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.

Restaurants of the month

I thought it would be nice to list the restaurants I visited this month, as I work on my end of credit-card cycle budget process:

Christos Steakhouse - We just bought a steak to cook at home, but from that experience, think it's probably a solid restaurant.

Mojave - Sister restaurant to Agave in Manhattan, this is our stand-by place for a quick meal with a nice tequila.

Xai Xai Wine Bar - Neat wine. Too expensive.

Daniel - The weakest of the four great New York City French restaurants, but still a very great restaurant with high ambitions.

Sushi of Gari - Not as good as Yasuda if one is after purity, but Gari's amazing twists on traditional sushi are exceptional (and the plain old sushi is pretty good too).

Porter House New York - Do you want Per Se's view onto Central Park for a fraction of the price, and to get a fantastic burger to boot? Porter House at lunch is the answer.

Motorino New York - excellent artisanal pizza.

Sripraphai - The best thai restaurant in New York, though the menu is hit or miss.

Adventures in Meat cookery

I try not to eat too much meat during the week so that I can splurge over the weekend. This week's such splurge was a cut of dry-aged, prime, beef that I bought from Astoria's own Christos Steakhouse. Rather than cook the steak the way most people recommend (screaming hot pan, massive sear), which creates so much smoke as to be unappetizing at home, I've begun experimenting with the egullet, Alain Ducasse home method demonstrated here.

I still think I did not rest the steak quite enough to fully redistribute the juices around the meat (you're supposed to rest it for 15 minutes, but I got impatient), and did not use the recommended butter. Still, the method produces a delicious, crusty, steak.

UPDATE: We enjoyed a bottle of Nederburg Shiraz with this steak. It is a simple, pleasing, South African wine with some good flavors, and has the great advantage of costing $9.