My First-Ever Korean Table

I have long enjoyed Korean cuisine, but have never attempted to make it myself. Like Indian cuisine, it always seemed rather daunting, even though the ingredients are fairly common (unlike Indian spices). Recently, I decided to make a full-Korean meal for members of my family, including banchan and dessert. I was somewhat trepidatious, as I generally like to test recipes on myself before inflicting them on others. :-)

It was a long, arduous undertaking, but I did it, and most everything was well received. I waffled between making little dishes of banchan myself or buying it, but in the end the things I wanted were simple enough, and only ended up buying the kimchi (I'm not sure I'll ever come to a point where I'll feel I need to make THAT myself).

One learning that came from this experience is that it's well worth taking the time to make the main courses, but maybe not so much the banchan unless I'm feeding a lot of people over the course of several days. The banchan dishes I chose, while very simple to prepare, are nevertheless time consuming, especially when preparing a bunch of other dishes, as I did.

Here, then, are the various dishes I made, along with a few cooking notes and how each was received.

Kimchi, the only dish not made from scratch. It was okay.  I have yet to find a brand of store-bought kimchi that I really like. The kind served at Korean restaurants tend to be much better than what I can find at the grocery store (even H-Mart, a Korean grocery store).

Sigeumchi Namul, or seasoned spinach, made by dropping the spinach into hot water for 1 minute, then seasoning with sesame seeds, sesame oil, and salt. Very good and simple, but quite a bit of work due to all the washing that's required.

Kong Namul, or seasoned bean sprouts, made by steaming the sprouts (in this case, mung bean sprouts, though traditionally it is made with soy bean sprouts) for a few minutes, then seasoning with scallions, sesame seeds, sesame oil, and salt. Very good and simple, but a bit time consuming.

Oi Muchim, or spicy cucumber salad. Small Persian or Kirby cucumbers are sliced, then mixed with scallions, sesame oil, cider vinegar, and gochujang. This was only okay, even though it's usually one of my favorite banchan. The problem was that the gochujang I used was WAY too spicy, so that I wasn't able to put much of it in. That made the cucumbers under-seasoned.

Sangchu Kutjuri, or mixed simple salad, which I've found to be ubiquitous during Korean barbecue meals. However, I'm not sure how traditional it actually is, as it was actually difficult to find a Korean cookbook that had a recipe for it. It's red-leaf lettuce, hand shredded, with thinly sliced scallions and a simple dressing that's sweet, savory, and sour all at once. It's wonderful. My version was pretty good, but not nearly as good as I've had at restaurants. More experimentation is a must!

Jap Chae, or glass noodles with beef and vegetables. This went down like gangbusters. Everyone loved it. It was delicious, and very authentic tasting. The glass noodles are made from sweet potato starch, and turn translucent when stir fried. The noodles are mixed with seasoned beef, matchstick carrots, onion, shitake mushrooms, and spinach (which I added a bit late, so it's kind of clumpy in the dish). Really wonderful, well worth the time it took to make.

Bulgogi, or the well-known sweet and savory "barbecued" beef that's thinly sliced. This was an incredibly simple and delicious dish -- all that's needed is for the beef to mature in the marinade. Also a hit with everyone.

Saenggang Jelly, or ginger jelly. Most decidedly NOT a hit with everyone. First you have to really, REALLY enjoy the taste of ginger. Then you have to enjoy the heat in your mouth after a few mouthfuls of this super strong dessert. It creeps up on you, and just isn't very pleasant. Even those among us who enjoy ginger a lot couldn't handle eating all of it. Granted, we didn't drizzle it with dark corn syrup as the recipe indicated (because we didn't have any), so I don't know if that would have made a big difference. Honestly though, I can't remember EVER having a Korean dessert in a restaurant setting, and recipes for them in cookbooks seem very sparse; maybe dessert just isn't a forte of the cuisine.

