September 25 – October 1, 2023

Reunion of CCHS classmates and spouses at lunch sponsored by JC and Ann.  Center:  Olga (you should hear her life story) and Mark M. (CCHS Basketball player, among other things) were the guests of honor.  Chris and Mark also attended grade school (St. Philomena) together and wore amazing shoes to their first communion.

Monday:                   Grilled Vegetables with Burrata and Toasted Ciabatta

Tuesday:                   Chicken Soup with Soda Bread and Whipped Butter

Wednesday:            Lazy Night – Marinara with Rigatoni and Pork Meatballs

Late Season Hydrangeas, Casa Stuarti

Thursday:                 Blessing Board Event w/ Food Truck

Friday:                       Pesto Pasta with Salmon and Shrimp

Saturday:                  Margherita Pizza with Sliced Tomatoes

Parcooked Tomahawk Steaks with Oven Mitt to give an idea of scale

Sunday:                     Mash-up of Cheese and Crackers, Zucchini Canapés,

Grilled Tomahawk Steaks, Purée of Potatoes and Carrots, Sauteed Corn

Caveman Food

Apologia:  This post will strike some as a little too male oriented.  Please relax and give me some elbow room for my peculiar sense of humor and I think you’ll find that reading it doesn’t hurt and that cooking the recipe below will help you win friends and influence people.  And remember that ‘man’ is an inclusive term.

This week’s recipe for cooking tomahawk steak speaks for itself – it doesn’t need any more than the briefest of comments from me, just as the very good steak that it is doesn’t need much more than salt and pepper.

But allow me to mention that we cooked this feast, fit for a caveman, after last Sunday’s depression-inducing performance by the Steelers.  Now football game food is a curious mash-up.  Hamburgers and fries and barbecued ribs would, I think be understood by cavemen.  I’m pretty sure that nachos and macaroni and cheese would not go over as well.  And my guess is that chicken wings would be eaten whole with a lot of crunching.

But then there are the Ur-foods of man – foods that take us back to the days before agriculture and cities and some foods that even take us back to a time before women had the vote.  Foods that any caveman who ever butchered an aurochs would understand.

Among these foods the most iconic is the Tomahawk Steak.  Face it, any steak that can be used to bludgeon someone into submission (a typical activity among cavemen), is a serious piece of meat.  Not only does this steak elicit gasps from women folk (and what cave man did not enjoy evoking a good gasp from the women folk?), it makes men folk stop, take a hard look and begin to salivate.

It is also, by the way, a wonderful thing to eat and, I promise, a less difficult thing to cook than most people think.  I don’t deny that a piece of meat 2 inches thick and as large as a dinner plate, attached to flaring bone as long as a forearm, is somewhat daunting.  But cooking this well will earn you a reputation among family and friends that you won’t really deserve because it’s so easy.

All of this – my method of reverse searing, the actual time you’ll need in the oven and on the grill – is explained below.  Follow those directions and you will earn many grunts of appreciation from your fellow men and even some of the women.

Reverse Seared, Grilled Tomahawk Steak

Why reverse sear?  Well, your average tomahawk is going to be between 1 ½ – 2+” thick and on a bone.  If you try to cook this over charcoal without first par-cooking in an oven, the outside of the steak will probably burn before the inside is cooked.  (You can do the par-cooking on a gas grill, if you can control the temperature.)

Timing:                                  About 1 hour and 25 minutes

Special Equipment:           Instant read thermometer

Prep:                                     

Remove steaks from refrigerator one to two hours before cooking and let sit at room temperature.

Preheat Oven to 225 or 230 F

Season the steaks liberally on all sides with salt and pepper.  I like Maldon Salt for this, but if you use it be extra liberal.  Maldon is much less salty than kosher salt.

Cook:

Put the steaks on a sheet pan and cook in the oven for one hour or until an instant read thermometer registers 115 F.  (If your reading is a bit over, don’t worry.)

About 20 minutes before the hour is up, light your charcoal.  Put the hot coals into the grill and let the grill grates get very hot.*

Now place the par-cooked steaks directly on the hot grill and sear each side for 4 minutes or so, then, using the bone as a handle (you’re going to get two oven mitts pretty messy here) sear the two fatty sides of steaks for about 90 seconds each.

This should give you a temperature of 135 F (medium rare).  If you want rarer, sear for less time, more well done, sear longer.  A good rule of thumb is that rare is 125F, medium rare is 145, if you want yours more well done, don’t come to our house.  Medium rare is the perfect temp for this cut.

Let the steak rest – tent it loosely with foil – for about 10 minutes.

*In the winter you can do your searing on a hot cast iron surface.  No skillet will be big enough, so you need a flat surface like a plancha, or, if you have a fancy stove, use its built-in grill.  If using a plancha, heat it over medium-high for 10 minutes before searing the steak.

NOTE:  If, at any time in this process you get interrupted or sidetracked, just take the steak out of the oven or, if it’s already out, let it sit.  You can get it back to the correct temperature when you get around to searing it, though you may have to take a bit more time to do so.  Finally – if you find the steak too rare when you cut into it, just cook it some more.  It is far better to undercook, which you can correct, than to overcook which will you have to live with.

Serve:

Remove the meat from the bone and slice it – if you’ve got an indoor crew who haven’t seen the steak yet, I’d arrange the slices nestled in the cup of the bone from which you removed them and let the gang gasp.

We served this with two dynamite side dishes from Jacques Pépin’s new book, Quick and Simple:   Puréed Potatoes and Carrots and a wonderful sauté of corn (Corn Poele) to take advantage of some of the late corn in Western Pennsylvania.