Dear Reader,

It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve cooked steak for dinner. The last six months have seen me working out my pressure cooker “muscles”.

I was sharing text messages with a dear friend last night about simple pleasures. You know, looking out on a pleasantly warm evening, snacking and chatting, and then enjoying a steak and salad dinner.

It got me thinking; I want to get my lips around a nice juicy steak.

How have you been feeling lately with the news of the Omicron Variant? The case number predictions have kept me on the edge of my seat. At present, we’re seeing doubling rates of 2 days and intracellular viral replication rates an order of magnitude higher than other lineages. 

It’s a great time to be alive if you’re a microbiologist. I wish, however, this was just a laboratory experiment and not real life. Please stay safe. Stay home if you feel unwell. Keep yourself distant from others by at least 1.5 metres. Wash your hands with soap and water as often as you need to. If soap and water are not available, carry and use an alcohol-based hand rub. Observe respiratory hygiene and if you feel comfortable, wear a face covering, preferably a surgical mask. Get immunised. It looks like everyone will need a booster for any real protection against severe disease caused by infection with SARS-COV-2 Omicron Variant.

Ingredients

• Eye fillet steak
• Raw prawn meat
• Cherry tomatoes
• Baby cucumbers
• Capsicum
• Iodised salt
• Black pepper (coarsely ground)
• Green peppercorns
• Horseradish cream
• Beef stock
• Butter
• Plain flour

Instructions

Steak

1. Buy some steak from the supermarket or the butcher.
2. Unwrap the steak and dry the surface with kitchen paper.
3. Place the steak on a wire rack over a tray.
4. Season the steak with generous amounts of salt.
5. Truss the eye fillet with cooking twine, so your meat keeps its shape and doesn’t fall apart.
6. Place the steak into the refrigerator overnight to dry brine.
7. When you’re ready to cook the steak, put them into a vacuum bag and vacuum seal the bag.
8. Set up a water bath and raise the temperature to 54 °C.
9. Cook the steak at this temperature for 2 hours and 10 minutes.
10. Remove the steak from the bag and dry the surface of the steak with kitchen paper.
11. Coat the surface of the steak with horseradish cream.
12. Pound some whole black peppercorns with your pestle in a mortar and clad the exterior of your creamed meat with the pepper.
13. To avoid burning the pepper and creating an acrid mess, heat a generous amount of butter into a cast-iron skillet and sear the surface of the pepper-crusted steak quickly.
14. Allow the eye fillet to rest. You may wonder, why does steak cooked in a water bath (sous vide) need to rest? It doesn’t; however, it does give the person cooking dinner sufficient time to attend to other things. I mean, if I drank wine, I’d probably have a sip or two. The same would apply if I drank beer 😉
15. Toss in the prawn meat and cook quickly. Avoid overcooking.

Gravy

1. When you open the vacuum bag, retain the juices from your meat in a small jug.
2. To your juices, add some beef stock.
3. Make a roux with some butter and flour.
4. Once the roux is ready, add the meat-juice augmented stock.
5. If you want a little more kick, add some green peppercorns.
6. Make the gravy to the consistency you desire.
7. Transfer the sauce to a jug or, if you’re fancy, a gravy boat.

Salad

1. Do I need to explain how to make a salad?
2. I cut some vegetables and put them in a bowl.
3. I drizzled over some extra virgin olive oil and seasoned it with freshly ground iodised salt.

Plating up

1. If I had guests (note no one has ever visited where I live), I would heat the dinner plate.
2. Place the steak on the dinner plate, add a pat of butter on the steak, and then top the eye fillet with the prawns.
3. Add some salad next to the steak.
4. Spoon some gravy over the prawns and steak.
5. Give thanks to God for, amongst other things, great friends, wages to buy food, and the skills to prepare and cook food. Plead with Him to use the food to nourish your body and mind and seek His assistance to be a better person.
6. While the steak is tender enough to cut with a blunt spoon, use a steak knife to cut your meat. 

Last post for the year

I think this will be the last post for the year. Next weekend is Christmas Day and Boxing Day. I plan to be elsewhere.

If you’re a regular reader, I want to thank you for taking the time most weeks to read my food musings. I’m grateful for the friends I’ve made in the blogging world, especially those who regularly comment on my posts.

Not a regular reader? Thanks for reading this post. Please feel free to leave a comment. 

If I know you in real life, thanks for reading and getting to know me better, I’m grateful for your time.

Final thoughts

1. When was the last time you cooked a steak?
2. Do you prefer a salad, hot chips, or potato mash with your steak?
3. How do you like your steak cooked in terms of doneness?

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