I did it. I cooked myself a steak dinner.
Set off the smoke alarm. I’d even opened up all the windows and put the central air fan on in anticipation…but it wasn’t enough. Not by half. Sigh. Whoever thought microwave stove hoods are sufficient for cooking should be…well, not shot, but certainly something less violently-bad. It’s so stupid.
It turned out okay. Our smoke detectors are hooked up to our security system, so the monitoring company was calling me as I was a minute or two away from needing to pull the steak off the pan, plus the dogs were freaking out and I was trying to silence the alarms…as a result, I pulled the steak probably two or three minutes after when I intended to, and was able to get slightly less butter basting than I wanted (that was RIGHT when the alarms went off, right as I was dumping that stuff in — it hadn’t even melted yet)…so it was definitely medium rather than medium rare. Two or three minutes is a goddamn eternity with a steak. BUT…still, it wasn’t ruined. There was still a nice pink strip dead center, and the seasoning was legit goddamn delicious. Probably a little too salty, which was an error from the night before. But, genuinely, only slightly too salty. The seasoning was almost fucking perfect.
Potatoes—which were in the air fryer during the smoke alarm mayhem—were less successful. First, it was too many potatoes in the fryer at one time. Ooops. Second, because of the fucking alarms going off, I missed turning/tossing them halfway through, so the result was widely varying cooks on the poor babies. Some were way overdone, bone dry; others were hardly cooked at all. I found a few that were perfect, however, and those were good. Also…too much paprika. I put in as much as the recipe said, but it was too much.
The shining star were the green beans. THOSE came out fucking perfect. Delicious. I got “French beans.” I don’t know what makes them special, and they looked exactly like normal green beans except slightly smaller, but they were delicious. Perfectly cooked. Perfectly seasoned and sautéed. A triumph.
And the surprise of the night: the wine. I gambled blind on a bottle of pinot noir from Santa Barbara (Santa Rita Hills, to be exact)—one of the only ones I could find with a review that didn’t mention “cherry pie” or “cola” and it turned out to be delicious. It was cherry, perhaps, very fruity at first, but it was light and earthy on the back end with that splash of “velvety” that I love so much. It didn’t turn too rich or sweet. It was very, very tasty, and it turned out to go reeaaaalllyyy well with the herbs I’d seasoned stuff with; the rosemary in particular.
It was messy. A bit scattershot. But, I did it. It’s been a very, very long time since I put together a meal like that, and I’ve never been good at it, which is why I don’t do it very often. But…I want to get better. I want to learn. And I want to do it enough so it feels much less overwhelming.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll try the cookie recipe. We’ll see. Night night.