I also made something else that I neglected to take a picture of, that everyone absolutely loved: Kom Tang, or beef bone soup. I actually don't even know how Korean it was, since I made a lot of adjustments, especially toward the end when I was running out of time. The recipe calls for beef knuckles, but I couldn't find it at either H-Mart nor 99 Ranch, so I ended up using beef neck bones instead. That right there might make it un-Korean, I don't know. I was also supposed to cut the meat and cartilage from the bones and drop the former but not the latter back into the soup; I skipped this step entirely. We're used to eating meat from bones in soup, after all. I also did not remove the carrot and onion, again due to time contraint. I used daikon, which I had on hand, which I'm not sure if that can be considered "Korean radish" (the recipe does not get more specific than that). Finally, I neglected to add all of the ingredients that I was supposed to at the end, because I just plain forgot, lol. Yet, as I said, everyone LOVED the soup!

I wanted to make "purple rice," which seems to be pretty standard at Korean restaurants, but it turns out that you have to soak black rice (a bit of black rice mixed with white rice is what turns the rice violet in color) for hours and hours before it softens enough to be cooked with white rice, which I didn't realize. So we just had regular sticky white rice.

All in all, a big success, and a few of these dishes will likely find themselves in my permanent repertoire!

Jap Chae (recipe adapted from The Korean Table)

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp Sweet Soy Base Sauce (recipe follows)
• 1 tbsp minced green onion
• 1 tsp dark sesame oil
• 1/4 lb sirloin tips or ribeye steak, cut into matchstick strips
• 5 oz dried Korean vermicelli noodles
• 1/2 lb spinach
• 2 tbsp canola or other neutral oil
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 1 carrot, peeled and cut into matchstick strips
• 8 dried shitake mushrooms, reconstituted in water and cut into matchstick strips
• 1 tbsp dark sesame oil
• 5 tbsp Sweet Soy Base Sauce
• 1 tbsp roasted sesame seeds
• salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. In a small bowl, add the beef and the first 3 ingredients to make the marinade. Toss the beef strips until thoroughly coated. Let the beef marinate while preparing the other ingredients.
2. Place the dried noodles in a large heatproof mixing bowl. Pour about 4 cups of boiling water over the noodles and let soften, about 8 minutes. Drain the noodles. If they get sticky just give them a quick rinse with warm water.
3. Fill a medium saucepan halfway with water and bring to a boil. Add the spinach and cook for 1 minute. Drain and set aside.
4. In a large skillet, add 1 tbsp of canola oil and place over medium heat. Stir-fry the onion, carrot, and mushrooms separately, seasoning each with a pinch of salt. Add additional oil to the skillet as needed. Place each vegetable, when done, into a large serving bowl.
5. In the same skillet, add the beef and stir-fry for 3 minutes. Add to the serving bowl.
6. To the skillet, add the 1 tbsp of sesame oil and the 5 tablespoons of Sweet Soy Base Sauce. Bring to a boil. Add the softened cellophane noodles and mix well. The noodles will become transparent over the heat.
7. Add the noodles to the serving bowl along with the cooked vegetables and beef. Toss until the ingredients are evenly distributed. Taste and season with salt and pepper if needed.

Sweet Soy Base Sauce

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup water
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 6 thin slices of fresh ginger, peeled
• 1 tsp black peppercorns, crushed
• 1 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup red or white wine

Method

1. Combine water, garlic, and peppercorns in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
2. Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and wine. Turn the heat to high and boil for 2 minutes.
3. Remove from the heat and let it cool to room temperature.
4. Strain the sauce through a sieve into a large mixing bowl. Discard the solids.

Bulgogi (recipe adapted from The Korean Kitchen)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs boneless rib steak, cut into very thin slices 5-6 inches long by 2 inches wide
• 4 tsp sugar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed or chopped fine
• 3 scallions, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp Korean sesame oil

Method

1. Mix the beef and sugar together. Let it rest for 2 minutes, then add the soy sauce, garlic, scallions, pepper, and sesame oil. Toss the mixture well to integrate all the flavors, and let it stand at room temperature for a minimum of 1 hour (or overnight in the refrigerator) to allow the meat to mature.
2. Preheat a large, heavy skillet over moderate heat for 2 minutes. Add the beef slices, along with any remaining marinade, to the skillet. Stir fry, without oil, for 2-3 minutes, until done.

