Some days things just come together. We were in Princeton picking up a few things from Elements, including two very cool framed menus from the dinners we did there (Thanks again guys!), and we decided to find the local Whole Foods and check it out. We found some beautiful cheeses and then wandered over to the butcher. It was our lucky day. Porterhouse was on sale for $10.99/#. It even looked like prime,although it was not marked as such, it was that well marbled and beautiful. We often hesitate over buying meat on sale, asking ourselves what went into that low price. Somehow being at Whole Foods alleviated our concerns, for better or for worse, somehow we just assume that it's high quality meat because it's within their walls. Anyway, they had three butchers behind the glass and our salesperson happily transmitted our order to them. They custom cut two 2-inch thick steaks for us and we went happily on our way.
The last couple of steaks we've had had been cooked sous vide before hitting the grill. I must confess that I, unlike Alex, am not a big fan of pre-cooking my steaks. I prefer cooking them a la minute, seasoned simply with sea salt, and letting them rest to a perfectly cooked medium rare. Alex has a tendency to slip the meat into the immersion circulator while I'm tending to naptime with Amaya and I was determined to keep that from happening with these beauties.
"Um Honey," long pause.
"Yes." He looked at me in the rear view mirror. Amaya's not a fan of the car, which necessitates my sitting in the back seat beside her for distraction and entertainment.
"About the steaks." Another pause. "Could you not put mine in the circulator today?"
He raised his eyebrows at me. "No problem. I wasn't planning to put them in the circulator. I was planning to put mine in the CVap with butter, salt, brown sugar, soy sauce and whole cloves of garlic and finish it on the grill."
There was a brief silence as I absorbed that information. "Oh, in that case you can cook mine too."
The steaks were amazing, juicy, flavorful, and perfectly cooked.They cut like butter. Was it Whole Foods, CVap or Alex? You decide.
