After 4+ years of food blogging I have achieved a level of kitchen competence where my successes far outweigh my failures, but even so, I can overcook an expensive steak just as easily as anybody else. Always frustrating and embarrassing to screw something up, but I wouldn't be fooling anybody by trying to pretend I am infallible... and I like for this blog to commemorate both the good and the bad products of my kitchen.
And here we have one of the bad (but not as bad as you might think).
I was following this recipe from Food52: Steak with Arugula, Lemon, and Parmesan... and didn't compensate enough for my relatively thin cut of New York Strip steak. The recipe called for 2-3 minutes per side to brown the meat and then 10 minutes in a 375 degree oven for medium rare... I thought I was being careful by checking the meat temperature at 8 minutes, but we were waaaaaay past medium at that point already. Cooking steaks is not something I do often, so I guess I just don't have any kind of feel as to what's long enough... someone with more experience would have known better. But how do you get experience? Burning the occasional steak and learning not to do it that way again.
Despite all that, as I teased above, it was still actually quite tasty even though I much prefer my steak medium rare... which I think speaks towards the excellent collection of flavors involved here. In addition, I guess a nice caramelized crust and softened fat can make up for dried out meat to some extent.
What drew me towards this recipe initially was the simplicity... grab a couple of steaks, a lemon, a bunch of arugula, and some Parmesan and you have dinner... and as an omnivore married to a vegetarian I could easily scale that down to serve one.
So I'll make this recipe again, and who knows? If I ever figure out how to not overcook my steak... maybe it will be a good choice for when I want to treat myself to an extravagant, but simple, dinner.
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