The Old Red Lion, Grenoside, Sheffield

The idea of having a proper local pub always appeals. A regular haunt, nothing fancy required, just reliably good beer and food. Somewhere you can rock up any night of the week for an impromptu pint or pie, safe in the knowledge you won't be disappointed. 

It doesn't sound like a big ask, but if, like me, you never end up living in the leafy, fashionable or well-to-do suburbs, it can be a challenge. Live in Dulwich, Chorlton or Chapel Allerton and this mission ought to be straightforward. Try Woolwich, Sale or Outwood and you might struggle. 

Now that I'm residing on the north side of Sheffield the challenge starts anew. The Old Red Lion would just about fit the bill, so it's a shame it's not quite within walking distance.

It looks like a traditional village pub, but the food on offer is a little more ambitious. There's a menu of pub classics, pitched around the ten or twelve quid mark, and a fixed price menu at £23 for two courses. We thought we'd try the pub grub first time around then return for the more upmarket stuff at a later date if it was any good.

On the face of it the beef, mushroom and ale pie ticked every one of my 'dislike' boxes. China bowl of stew with a pastry lid rather than an actual pie: check. Jenga chips: check. Another annoying china bowl with not enough peas in it: check.

Putting my prejudices aside I got stuck in and what do you know, it was really good. Tender beef and fat slices of earthy mushroom in a thin but well-flavoured broth encased in short, delicate pastry. Peas that were a lot better than they looked and competent chips.

AS had the rump steak, a decent enough piece of meat that was accurately cooked, a feat beyond most pubs. A side of onion rings were fine specimens, hot, crunchy and more-ish. I enjoyed them so much I'm even prepared to forgive the great big pointless tomato, which was big, pointless and not great.

That return visit is definitely on the cards, there's a partridge dish with my name on it. Were it half a mile closer to home The Old Red Lion could be my local, as it is I'm still on the lookout. Any good pubs in Oughtibridge?

7/10

210 Main Street

Grenoside

Sheffield

S35 8PR

Please note: Don't mistake this place for the other Red Lion in Grenoside on the A61, which is a bit crap.

http://www.restaurantgrenoside.co.uk/

The Prince of Wales, Ecclesall Road South, Sheffield

I hadn't realised that the Prince of Wales was a chain pub until we arrived, but it couldn't have been more apparent within seconds of walking through the door.

Pleasant interior, but a bit glossy and overdesigned, plasticky mass produced menus, a token effort at serving some interesting beers. All of the obvious signs were there. All of this didn't necessarily mean I was going to dislike the place. I don't have a pathological aversion to chain pubs and restaurants, some of them have served me decent enough food at reasonable prices.

With the pubs I think there's value to be had at the bottom end of the market. I'm never going to complain at a serviceable beer soaking plate of food for little more than a fiver. Gammon, egg and chips or something like that.

What I do have an aversion to are the more upmarket chain pubs in more affluent areas, where the prices are cranked up way beyond any corresponding increase in quality. Those places where you leave feeling like you've been patted down for cash.

Sadly that's how I felt after leaving the Prince of Wales last Friday night. The food wasn't actively unpleasant, just exceptionally mediocre for the prices charged.

My starter was the high point. Chicken noodle soup (£4.50) from the specials menu brought springy noodles and lots of chicken that wasn't just overcooked breast meat, in a broth that was far too sweet but had a satisfying chilli kick.

Other starters around the table included some decent garlic mushrooms and a chorizo and potato hash with a lovely looking poached egg. They were all declared a success.

It was with the mains that things went down hill. Steaks were adequate but served with standard commodity frozen chips, the kind you'd expect to be served with a two for £8.95 meal or under a slick of cheap cheese in a Wetherspoon's. At £17.95 for the ribeye that's taking the piss.