Kom Tang (original recipe; my notes on what I changed, after)

Ingredients

• 8 cups water
• 3-5 beef knuckles with meat and cartilage attached, well rinsed
• 1 carrot, halved lengthwise
• 1 medium-size onion, halved
• 1 Korean radish, peeled and cut into a 4-inch piece
• 1 tsp salt, or to taste
• 5 scallions, sliced thin
• 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
• 1 tsp hot chili powder
• 1 tsp chopped fresh ginger

Method

1. Bring the water, bones, carrot, onion, and radish to a boil over high heat for 20 minutes. Skim off and discard the foam. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for at least 2 hours, which should be sufficient to tenderize the ingredients.
2. Remove the bones from the broth; cut off the meat and cartilage and cut into 1/2-inch cubes. Discard the carrot and onion.
3. Slice the radish into thin 1-inch squares. Add to the hot broth with the meat pieces, salt, scallions, sesame seeds, hot chili powder, and ginger. Mix briskly and serve immediately.

My Changes

1. I used beef neck bones.
2. I used Daikon radish, and sliced it into 1-inch pieces from the outset.
3. I skimmed the foam at the beginning and at the end.
4. I did not remove the meat/cartilage from the bone and instead served with the bones intact.
5. I did not remove the carrot or onion.
6. I did not add the ingredients from the scallions onward, at the end.
7. I ended up simmering the soup for 4-5 hours, as I was preparing the rest of the meal.

Red-Braised Beef

A traditional Chinese dish (one of my favorites) is "red"-cooked beef and tendon. I think the reason it's called "red" is due to the resulting color, which isn't really red as it is rich, shiny, and wonderful. I suppose you could say it has reddish tones.



The flavor is indescribably good. It's flavored with soy sauce, sugar (in the form of rock candy), rice wine, and star anise. That's it. And yet the transformation of the meat once it's been braised for hours is quite incredible.

Most commonly this dish is made with beef brisket, but my mom likes to make it with beef banana shank because it has less fat content. Once it's all been cooked, the beef is so tender and falling apart that the difference between the two is minimal, so I'm good with going with the healthier version.



Just as important as the beef is the tendon, a creamy white substance that connects muscle to bone. The only way to eat it is when it's been cooked for a long time, so that it becomes soft, melty, slightly sticky, and delicious. Both the beef and the tendon need to be pre-boiled, to get rid of some of the surface blood and impurities, and when you do this, they both become very hard and solid. Only hours of cooking will coax them into being as tender as they need to be.

The recipe I got from my mother is imprecise ... she's a wonderful cook, and as is the case with most wonderful cooks, does no actual measuring. Grrr. So I had the ingredients and the general method down, but actually making it turned out to be more challenging. I made this about 3 times (always too salty) before I finally perfected it this last time. The key is not to use too much soy sauce. It'll seem like it's not enough, just a small amount sitting at the bottom of the pot, with huge hunks of beef and tendon on top -- what chance does the soy sauce have of seasoning it all? Don't worry, it will.

Speaking of soy sauce, the absolute key to red braising is using dark soy sauce. If you don't, it won't get that deep, dark, 'red' color, which is what makes a red-braised dish so appealing. However, you also don't want to use only dark soy sauce, which contains molasses, as it hasn't got the same flavor as regular soy sauce. You want to use a mix of both. Dark soy sauce is available at Asian markets like 99 Ranch, but in this day and age your local Safeway may carry it also.

If you find that you have star anise but it's in bits and pieces, use a cheesecloth and some kitchen twine to make a pouch for it. It's important not to let a bunch of stray pieces of star anise get lost in the pot, because at some point you'll need to fish them out (if you leave them in for the entire duration of cooking, your dish will end up bitter -- at least according to my mom). As for the rock candy, it's traditional to use it (and very common in Chinese grocery stores, so if you're there for the star anise, might as well pick up a box), but ultimately it's really just sugar, so if you don't want to bother, substitute with plain sugar and I'm sure it'll be fine. Here's the rock candy that's popular in our household:



Finally, you can cook this in a pot on the stove (as my mother does), but that requires a little more attention as you don't want the sauce to burn. If you're more like me and want to use something you can turn on and pretty much not have to worry about, use a slow cooker.

