Terena vs. the Steak

(gee, I wish my steak looked that good).


Last week I decided to cook a steak, so I went to the grocery store and discovered there are a lot of different packages of dead cow, all arranged from the cheapest, to the most expensive (who the hell can pay $21.00 bucks a pound for meat now-days?). I hadn't decided what kind of beef to cook, only that it had been a while since we'd had a steak and I was hankering for some red meat. After examining the different types, I chose the one that had a good price, not the cheapest, but definitely not $21.00! Then I went home to research how to cook it.

Should be easy, right? Get a pan hot, toss in the meat, season with salt and pepper, turn it over, wait a while, cut it to look inside and see how pink it still is, then remove before all the pink is gone. Then I found this site and discovered there are RULES for cooking a steak. Just like everything in the kitchen, you can't just toss it in a pan and hope it comes out all right.

Then my husband asked, "What kind of steak did you buy?"

"Kind?"

He just shook his head, probably thinking about those frozen dinners again. "How you cook it depends on what kind of steak it is."

"Oh." I don't know what I bought. It was the one that I could afford that didn't look like stew meat. Pulling it out of the fridge, I read the label. "New York," I shouted.

"Great. So how do you cook it?"

Obviously the guy who knows how to cook meat wasn't going to help.

Since the BBQ was out of propane, I decided to pan fry it. On the internet, I found a step by step recipe for how to cook a steak on the stove. I followed as best I could, but when it came time to figure out if it was done or not, I ran into trouble. I like my steak medium-well; just enough pink to be tender, but not bleeding. Achieving this equilibrium of steakiness is not easy, and so, despite the fact the "rules" said to remove it before it was completely done because it would continue to cook for another 10 minutes just sitting on the plat, I let it stay in the pan too long. No one will get botulism from my cooking, that's for sure.

My family sat at the table and I served the steak, which smelled delicious, but required extra bbq sauce to make edible. It wasn't a bad steak, just a little past tender. All right, a lot past tender.

But it made a great stir fry the following day.

What Foodies Read

I wanted to see what the "foodies" read, so I opened the food section in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper (online it's SF Gate). There was an article sharing three chicken recipes called "Three Hens in a Pot." The author described how the smell of the rosemary and wild thyme emanating from the pot of chicken brought her a sense of "satisfaction and goodwill." Of course, it helped that the author was having dinner in a chateau in Provence, France while drinking good wine with new friends. Then I scrolled down to the recipes for Poule a Pot, Coq a Vin, and Poulet a la Creme.

Hmmm... could I make something like this? I started with Poule a Pot, which has 31 ingredients. Dang that's a lot of ingredients!

I stopped reading after ingredient number 10.

The other chicken dishes had fewer ingredients, but required items I couldn't afford (brandy and burgundy?).

Then I tried reading the article, which told all about the writer's experience with that amazing dinner in Provence and went on to explain some of the history of the dishes being prepared.

You know what? I couldn't care less.

Do I need to care about how chicken is cooked in Provence to be a good cook? Or is the mere fact that I don't give a rat's-ass about how chicken is cooked in Provence a sign that I will never be a good cook?

The Cooking Experiment - Meatloaf

I don't know if I've said this before but I am not a cook. Luckily, my husband is a great cook or we'd all starve. Not only am I not a cook, I probably shouldn't cook. Anyone who knows me has probably tasted one of my "creations" and thought I should stay far away from a stove. Even a microwave is iffy.

I've decided to change that.

No, I haven't suddenly fallen in love with cooking. To me, cooking is something you have to do because food tastes better when it's warm. I have never been nor do I imagine myself ever becoming a "foody." But lately I've felt this urge to pay more attention to the every day, small, important things in life, like food and shelter and growing a garden. Maybe it's a middle-age, pre-menopausal thing. I've spent my entire life being supremely, intellectually creative, putting all my energy into acting, dancing and writing, saying I didn't have time to clean or cook a meal because I had more important things to do. I was an ARTIST.

My husband was probably as surprised as I when I said, "I'm going to cook meatloaf."

He blinked a few times, then said, "You're brave."

"Why do you say that?"

"I never have luck with meatloaf. It's always gooey on the inside and burnt on the edges."

"We have all that hamburger in the fridge we need to use so I'm going to make a meatloaf. I haven't had meatloaf in years."

"Sounds good." I'm sure he was thinking about the frozen dinners in the freezer he could nuke if my meatloaf turned out as well as my other attempts at cooking.

The reason I haven't had meatloaf in years is because I'm a Celiac, which means I can't eat anything with Gluten, like wheat, barley, rye, or spelt. Most people make their meatloaf with bread crumbs, so I can't have it. Seeing as my bread is expensive, I decided to skip the breadcrumbs and instead used grated potatoes. We had several sitting in a bag in the pantry needing to be cooked and I read on a Celiac forum that grated potatoes work well.

I mixed up the meat, potatoes, Worcester sauce, tomato sauce, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning and one egg in a bowl, then flattened it into a 4 by 8 inch baking pan. After topping it with more tomato sauce and Worcester, I put it in the over to bake for 40 minutes. Simple recipe. Even I could figure this one out.

Did I cook something edible? The meat cooked all the way through, the edges didn't burn, and it smelled delicious. The potatoes cooked all the way, but stayed a little firm. I liked how it tasted, but since I haven't had meatloaf made with bread crumbs in over 10 years, I can't really compare it. My family ate it and my husband said it was good. Even my daughter ate it, although the strings of potato were weird.

So, that's my attempt to cook a meal from scratch, following a recipe in my Gluten Free cookbook, and using ingredients already in my house. No one got sick or begged for a TV dinner. However, the dog is probably bummed it turned out so well because she won't be getting this experiment.

What shall I cook next week?