I was in the mood for fish, so went for the whole grilled plaice with scallops from the specials menu.  The fish itself was cooked nicely, delicately flavoured and flaking easily from the bones, but the plate as a whole was a mess. The greasy, tasteless sauce had coated some overcooked asparagus and pointless rocket in an unpleasant film and the potatoes were mealy. The scallops were rubbery, gritty and not really worth eating at all. Poor, especially at over twenty quid.

We didn't bother with dessert, it was a birthday night out so we proceeded directly to cocktails. A round of celebratory champagne mojitos went down well but were light on the mint and lime and too heavy on the sugar.

Credit where it's due, the service was great throughout. Friendly and efficient. But good service isn't enough to make up for half-arsed expensive food. We paid forty pounds each for two courses, a pint and a cocktail apiece, and a bottle of half-price wine (special offer) between four. Presumably they get away with it because they can, the place was heaving.

4/10

Ecclesall Road South
Sheffield
S11 9PH

http://www.theprinceofwalessheffield.co.uk/

Hummingbird Kitchen and Bar, Chapel Allerton, Leeds

Like my meal at Hui Wei the previous week, dinner at Hummingbird didn't quite add up. This time it wasn't the ordering that was at fault, rather what arrived on each plate that resulted in a meal that was disjointed and incoherent. Some of what I ate was really very good, but some things were awful.

After drinks at the bar that included a well kept Kirkstall Brewery pale ale we decided to kick things off with a bottle of Gavi.

Our waiter forgot to fetch the bottle after we'd ordered starters (sorry, small plates) for which he duly apologised with the phrase 'my bad'. You what? Oh you mean you're sorry. Fair enough you've fetched the wine now, are you American? He wasn't.

I thought the world had moved east nowadays and that the Chinese were in charge. Apparently not, American cultural creep is alive and well. My bad? What next, Prom night? Prom night as in end-of-term-disco-succumbed-to-grasping-commercial-avarice. Oh yeah, we've got that now according to the news. Brilliant.

Apologies, rant over, onto the food and I promise not to comment further on the waiting staff's turn of phrase. Not for a few paragraphs anyway. The cod cheeks, my first choice starter (small plate, my bad), were off so I went for the pan seared baby squid, scallop mousse, chorizo croquette, squid ink dressing.

It was the appearance of this, as opposed to the taste, that was a little unnerving. I shan't elaborate, just look at the photo. Bit weird if you ask me. On a positive note the squid itself was tender and the mousse inside very smooth. Returning to a less positive one the chorizo croquette didn't taste much like chorizo.

Some of the other starters deserve a mention, a slow cooked beef hash and a summery pearl barley rissotto with broad beans were both declared a great success.

I've had the crispy chicken with fish combination before and enjoyed it, so was intrigued by the ambitious sounding main of pan roasted hake, prawn paella, chorizo dressing and crispy chicken, at least until our waiter described it as a 'deconstructed paella'. Eh? I'm really not sure about this fad for 'deconstructed' stuff. What does it even mean?

I think I might open a restaurant serving nothing but deconstructed dishes. It will be a cunning ruse designed to persuade people it's all about culinary cleverness, when really it's just 'cos I can't be arsed cooking stuff properly. Deconstructed Shepherd's pie sir? Certainly sir, here's your mince and tatties, best get a shift on we need your table back in two hours.

There's a very good reason a paella is usually served 'constructed'. If it's not then it isn't a paella, it's rice and seafood and meat and some seasonings. Of course, as all this rattled around in my brain I ordered it anyway.

Predictably enough what arrived was three different things on a plate, not interacting with one another in any particularly successful way. The fish was excellent. A large fresh fillet, delicately cooked to just flake and well seasoned. The other stuff was rubbish. The paella had the taste and appearance of overcooked, mushy savoury rice and the chicken drumstick was dry and tasteless. The fourth thing, the chorizo dressing, was definitely on the plate (that would be the orange wet stuff) but didn't taste of anything.