Red-Braised Beef and Tendon

Ingredients:

• 1.5 lb beef tendon
• 1.5 lb beef banana shank (whole)
• 1/4 cup dark soy sauce
• 1/4 cup regular soy sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tbsp rice wine (I like Shaoxing)
• 2-3 slices of ginger (about 2 inches in length)
• 1 medium-sized chunk of rock candy or 1 scant tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 whole star anise (phonetically called "bak gok" in Cantonese)

Method:

1. Boil a large pot of water. Add tendon and shank and boil for a few minutes, to let the blood and other impurities out -- there will be foamy gunk. Remove tendon and shank from water and put them into a clean slow cooker or pot, arranging the pieces so that you get maximum surface area.
2. Pour the soy sauces directly over the meat, doing your best to splash a bit on every surface of the meat and tendon. Tuck the ginger in between the pieces of beef. Add the star anise, making sure that it's in the soy sauce (same thing if you're using a pouch). Add the water and rice wine. It will seem like there's very little liquid in the pot; resist the temptation to add more.
3. Set your slow cooker to 'high' (or simmer this on the stove using low heat) and cook for a few hours. Periodically, about once an hour, check on it and turn the pieces, as well as skim off any fatty oil that accumulates on the surface.
4. After about 3 hours, remove the star anise and add the chunk of rock candy. Cook for another 2-3 hours, again turning the pieces every so often and skimming off fat.
5. After 5-6 hours, the beef will be soft enough to cut. Remove the meat and the tendon from the pot and cut into smaller pieces (the meat may be so tender at this point that you can just use tongs to pull it apart). Add the meat back into the sauce, stir everything to coat, and cook an additional 30 minutes to an hour.
6. Serve with rice and some veggies (like garlic stir-fried spinach)!

Kalbi -- Korean Marinated Short Ribs

I'm not Korean but I LOOOOVE Korean food. Making it completely authentic is a bit of a challenge without that background, but I do have some friends to guide me. One of my favorite dishes is kalbi, marinated sliced short ribs that are sooooo good.



Last summer we had a barbecue, to which my cousin's friend, who's Korean, brought uncooked kalbi. It was grilled on the barbecue along with other meats, but frankly blew everything else away! I begged her for the recipe, wanting to know what went in the marinade, and after much badgering she finally confessed that she didn't make a marinade from scratch; she used Mr. Yoshida's marinade. D'oh.

Well, you can't argue with a good thing. I'd love to know how to make my own authentic marinade for kalbi one day (any of you have tried and true recipes you'd like to share??), but until then, this one does me just fine.



Kalbi is so popular that grocery stores of all types are carrying this cut of meat -- often named some variation of "kalbi" or might say "for Korean BBQ" or "cut flanken style." You definitely don't want the typical large cuts of short ribs (that are good in their own right, for braising usually). These should be strips of beef about 1/2-inch thick, about a foot long, and interspersed with 3-4 bones toward the edges. You can marinade and grill them whole, but I usually slice them into pieces, letting the bones guide me where another piece should start/end. I'm way too lazy to fire up a grill to make these (though I do think they taste better that way), so to make them at home I just heat up a tablespoon or two of canola oil in the wok and cook them that way (they don't take very long). I make sure that the beef is in a single layer, and just turn them at intervals. Depending on how much you have you may need to do this in batches. It also seems fairly typical to serve these with just-cooked onion ... in the last batch toward the end of cooking toss in a small onion sliced on the vertical in with the beef, and stir fry until the onion is just starting to brown, about a minute or two. They shouldn't be completely soft and should still have a nice crunch to them.



So far I have been way too lazy to serve this with a proper Korean banchan offering -- way too many little side dishes to make for just me! -- but I eat this with a large helping of fluffy white rice and prepared kimchi and it's just divine! I initially start out using chopsticks but soon abandon my propriety and just eat the ribs with my fingers, lol.

