Epic fail

Everyone needs one of those days to remind them that they are not invincible, that there is work yet to be done and hours yet to be put in. I think I know a fair bit about food. I think I can cook. But you wouldn't have known it today.

I can't remember the last time I was so disappointed with a meal that I put out. I over-salted the potatoes. My vinaigrette broke after I had tossed the salad in it. But most disappointing of all, I committed the kitchen's cardinal sin.

I over-cooked the steak.

Steak is one of those things that is pretty forgiving to cook. It's best when kept simple - salt, pepper, a nice pat of butter, grill. If you want to be fancy you can introduce garlic, or rosemary. In any case, you don't have to be Tom Keller to cook steak. The only thing that you absolutely cannot do is to over-cook it. Words cannot express the disappointment at carving through a piece of well-done meat and seeing brown instead of red or pink. Or gnawing through what could have been a tender juicy steak, but instead - for all intents and purposes - became nothing more than a dry piece of rubber.

That's what gets me the most when I eat a well-done steak - whether or not I was the one who cooked it. It's the fact that the cook abused the potential of that piece of meat. There is only so much good beef around, so really, every well done steak is one less steak that could have been done medium rare. So today I wasted three pieces of Australian striploin.

No point making excuses. I shat the bed, plain and simple.

A couple of photos from the meal:

(None of the said steaks, of course - that would just be offensive.)



Probably the only thing to come out right of the entire meal, because it required so little work. Asparagus, wrapped in some Spanish jamon that my sister had brought back from her travels, drizzled in olive oil, salted and peppered.


Salad of arugula, roasted red pepper, portabello mushrooms, red onion and leftover asparagus.