pan pan.

Above: low-lit butterscotch pudding. Very very good warm.

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Something I've never not improvised is a pan sauce for a freshly-cooked steak. Like: you take your steaks, slap 'em up with salt and pepper, toss them in a hot skillet for 2-5 minutes per side, then take them out and let them rest for 10 minutes.

While yr meat is resting, you make a pan sauce. This can go really well or you can end up with something blackly inedible, but somehow I never really considered why my bad ones ended up bad, I just remade them and they'd be OK.

Then I just read something somewhere the other night that said "after your steaks are out of the skillet and resting, let the pan cool off for a minute and then start making your sauce." DUH. And indeed this is why my sauces sometimes fucked up: too-hot skillet vaporizing my liquid instead of reducing it usefully. And by the time I fucked up the first try and started a second one, the pan was much cooler. DUH DUH DUH.

So here what was in last night's sauce, which was great, ALTHOUGH....it's more about the technique and not obliterating your sauce with an overheated slab of cast-iron.

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pan-fried steak with red wine sauce.

2 petite steaks
plenty of salt
plenty of pepper

3/4 cup to 1 cup red wine
1 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1-2 tbsp butter, depending

Follow instructions hinted at above, basically after steaks are resting, turn off heat and let skillet cool for a minute or a bit less. Throw everything in the pan on medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes, keeping an eye on it so nobody burns up. Serves 2 or so.

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