Birthday Steak

My parents came down this past weekend to celebrate my birthday early. I got the obligatory birthday card (which appeared to be an optical illusion involving stacked turtles - but it was a real photo), and a birthday cake.

Mom came through with a bundt cake - I'd been craving one for a while, and this was a glorious tunnel of fudge cake. Tasty.... that was breakfast and lunch today.

But even better, mom and dad brought down some rib-eye steaks from Garners Meats - a meat shop pretty close to their house. They say the meat shop is full of beautiful cuts of meat - and I can believe it. The three steaks each weighed in well over a pound, 18-20 ounces, and were close to two inches thick. They were so bright red, pink almost, that it was a shame to cook them. But that was their lot in life.

So I marinated them briefly in a little garlic, soy sauce, oyster sauce, ginger, and red-pepper flakes. Just long enough to give a little flavor to the little bits of meat hanging on the edge of the main portion of the steak. Then I threw them on the grill.

Mom and Mary's (they were splitting one) went on early, and got the medium-well done treatment, just barely pink. Dad's and mine went on just as the potato planks were ready to flip. Our steaks grilled up beautifully, dark grill marks on the outside, warm but mooing on the inside. After the obligatory 5 minute wait to let the juices re-distribute themselves, we dug into the steaks.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........

I must say, that was the best steak I've ever grilled myself, and certainly one of the top 3 I've ever had. So very tender, done perfectly (without the aide of a thermometer), and all 18 ounces of it was mine.

I'm gonna have to make a point of checking that shop out next time I'm in Portland for a weekend.