Dinner For One a la Alain Ducasse

Cooking dinner for one's self isn't all that exciting.  Oh sure, you can make yourself a beautiful salad, or a nice one-dish meal, and that's just fine.  Something that'll give you leftovers the next day for lunch is always a plus.  But generally, are you roasting a chicken for yourself or making a pork roast or even preparing a big, fat steak? Along with a couple of sides?  My guess is no. Or at least not too often.

But since I 've had a bit of blogger's block lately, and since my blog is mostly about food and cooking, I figured if I started actually cooking when Significant Eater and I are in different cities, I might have that much more to blog about. Friggin' genius, eh?

Last week, while digging around in my freezer, I came across a steak I'd had frozen for a while and thought it would be good to use, since I wanted to try out the Ducasse method of cooking a steak over moderate heat on the stove top  (Alain Ducasse is considered one of the world's great chefs) and since I also wanted to empty my freezer of various frozen stuff that was reaching the end of it's lifespan.

Of course, me being me, I didn't follow the Ducasse directions exactly. But I did do what you all should do when following a recipe - read it from start to finish; that way you at least have some idea of what you're hoping to end up with.  It's also the first thing I learned in cooking school...read the damn recipe.

My steak happened to be a rib eye which is actually my favorite cut.  You'd never guess it was under here, but I always think these things will help keep the cook top clean, which, by the way, they don't...

The steak got turned after 10 minutes...

It's looking good, with a nice crust.  At the same time the steak was cooking, these were roasting in a hot oven...

And finally, the lonely man's dream frozen vegetable side dish (I always have them in the freezer - they come in so handy)...

One of the most important steps in that recipe you've read all the way through is the resting period.  I don't care if it's a steak, a pork chop or a roasted turkey. Let it rest before carving; end of story. Chef D. recommends resting a thick steak for about half the time it takes to cook it - I went a few minutes less, but not by much...

Perfectly medium rare, and exactly the way I like my steak cooked. Plated up with those vegetables and potatoes, and it's a meal you might even be tempted to  serve to someone other than yourself.  And it took less than an hour, start to finish...