The other mains around our table were better than mine, pork and lamb dishes both being declared very good and not having anything obviously silly on the plate as far as I can tell. I tried a bit of pork belly and it was lovely, with the winning combination of soft moist flesh and proper crackling.

The theme of messing around with a classic to little advantage continued with pudding. Lemon meringue pie brought pastry that was past its best, a nice, tart lemony filling and hardly any meringue. What's the point of lemon meringue pie with hardly any meringue? There were just a few strips of dry, crumbly stuff scattered on the top, none of the unctuous gooey loveliness you'd hope for.

At this point I should say something nice about our waiter for a change. He knew his stuff, being well versed on the range of drinks on offer and suggesting a lovely Pedro Ximenez sherry to have as a dessert wine and digestif. An espresso martini type concoction that one of the others had at this point was also delicious.

We finished up quite quickly after pudding, the lights had been dimmed and the volume cranked up, presumably the bar takes precedence late on weekend nights. Including service we paid £40 each in total, not bad given that it included some pricey drinks.

I think the problem with Hummingbird is that they're trying to be all things to all people. It's a friendly suburban restaurant attempting to combine attempts at fine dining with being a noisy late night bar. It doesn't quite work for me. Someone in the kitchen can cook meat and fish really well, but whoever is in charge of the menu is getting a bit carried away with themselves. Simplify things a bit and they'd be on to a winner. Mind you they're probably on to a winner anyway. The place was heaving so what do I know.

6/10

Stainbeck Corner
Harrogate Road
Chapel Allerton
Leeds
LS7 3PG

http://hummingbirdkitchen.co.uk/

Trying to cook the perfect steak [volume 5]

I've finally cracked it. I don't think I can improve my indoor steak cooking method any further. Last time round it was almost perfect, but I just overcooked it very slightly despite using a meat thermometer to keep an eye on things.

This time I corrected that by removing it from the pan a bit sooner, aiming for an internal temperature of between 120 and 125 degrees fahrenheit rather than 130. The thermometer was reading 123 when I took it off the heat.

The meat on this occasion came from Holmfirth by way of the Schoolrooms at Low Bradfield. It wasn't cheap but it was good stuff, well hung with a good thick layer of creamy fat. The butcher is helpful and was more than happy to fetch out a whole rib and cut to order.

Apart from the minor alterations to the temperature I did everything the same. Dry age in the fridge for two days, remove from the fridge as early as possible and salt early too. Here it is after the salt has soaked back in, just before going in the pan.

After just a few minutes turning in the pan the crust is starting to develop nicely.

Nearly done and looking good.

After resting here it is ready to slice. Glossy butter sheen shown up a treat by the flash.

Ooh yes, this is the business. The dark, caramelised surface of the steak forms a crust just a couple of millimetres thick before it gives way to the blush, juicy flesh inside. Deeply savoury, marmitey tastes combining with the iron-y rich meat and creamy, buttery fat. Lovely. We ate it simply with some garlicky sauteed potatoes and a salad.

This time there was enough for leftovers.

So I sliced up the rest for a monster sandwich the day after.


To finish this little series of posts here are my top twelve tips for cooking a perfect steak.

1. Buy the best quality meat you can afford, from a good butcher or farm shop. Don't bother with the supermarket 'best of' varieties, they're still not very good.

2. Buy a thick steak, on the bone, with plenty of fat. Fat and bone equals depth of flavour, and the bone is good for gnawing afterwards, or contributing towards a stock. A two inch thick one rib piece cut from the whole joint is ideal. This will weigh between 0.9kgs and 1.4kgs depending on which end of the rib it's cut from. Don't bother with a T-bone, the fillet section will only end up overcooked.

3. Invest in a meat thermometer, they don't cost much and it's well worth it for the extra accuracy you'll get.

4. Dry age the steak for an extra couple of days by leaving it uncovered on a plate in the fridge, or better still on a wire rack with a plate underneath to catch any juices. This, in theory (I'm convinced it works) helps to tenderise the meat and concentrate the flavour.

