Sliced steak

Sliced Delmonico steak (which can mean about 100 different things depending on where you get it), white and red cipollini onions (Can cipollinis be red? Not sure, but that's the basket where the fine folks at Snake Hill Farm put them, so we'll go with that.), wilted spinach, and some leftover grits (I made this a few days ago, so the grits weren't too old.). Some mushrooms may have been nice (I've really been slacking on taking advantage of the great things from Killbuck Valley Mushrooms.), but they weren't required. The steak and spinach were from the grocery store (hormone free and organic, respectfully), so options were limited.

Onions
Ingredients:
- Onions, halved and sliced
- Butter
- Salt and pepper
Method:
- Heat butter in a pan
- Add onions, salt and some pepper
- Maintain on a medium-low heat until they're to your liking, stirring relatively often

Steak
Ingredients:
- Steak
- Salt and pepper
- High heat oil
Method:
- Get uncoated frying pan very hot and add oil
- Season steak
- Sear both sides and the sides of the steak
- When it's how you like it (As you can see, I'm a medium rare-rare person myself.*) leave it to to rest
- Turn off heat, but don't clean pan

Spinach
Ingredients:
- Spinach
- Salt and pepper (See a theme with the ingredients in this meal?)
Method:
- Pan should still be a bit greasy and hot (if not add some oil/turn on heat)
- Add spinach and a little salt and pepper, quickly turning being sure none of the spinach stays on the bottom of the pan too long
- Remove from pan with tongs, squeezing and leaving as much liquid as possible in the pan

Grits
- See previous post, or just bake or mash a potato

Once spinach is laid out on a plate slice steak across the grain (As much as possible--the grain is not to consistent on this cut of beef, and this step is not all that important here.) and plate. You could make a quick pan sauce with stock or cream (or both), but it's not really necessary.

* My two cents on ordering a steak in a restaurant (Which I rarely do, as such great meat is available at the consumer level, and it's a pretty easy preparation.)--order it rare, medium-rare, medium, possibly medium-well, or well (if you're not concerned about your piece of meat). My point is that I do not recommend saying something like "Medium-rare but on the rare side," or "Slightly more cooked than medium." It just doesn't work, generally, and it messes with your server. At the typical restaurant the server is writing your order on a ticket that will be placed in front of a cook or relayed through the restaurant's computer system. At least in any place I've seen, there is no "Medium-rare but on the rare side" code for the ticket, or button for the system.

I agree, it is a service industry. But, while I truly believe that restaurant personnel adulterating (for lack of a better term) customers' food is not all that common, why annoy them? First, very few servers that I know want to get into an extended conversation with the cook about an order during a busy dinner service (the cook is likely even less inclined to participate in that discussion). Second, if you're that picky (and I tend to be), just make it yourself.