steak frites

48. Fried entrecote

That's rib-eye steak to you and I. Larousse Gastronomique presents several recipes for this lovely cut of beef and it makes sense to start with the most basic. You take a steak, season it heartily and fry it in butter until it's cooked to your liking. The fond and meat juices serve as a sauce. That's it. Done. One of life's simple pleasures.

Given the success of my rosemary and sage plants, I stole Neil Perry's idea (see: Good Food--and yeah, I know, he didn't invent the idea) of rubbing some freshly chopped herbs into the surface of the meat before cooking it. He suggests using oregano, too, but I don't have any fresh oregano. In the MoVida book Frank Camorra uses fresh thyme in the same way but my thyme plant is looking rather sad at the moment.

To make the pan sauce, I lifted the fond from the pan with a splash of Armagnac. I added the resting juices from the meat, too. Once the sauce had reduced by half I turned off the heat and stirred in a knob of butter.

The steak is beautiful. I love elaborate dishes as much as the next foodie but there's just something about a piece of good quality beef--a King Island rib eye, in this case--cooked to medium-rare.

49. Pont-neuf potatoes

A couple of years ago, one of my housemates and I spent a lot of time cooking chips. We tried numerous recipes and numerous varieties of potato, trying to perfect them. We made lots of good chips but just stopped after a while, never attaining perfection. Making your own chips is time consuming and, because of the oil, a bit costly for a student.

Larousse Gastronomique presents a couple of recipes for chips. This one is both clear and similar to the recipe I had the most success with--the 'Les Halles' fries in Bourdain's book of the same name. This recipe requests waxy potatoes. It instructs you to cut them into 1 cm * 1 cm * 7 cm chips and to deep fry them twice: first at 170 degrees for 7-8 minutes and then at 180 to reheat them and crisp them up.

The chips are good. Amazing? No. But they'd kick the chippy shit out of anything you get in any takeaway joint or pub.