Steak

"It smells a little like a dog"?

{Sniff}

"Yes, but a tasty dog".

That was our conversation on Sunday, as my meat-splurge of the week, a 24 ounce dry aged rib eye from Christos Steakhouse, came off my grill at home. It's true that real dry aging gives meat a bit of a funk, and if you do nothing but inhale, the aroma can be a little heady (like blue cheese or a mushroom, I'd say). But cooked, the flavor is absolutely worth it.

In fact, I'm now more and more convinced that eating a steak in a restaurant is a waste of time, if what you are after is food rather than simply a convivial place to sit. As long as you have a good butcher, or some availability of really good beef (or lamb, or whatever), there is literally nothing more to cooking it than putting it in a pan or a grill on medium heat*, leaving it there for some period, and then flipping for another period of cooking. Sure, if you want, you can get fancy and baste it with butter or whatever else. But when you're dealing with a prime dry aged rib eye, that seems like a waste of time to me. And I'll take my sides over a steakhouse's anyday.

We enjoyed our steak with a $7 bottle of Three Knights merlot from Trader Joe Wine Shop. A very pleasant, drinkable, wine.

* I have given up entirely on the "get the pan/grill piping hot and sear the steak to a crisp" school of cookery (as I foreshadowed here). First, juices do not "seal", no matter how much you char the exterior. The maillard reaction flavors you want, and the thick, crunchy, crust, can be achieved without all the smoke and to-do of a piping hot pan. A medium sizzle does just as well. Second, I can get perfect medium, medium-rare with this technique, with even cooking on both sides of the meat. That's a challenge with the flamethrower technique others recommend. Third, this gives me lots of time to make a salad, while the steak is pan roasting.

** Caveat: I suppose with a thin steak, you'd still want to apply a slightly higher heat, as it might cook before you get it crusty.