You cant talk about cooking in my family without including my mom. Normally, its my mom dropping the five star dinners on us, but Tuesday night, we had a different experience.
Mom booked a little cooking class action for the two of us. The local Williams and Sonoma is offering two hour classes where they demonstrate an entire meal (sales pitch included for their products) that includes you eating the meal. Needless to say, it didnt take any arm twisting to get me to attend that class.
Menu for that night included ... French Onion Soup, Rice Pilaf with Mushrooms, Ribeye steak and some sort of chocolate dessert (kinda a look a mousse).
I'm not a fan of French Onion soup, but to be honest the recipe is far less complicated than I expected and I might consider brewing some up for guests in the future. Everyone else commented that the soup was excellent, confirming my believe that it ain't for me.
The rice was really nice. It was cool to see a rice pilaf made from scratch as opposed to buying the dollar box at Publix and mixing the packages together with water.
It was the ribeye steak that I went to see and taste though. Martha, the nice lady teaching the class, took some very nice looking (and my favorite food in the world) ribeye steaks and crusted them with a mixture of kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper and fresh rosemary. Guess the secret ingredient? Duh ... Rosemary!!!!!
Interestingly, she placed the spices on right before she started cooking. I think that she waited to spice the steaks because the salt will rob moisture from the steak when I applied for long periods ahead of time. I forgot to ask Martha about that but after doing some research, salt tends to have an adverse effect on moisture.
Now, to be honest, I was suspect on the idea of cooking ribeyes in a pan or oven. Strike One and Two! (She actually did BOTH!) In my mind, you grill ribeyes!!! Last, Martha and several of the attendees were slightly older ladies that wanted the meat to be cooked, "well done". Strike Three! I was confident that I was in for a slightly ruined, overly cooked, rubbery ribeye.
I will stop now and apologize, on all accounts ..... well on two out of the three accounts.
Martha did a fine job of coating the steak with the salt, pepper and rosemary spices. The rosemary was fresh, like she picked it out of her garden that afternoon fresh!!!!!! Those steaks smelled wonderful sitting on the counter (directly in front of me) waiting to be ruined by the pan and oven.
Martha informed us that she had the eye for the pan turned on HIGH, the olive oil sizzled when she poured it in (ahhh, the smell of goodness). She then placed two of the ribeyes into the pan for about 2 minutes before flipping the steaks for 2 more minutes. I was almost in tears as I listened to the steaks sizzle and as she pulled them off to place into the oven I thought about how wonderful it would be to eat them right then. Martha repeated the searing process on the rest of the steaks till all where done and she placed them in the oven (around 350 I believe).
Let me say that searing steak (or any meat for that matter) is a great way to lock in the juices. The science behind it suggests that if you scorch (not burn) the outside edges of the meat quickly, the pores of the meat will close trapping in juices. Really, this is true stuff, you can look it up! Alton Brown (the food science guy) talks about this stuff on his Food Network shows often.
Anyway, Martha seared those steaks tight, then placed them in the oven. Apparently around the 12 minute mark Martha pulled the steaks out of the oven. I didn't have a good sense of time for two reasons; one, I was fearing for the life of those steaks and two she distracted everyone else talking about that chocolate dessert stuff.
Finally, Martha reached into the oven and let the meat free!!!!!!!!
Immediately, Martha began to cut into the meat. If you are wondering about letting meat rest and all that jazz, let me say, Martha said no (in this case) and Martha was right. She cut into that steak and it was ...... a perfect medium! For me, that is a little over cooked, but the individual slices that she served could be cut with your fork and tasted like heaven.
I was wrong! I was wrong! I was wrong! A fine steak can be cooked indoors with a pan and an oven. Martha proved that well enough for me. Sure, those steaks could have been medium rare with appropriate redness inside, and I would have enjoyed them even more but Martha needed to cook them to a happy medium for everyone (I couldn't be selfish on this outing).
As for the dessert, well I ate it. That says a lot as I don't generally touch dessert. Whatever that chocolate stuff was, it was good (was that English? three "was" in a sentence, can't be good).
A couple of lessons learned from the class for me ....
1. Traditionally, if I am looking for a fine steak, I go to a real butcher but she proved to me that you can go to Publix (or any grocery store) for a really good steak. Note: she did ask the butcher there to cut them special for her, thickness, marble, etc.
2. Fresh herbs are key and rosemary on a steak is great.
3. Pan searing is awesome. I will try that at home but I will finish it in the grill next time to get some of that smoke flavor too. I will not grill the steak though, I will BBQ it with indirect heat.
4. A really good olive oil does make a difference. My Cisco brand olive oil does not produce that kind of a buttery flavor (sorry Cisco). Looks like the sales pitch for Williams and Sonoma might have worked on me.
Special thanks to mom for treating me to a great dinner and some life lessons too. I hope to attend more of their classes.
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