At this time of year, cattle look so content in the fields. They are plump and sleep from an endless supply of fresh grass and they look sleek after shedding their winter coating.
I like the look of cattle on a plate, too. Luckily, there are great butchers in Galway, including Collerans on Mainguard Street. I bought a fillet steak there at the weekend to try out a new way of cooking it (plus an old way of eating it). I usually pan-fry or grill a steak, but I came across a technique called the reverse sear method that I decided to try. The idea is to oven cook the steak first on a low temperature before finishing it on the pan. The challenge is to keep the temperature low enough – my cooker was a little hotter than I would have liked, but the end result seemed reasonable. But was it better that just frying it ? Well, to be honest, I couldn’t really tell the difference – it didn’t seem to taste any better than a pan fried one (though it still tasted great). I’m going to have to do a few more experiments, and see if I can get the over temperature down to around 50 degrees celcius. Which means I’m going to have to eat a few more steaks… in the name of experimentation, of course.