Cooking in Wyoming

When I was vacationing in Wyoming at my sister-in-law, I offered to do dinner. So: bought two two-inch-thick porterhouses (weighing from thirty-six to forty ounces each); slathered with a mix of olive oil and butter, sprinkled liberally with kosher salt and fresh-cracked pepper. Lay them in a twelve-inch cast-iron pan (which was with her husband's family for generations, or so I hear--and the main reason why I chose steak (wanted to see how they would taste, cooked in such a wonderful implement)), which had been kept heating in a 500 degree oven for twenty minutes. Kept the steaks in there for eight minutes one side, seven the other. Came out medium-rare--crusty dark-brown on the outside, red and juicy on the inside, with a kind of dark, buttery juice running about all over the pan.

Let the steaks cool, and scorched some sliced Italian bread on the pan. which soaked up all the juices. Served it with herbed butter (butter, kosher salt, fresh-cracked pepper, garlic, half a dozen dried herbs, all run through a blender) and a spinach salad with strawberry vinaigrette (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic clove, kosher salt, fresh-cracked pepper, and a few heaping tablespoons of strawberry jam, run through the same blender). Not too bad.