Friday, 20 January 2012

When everything You ever believed... was WRONG!

Beef... more appropriately Steak, has long been one of my favourite foods. It would definately be my last meal (if it was positively guarenteed to be cooked to a perfect rare). I remember before I was a big steak fan, I would go to steak houses with family and friends, and nibble on a dry chicken breast or iceberg-y salad wondering what all the fuss was about.


I can't remember which particular steak brought me back to being a lover of the cow, but I DO remember not too long after, I decided I was going to learn how to cook the perfect steak, and bought a 6 burner gas barbeque to assist the learning process.

I can proudly, and boldly, say that I can cook steaks *he hem* PERFECTLY... to the point where I am so critical of restaurant steaks, that I would say that in 3 out of 4 cases, I am disappointed.

But... all of that self-praise aside, I return to the point that I am here to make. Being proved wrong... and by a hero at that. Tonight, after napping on the couch through the evening, I woke just after midnight and realised I'm probably not going back to sleep for a while, so I jumped on 4OD (TV on demand) and had a peruse. Mr Heston Blumenthal has a new series that I thought I'd catch up on. How To Cook Like Heston is Heston teaching us, the viwers, how to cook: no fancy schmancy science-type theatrical food, but basics, that we all-too-often get wrong. Tonight's episode was Beef HUZZAH!


I will let you catch up on the whole episode at your leisure. Worryingly Lord Blumenthal tonight told me that I was wrong. That my tried and true searingly hot pan, 2-3 mins one side, 1-2 the second, was WRONG! I am yet to try his method of continually flipping every 15 seconds, but I shall... and will report back.

This has got me thinking though. If I cook perfect (and i mean perfect in the true sense of the word, ie: as good as it can possibly be) steak is there any point in me changing? Or... if my steaks are actually less-perfect than they can actually be, how much more dining disappointment is there for me in the future?

An experiment is at hand. The outcome, I don't know. But if nothing else, Heston has shown me how to make a great burger patty.

I am about to watch the next episode: Eggs. I'm fairly sure my fried egg is second-to-none, but we'll see what H.B. has to say about that. (In a worst case scenario, I might finally learn how to poach)


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