5. Remove the steak from the fridge at least four hours before you want to cook it, as it will take this long to come properly up to room temperature.

6. Salt the steak generously and early, ideally about 90 minutes before you start cooking it. Use sea salt from a grinder rather than cheap cooking salt. It does taste better. Salting this early allows time for the salt to really penetrate the meat, enhancing the flavour and tenderising. No pepper until it's on your plate.

7. Cook it in a flat bottomed frying pan, not a ridged griddle. The ridge marks might look pretty but all you're doing is keeping some of the surface of your steak further from the heat source, which means less delicious dark crust.

8. Use a neutral oil with little to no flavour (sunflower, rapeseed etc) and a high burn temperature for most of the cooking time. Olive oil or butter will burn and make your crust taste bitter.

9. Keep the hob on a high heat throughout the cooking time, and keep turning the steak at least every 30 seconds. This helps to build up the crust.

10. Throw in a knob of butter for the last minute or so of cooking time (30 seconds on each side), it adds to the flavour and finishes browning the steak nicely.

11. A steak this thick will probably take the best part of twenty minutes to cook, but there are plenty of variables here so using your meat thermometer is key. Keep a very close eye on the internal temperature of your steak, it will rise very rapidly towards the end of the cooking time, so if you want medium rare take it out of the pan when the temperature says rare (120-125 degrees fahrenheit).

12. Rest for a long time. If it took 15 minutes to cook, then let it rest for another 15, on a warm (not hot, you don't want to keep cooking it) plate loosely covered with tin foil. No matter how delicious it smells do not cut back on the resting time.

Enjoy the beefy goodness!

Fazenda, Leeds

Meat. More meat! More meat! The battle cry remains the same, the venues change. From time to time the lifelong (well they haven't ditched me yet anyway) friends I met at University and I like to meet up to drink, make merry and eat a lot of something large and meaty.

It might be in curried form, it could be Chinese or perhaps a barbecue. In days of yore the cry originated in the kebab shops of Hyde Park, the meat of dubious quality, foot long strips of it stuffed in budget pitta and doused in hot sauce.

Nowadays I wouldn't touch that stuff. Honest. Well alright I might if you plied me with enough booze first. But it's a very rare occurence. I like to think our palates have developed, become refined over the years, learned to appreciate subtle tastes and quality. In practice it's probably just that we can afford to spend more than £3.50 on dinner.

Last Saturday we tried something a little different, a visit to Leeds' one and only Churrascaria, a Brazilian barbecue restaurant. Fazenda is a Rodizio, a Churrascaria where the meat is grilled in huge chunks on giant skewers which are then fetched to your table where the flesh is sliced directly onto your plate. This continues indefinitely using a beer mat traffic light system. Leave your mat on green, and hey presto. Meat! More meat! Flip to red and they'll stop.

If you like meat this seems like a very good idea. If you don't I wouldn't bother.

In practice it's not always such a good idea. I've got history with the Rodizio. Some years ago I spent a few weeks in Brazil (and its equally meat-tastic southern neighbour Argentina), the final week of which was in Rio where I did literally nothing but eat meat at a Rodizio and drink Caipirinhas. Alright not quite literally, but that's the abiding memory. Presumably I was lying on the beach with the meat and booze sweats inbetween times.

After the excesses of Brazil I didn't go near another Rodizio for another few years until a couple of very underwhelming experiences in a London restaurant. Meat that was mostly overcooked and poor quality, the best cuts showing up far too infrequently. Compared to the generosity and quality we'd experienced in Brazil it was a waste of time.

Fast forward another couple of years to Fazenda. Would it be like a true Brazilian Rodizio, or would it follow the annoyingly common British approach to this sort of thing (i.e. offer all you can eat, hide behind a gimmick, then don't worry about the quality because they'll be queuing out the door anyway)?

Thankfully it was much more like the true Brazilian experience. Meat! More meat!