I posted this to LiveJournal and chumas has shared a kalbi marinade, woot! It goes like this:

Moms Marinade

Ingredients

• 1 cup of dark soy sauce
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup sherry
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup green onions, minced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon ground cayanne pepper (I like it firey, less for less heat)
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

Method

1. Let kalbi soak in marinade for two to three hours, flipping occasionally. Grill or pan fry, serve.

But it seems that Mr. Yoshida's is quite well known and popular, so there's no shame in using it from time to time, right? Right!

T-Bone Steak with Melting Marrow Gremolata

One of the simplest pleasures in life is a perfectly cooked steak.

Beef is enjoyable in many forms, but steak is possibly the simplest and best of all -- you throw it over some heat and minutes later, you're sitting down to a satisfying meal. At least, that's the way it should be. Cooking a steak is simple. It doesn't take much to cook beef. But cooking it perfectly is another story.



My idea of a perfect steak is: seared and crusty on the outside, with a warm red center. It sounds so deceptively simple, but it's taken me years to finally figure out how to make something close to what I love (though not perfected yet) with the tools I have at hand. The thing with steak is that it's so easily overcooked. One second it's too rare, and the next second it's brown throughout. If you brown it on high heat, the outside is charred but the inside is too rare. Brown it on lower heat, and it'll take longer to brown, by which time the meat will be far too well done.

My dad doesn't worry about the browning. As long as it's medium rare, he's good with it. And his steaks are definitely fantastic. But he uses a broiler, and I've never been able to figure out my electric broiler, so that's out. Others use outdoor grills with great success. I love the flavor of meat that's been grilled on a barbecue, but I'm just one person and it's a lot of effort to get a grill going just for one steak, and anyway I don't have a great grill (just a small hibachi) or experience with grilling steak. Basically, all I have is my oven and my stove. Is it possible to get perfectly cooked steak with just those? It might be. I'm still in the experimental stages. What I do know is that my first try was a steak that came close to being perfect, maybe as perfect as I can get with home equipment. Time will tell.



Until today, I generally avoided cooking steak at home because it never comes out the way I want. Why did I finally cave? Well, it has to do with bone marrow.

The other day I went to a neighborhood butcher for the first time, with the intent to buy marrow bones. I ended up buying 6 pieces. (One was given raw to my dog, as marrow bones have been proven to be a great recreational bone, keeping dogs busy for hours as they chew happily away -- and it keeps their teeth clean and tartar-free at the same time!) I've been doing a LOT of research and reading about eating bone marrow, which has sadly gone out of practice in modern times, even though it's chock full of goodness. "Bone marrow is a source of protein and high in monounsaturated fats. These fats are known to decrease LDL cholesterol levels resulting in a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease." (Source)



I've ordered Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore by Jennifer Mclagan, which won a James Beard award as the best single subject cookbook of 2005. The cover of the book is a plate of delectable-looking roasted marrow bones. I love this quote from the author in an interview she did: "But when you [...] get to chew on the bone it is something primordial. It takes us back to our ancient wild past as humans. It is a pure basic human pleasure and the basis of the truism 'the closer to the bone, the sweeter is the meat'."

The most common method of preparation is to roast the marrow right in the bone, then use it as a spread on toasted bread. Anthony Bourdain has said that if he were on death row, his last meal would consist of bone marrow (here is his recipe). For something a little fancier, you could also roast it, remove the marrow and mix it with aromatics and mushrooms, then stuff it back into the bone, and serve it that way. I'm also intrigued by this method of removing the marrow from the bone, brining it, rolling it in flour, then sauteing it in oil. Then you spread it on bread to eat.

But perhaps the method that's intrigued me the most is the recipe for Melting Marrow Gremolata, which comes from Judy Rodgers's The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, one of the favorites in my collection of cookbooks. Her recipe has you mixing together a traditional gremolata of garlic, lemon peel, parsley and other seasonings along with chunks of cold bone marrow. You then cook yourself up a nice juicy steak, and spread the marrow gremolata over the steak. The heat melts the marrow and the aromatics spread and bloom over the surface of the meat (paraphrasing now as I don't have the book in front of me).

Thus while at the butcher's, I also picked up a T-bone steak, one of my favorites. If I was going to make the gremolata, I'd have to have a steak to use it on. And if I was going to cook steak at home, I'd have to try and make it good. I made the gremolata while waiting for the steak to come to room temperature and kept it in the fridge until it was ready to be used.

