On this, our second wedding anniversary, I took it upon myself to prepare a dinner of an almost Faincy variety. And to do dishes. Most of them at least.
So, the menu for this evening is a steak au poivre with fried zucchini. The steak uses a rather interesting method of preparation and this was the first time I’ve ever tried it, to great success, thankfully. The secret: salt — lots and lots of salt.
You have to coat the steaks in salt — like a tablespoon per steak — about half an hour before you’re ready to cook them, then wash the salt off, pat dry, dust with freshly cracked pepper, and sautée on medium high heat for 4 minutes per side for a perfect mid-rare.
The zucchini is cut in a large julienne, like french fried potatoes, coated in flour, egg wash and then, muched up tortilla chips. I ran several handfulls of chips through the food processor, but I think some cornmeal would work just as well.
The final plate looked a little something like this:
The tao of steak
Step 1: Salt the steaks, use a lot of salt 
Step 2: Rinse the salt from the steaks and pat them dry 
Step 3: Put some pepper on the steak, freshly cracked is the way to go, and you can run some peppercorns through a coffee grinder if you like 
Step 4: Sautée with a little browned butter and oil. It smelled too good and I forgot to take a picture of it. I’m only sorta sorry about that.
Step 5: And this is one of the very most important steps of cooking a steak – let it rest. Put it on a plate and don’t touch it for at least 5 minutes and 10 if you can wait.
The zucchini files
Step 1: Forget to take pictures any of the prep work.
Step 2: Cut the zucchini in a large julienne, think Wendy’s French fries rather than McDonald’s.
Step 3: Dredge in flour seasoned with salt, garlic powder and whatever else might sound good; then a little dunk in egg; lastly put some of the chip crumbs on ‘em.
Step 4: Fry in oil at somewhere around 350° F for a couple of minutes and dig them out. Hot oil can hurt your hands so use a spider. 