Did I mention the salad bar? While the meat and various other sundry items (chips, beef empanadas, pao de queijo) are fetched to you, the salad bar is self service. I was quite impressed with the salad bar at Fazenda. Plentifully stocked, good quality, a selection of cold cuts available as well as green stuff in case unlimited hot sliced meat just isn't enough.

The bread from the salad bar was good but the pao de queijo (little cheesy rolls) were a bit chewy and rubbish. I liked the beef empanadas though. Good and meaty. Always makes sense to commence an all you can eat meat barbecue meal with some little meat pies.

And then the meat began to arrive. Beefsteak in a multitude of ways. Rump and tail of rump and picanha, or cap of rump, the King of the Rodizio.

Even a bit of fillet, and then some ribs. None of it was overcooked, everything ranged from medium through to rare, no well done steak in sight. Not the best beef I've tasted, but decent stuff and handled well.

There were sausages, Brazilian style chorico and black pudding, both delicious these. The black pudding was a soft squidgy delight, more like a French boudin than a British pud.

Lamb was over marinaded in a slightly artificial tasting minty sauce, but was beautifully cooked within, pink and tender.

There was chicken, no breasts I'm pleased to say, but crispy skinned thighs and also hearts. I had high hopes for these after enjoying them on holiday last year, but sadly they were like rubber balls.

Meat! More meat! It continued until closing time, we dined late, the beef getting ever rarer as time progressed. The final skewer was blue, virtually raw, I think they'd doused the flames but brought it to us anyway.

Finally spent, my faith in the Rodizio restored, we headed off, fortified for the rest of the night.

It's a fun evening a meal at Fazenda, but not a cheap one. On a weekend night the all you can eat Rodizio will set you back £28 (weeknights and lunchtimes are cheaper). By the time we'd quaffed a load of drinkable but unspectacular Malbec our bill topped out at £44 per head including well earned service (we worked those meat waiters hard). The meat was good but not excellent, so if you want to stuff your face I'd go here, but if you want a genuinely fine piece of meat I'd go elsewhere.

7/10

Waterman’s Place
3 Wharf Approach
Granary Wharf
Leeds
LS1 4BR

www.fazenda.co.uk

The White Swan, Leeds

I like the Leeds Brewery pubs and bars, each of them is a reliable place for a drink or a bite to eat. Nothing mindblowing, but you know you can walk in at most hours of the day and expect to be fed and watered well.

This was just the case last Saturday. Original plans went awry and I was racking my brains for alternatives in that part of town. The White Swan did the job.

It's a standard pub food menu, there are burgers, sandwiches, sausage and mash, fish and chips and so on. All a little more expensive than your average chain pub but the food is better than average.

Mussels and chips for me. The mussels were plump and fresh, and not at all bearded or gritty. The leftover creamy, briney liquor kept me happily slurping away and dipping chips for an age. They would have been great chips (I'm not averse to skin-on once in a while) with an extra minute or so in the fat, they tasted lovely but were just a little on the floppy side.

A 6oz Steak across the table was also declared a success. I tried a bit and it was good;- pink, properly seasoned and rested. The accompanying chips were the same as mine, tasty but slightly underdone.

A side of onion rings were magnificent though, the batter light and crunchy and the innards sweet.

With a pint of I can't remember what and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, the bill was just shy of £30. Service was quick, the food enjoyable.

7/10

Swan Street
Leeds
LS1 6LW

www.whiteswanleeds.co.uk

French Living, Nottingham

Dinner for three in Nottingham last Tuesday night. It's not often I eat French food, so I had high hopes for French Living. It's a well established fixture on the Nottingham dining scene, serving classic French bistro food.

We started with a few nibbles; - bread, vinegar and oil, olives and saucisson sec. The bread and olives were nothing special but pleasant enough. I enjoyed the saucisson, which was mildly cured, fatty and moreish.

