Ok - this is a last-ditch effort to revive the blog.  On that subject, I will now take a question from an imaginary reader.  

Dear Campbelloki.blogspot.com:  Seeing pictures of food on your blog so often is beginning to weird me out.  I mean, come on.  Are you going to turn your blog into one of those lame blogs where hopeless culinary fanboys cook every recipe from a particular cook book in order from beginning to end so as to show unparalleled devotion to a cooking icon who doesn't even know you exist and wouldn't like you that much if he/she actually knew you?

Me: Yes.

(Q&A now over) There are a couple of things I hope to accomplish in this effort.  First, I want to get some basic cooking skills.  Second, I want to use cooking as a device to keep writing in this blog.  I sometimes wonder whether Alton loves cinematography or cooking more.  I think sometimes that cooking is just a means to an end.  It doesn't make him any less stupendous - quite the opposite.  Because he's actually trying to make a TV show rather than just have a studio audience clap and scream when he trots on stage (take that, Emeril), he's done something unique.  The reason I need to re-start the blog is obvious.  Now that I live in Pullman, there's a lot less material that can safely and appropriately be shared with the world.  Writing about work in San Diego was fun, but if I did that here, I'd probably offend the last 3 people at work that still think I'm an ok guy.  

The first recipe in Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food - Version 2.0" is Skirt Steak - The Master Recipe.  This is part of the first section of the book which is on searing stuff.    I sear stuff a lot with our cast iron skillet.  Mostly ham/lamb-burgers and sirloin steak. Appropriately for the first recipe in the book, it was really straightforward.  Get slab of meat, lube, season, heat cast iron, and cook on both sides.  

The first issue was the piece of meat.  I'm sure every butcher cuts stuff a little different.  The skirt steak cut I got was pretty long - maybe 2 feet - and had trouble fitting into the pan even after being cut in half.  The nice thing about this recipe, though, is that since the meat is already flat, there is a good chance it will get cooked properly without much fussing around.  

Once the pan was hot, I slapped the meat down and it started to hiss and smoke appropriately.  This usually means I have to send Asha upstairs to shut the bedroom doors so we don't go to sleep to the sweet smells of a yakiniku joint. 

Per instructions, I cooked the meat for 3 minutes each side.  As you can see from the picture, it got pretty smoky.  It always does - sometimes I sear outside.

A couple of observations - first, it's really helpful to get the meat out of the fridge and let it sit for a long time so that the inside isn't still 40 degrees when you slap it on the pan.  If it is, you will likely get the warm pink center of the rare-medium rare.  I thought this wouldn't happen with such a thin cut, but it did (see pic below where one piece is just a litte pink and the other is dark red).  The steak I had was only about 3/4 inch thick.  The other thing is that the cut I had was of variable thickness.  I thought this would be good, though, because I like rarer meat, and Mari and the kids tend to like less rare.  

Anyway, I took it off the pan and it looked like the below picture.  Per instructions, I cut against the meat grain.  This was also a nice thing about skirt steak.  Unlike some other cuts where the grain changes a lot, and is sometimes hard to nail down, cutting across the grain on skirt steak is super easy.  I whipped up a pan sauce with low expectations since I hadn't planned on doing that.  I ended up with something that looked like engine sludge - low expectations were met.  

The meat itself was o.k.  The rarer parts were pretty much inedible, though.  Everything on the thin end that was medium well tasted good and everyone liked.  Does make a guy pine for finer cuts of meat, though.

Overall score (note I'm not scoring the recipe but rather what happened when I tried to make it): 2 salt cellars out of 5

What I'd do differently next time: Cook the meat a little longer at a little lower temperature, and make sure the center isn't cold when it goes in the skillet.  

Next Recipe: Cast-Iron Duck