Tonight I cooked Mrs Steve and me a simple steak dinner. The steak was thin-cut sirloin, which I trimmed of most of its rim of fat and carefully removed the veinings of that translucent connective tissue that doesn't render with flash-frying. I don't understand that stuff on a rare-to-medium-rare steak. It doesn't render at all in that short cooking time and I'm not up for chewing rubber. Anyway, I put the fatty trimmings in a small saucepan, heated it gently for half an hour and ended up with enough lovely beef fat to cook the steaks in my best frying pan. No flavour of the fat lost, and a decent cook's nibble for me... Don't tell her...

Before I cooked the steak I got my accompaniments sorted out. First, the chips. I had some lovely salad potatoes which I cut into chips (skin on). They were par-boiled in well-salted water for seven minutes, drained, roughed up then coated in hot groundnut oil on a baking tray. They went into a very hot oven for about 20 minutes. The veg was tenderstem broccoli, which was boiled for about six minutes in salted water (I don't believe in steaming). I also chopped up a big handful of my home-grown cherry tomatoes, adding a tablespoon of capers, seasoning and a good pinch of dried oregano. Stand by...

The steaks were fried in a very hot pan (my best one) in a smearing of that beef fat I mentioned. 60 seconds per side, then on to a hot plate which I covered up and then put into a warm oven to rest. The tomato mix went straight into the frying pan with the meaty juices, and the broccoli went on.

Six minutes later, chips went on warm plates, then the steak, then the broccoli then the tomato sauce. Bejaysus, we ate well tonight...