Steak Tips

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite thing to cook?

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I don’t do them too much anymore. We eat less meat, but one of my favorite dishes was a roasted steak tips recipe that was finished over a flaming bed of coals. It came about from grad school dietary boredom.

I was very poor in grad school and spent a lot of time searching for good, but inexpensive, materials that I could cook with. I was also living with a cat ( Clancy, the Grey Menace). He fancied himself an epicure, gourmand, and not the sort of kitty who was satisfied with Friskies every day. Let him get too bored and spend time being apprehensive about losing O Negative blood in a fight.

Luckily for me, there was a local farmer’s market not too far away where many of the local Pennsylvania Dutch farmers sold their produce one day a week. It was my lifeline to good food at a reasonable price. Among my indulgences every so often were some thin cut steak tips. These I’d take home, carefully sautée in a sauce I’d mix from Worstershire sauce, spices and wine, and lightly bake. Then I’d finish them on my little Hibachi that I had in the back yard. The Grey Menace stood guard to ensure that nothing was stolen.

At the perfect moment, the tips were removed from the hibachi and served with a salad for me and a bit of cat food for him. For a poverty-stricken grad student, it was a splendiferous treat. Clancy of course demanded seconds.