Sunday I decided, at the somewhat last minute, to do steak. I made the black and blue beef from Forever Summer- steak marinated in soy, ginger, garlic, scallions and sesame oil and then grilled on a "blisteringly hot" grill pan. I've never had much (or any) success with steak indoors at home. I did not use the rump steak Nigella called for- whenever I get to the market, all of my studying of meat charts goes out of my head and I can't remember if the flank is the same as the rump and what the hell a London Broil is, etc., so I just grabbed two ribeyes. And I heated the grill pan up for a good 20 minutes on high, and cooked my steak to rare using the finger test and Jeff's to medium. And man alive, were they juicy and delicious. Mine was perfect- charred and full of flavor on the outside, tender and meaty on the inside. Steak, I have conquered you, and it feels good. It is all about the ridiculously hot pan.

I served it with asparagus, which I tossed with olive oil and salt and ran under the broiler for somewhere in between 5 and 10 minutes (I'm not being coy, I can't remember how long they took). They were very good all brown and crispy, but I wish I'd used butter. Asparagus go with butter, in my head. Would butter burn under the broiler?

I also would have served it with rice- except the TJ's wild rice blend I grabbed included brown rice and brown basmati rice. Which a)take much longer than white rice to cook, so weren't done in time and b) in my mind brown rice is slightly less appealing than styrofoam, so I wasn't in much of a mood to finish cooking it anyway. And who needs rice when you just had a huge steak and asparagus?