hell, this is good." 

The corn was frozen in a little microwaveable package. Trailer park, I know, but sometimes I just flat don't care.