Steak For Castaways

This really should be posted at my other blog, Tied to the Steak, but that’s pretty much defunct. Unlike a site extolling burgers, a site extolling steak can get pretty expensive.

But I’m in Japan at the moment, and the urge for Wagyu at its so-called source is strong.

I went shopping for dinner at a local grocery store called Max-valu and checked out the steak choices. They were all pretty frightening, price-wise. And the Japanese obviously don’t like their steaks in 1-plus inch measures, so most of the steaks I saw were about a third of an inch thick — that means around two minutes on each side for medium rare.

But what do you do when the kitchen isn’t your own and you want to have a brilliant steak?

I snagged some family-plot-farmed garlic and sliced about eight cloves of that. Since it was very cold and there was no way to keep the steak warm post cooking I opted to make the sauce first, without the pan drippings -- I'd add them back in later.

They don’t appear to have shallots here, either; Obaa-san had never heard of them. So it was a container of pre-cut scallions into butter, then garlic, then Chardonnay from Chile (!) then a hair of mirin . . . and with some weird Japanese rock salt the sauce was done.

Clean the pan, put sauce on hold and then cook the steak in butter . . . pull its sorry skinny ass out and reheat the sauce and pour over and serve with Grandma’s overcooked rice and it was HEAVEN. I don’t regret one yen of that 1,666 (about $16 US, around 11 Euros).

Just the arbitrary way in which the whole thing came together, the negation of reverent ceremonies to honor such high-priced fare — the better it ended up tasting.

Regret no pictures but you can go to the steak blog to see past ones.

Would that those cuts (expensive though they are) be available in Montreal. Might just rekindle my red meat fetish.