Mon Premier Boeuf Brûlé

It's fair to say that I'm really romping through my meats. Since deserting my vegetarian post but a few weeks ago, I have been on a carnivorous crusade, beginning with chicken, through bacon, even having a je-ne-sais-quoi stop-off at Peperami. Today's meat mission was straightforward but admittedly daunting. Daunting because, well, any meat which needs to be restrained by vacuum-pack, lest you should baulk at purchasing it in a puddle of its own blood, means business. And while business may traditionally take a rest on the Sabbath, today was Steak Sunday and my experience floodgates were well and truly open.

Some knowing people in my life were in disagreement about which cut of beef to lose my virginity to (recall the choice between the strawberry and banana condom? No?) A Classicist-turned-Commis-Chef made a persuasive case for the rib-eye, while My Northern Friend made an uncharacteristically restrained case for the fillet. I purchased both, taking a typically vegetarian disinterest to the difference, and a positively cavalier eeny-meeny-miny-moe approach to choosing between them.

The fated rib-eye

Meatslab

As hap would have it, rib-eye prevailed and I proceeded to free it from its sanguine vacuum. It had a network of fat traversing the cross-section, and it was, at 0.3kg, quite a beefy portion [tautology alert]. A quick Google told me that I had to let my meat reach thermal equilibrium with the room, which Cedric and I duly waited out in a tranquil embrace.

Waiting for Godot (too right I name my beef)

Now, as a thoroughgoing meat-n00b, lacking all meat common-sense, I knew the cooking of this thing would test me. It was at least a short test, with Google (again -- this time as a noun) telling me that for a medium-rare steak, three minutes of hot-skillet action on each side was all it would take. Surely I had six minutes of competence left in me to complete the mission?

I tossed a spoonful of butter into an iron frying pan (my true skillet dreams persist, vainly) and I watched nervously as my pan began to smoke, quite menacingly, like a brooding Heathcliff. I lobbed the rib-eye forth and heard a snare-like sizzle.

Action shot

Three minutes seems like an eternity when you don't know what you're doing. It's like forgetting your lines in GCSE drama and being entirely without crutch or prompt when no inspiration comes. I flipped the steak over, feeling unfathomably out-of-my-depth when pandemonium struck. In that ham-fisted flip, my pan burst into flames, which, while strangely exhilarating to this self-confessed adrenaline-phobe, was so-not-in-the-script-don't-the-fuck-do-that-again-you-stupendous-moron. My confidence plummeted. Why hadn't I just gone up to Gaucho in London, where the use of fire, if employed at all, is intentional and controlled?

I feebly blew/sighed on the pan and impatiently kept the steak sizzling in the incendiary smog for two more minutes. My hopes for medium-rare were extinguished with the blaze. My premier boeuf would be brûlé.

With the fire alarm bleating, I poured myself a glass of Cabernet Sauvingon and removed the rib-eye from its Le Creuset crematorium. Gospel has it that you should let meat rest, and after the unpremeditated flambé, I needed to sit down and think about what I'd done. Meanwhile, the pre-fabricated peppercorn sauce (fanx Sainsbury's) was heating up on the stove and, when I finally re-entered the theatre of conflict, I spooned it over the steak and carried it to the dining table. There was a ceremonious trial-by-ordeal aftermath calmness in the air, or maybe it was the red on my yet-empty stomach.

Unironically well-done

The steak, overall, was a delight. The accidental burning had given it a deeply flavourful, crisped edge, and, for the most part, the centre was rosy and moist. I found the unctuous texture of the fat a little unpalatable, and I suspected that the meat's soulmate was not Sainsbury's factory-farmed peppercorn sauce. For my first time, however, I was making all the right noises. It was a simple, robust and moreish plate of food.

So, despite bearing all the hallmarks of a botch job par excellence, I managed to serve an edible (fat maybe excepted) hunk of meat, which I chowed down with audible, and authentic, gusto. Nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to having a steak cooked properly.

A table for two at Gaucho, please.

Champagne, Chocolate and Chicken: the Three Cs of Epicureanism

Just as I've long suspected, there's something of the female about me. While I may oftentimes subvert the stereotypes of my gender by ordering a pint instead of Pino Grigio (and, let's be honest, by studying Philosophy instead of English Literature), the hallmarks of a female (a homely, cat-whispering one at that) are all-too present. The way I chose to spend my Friday night is possibly the greatest warning that this here human contains oestrogen. 

It was a white-hot day in late July, and the clock at Reading station helped me to infer that my train was running pretty fucking late. So into Reading town I strode (I lie, I was tired, it was an amble at best) and, though belied by my gait, I was on a mission: a tripartite, and unintentionally-alliterative, mission of champagne, chocolate and chicken. Like the Five Pillars of Islam, these are the Three Cs of my own kind of Epicureanism. 