Onglet à l'Echalote for me, a large slab of skirt steak in a shallot and veal stock sauce. The steak itself was a beauty, properly rare as requested and strongly flavoured. It was also impressively tender, tricky to pull off with this cut. I picked the winner with this, a pricier rib-eye across the table looked a little thin and weedy in comparison, though it was declared a success.

The sauce was rich and reduced, perfectly nice but superfluous really. Every time I eat a sauce covered steak it just re-inforces my view that the main purpose of steak sauces is to mask inferior meat. If it's a good quality piece of beef, which this was, let the meat take centre stage I say.

The sauteed potatoes and vegetables were both fine, nice crispy bits on the spuds and al dente veg.

Cassoulet Toulousain was, I think, a classic rendition. It's not a dish I'm very familiar with but all the components were there;- soft, stewed beans, sausage and duck hidden beneath a breadcrumb crust. I tried a bit and really liked it. Definitely something I'll be ordering in the future.

The puddings we had were, putting it bluntly, a bit rubbish. Peach melba was made with crap ice-cream. You know the yellow coloured Cornish stuff from the supermarket? That. A chocolate cake was rather dry and needed a more generous hand with the custard to save it.

Dessert aside a good meal. Service was efficient and suitably Gallic, and prices are reasonable. Our bill came to £85 but that did include two bottles of decent Pinot Noir and 10% service. Worth a visit.

7/10

27 King Street
Nottingham
NG1 2AY

http://www.frenchliving.co.uk/

Trying to cook the perfect steak (volume 4)

I know barely a month has passed since last time, but I'm going to write about cooking large slabs of cow again. Vegetarians and those bored of beefsteaks look away now.

I had to write about this steak, because it was the best yet. I've almost cracked it. Without the use of charcoal I don't think I can do much better.

This was an unplanned steak night. I was at the excellent Welbeck Farm Shop buying some cheese and inadvertently wandered over to the butcher's counter, drawn in by some mysterious form of meat magnetism. And there it was, some very fine looking rib on the bone, priced most temptingly at £9.99 per kilo.

I ended up with this. A one rib steak, a good two and a half inches thick, weighing in at around 1.25 kgs. Here it is just after salting. I should note at this point that I shared this one with a friend and her daughter. I do have limits.

The cooking method was the same as last time, for details see here. The gist is this: salt generously at least an hour before cooking, very hot pan, plain oil, turn it regularly, add butter for the last minute or so, give it a good rest.

Prior to cooking I also tried Heston's extra ageing method, essentially leaving the steak uncovered in the fridge for a couple of days. The theory is that this dries the steak a little, tenderising it and concentrating the flavour. I've no idea whether this made any difference, but we'll assume Blumenthal has done his homework.

The steak being such a whopper I salted 90 minutes before cooking this time. Here it is after the salt has been absorbed, just before it went in the pan. The only other improvement I could think of was keeping better control of the temperature, so I bought myself a new toy:

Meat thermometer at the ready. Hot pan at the ready. Impending fat splattered smoke choked kitchen at the ready. In it goes!

Two minutes in, the first signs of a crust start to appear.

Seven minutes in, the char is coming along nicely, and the fat is starting to render and crisp.

Fourteen minutes in, almost there. The butter has just gone in and the crust looks lovely. I was keeping a close watch on the internal temperature at this point. 130 degrees fahrenheit was the target point, which is just on the cusp of medium rare. This was the only mistake I made. The temperature rose slowly and steadily throughout the cooking time, but then suddenly started to shoot up rapidly towards the end. I missed the cut-off point by a couple of degrees, removing it from the pan at 132.

Here we are, post-rest, resplendent and ready for slicing.

It was wonderful. See how the thin, dark crust gives way to tender pink juicy flesh. It was a beautiful piece of meat too, with a powerful savoury beefy flavour and delicious fat.

I always think you can spot quality, well aged beef by the fat. It should be yellow-ish in colour and smell a bit buttery. It should be rich in flavour and entice you to eat it, even the thick wobbly bits. This was all those things.

