A STEAK? OR A DEADLY WEAPON?

Hi folks, Chef G. here.  Today's offering is easily the most dangerous dish ever prepared on The Chef G. Cooking Channel, so I don't have time for the tomfoolery that usually goes on in my introductory segments.  Let's get right down to business, shall we?

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Yesterday, I went to a place that I find quite fascinating.  The place is called "Cossetta's" and it's an Italian food complex that takes up about half of a city block in downtown St. Paul.  It includes a pizzeria, an antipasto bar, a full-fledged Italian restaurant, great crusty breads from the in-house bakery, and a little alimentari (market).  Is it any wonder that an ersatz celebrity chef like me would be attracted to such a place?

The alimentari was the focus of today's visit.  When not dealing with customers, many of the employees speak Italian to each other.  It has some really cool stuff.  My favorite section was the olive oil aisle.  It has something like 100 varieties of imported olive oil, some of which are over $100 dollars a bottle.  Some of the olive oils are sold in gallon-sized tins that resemble the gallon-sized containers of highly flammable, highly toxic solvents I used to sell before I retired from the world's largest paint company. 

The alimentari also has a small, but very enticing, butcher shop.  I perused the fine looking meats, doing my best to control my drooling.  After much hesitation, I finally decided to splurge on a $60 chunk of meat.

That was very uncharacteristic of me.  After all, I pride myself on being a Chef of the Common Man.  But, damn, it was so well-marbled, so exotic, so beautiful . . . and so DANGEROUS!

It's a bone-in ribeye--sometimes called a Tomahawk Steak.  I call it a Three-Pound Sledge Hammer.  You could crack a skull with this thing.

I took great care while handling the steak, lest I crack my own skull.  My greater fear, however, was having such an expensive steak and not cooking it to perfection.  I shouldn't have worried.  Not even I could ruin a 3-inch thick chunk of prime beef. 

Here's how I did it:

I carefully unwrapped the bludgeon and put it on a broiler pan.  

 

I let it warm to room temperature.  Then I seasoned it liberally with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper while waiting for the oven to heat up to "broil."

Sear the steak under direct heat for 3 minutes on each side.  They say that will lock in the delicious juices.  Sounds good to me.

After the searing, turn the oven down to 275-degrees and cook for another 20-minutes.  When you pull it out, the billyclub should look something like this.

It looks good enough to dig in right now.  But DON'T DO IT!

You must--YOU MUST--cover your giant caveman steak under an aluminum foil tent.  The meat will continue to cook in there and distribute its juices for another ten minutes.

Then you can start slicing up your tomahawk to serve your guests.  In this case, my guests were me and Mrs. Chef G.  We barely ate half of that monstrosity.  Luckily, we both love cold steak the next day.

Steak and a tossed salad with green stuff, cucumbers, carrots, and dressing.  That's all you need.

I know there are a lot of pictures of meat here.  I also know I have legions of vegetarian fans.  To you folks, I apologize.  I'm a vegetarian in spirit, but a carnivore by nature.  For more on that, you can go back and read about my meat-atarianism. https://chefgcooks.blogspot.com/2021/04/confessions-of-meat-eater.html