A few months ago, just as the great freeze was beginning, I attended a fabulous bloggers’ lunch in London with some new friends and not quite so new friends (I’m still a neophyte in this blogging world so it’s a bit early to consider fellow bloggers “old friends”). There were Meeta and Jamie (who had come from afar), Jeanne (organiser extraordinaire), Kavey, Anne, Hilda, Sarah, Julia, Catty, Eunice. We are a group of people with different backgrounds, histories, everyday lives and talents but all having one things in common – a love of food and cooking perhaps bordering on obsession. In a good way. We ate, we drank, we chatted, we laughed, gifts were passed around…
Gifts are generally good, especially when they come from fellow food bloggers. Kavey brought random packs of spice mixes for people to play with and blog about. I was given steak seasoning. Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it, especially if you like steak. And I like steak. It’s the Friday night meal I will make if I’ve had an especially bad week – steak, baked potatoes and mushrooms. Mmmm.
Bring on the steak
So here I was with my packet of steak spice, mulling over ideas of what I could do with it. I knew some of the others would be doing slightly odd and creative things with theirs, but in my case I decided to call a spade a spade and use it in the way it was intended. I have my own dry spice rub that I use all the time on steaks and I decided to use this in much the same way. I had this whole blog post composed in my head (I even jotted some bullet points down on paper – here’s the place where you ooh and aah about my organisational skills) about the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) and simplicity in cooking. About not needing a long list of ingredients to make something good. You take a simple steak, a simple spice mix, and voila – a quick, dead easy, delicious meal. It couldn’t go wrong.
Here’s how I envisioned the steak looking:
Here's one I made earlier...
And here it is happily letting the spice mix do its magic:
Even the photo of the steak is rubbish - it does not bode well!
And here’s what happened…
I need you to do some visualisation now. Cue some relaxing background music (classical I would think), someone with a gorgeous calming voice to read the text, and imagine if you will:
A prime thick piece of Aberdeen Angus beef, cooked to perfection in a cast iron pan - juicy reddish-pink inside with a spicy crust on the outside. Roasted potatoes, fragrant with rosemary, sage and garlic, perfectly crisp on the outside yet light and fluffy when you take a bite. And a simple salad: lots of greens, slivers of sweet red pepper and licorice-y fennel, and a light lemony dressing. A perfect, quick, midday meal.
That was the plan.
Now for the next part of the visualisation exercise: cue in some thrash metal music, someone with a loud shouty slightly annoying voice to read the text, and imagine this:
OH BUGGER THE PAN IS TOO HOT. THERE’S TOO MUCH SPICE RUB ON THE STEAK. THE KITCHEN IS FILLED WITH SMOKE. THE STEAK IS BURNING. THE FIRE ALARM IS GOING OFF. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE SHUT THE DOOR TO STOP THAT INFERNAL BEEPING??? AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH. BUGGER.
The potatoes were good. They were indeed herby and crispy and fluffy in all the right places.
The salad was nice and light and lemony. And I’m loving fresh fennel these days.
The steak was indeed juicy and redding-pink on the inside, but the spices were completely burnt (we had to scrape them off) and unfortunately a nice steak ended up with definite burnt undertones – not nicely charred, but burnt. It didn’t stop us from eating most of it though. Steak is steak after all.
I will admit that I am a bit bummed about the whole thing. I’ve only cooked steak a zillion times and have never burned it like this. I should have barbecued it. Or at least done a dry run since I was planning to blog about it. I will have to keep working with this spice mixture – I think it needs some liquid with it to really work well. It might work better with braised meat. I’ll experiment and report back.
We all make mistakes in the kitchen – luckily the vast vast majority of mine happen in the home kitchen (as opposed to the work one). If you would like to read about one of my kitchen mistakes gone RIGHT, read about my orange dust. That would make me happy.
Oh dear – I really HATE it when that happens.
Tell me about it! Oh well, lesson learned if nothing else.
Oh lord I’ll bet this post makes so many food bloggers feel as I do: relieved! It isn’t only me that has kitchen mishaps, dining disasters, cooking catastrophes! But all in all, the meal still sounds pretty darn good and a whole lot better than we get here for a midweek meal! I also think that things tend to go badly wrong when we are 1) being watched 2) giving a lesson 3) have only enough ingredients for one 4) are on a time limit or on top of a deadline 5) picturing the perfect picture for our blog. Yeah….