Served with sautéed potatoes, green salad, and mushrooms fried in smoked garlic this was one of the best Sunday dinners I've had in a long time. It even went down well with my friend's two year old daughter (who will eat anything as long as you tell her it's sausages).

Trying to cook the perfect steak (volume 3)

My little mission to find the best way to cook a steak continues. It's been a while since I've had one so I thought I'd treat myself to a little early Christmas present.

Here we have about 650g of T-bone from Farmer Copley's just outside Pontefract. Copley's is one of the new types of farm shop I tend to moan about; the prices are high and a lot of money has obviously been spent on the premises. The butchers counter was full of the usual ready trimmed, small not-very-exciting cuts but in this case they were happy to fetch a larger piece from out back and cut me something to order (unlike certain other farm shops where you have to order two weeks in advance in triplicate by fax just to get a decent sized steak on the bone).

In this case they'd already boned out all the main sirloin and fillet portions but did have some T-bone ends on offer. I'd rather not have the fillet section at all, but at least at the end there's not much of it to be bothering about.

On to the cooking method, so far this year I've tried the following:

- slow in a pan with a constant basting of butter followed by a long rest.
- fast over charcoal followed by a long rest.
- fast in a hot dry pan followed by a long rest (I haven't blogged this but it used to be my stock method).

...all of which have pros and cons, but this one is my new favourite, at least in December it is when I have no intention of firing up the barbie. I found the method on the Serious Eats website and you can find it here and here. These guys really know their steak!

Here is what I did.

Get a thick steak. At least one and a half inches. Anything thinner you might as well flash fry and eat in a sandwich.

Remove it from the fridge at least two hours before you plan to cook it, and salt it generously at least one hour before you plan to cook it. Salting early really does work. The Serious Eats link explains why, and if you look carefully at my photos (very carefully because they're rubbish) you can see the evidence. The photo above was taken about 15 minutes after salting. There are loads of tiny little pools of liquid on the surface of the steak where the salt has drawn out the moisture.

The photo above was taken about 40 minutes after the previous one. The liquid pools have disappeared either entirely or have left a little solid salt deposit, like the crust from evaporated seawater. If you don't believe me and want to get all Blumenthal-obsessive about it then go check out the time lapse video. I waited a full hour after salting because it took longer for the moisture to re-absorb for me.

When it was eventually good to go I heated up some neutral cooking oil (sunflower, groundnut or whatever) in a flat, thick bottomed frying pan until it was smoking. I don't use a ridged griddle anymore because although it makes your steak pretty it actually hinders development of the crust (because the surface of the meat between the ridges is actually kept away from the heat slightly).

When the oil was smoking profusely I threw in the steak, then kept turning it every thirty seconds or so for a few minutes. The exact time will depend on the thickness of your steak, you'll have to guess if (like me) you don't have a meat thermometer.

This is after the first minute.

And here we are after three minutes.

After 5 minutes I threw in a big knob of butter, then started turning it even more frequently.

After about six and a half minutes the crust was looking good and it came out of the pan and on to a warmed plate. I then covered it with tented tin foil and left it for about seven minutes.

The finished article, looking pretty damn fine. How about the inside?

Almost cracked it! I was looking for that dark, crusty almost charred but not burnt surface giving way to pink right the way through the centre. This was just very slightly overdone in the centre, but only just. The texture and flavour were excellent. The salt had permeated right through the meat leaving it perfectly seasoned, and it had a strong, minerally flavour. Really, really good. I also had the urge to eat all of the fat from the edges, as it was all lovely and creamy and more-ish, always a sign of a good steak.

With a bit of tweaking, this is the method for me. I'd probably knock 30 seconds off the overall cooking time for a steak the same size, and add the butter 30 seconds earlier. Other than that it was wonderful, and the meat itself very good too. I'll go to Farmer Copley's again.