The perfect steak
I just finished a huge delicious steak. Every time I think on the perfect steak, the scene from “The Matrix” pops into my head: it’s the one where the evil guy meets the evil agents in the steakhouse. The evil guy is telling the evil agents how he knows that this big delicious steak he just cut a slab from is not real, is only a computer-generated image of the steak (I’m obviously paraphrasing here). He understands this, yet when he puts the large luscious piece into his mouth, he can’t help but enjoy its flavor and texture, and wish beyond anything to return to the days when he enjoyed simple pleasures like steaks and fine red wines.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to write when I ran upstairs to the computer. I arrived home a bit tired from work and the gym. When I looked in the fridge, I found the only remaining meat from my last Albertson trip was a huge steak. I had put off cooking it because it was rather large and seeing as the Julies is still out becoming famous, being alone with such a large steak was somewhat intimidating. I took a deep breath, found a clean pan (there weren’t many—I’ve gone through the grill pan, the nonstick pan, and the strangely shaped pan, which leaves me only the All-Clad frying pans), and set it on the electric range at a heat setting of six (out of ten).
The steak was thicker than usual, almost an inch and a half at its thickest part. I added a bit of olive oil to the pan and when it became fragrant, I added the steak. I moved the steak around so it wouldn’t stick, but after a few seconds, I found it hadn’t worked. I peeled the steak off the pan and slid it around until the sliding was slick. I set the microwave timer at four minutes and went to spend some quality time with the internet. (I spent too much time with the internet today. It feels like a scorned lover, always wanting more from me even after I know that neither of us is good for the other). At the beeping, I cut open a rounded roll with my oversized bread knife and set it in the toaster at the two-minute setting (for such a fancy toaster, it takes a surprisingly long time to toast anything consistently). I went to the pan and turned over the steak. It had sealed beautifully, with a brown crispy coat. After realizing that the steak was not going to cook through on just the range top, I turned on the oven at 350 degrees and returned to the cozy embrace of the internet after setting another four minutes on the clock.
The toaster beeped first, but I ignored it. When the microwave beeped I peeled myself away from the internet (reading a particularly funny website: tremble.com, via kottke.org), and returned to the pan. The second side stuck as bad as the first, but after freeing the meat, I squished it around until slick and settled it in the pan. I turned off the oven top and slid the pan into the heated oven. I set the timer for another four minutes, pulled the hot bread out of the toaster, juggled the bread slices between my hands like, well, the proverbial hot potato, and placed them on a dinner plate. Since the steak was so large, I decided tonight I would splurge and use the large plates instead of the medium-sized ones that we bought as “salad plates” (even though they were larger than my last dinner set’s dinner plates).
The oversized dinner plate waited quietly next to the oven, with the split roll upside down and staggered on the edge of the plate. I returned to the internet yet again. I had a New Yorker on the table—I have many New Yorker scattered throughout the Castle[1]—but I resisted the printed word for the electronic one. And, besides, I had a few more articles at tremble to read.
[1] I am still very far behind in my New Yorker reading, and I’ve decided not to renew until I catch up. This is a valid strategy, I think, because I’m constantly reading New Yorkers that are three months old. I read the New Yorker not so much to learn what’s going on in the world, but instead to validate my overly liberal ideals of the world and, of course, remember how wonderful New York is—if only I could move back. Missing a few months of New Yorkers, therefore, will not be too bad. The only part I fear is the letters section in the beginning. I hate when I read a New Yorker and realize I don’t know what article the letter author is referring to. I’ll have to suck it up somehow for the months I miss, regardless of how many free calendars the New Yorker offered me. And, yes, I did need a calendar. I removed last year’s New Yorker calendar from my wall at work, and the pushpin still waits in the wall for a new calendar.
The microwave beeped and I headed into the kitchen. The steak smelled surprisingly good. I pulled it out of the oven and grabbed a fork and knife to check its doneness. I had stuck all of the full-sized forks into the dishwasher and I was too lazy to open it and sort through the silverware. I grabbed a small salad fork to eat the large steak, which was a sacrifice, but in the grand scheme of things, not a terrible sacrifice. I remembered to pull on the oven mitt before pulling the pan from the oven. There have been too many times where I’ve forgotten this simple but highly effective glove, and pulled my hand away in horror at the sudden pain. It’s amazing how sometimes the pain hits too slowly, and in that moment before you realize what you’ve done, you wonder what is wrong, since you know something is wrong but you just don’t know what it is. Most of the time, I forget the mitt after the pan is sitting on the oven top and I’ve eaten my fill. It takes a surprising amount of time for the metal panhandle to cool sufficiently to move it to the sink without that sudden surprise.
After cutting into the steak, I realized it was not ready. I flipped the steak and turned the oven back on. In four minutes it was ready, and with mitt in hand, I served it up to my plate, carried it over to the table, and, with my New Yorker open and ready for reading, I proceeded to stab and slice away at what was a perfectly fatty and quite delicious steak.
You may be asking yourself why I bothered to describe my dinner experience in excruciating detail. I don’t have a good answer. I should have used this sudden burst of inspiration to write something meaningful. Perhaps I should have returned to my Jewish essay—although, since this is Shabbos, the day of Jewish rest (I shouldn’t even be typing this words), I decided not to risk the wrath of you-know-who in typing words about Judaism. Or perhaps I should have returned to the ping-pong story, which sits like a lonely cat on the edge of the stoop waiting for its tray of milk. But I didn’t. Steak just seemed a much more apt topic for today. Now, I’m on to drawing new monsters. They’ve been yanking at the corners of my sweater all day.