Thanks, Jamie. I’ll be happy if I can make others feel relieved and perhaps a bit human. We get so used to seeing amazing food in blogs that it’s easy to forget what sometimes happens behind the scenes. And yes, I think the fates were conspiring against me: I was feeling the pressure of living up the the challenge, I knew exactly how I wanted it to turn out (big mistake) and I just didn’t have time to do it again so it had to be right the first time. A recipe for disaster!
Oh, I’m so sorry but *giggle* surely we’ve ALL been there – especially planning to blog something and it all going wrong!! I know I have!
Am hoping you are able to find success with the spice mix next time and if you want me to grab you another packet and pop into the post, let me know.
x
Kavey
Thanks Kavey. I’ve still got about 2/3 of a packet left so should be ok. My brain is already mulling around ideas as to what to do with it next. You have not seen the last of it…
LOL – oh I am glad it’s not just me that gets into these ridiculous situations. I won’t even tell you about the cake that I started baking on the weekend (as in put in the oven) without vital ingredient, and then had to haul it out and do damage limitation…
) Hope that some more experimentation yields results – if the steak spice is as good as my lemon pepper it is worh persevering!
This post has been great in that other people are coming out of the woodwork and talking about kitchen disasters. I love it! And I’ll bet your cake turned out just fine…
Oh My! I know the feeling. My smoke alarm won’t turn off for ages once it starts bleeping!!
LOL! This could be me at times in my kitchen too – minus the fire alarm instead add a lot of swearing! Michele – I still would have eaten the steak. You put a smile on my face!
Oh there was some swearing going on – I just sort of edited that bit out!
Well at least it’s good to see I’m not the only one who has the odd smokey disaster. Made me smile though – know the feeling. All that planning… grrr : )
Yes, well, I guess I should know better than to put all my eggs in one basket. so to speak.
Oh I love your honesty! I also love how kitchen disasters, infuriating at the time, turn into such fun stories after! Better luck next time with the spices!
Well, you have to laugh, don’t you? Much more sensible and less stressful than the alternative.
*chortles merrily* Our smoke alarm is at the top of the stairs (our apartment is on two levels and the kitchen is upstairs) And when I say the top of the stairs, I mean, just beyond the top stair, so I have to lean forward and wave a tea towel at it in the hope it won’t trigger the main alarm and cause a mass panic and get everyone standing outside in the car park, glaring balefully at me. I have toppled forward and half fallen down the stairs before now… that may make you feel better.
And yes, I have managed to incinerate dry spice rubs as well….
Oh the visions this conjures up! We just madly open and shut the door to get the smoke alarm to stop. I like your perched on top of stair madly waving tea towel method much better.
Oh dear, what a pity! At least it was still pink and juicy inside so not a complete loss. If you only knew how many of my kitchen exploits ended up in disaster….
Better luck next time!
I think this is one of my favourite posts ever. Not only is steak and potatoes our default Friday night treat, but our Belsize flat was so tiny that the smoke alarm went off if I burnt the toast. I have distinct memories of being about 120 weeks pregnant and trying to balance on a rickety chair with a broomstick in my hand so I could turn the damn thing off!
Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, while I was writing a blog post this morning I managed to a) burn the porridge and b) run down the street in my nighty to catch the bin men. Mortified, moi? Not half…
I love all the stories that are coming out of this. Kitchen disasters seem to pull people together and make people feel much more human than story after story of fantastic dishes. Maybe I should start a new Kitchen Disasters blog???
Oh goodness. The worst is when you know the damn fire alarm is going to go! I’m sorry to have missed the brunch – was looking forward to seeing you again. though I’m with you – steak is steak, it seems to always taste pretty good no matter how its cooked!
Yes, kitchen dramas can be fun. Did I ever tell you about the time the stuffed flank steaks, just out of the oven still tied up looking exactly like footballs, were being transported down to Heathers kitchen at 6641, flew out of the pan and careened down the basement stairs? They survived and the next day on Garibaldi Glacier the people who were served it, thinly sliced and drizzled with demiglace never noticed a thing. Keep up the entertaining work!
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