Deep Freeze

I'm conflicted.

Snow continues to fall outside; it's been snowing all day. The roads are quiet, save for the intermittent plow. Earlier this evening, before dusk, we took A. for a walk in the snow. It was picture-perfect, one of the few picturesque winter moments we've had this year. And now I'm sitting inside with a cup of hot tea. It's warm inside. The dishes are clean.

I'm conflicted, though, because I made steak frites tonight under troublesome conditions.

The steak, you see, was frozen.

I'd purchased a thick-cut Delmonico steak on Saturday. But when it became clear that we weren't going to manage it then, I shifted it into the freezer. The steak went back into the fridge this morning, but by cooking time it was only superficially thawed.

"Don't do it!" you say. "Order pizza!"

I'm conflicted because it wasn't a total disaster. Indeed, had I been just a wee bit more patient in my preparation, the experience might even have been revelatory.

I followed more or less the same general procedure as for a "normal" steak. I superheated a cast-iron skillet, and heated up some oil for the fries. I then added some olive oil and a pat of butter to the hot skillet, and seared the meat aggressively. I was especially thorough with this step tonight, as the steak was nearly two inches thick. And, of course, frozen. When it was seared dark brown on all sides, I placed it in a 300° oven until the thermometer showed me signs of warmth.

Meanwhile, I double-fried some matchstick potatoes and onion slices. To conserve oil, I cooked the fries in small batches. I also made a quick sauce with some sautéed shallots and a little tub of P1's marvelous demi-glace. This demi-glace lives in the freezer, in a tower of little tupperware tubs. In an ideal world, I would have made a proper sauce (a little red wine vinegar early on would have brightened things considerably). But tonight's was a quick dinner, dammit, and I wasn't about to go noodling around with fancy reductions and vinegars. Phooey.

But this same lack of patience led me to slice the meat before it had enough time to rest. And, given that the meat had been frozen, the consequences were a little more significant than usual. While quite serviceable, the steak slices were just a touch too bleu through the center, and perhaps a shade less tender than they might otherwise have been. But not a disaster.

Intriguingly, the meat was evenly pink throughout, in contrast to the seared exterior. This is a good thing. The logic for bringing steaks to room temperature is to preserve precisely this kind of evenness. I'm far from advocating the habit of cooking frozen steaks. But with a few moments more in the oven, and a longer rest, it might have worked. Who knows. Let's send a letter to the folks at Cook's magazine.

Here's an additional caveat: there are far more appropriate dishes for a snowy night than steak frites. This is café fare, after all, and it accommodates itself better to evenings when the air is crisp, rather than cold; and when the accompaniment of choice is, say, a Southwestern red rather than a duly Northeastern hot chocolate.
For on such crisp evenings, the house won't fill with greasy smoke from the skillet, as it did tonight. You can open a window.