Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Steak





2 steaks
1/2 cup sea salt
1 tsp rosemary
1 tsp garlic
2 tbsp butter

Buy good steak.  You can tell it's good if it has little streaks of white fat in the meat.  Those are like little globules of flavor. Cover the steak all over with sea salt. Leave it that way for about half an hour.  Then wash all that salt off-- it would taste awful if you left it on there.  During that time the salt was soaking into the meat, and kind of breaking down its defenses. Put the spices onto the meat at this point. Whatever spices you like, really.
If you cook it like this, the steak will taste a little bit like bacon, because it's salty and has a carmelized, crispy outer coating.
Turn the burner on to high.  Add some butter and wait for it to boil. Leave the burner on high the whole time. Drop the steaks into the pan. Let it cook for about 20 seconds, then turn it over. Turn it over again after 20 more seconds, and keep doing this as long as you're cooking the steak.  The reason for doing this is so that the outside gets cooked faster than the inside, but it doesn't char too much. ( I like the flavor of some black carbon, myself.) You can't get distracted while you're doing this. You should probably open a window and take the batteries out of the smoke alarm, too.
It's done when there is a layer of brown on the outside, but the inside is still a little bit pinkish.
I wouldn't put any sauce on this, but if you want you can put just a little. You don't want to drown out the taste of the steak.