Now, I'm not shy of the term "high roller": anybody who has seen me undertake the eight-course door-to-door dining experience down the Strand (yeah, it's a thing) will testify, but there was something decidedly un-Champagne-y [awkward] about the circumstances I was in, y'know, student penury with, as always, absolutely nothing to celebrate. I did still have a taste for sparkling though, and my normal Boots Meal Deal beverage of San Pellegrino now seemed laughably ordinaire. I grabbed a middling £12 bottle of Prosecco, an appropriate price-point for She Who Dines Alone. Good. Now to source the protein aspect of my triadic desiderata: da cluckster. 

I very recently fell off the vegetarian wagon [or, as vegetarians like to see it, a ship of Titanic stature whose journey is an endless moral odyssey] and, given that my mouth had not partaken of any flesh for two damned [literally, I can tell you] decades, I needed an entry-level, min-shock meat to prevent potential vomming. A Nicely-Treated-and-Better-Fed-than-Thou chicken set me back £8, which made me wonder what I'd be worth bent over and stuffed into cellophane, given that I'm scarcely free range [I lack range] and am far from organic [I test cosmetics on myself with total, daily, self-abusive abandon]. So, chicken in the bag, and with the voice of a thousand outraged salad-fanciers in my ears, I set off to locate some weather-appropriate chocolates. 

I've long been a fan of Hotel Chocolat, but admittedly I've always felt ambivalent about the price-point. BUT, arguably-piss-taking prices aside, Hotel Chocolat is some of the best high-street nosh you're going to find outside of the Continent (and yes I do realise that my personal god Roger Federer is Lindt's International Ambassador, but hasn't Feds already given me enough pleasure across the last ten years*?) It was Hotel Chocolat's time. [N.B. French-sounding name aside, Hot' Choc' are in fact a British brand, so yes, actually, I have *totally* eschewed the Continent -- Schopenhauer and Marx excepted.]

Bottom-right choc: lemon truffle (see Platonic Forms)

I bagged myself a fruity selection, not under any false pretences of health, but because this selection boasted two whole lemon truffles, instantiating therein the Form of Fruit Chocolate. You'll have to take my word for it and get yourself a box -- £13 for an "H" box is just about on the cusp of reasonable for my money. 

I won't dwell on how I actually got home, but when I finally fucking did, I whacked the oven on (190), freed my chicken from its body-bag, and laid it down into a Pyrex coffin. Being a meat n00b, I wasn't really sure of any spiritual/seasoning rituals, so I lovingly stabbed the bird in its breasts, drizzled it in olive oil and threw sea salt at it like Pollock's last foray. I decided to go for a half-hour jog in the meantime, while Cedric kept guard of the oven door [appreciate it, Ced].

The ever-attendant Ced.

75 minutes later, the chicken and I were two hot messes (no prizes for guessing who was hotter), and it was time to carve. I was fairly sure that my chosen-utensil (an ancient bread knife) was inappropriate for creating perfect slices, and, well, yeah, I was right. But in those moments of bungled, flesh-mangling, frankly car-crash slicing, I no longer felt like such a woman. In this expression of species dominance, I felt a pang of the Neanderthal (all of whom were men**) and the poetic tradition of Ubi Sunt take over me . . .  My hand-knife-meat coordination left everything to be desired, but, notwithstanding, this bird smelt great (J'Adore par Dior, mais oui). If I hadn't been dining alone (well, I lie, Cedric clearly fancied himself a worthy dinner date), I would have tasked my companion with the role of carver, to retain a modicum of the chicken's dignity/aesthetic value. It was also pretty good eatin' -- in death, the chicken begged to be shared, like a good little utilitarian. All the best utilitarians are dead anyway, and being a Kantian, tearing at the flesh of a utilitarian is some of the best fun you can have without taking your clothes off . . . at least that's what Panic! at the Disco taught me in 2005. 

Hello Boys

The eating of meat should be a shared experience. And while I admit I achieved a moment of shared transcendence with Cedric [I now totally get why he goes all hyper for his Christmas partridge], I admit I am looking forward to similar experiences in the future with beings of my own kind. Epicurus always said that pleasure is less about what you're eating and more about with whom you are eating. May that pro-social recommendation resonate. 

So, let us come together in a modern ritual, where the tribal and sanguinary marry to make men of us all. 

Consummatum Est (it is now)

Cedric: a very satisfied dinner date.

*Can we still not mention the 2008 Wimbledon final? Thx.

** Source: Trip to the Natural History Museum (2009).