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.