So the night started out simply. Picked up DK from the office, stopped by his house, and made our way back home. Had some nice ingredients - filet mignon, asparagus, etc - and once we'd settled in, I set about making dinner. Dinner would be, along with blanched asparagus and parmigiano risotto, steak au poivre, a dish that (for the uninitiated) calls for a sauce that is made by FUCKING LIGHTING THE PAN ON FIRE. That's right, you purposefully start a kitchen fire.
I'll tell you more.
It was the scariest thing I've ever done. Seriously, I was shaking, both before and after. I had to sit down (once all the flames went out, of course). Lets start at the beginning.
In a medium pan over medium heat, you heat butter and olive oil until the combo takes on a golden color (takes about a minute). Mixing the oil with the butter increases the smoke point of the butter, enabling you to cook something in it at a higher temperature without burning the butter. So I did all that, and then put my beautiful peppercorn-crusted filets into the pan. I was feeling quite confident, like a very capable, learned chef. I had everything going at once - the asparagus, the risotto, the filet, and it was all coming together magnificently. But there it was - it was looming in the not-so-far-off distance - the notion that I would have to FUCKING LIGHT THE PAN ON FIRE. The steaks were done. There was no turning back.
I donned my Orka, pulled my hair back, and said a little prayer. Oh, and I also equipped DK with a big metal lid, in case things got out of hand.
I poured the cognac into the pan. "Shit, this is it! I've gotta do it now!" I thought, as the cognac began to sizzle and spit. And I did it! I stuck my grill lighter into the pan and - WHOOOOOSH - a column of flame ignited in front of my very eyes and licked its way toward the ceiling. Holy cow. Shake, shake, shake, I shook the pan, gently sloshing the burning liquid around as the flames (which were now confined to the area directly above my pan) began to die down. Shake, shake, shake, and twenty seconds later, the fire had burned itself out. The really magical part of the whole process (I mean, in addition to me escaping with my eyebrows still in tact) is that it worked - all the beautiful brown bits from the bottom of the pan were now part of the sauce, no scraping required. I finished making the sauce, plated our dinners, and abbiamo mangiato. We ate.