I preheated my oven to 450°F and started heating my new Le Creuset grilling pan (yes, the same one I used yesterday for my flounder). When the latter was hot, I rubbed a bit of canola oil over both sides of the steak. If I didn't have the gremolata I would have seasoned it with salt and pepper as well, but I did have it, so I did no further seasoning. The steak sizzled when I placed it into the pan. After 3 minutes, the steak was seared with lovely stripes of brown that you see on TV commercials -- I wish I'd taken a picture of it at this point. I'll be trying this with a normal pan as well, to perhaps get an all-over crust (I'll also use a higher temperature to sear). I flipped the steak over, sprinkled the gremolata over the top, and placed the pan into the oven. After two minutes, the steak was done. You should let it sit for a few minutes to keep in the juice.

Overall, the result was very good. The only problems were that it was actually a little more well done in parts than I really like, and that there was a bit of inconsistency in how evenly the steak cooked. Some parts were overdone, while other parts (the bits closer to the bone) were underdone. There will always be some inconsistency, but the range here was a little more than I would have liked.

For my next attempt, I'll use a higher heat when doing the initial searing and lessen the time as well. I'll also try using a lower temperature in the oven, and keep it in a minute longer. Still, I must say that it was very exciting to come this close on a first attempt. It gives me great hope! As for the gremolata, I think it was a bit heavy on the parsley. If I make it again I'll use more garlic and less parsley. Not being familiar with bone marrow, I'm not really sure I could taste it! I'll definitely need to prepare it using one of the other methods.

I served the steak with Ruth's Chris au gratin potatoes (recipe here).


Taking it out of the oven in preparation for the last step: Lots of cheese sprinkled on top!


And the finished product...

Melting Marrow Gremolata paraphrased from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp cold beef marrow (0.5oz)
• 2 tbsp packed, chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tsp lemon zest, chopped
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 3 pinches of salt

Method

1. Mix together everything but the bone marrow.
2. Chop the beef marrow into small pieces and toss with the aromatics. Keep it in the refrigerator until ready to use.

The Perfect Burger

I love a big, juicy burger. And I like it rare.

There was a time when I was afraid to eat rare burger, but that time is gone now, thanks to this article by David Shaw that I read, about 3 years ago. After reading it, I challenge you to find a good reason why you wouldn't get a rare or medium rare burger from the right place. (Unless, of course, you're one of those people who likes their meat well done, in which case, I can't remotely relate.)



One of the great tips Shaw imparts is that burgers are always best at steakhouses, because "they get good-quality meat, they don’t put so much lettuce and sauce on the burger that you can’t taste the meat and they know how to cook it." He's not wrong. The biggest challenge for me is going to a steakhouse and ordering a burger instead of a steak.

My go-to place to get a perfect burger is Outback Steakhouse. Sure, it's a chain, but it has consistently decent food and my wallet doesn't cry about their prices. Plus, they do make an excellent burger, and their steaks aren't so fabulous that I can't resist getting one of those instead.

I went the other day, and started with cream of broccoli soup. It was hot, which means it met my #1 requirement for soups (that are meant to be hot, at least). I've found that Seattle restaurants in general are very good about serving their soups very hot, maybe because it's so cold here. Flavor wise, however, I've had better.



Next came the burger. I always get the No Rules Burger. It's no longer on Outback's official menu, but if you order it they'll make it for you. Basically, this burger has everything and anything you want and don't want, for $9.95. My usual burger includes sauteed mushrooms, grilled onions, bacon, cheddar cheese, lettuce, pickles, tomato, and no sauce but for mustard.



The fries that night were sub-par, sadly. But I'm not sure if it's really the fault of the fries, or because after having the ones at Bis on Main, no others can compare. Sometimes I get the steamed broccoli, because it's surprisingly delicious at Outback.

In any case, it's the burger that's the star, and the meat was everything it should be: juicy, full, flavorful. And of course, cooked perfectly. I got it medium rare that night, but sometimes when I'm feeling particularly rebellious, I get it rare. ;)